PHOTOS & FUN
at the
WEDDING  of  TINA  YUSHAN  GOURD
and
LORRIN HANNAY NELSON
Baby Island Lodge  &  Freeland Hall
Whidbey Island, 21-25 July 2004

INTRO / HOME
BABY ISLAND LODGE
FREELAND HALL & CEREMONY


FREELAND HALL 


Freeland Hall sits on a promontory of land with water nearly on two sides.  The building looks due north on this view of Holmes Harbor.
(Photo: Jerry Nelson.  The full image will print to 4x15.6" and is 905x3548pix.)

 




The Hall was built in 1914 by a group of utopians who settled here in 1900 and contributed $10 each toward the purchase of 5 acres of farming land.

    
Photos: Rob Starling.

The Hall today is a humble community center on Whidbey Island, built in 1914 and still incompletely restored. 
Although the Hall is well known to Island residents, Lorrin and Tina must be complemented on their detective work in finding it and lining it up for their wedding in high season. 



CEREMONY 

        


Left: The grandmothers.
Lisa Gourd Goold escorts Florence Laikind Nelson, Jerry's mother, and Katie Gourd escorts Joan Anderson Hannay, Robin's mother (and Daisy).
Middle: Parents escort the groom.  Jerry, Lorrin and Robin Nelson.
Right (or bottom): Parents escort the bride.  David, Karen and Tina Gourd.  (Photos: Rob Starling.)

              
Photos: left, Rob Starling;  middle, right, Jerry Nelson.           Julian, Brooke and Hal Beecher; Robin Hannay Nelson, Brooke's sister.      Brooks plays before the ceremony.

Left: Hal and Brooke Beecher, who played for the opening and processional.  The piano, floor and music stand were a first for Brooke.  The music stand we came up with had embedded intelligence and also turned pages. 
    

TESTIMONIALS
                       
Testimonials were the heart of  the ceremony.   Lorrin told the other guys about the latest woman attracting his attention on campus, and his lowly assessment of any future for the relationship.  Of course, the medium was an all-points email, and 6 years later, disk drives could still be found with the file, which Joel wasn't too embarrassed to read  to the assembled public.  Tina told her friends about this guy she'd just met -- handsome, a great dancer, named ... Sean (!)  And he had a wonderful, good-looking roommate who was **really** nice ...    

The honesty, straightforwardness and principled behavior of both partners was the theme woven through comments from friends who shared the journey.  It is a great foundation for mutual growth in the future. Robin and I thank all of you for the strong affirmations you made about our son, his chosen mate, their importance to each of you, and their chances for a fulfilling life together.  The existence of these bonds is an asset to everyone in the groups who traveled through the years to a wedding in Freeland Hall.
 
I hope to add many great photos from David Gourd.  This of course was the heart of the ceremony.


GROUP  SHOTS  --
The  United  Clans of T&L

Hania, our professional photographer, ran the shoot, of course, and her official shots of the Roosevelt,  TJ, and Swarthmore crowds  will be out by September.  First up below:  Roosevelt High School, Seattle -- still crazy after all these years.                              

         
Levitating the bride.   (Photo left:: Rob Starling; right: Jerry Nelson.)

                         
The Roosevelt High School/Seattle group.  Claudia Farrar, George Meaders, Tina and Lorrin, Carol and Brian Vu (and, front row:) Paxton Farrar, Emily Stephens, Dave Farrar.  (Photo: Rob Starling.)  


      
Roosevelt High/Seattle group.  (Photo: JN).    Right: Emily shortchanges Tina and Carol.  (Photo: Rob Starling)


    
The Thomas Jefferson group at ease.   (Photo: JN)

       
The TJ group posing for the "real" photographer.  Rear: Janet Lee, Virginia  Nguyen, Tina Gourd, Lorrin Nelson, Erin Hartel, Mandy Menzer, Jennifer McGuire. 
Front: Chad Saselik, Will  van Cleve, Brian Hashimi is visible in the "at ease" pose not here, Joel Hartel, Warren Menzer, Rob Starling.  (Photo: Jerry Nelson)

PHOTO NOTE:
 I pasted in the far side of Holmes Harbor from another photo.  Don't kid yourself that a vintage 2004 CCD sensor has that kind of dynamic range. Some of us have hopes for Foveon Inc. where Carver Mead may eventually bring retinal circuitry to a semiconductor chip that's already pretty good.  A sheet of typing paper in starlight --you can find the sheet even if you can't read it--vs the same sheet in sunlight is 6 million to one.  In the lab, the eye can do 10 billion to one.  Today's best consumer detectors are about as good as slide film:  2500:1.  There is no technical system on earth that can match the eye -- shine a ground laser onto a space satellite, and it loses star tracking and tumbles through space -- remember that during the next war when rumors trickle down that some smart weapons aren't working anymore.   The eye uses biochemical negative feedback  from the get-go in the receptor, then neural circuitry around the receptor in the retinal network (back of the eyeball) to throttle down the response so there's still some dynamic range left for later -- hence the hope Carver's company won't go bankrupt before they can "rev" the chip technology a few more times and add modulator circuitry to the simple detection chips of today. 

 OK, we can make plausible prints with a dynamic range of  256:1 for display, why this winging for better **capture** ratios in the many thousands?   Because then you've taken the whole scene home with you in your pocket.  So, if you want to display the complexion, texture and shape of what's lost in a sunlight blotch on someone's face, you can do so.  You can show some of the image, albeit very lightly, very brightly.  Today, I can't show you anything -- all the pixels are the same, all white, all gone, nothing to restore.   Ditto shadows.  Consumers only count pixels (2004 is the year of the 5 megapixel camera).  Dynamic range is expressed in numbers like 3.0, 3.4 -- those are the exponents of a log scale.  10E3 is a thousand, a range of 1000:1;  10E3.4 is 2500:1.  Carver Mead and his grad students created the American digital chip design industry almost single-handedly -- they built the tools and programmed the software that enabled everyone else to create digital chips.  Foveon will be an analog chip venture.  When you've done as much as anyone to change the course of the last half of the 20th century, it's OK to turn tail and swim upstream.  It's your stream.



FREELAND HALL RECEPTION:  TOASTS

        

David Gourd, Robin & Jerry Nelson (photos: Rob Starling). Lorrin & Tina acknowledge toasts (Photo: Jerry Nelson).


SHED THOSE JEANS & T-SHIRTS (you slobs!)

          
Virginia Nguyen (photo: Rob Starling)            Warren and Mandy Menzer (photo: Rob Starling).   Janet Lee & Chad Saselik (photo: Rob Starling)

Tina & Lorrin's suggestion to use classic jazz for dinner was perfect.  We only got through the "vocals" on the list of mostly small combo & classic jazz  instrumentals.

         
Tina Gourd, Erin R Hartel, Virginia Nguyen         Eric Miller and Tina Gourd                                     Erin & Joel Hartel   (Photos: Rob Starling.)

Eric is a colleague at the middle school where Tina teaches.  He & Carol did the slide show enjoyed by all.


    
Katie Gourd, with Luna, a full-sized (eventually) poodle, and the youngest Dog In Residence at the wedding (photo: Rob Starling).

Dogs are groupies, and their happiness added to ours.  We had Knightly (Erin & Joel), Louis (Tina & Lorrin) and Luna (Katie and Matt) in residence at the Lodge.  Daisy attended the wedding with Joan Hannay.  Behind the scenes, advance planning and the attentiveness of Erin Hartel kept the animals safe and alternatively sheltered when the Lodge emptied out for the wedding and a night of dancing.



         
Rob S, Eric F, Tina G, Brian V, Emily S.                      Will van Cleve.         (Photos: Jerry Nelson)



FREELAND  HALL  SOUNDCREW  &  DANCING


        
Sean Brennan, Lorrin & Jerry Nelson, Friday setup.           Looking for a boost at 1KHz.  Lorrin & Jerry Nelson.                      Song List Sean. 
(Photo: Rob Starling.)                                                  (Photo: Rob Starling.)                                                                (Photo: Jerry Nelson.)

Music was run by the well-known DJs Slick and Ice.  A 3-PC LAN drove CDs and mp3s through a mixing console.  Two of the PCs were matched Apples running DJ software, but the DJs were having too much fun to beat-synch and cross-fade tracks into a continuous wall of sound.  Jerry skimmed 1,800 hits down to 155 upbeat favs, and Robin test-danced the list down to 22 showstoppers.  Jessica was supportive, perhaps because most cuts were released and charted before she was born, but Lorrin knew better.  He would cue our preferences along with everybody else's.  Seeing I was in a morally indefensible position, and out of marriageable children, I turned to Sean.  "Sean, please play these.  I'd rather die of cardiac arrest at this wedding then fade into old age."  This is the sort of proposal that intrigues Sean, Sean delivered, and, speaking for myself, the dancing was great !!   Robin and I also thank Warren and Mandy for helping us desecrate the tango.  The rest of you are invited to schedule a longer Practice Night for next time.  Sean criticized me for not collapsing on the dance floor, but a cold front moved in on wedding night, and the offshore breeze into Freeland Lodge's wall of wide double doors was a life-saver. 

(David Gourd and Chuck Groom have nice dance floor shots.  Hopefully later . . . )

SUNDAY at the LODGE


    
Lydia & Florence Nelson (photo: Jerry Nelson).






POST-SCRIPT
 
Marriage gives each of us the chance to create one other person in 6 billion with whom communication is effortless, with whom communication has no calculated ambiguities, no hidden agenda other than self-expression and mutual growth.  This achievement requires self-honesty, requires that we find enough pride in our strengths and accomplishments to accept all the weaknesses and failures.  If that point can be reached, then it is easy to raise children to become all they can be, and the children will enjoy what they see you enjoying without being admonished or pushed.  The insecure parent produces insecure children and the many compensations are only just that -- the upward spiral is more fun.  Just turn around when you feel the ground sloping the wrong way under your feet.  Do it as a conscious decision and an act of will.  The community that came together for this wedding was special.  The relationships among this extraordinary group of  friends are as valuable as the marriages that have formed. Stay together, and prove that the odds are better than one in 6 billion.
--jerry
 
      
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