In the past few months I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t had time to work at genealogy the way I wish. I have a lot of wonderful material on the Paak family, which has been given to me by Professor Edgar Lawrence. I also have some interesting material to share from Elmhurst research about the Klein and Van Gessel families.
But am I sharing any of it in this post? No. I want to do a good job of pulling it together, and I can’t do that now, as overworked busy as I am. Instead, I thought I would share a photo from the Kalamazoo of my youth. On the right side, you can see my mother-in-law, the artist Diana Dale Castle. I wrote about her in my post The Todd House.
She’s at Bronson Park, which is the town square of Kalamazoo. When I was growing up, the park was surrounded by the “First Churches” of Kalamazoo (First United Methodist, etc.) and City Hall. Its enormous oak trees had sheltered Abraham Lincoln when he gave a speech in Kalamazoo. The park had the best Christmas decorations every year, and everything from political rallies to art fairs were held there.
My mother-in-law used to show her art at the art fairs.
Here is my MIL painting in her New York City apartment in the 1950s. Look at how horribly yellow the photograph has turned! Do you know if this can be fixed–and how to fix it?
The Family Kalamazoo 
Those are great pix, Luanne. Diana was clearly a beautiful woman and very talented. I bet someone could scan the second photo and do some kind of correction, The easiest thing might be to turn it into a black-and-white or sepia-tone photo.
Yes, she was both beautiful and talented and kind, too. And a big talker :). That’s an idea–to turn it into a b&w or sepia. I can try that myself and see what happens. It might have to be an expert to do the first suggestion, though. And there are more. Many of the photos from hubby’s family during this period are like this.
The photo can definitely be fixed. If you email it to me I can click a few things and improve that right up. amberlysfamilyhistory (at) yahoo (dot) com
Amberly! It’s already winging it’s way over to you! Thank you so much! What a sweet offer.
I would eat in Bronson Park every day when I worked at the Kalamazoo Civic theater box office. At the time, they still had huge art fairs there. I think they still do! It’s very cool to see your m-i-l out with her paintings. It’s like you can just get in the car and go visit her down there!
Nathan, I wish! She’s been gone 10 years now. I used to love Bronson Park. When I was a teen I used to hang out there with friends. I was downtown in 1980 when the tornado hit and wiped out all those beautiful trees.
What a beautiful woman – and evidently very talented!!
Thanks, Sheila. Right on both counts!!
Depending on which Wal Mart and who is working in the photo dept I have had some great fixes by the techs there. Some were b/w and he really cleared it up and made me a 4×6 b/w and was not blurry. Its worth trying. Ed
Thanks, Ed! I appreciate it and will try that!
A beautiful and very talented lady! I don’t know anything about photoshop but it seems to me people are practically working miracles on photos with it. But then what do I know?!
The thing I am able to do on PHotoshop that is very helpful is to rotate pix. My scanner sometimes makes them crooked and photoshop can even them right out. But most of photoshop is too complicated for me. YOu know a lot, btw.
Isn’t it awful when work and other obligations get in the way of genealogy? I can empathize. But you have such a wonderful photo collection. Pictures almost speak for themselves. These certainly do. I hope you were able to fix the yellowed last one.
Ugh, so true! and so unfair ;)! That’s what I am going to do for a while is put up some photos since I don’t have time to research. I just put up one that my daughter just scanned today.
I will check it out. I wish I had more photos so I could do that also when I need to fill a gap.
I’ve been appalled to discover that many of the photos that my husband and I took during the early years of our marriage have become very yellowed. It seems really odd to me that b&w photos from the early 20th century are in much better condition that pictures that were taken during the 1970s and 80s.
It’s such a shame that what we thought was cutting edge technology turned out to be bad. My personal snapshots from the early years of marriage (late 70s) are like that. Horrible.
[…] shared a couple of photographs of my artist mother-in-law the other day. They were from the 60s and early […]