Hometown politics
People seem to have gotten used to the incessant noise machines — gas-powered leaf blowers. They’re a blight on the citizenry here in Lower Merion and around the country.
See the campaign at BanGasBlowers.org
Two years of advocacy against a Sixers arena in Philly’s Chinatown
The struggle against the arena was successful. But rest assured, the brilliant activists who made the
Sixers’ billionaires back down are not going away. Witness more from inside the movement.
From trash pile to history museum
I saw this framed map on a neighborhood trash pile last year, and of course I took it home. It was titled “Birds-eye view of Pequot Casino and Surroundings.” I had heard of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe and their Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, so I figured the map would be good wall art for my brother Jim, who lives in Stonington Connecticut, not far from the big casino
But how did this really old map, probably printed in the early 20th Century, have a Pequot Casino? After all, Foxwoods wasn’t founded until 1986.
Danny’s Guitar Shop · 2013-2016
Danny Gold is the host of the show (writes his own material), and he really does own and operate a great guitar shop. Larry Freedman recorded and mixed the sound and did a lot of the masterminding.. I directed, shot and edited.
My Main Squeeze was our final episode, and perhaps my favorite.
This ambitious music series debuted on a little cable outfit in central Jersey that mainly showed local infomercials, When we amassed three shows, we approached Philadelphia's public station, WHYY, where we ended up with a regular time slot for three years. We made 13 episodes in all, completely on our own.. We’re not sure if the people at WHYY watched it or not, but not once did they ask to see an episode prior to air.. Needless to say, Danny, Larry, and I were living a television dream.
Big French Dance · 1972-2019
This photography book is the culmination of a music documentary project that began in 1972 — when my wife Fay and I moved to south Louisiana to study regional French music.
Four decades later, I revisited my old box of negatives and over a couple of years created the book that I published in conjunction with a solo exhibition at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, LA..
Late breaking news! Our entire collection has been accessioned into the Southern Folklife Collection of the University of North Carolina library, where it is now available to scholars, documentary makers, and others studying the American south. Steve Weiss, curator of the widely admired archive, came to our studio to pick up our negatives, audio tapes, the Big French Dance exhibition, and a complete digital catalog that I created for the Ron and Fay Stanford Collection. Such a relief that our documentation will be preserved.
Photographs to U of Iowa Special Collections
I spent 1974-75 at film school in Iowa City, and I earned my tuition documenting a historic preservation project right on campus — the 1840s State Capitol building. Periodically I’d spend a few hours on-site with my 35mm Nikon and a 16mm Arriflex movie camera.
The film footage became part a documentary once the restoration was finished, but the stills stayed in negative sleeves until I scanned them recently. What I rediscovered was a time capsule from a half-century ago —: an all male construction crew that used Thermos bottles and read their newspapers, not phones, at lunch.
Back in the day, there were Thermos bottles, local newspapers, and no phones in sight,