Tuesday, February 16

I spent the entire day today going through sports contact sheets for the late 1980s looking for images of the women's basketball team. So far I have found about two or three team photographs in each year. I haven't started scanning them yet; instead, I'm setting aside the contact sheets and I will pull the negatives and scan them once I've gone through all the years.

I'm learning some interesting things about Indiana University sports by going through all these contact sheets. I'm not much of a sports fan, so I learned about the "Old Oaken Bucket" by running across a photograph of the trophy. This trophy is held by either Indiana University or Purdue University, depending on which school wins the game between the two in the "Big Ten" football conference. Each year a link shaped like an "I," a "P," or an "IP" is attached to the chain. An "I" is attached if Indiana wins, a "P" if Purdue wins, and an "IP" if it is a tie. This tradition goes back to 1925. There is even a Wikipedia article on the "Old Oaken Bucket."

Purdue currently holds the bucket.

Some of the images, however, are completely inexplicable, like the contact sheet I ran across with several rows of identical photographs of a Pepsi vending machine.