The Isaacsons, 1971

I recently acquired some new photographs from the Cooper household.  Among them I found this great picture of my paternal grandparents, Oscar and Ruth Isaacson.  The picture is from around the time of my parents' graduation from Augustana and their wedding.

Incidentally, those would be pretty hip outfits on my college students.  Or maybe would have been when I was in college (I guess it's now been something like 10 years since Lisa Loeb glasses were in).

Blowing bubbles

One of the disappointing things about being a grown-up is that you don't get to blow bubbles.

I also wonder if they still make these sorts of pipe-bubble-blowers.  I suppose they don't make candy cigarettes, either.  All that "smoking is bad for children" rhetoric, you know.

Ruthe at her wedding

I guess rather than toss the bouquet, she choose to hand it off to a friend?

This is Ruthe wearing her mother's wedding dress. And looking, as always, quite fetching.

"Getting Writer's Block From Calling You is Still All I Wanna Do"

Today, we celebrate four years of marriage. We've been together even longer than that. I like you even more now than I did then.

Joe Bradley, Batman

It's been a while since I've contributed to this blog. In my defense, I'm lazy.

Today's my dad's birthday. He was born on January 7, 1948, so by my count that makes him... 94 years old.

(In addition to being lazy, I'm also quite stupid).



Here we see him as a young man, wielding the bat he would later use to beat the unholy crap out of me.

(In addition to being lazy and stupid, I'm also compulsively dishonest. In fact, my father never beat me with a baseball bat, despite the fact that I most certainly deserved a severe batting between the ages of 13 and 22).



And here we see an honestly paternal moment between Joe Bradley and the aforementioned, batting-deserving son.

Note the beer, cigarette, and wood paneling. The seventies were an awesome time, and I think we'd do well to try to make 2009 look more like 1977.

Happy Birthday, Dad!