Kodachrome

They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summer
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So, Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away

~ Paul Simon

If this song is familiar to you, you will certainly recall the opening line:  When I think back to all the crap I learned in high school . . .   Having had a 30-year career as a high school English teacher, that line does make me cringe a bit.  While I don't dispute that there is likely a lot of "crap" being taught, I'd also like to think that everything I taught was meaningful.  "All great literature is about what it means to be human," said my colleague and friend JoAnn.  And I had the opportunity to teach great literature.  I choose to believe that it made a difference.

But on to the lines quoted above.  I was always taken by the idea that we tend to record our lives in sunny days.  Ever the optimists, we take advantage of the blue skies and bright sun to get out our cameras (or now, our phones) and click away.  Or maybe this was more true back in the dark ages, when we had to pay for our Kodachrome film and then pay to have it developed.  If there were only 12 pictures per roll of film, there was no desire to waste them on cloudy days.  Hell, I'm old enough to remember when color film was a luxury.  Although Kodachrome was invented in the mid-30s, most of the photographs I have from the 50s and 60s are in black and white.

The Wizard of Oz movie was produced in 1939.  When I was growing up, it was broadcast on television every year, sometime in April.  I never missed it.  Although I cannot remember when my family switched from a black and white TV to a color set, I know that, through many years of watching the film, I had no idea that the movie is not in color until Dorothy lands in Oz.  It was all Kansas to me.

Twenty miles southeast of Bryce Canyon in Utah is another red-rocked nirvana, the Kodachrome Basin.  State Park literature states, "The color and beauty found here prompted a National Geographic Society expedition to name the area Kodachrome, after the popular film, in 1948."  Although it always seemed to be too commercial a name for a natural area, I understand the reasoning.  There will come a day, I suppose, when the history of the name will be lost on visitors, especially since Kodachrome film was retired in 2009 after 74 years.

When Paul Simon sings this song, he often switches the last line around.  Sometimes it's Everything looks worse in black and white, and sometimes it's Everything looks better in black and white.  He claims that he doesn't remember which way he originally wrote it.  I guess it's all a matter of perspective.  And you get to decide.