I’m challenging myself to give you a description without a particularly relevant image, this image is of a small house in Carpenteria, and is meant as decoration to this piece rather than having any particular relevance as the blog is about an image I have in my head, not in digital format.

We went to Carpenteria’s Museum, in this small town on the coast just below Santa Barbara. It’s worth a visit.

As we entered the place, a long single storey building which was dark as we walked in. A delightful elderly lady welcomed us in and asked if we’d like to see the Museum, if so she would turn the lights on, which she kindly did. It’s not that she was working in the dark, just that she was lit a little by the doorway and some localised lighting.

Behind her I noticed a lady, of similar age I’d guess, in what might be called the back office. She was in profile to us, dark haired with a pair of glasses with wings. Her chin was in a set in a determined way, slightly jutting forward in concentration, her bottom lip slightly forward of her top. She was lit by two frosted glass bell jar type of lights from long leads going to the ceiling. The yellow light lit her and the top of her head, and in front of her was an old style computer screen which cast a very slightly blue light to the edge her noble profile. She sat quite still in rapt attention to her task. Behind her were racks and racks of shelves with what looked like ancient box files. Wooden shelves and dark files. The whole thing was framed by the doorway to her small office. This entire sepia scene, was just a few seconds as her colleague was busy explaining to us the delights of the Museum, and it would have been a little odd to keep looking over her shoulder.

It could have been a Norman Rockwell work. Here, in the background, was an elderly lady who when she was born probably wrote on a small chalkboard at school, and now she’s busy fathoming a computer.

It’s stayed with me, you’ll have to imagine it.