Santa on the Scene

My goodness, I had lunch today with friends at Pho Jasmine in North Portland, and the anarchy that was spilled around that table was a thing to behold!

A thing of beauty.

Photographer Lee Santa is in town, visiting from his home in Sagle, Idaho to attend the Portland Jazz Festival this weekend. He brought another of his Portland friends, Michael, to our meeting.  Michael is working on a very clever children's book of photos and poetry that I'm interested in.

I hadn't seen Lee in person in decades, but people don't change that much.  We fluently picked up with our old, easy, humorous banter.

Lee gave me a copy of Transparency Records' three-disc set of the Sun Ra Arkestra recorded at the legendary Red Garter in NYC, in 1970. Many of Lee's photos of Sun Ra from that three-night session are included in the TR set, and are featured in his recently-published memoir, A Journey into Jazz.

He bought me lunch, after mentioning that I was somewhat grayer than the last time we visited.  What a guy!


TS