May 2, 2013: With support from viewers like you.

Some good news to report tonight, and some bad news.

We’ll start with the bad news: This coming Monday’s post is boring and pedestrian and you probably won’t like it that much.

The good news: Hope Street has won an award from the local paper’s best-local-blog contest for the second straight year.

Last year, Hope Street won as best blog in the Family category. This year, readers (probably including a whole bunch of you) voted Hope Street best blog in the Personal category.

The full story can be found on the Morning Call’s website here. I haven’t brought myself to look at it because there are probably some really dorky-looking pictures of me somewhere in the package.

(For those of you who voted the full slate, my other blog, Neck Pickup, won Best Music Blog. I’d like to think that was in honor of my eight straight posts about the Bay City Rollers, but that series started after the contest ended. So it must have been something else.)

After having been to the awards ceremony, I have warmed to the idea of a blog contest, as opposed to being totally pissy about it, as I’ve been in the past.

It was a pleasure to spend some time tonight in the company of a bunch of other bloggers who are passionate and creative. And it was an honor (hopefully not too much of an ego stroke) to hear them say they like what I do here.

Even if I remain kind of ambivalent about the idea of a “best blog,” I appreciate the paper setting up the framework for that kind of interaction.

And I appreciate the time and effort that those of you who voted put into supporting me. Thank you for your support. I will endeavor to keep the blog worthy of your time and interest.

After this coming Monday, that is. Did I mention you might not wanna tune in?

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1952-57: The winners.

Monday’s post, incidentally, was the 100th in the history of 5,478 Days/Hope Street. Thanks to all who have tuned in. I will endeavor to keep making it worth your while.

In Monday’s post, I briefly mentioned that my grandpa used to win and place in the Stamford Advocate’s reader photography contests back in the 1950s.

In keeping with the Blumenau family philosophy of keeping everything (and knowing where to find it), I’ve unearthed some of the old newspapers in which my grandpa’s prize-winning photographs originally ran.

Check it out, news nerds: This is what “reader-supplied value-added content” looked like when Dwight Eisenhower was President. (Of course you can click any of the pix to see ’em bigger.)

The above pic appeared in the Aug. 22, 1953, Advocate. The cutline says this picture of my dad, Aunt Elaine, and two slow-moving friends was “the week’s winner in Class III, children and animals.” (I’m sure my grandpa was crafty enough to realize that children plus animals would be a sure-fire winner.)

Although my grandfather’s yard on Hope Street bordered no body of water that I know of, turtles could occasionally be found wandering through.

There exists, in the family archives, a picture (taken roughly a quarter-century after this one) of an endearingly alarmed young me shoving my dad away as he tries to introduce me to a Hope Street yard-turtle.

But I digress.

From the Aug. 11, 1956, edition, here we have an “amusing and unusual” picture that won the top award in Class II. Not sure what Class II was — feet, maybe? Saddle shoes?

I like the dry, boring old-school newspaper photo headline: “Ankle View Tells The Story.” I would have opted for “Two Feet of Water” myself. Or maybe “Standing Water”?

Perhaps the apex of my grandpa’s amateur photography career. From the Aug. 31, 1957, Advocate. This ghostly shot won my grandpa first prize out of 16 “Best in Class” winners over four weeks of contests. For his efforts, he won $25 and a first-place ribbon.

And finally, from the Aug. 30, 1952, Advocate, we have the famous faked girl-by-window shot, which won my grandfather second place in the overall photo contest (presumably it won in some earlier category):

The Advocate was kind enough to run a story about that year’s winners, from which we learn the following about my grandpa:

Mr. Blumenau made the picture with a standard Rolleiflex camera, which is what he uses for all his work. He has been taking pictures for about 15 years and started originally with a smaller camera, graduating to the Rollei as he became more interested in his hobby.

The pensive young lady in the picture is Mr. Blumenau’s daughter, Elaine, who posed for the shot at her daddy’s direction. Mr. Blumenau does his own developing and printing, but has no darkroom at present. He plans to build one in his basement eventually, but at present is a little too busy raising a family. He is not a member of a camera club, but once belonged to the well-known Springfield Pictorialists, a group of enthusiastic amateur photographers who meet in Springfield, Mass.

Mr. Blumenau is a machine design draftsman. What he knows about picture making he has picked up on his own, through reading and actually taking and developing pictures. Judging from the fine results he gets, his method must have merit!

The self-trained lone wolf of family photography (at center) receives his award.

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