WE ARE LIVING IN A DAVID LYNCH FILM. I knew David Lynch as a friend of Jim Victor. He lived in the hay loft of the firehouse on Fairmont Avenue. There was a studio open to several artists on the second floor. Betsy and me lived at 2222 Green Street

David Lynch films are sometimes listed as horror films. 

His films are not horror films. They reflect the horror in our everyday life. 

I went with Jim Victor to watch The ELEPHANT MAN in the theater. 

My friend Jim Victor is in a photo still in the HBO Documentary David Lynch: The Art Life 

Still from HBO Documentary Jim Victor is on the left

I knew Dave Lynch as a friend of Jim Victor. He lived in the hay loft of the firehouse on Fairmont Avenue with Jack Fisk. There was a studio open to several artists on the second floor. Betsy and me lived at 2222 Green Street. I only met Dave and Jack Fisk coming and going in the firehouse. The firehouse is now a restaurant. 

Jim Lloyd sculptor  another friend of Jim Victor made the hayloft into an amazing living space. Plants hung in the places hay was moved up and down to the main floor. I had my Nikon F with me always. I might have photos of the hayloft living space somewhere. 

© James Pitcherella

I made photos of David Lynch making a life masks with Jack Fisk.  

He used the cast as part of screen. A film on a loop was projected onto it. The art piece was presented at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

The additional frames on the second contact sheet are of Jim Victor making a sculpture. Photojournalist Ku In Kim developing prints. 

And a piano concerto that might have been at the Curtis Arboretum, 1250 Church Road, Wyncote, Montgomery County, PA 

© James Pitcherella

© James Pitcherella

Betsy and me have the good fortune of livelong friends particular Jim Victor and Norm Jones both played significant parts in the Twentieth Century.  Jim in the peace movement. Norm Jones at the DOD. 

I posted this earlier:

I’m familiar with peace activists. I walked with Father John McNamee and my friend Jim Victor to see Daniel Berrigan at the Race St Friends Meeting House in Philadelphia in 1966.  

After talking to Father John my wife said, “What a waste!” Me, “What do you mean.” He can’t get married. John is a much more handsome man than David Morse in the film “Diary of a City Priest.”

This is a recent photo of Jim Victor & Father John McNamee at Villa St. Joseph in Landsdowne. He’s 90 years old. And still handsome!

Father John has a new book:

Our family has had the good fortune of a friendship with Norman Jones. 

We met Norman through another friend, John Hamilton. I met John running up and down Lemon Hill. We were going to join a rowing club. John got a bad back. The Fairmont Rowing Association was desperate for members and I began in a gig on the Schuylkill. John taught string instruments in the Philadelphia School District and played the viola professionally. Norman was a tenant at one of John’s rental homes. 

When Norm graduated from Drexel University, he fulfilled his army, ROTC at Fort Benning, Georgia. After his basic training, the army told him they had too many officers and he would need to enroll in the National Guard.

We got a call from Norman saying he needed a place to stay for a couple of weeks until he, his wife Mary and his daughter Suzi could find a home of their own. That two weeks stretched out into three months. We became very close friends during the three month period of living basically as one family.

Norm is a microwave engineer but he’s inclined to repairing automobiles and he helped me get my Saab 96 running smoothly. At a time when all cars used mechanical points to distribute a spark to each spark, plug norm help me install and electronic distributor. I remember Norm saying don’t touch the car you’ll be electrocuted when he briefly reversed the polarity of the battery, making the car body positive. The electronic distributor was successfully installed and my Saab 96 no longer stopped and needed new points.

Norm got a job working for Philco Ford and was enrolled in the Air Force National guard at Willow Grove, Naval Air Station. The Air Force Reserve had Cessna O-2s at Willow Grove Naval Air Station. Norm had command of the modified jeeps that carried the ground component of the forward air control. 

Betsy & me brought Suzi to the Air Station swimming pool. I played racquet ball at the Air Station court. I sometimes drove Norms car and the guards saluted me. Security was limited at the time. 

Norm was working at Philco Ford which designed radios that went into Ford vehicles. Norm designed a radio that would work well in their vehicles. Ford told him to modify them to make them less costly. Norm said the radios would only work for a few months if they were designed that way. Didn’t matter to Ford.

Norm said he couldn’t work for a company like that.

Norm began a long career designing satellite communications for the Department of Defense leading a small number of engineers in Reston, Virginia. 

Norm, divorced Mary and married Janet. Janet was a colonel at the NIH Clinical Center. 

He was concerned Janet could be kidnapped and used to gain information about Norm's work. Norm was away often at Palo Alto CA and Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. He designed a complete hard wired security system for their Reston home. His computer recorded in detail every person that came near their home. 

Betsy, Julia, Jeff and me visited Norm and Janet at their home in Reston and were greeted by speaker on their security system as we walked to the front door. 

Desktop computers were a new thing in the early 1990s. Norm taught Jeff and Julia how to use them. This is his office in Norm & Janets home in Reston. 

In the photos below Norm is instructing Julia & Jeff on how to use computers. Norm is an excellent and very patient instructor. At the time the photos below were taken Norm could not tell us what he did for the DOD. 

The military satellite communications system his team in Reston designed is still in use. Norm placed a ground unit in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. For a time it was the only communication system connecting New Orleans with the rest of the world. 

Over the years Norm's original designs were modified and used by Google Maps, Skype and other commercial systems. 

I'm greatly concerned about the coming election. Democracy in the United States is on a chopping block and Republicans wield the axe. I made this video:

“Right wing justices postulate Trump’s “immunity.” The objection is that this makes him a king. 

Not so. It’s much worse. A king can be subject to law. The American Revolution was justified by the notion that he had overstepped the law.

 This discussion of immunity is something else. The justices are not discussing any constitutional system at all, including a constitutional monarchy. 

Justices are instead flirting with the idea that a single person can be outside any constitutional system, outside the rule of law as such. 

There is a tradition in which you say the constitution is just there for us to wait and find out who is willing to break it and then we are going to endorse that person and give him special rights. 

That tradition is Nazi.” 

Timothy Snyder Yale Professor of History. 

"Judge Luttig Issues DIRE WARNING to Supreme Court over Trump Immunity"