Jason Whong: Renaissance Man-in-Training

Once again, I covered the LPGA Corning Classic for the Star-Gazette, and I did it almost exclusively with the Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 lens attached to an EOS 30D. I brought along my personal camera, but only used it for a few shots with a wider angle lens during the tournament.

I keep saying that golf is more and more interesting each time I cover the tournament, and I think this year definitely threw us a curve. The night before the final round, there were something like 20 golfers that had a chance at winning, so despite having four photographers, we were really stressed, running around all over the place, eyeing leaderboards, and noting which names we’d not heard all weekend that were now only a few strokes off of the lead.

In the end it was Leta Lindley who won the game, beating Jeong Jang in a sudden death playoff on hole 18. It was my second playoff. If you want the nitty-gritty on how Lindley won, check out Joe Mink’s retelling of the playoff. Or if you want to read a heartwarming story, try Steve Jensen’s story about watching the end of the tournament with the winner’s children.

And now, onto my fave photos from this year. First, from the finish:

Leta Lindley reacts after sinking the game-winning birdie putt.

Mommy wins! Mommy wins!

The taste of victory is running down her visor.

Some generally pretty shots:

I like Anna Rawson’s caddie’s white beard, which shows up even when he’s far away from the plane of focus.

Jimin Kang lifts a boundary rope. This is the first time I have shot a golfer doing something other than reacting or watching a ball or swinging or taking a club or walking or smiling. It’s just an act of courtesy that most people don’t get to see.

Meena Lee gave me my favorite sand shot of the tournament.

Sometimes the light works out just perfectly. Katherine Hull hits from the rough.

Ji Young Oh tees off under a blue sky. It was the first time a blue sky showed up in the tournament, so I needed to record it. Luckily for me, the ball was in front of the shade.

My favorite tee shot of the tournament: Taylor Leon on 13.

At one point, I noticed that our paper had three photographers on Erica Blasberg, so I took this shot and went back to send it to the office. Since she was winning round one, that’s the one that made it up online. I think she was smiling because her caddie made a joke about all the photographers following her.

Paula Creamer in profile. There’s tape on her finger. I don’t know why golfers tape fingers.

Some people look for rainbows when the sun shines as rain falls. I looked for golfers, and found Hee-Won Han.

And of course, some random reactions:

Giulia Sergas; Mi Hyun Kim; Jeanne Cho-Hunicke; Rosie Jones; Paula Creamer; Paula Creamer again; Laura Diaz; Erica Blasberg Joe Fazzary (from the Pro-Am); a baby bird; a baby raccoon.

Technorati Tags: LPGA Corning Classic, LPGA, Leta Lindley, Jimin Kang, Hee-Won Han, Taylor Leon, Meena Lee, Anna Rawson, Katherine Hull, Giulia Sergas, Mi Hyun Kim, Jeanne Cho-Hunicke, Rosie Jones, Paula Creamer, Laura Diaz, Ji Young Oh, baby bird, baby raccoon, Corning, Elmira

I have met a gentleman around town named Caglar Singletary. He is a friendly fellow. I think I first met him at Grace Episcopal Church on the northside; after that I just began seeing him at many events.

Caglar is somewhat famous in some circles on the Internets for some songs he wrote back in the day. He was one of the subjects of a documentary called “Off the Charts,” which was about people who paid to have their poetry turned into music.

I have become fond of the songs that were in the documentary, so I was quite surprised to find the songs available on iTunes.

Clicking the button above will launch iTunes and take you to Caglar’s songs on the iTunes store. I have to wonder whether he gets many royalties from this.

Technorati Tags: music, angelaria, outsider art, novelty songs

Because I am going to insulate the walls of my house this year, I wanted to see if I could get a copy of the blueprints, or at least find out for sure which year the house was built. I also wanted to find out if my house was a home constructed from a kit purchased from Sears, Roebuck & Co. They sold house kits from 1904 to 1939. Mine most closely resembles a Fullerton in size and layout.

So, today I did a lot of walking in circles. It was pretty fun.

I started at the County Clerk’s office. Someone helped me look up the property in the County’s records, and she said the house was built in 1900, which would not make the house a Sears home. I asked if the record was actual or approximate, and she said that I should ask the City tax office because that’s where they got the record from.

I walked a few blocks to city hall. In the city tax office, they confirmed for me that the construction date often says 1900 when assessors and property owners don’t know the date of construction at the date of the last assessment. I asked if they had any building permits on file, and they sent me to the Code Enforcement office.

At the Code Enforcement office (which I drove to, because it was on second street), I learned that they only have records going back to about the 1990s, and any records from before 1973 were lost in the flood. So there would be no official way to learn of the construction date through them.

They suggested that I go to the tax office, who suggested that i go to another tax office, which was closed from noon to 1 p.m., and I arrived at the door at noon exactly. So I went back to the County Clerk’s office, this time to ask about mortgages. I wanted to know if the builders of the house had recorded any mortgages on the property, and if so, whether Sears was the Mortgagee. I found nothing there, but I did decide to look up the original deed written for the Harpers when they took possesson of the property, after it had been subdivided from Miller’s farm, from back in 1889 in the Liber of Deeds:

Neat, huh? Unfortunately, I was still no closer to knowing when the house had been built.

So I made one more stop, this time at the Chemung Valley History Museum.

We looked at a bunch of photographs of houses belonging to people whose last names began with H. It would have been neat to see an older photograph of my house, but since my house is tiny, nobody thought to take a picture of it and give it to the historical society.

We also looked at the city directory, which was a bit like a phone book, except it was written for a time when nobody had phones. It was a hardcover book, and listed names and occupations by residence. It also listed residences in order, based on if you were traveling down the road away from the city center, so you would know what the cross streets were.

It turns out that the nomenclature of our street has been somewhat controversial over the past hundred years. When we moved in, it was Collins Street. Then the city replaced all the street signs with one that said “Collin Street”. Apparently, 90 years ago, it was also known as Collin Street. I didn’t bother to check how long it was before the street became Collins Street.

On a hunch, I found the house in the 1936 directory. The librarian suggested I go by fives until I found a time when it was not in the directory, so I went all the way back to 1916 before i found that there was no 603 Collins between Baty and South. Then I moved forward until I learned that the first time my house showed up was in the 1920 directory, which the curator said was published in Spring of 1920. Given what I can guess about lead times for publication, and how snow is not good for construction, it leads me to believe that the house was actually built in 1919.

Unfortunately, I can not vouch for the provenance of whether this is indeed a Sears home just yet, because I have not read enough about the subject. I am planning to pick up a book about it, so I can read more. For now, I have a decent idea of when the house was built, which is not that far off from what the structural inspector said. And while it was built within the time frame of the Sears Modern Homes catalog’s publication, as well as being really close to the rails needed to deliver such a kit, I have a feeling I actually live in a knockoff of a Fullerton.