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Wayback Machine - June 1977
Perhaps my first self portrait in a side view mirror. Most definitely not my last.
Taken with my Kodak Instamatic 100.
Since it's #WayBackWednesday, I guess this could count.
I went to Small World coffee shop in Princeton to get some photo editing done. I grabbed a small table near the front window as I like to people watch while editing. Next to me was an elderly gentleman, in shorts a baseball cap and a zip-up sweater. He was tapping away at the keys, and speaking with someone on his phone here and there too.
At one point, he took his phone and walked out of the coffee shop, leaving behind his MacBook and coffee. He came back in about 15 minutes later and I joked to him that he's quite trusting.
We then started chatting. What does he do?
"Retired professor from Princeton. Taught at Harvard."
What do I do?
"Retired corp comm guy. Now freelance photography."
Though he spoke softly, I detected an accent. I asked where he was originally from. He said "Ethiopia."
I smile and said "I've been there, back in 2011. On a photoshoot with my company. At an organization called Project Mercy."
He looked at me and said "Do you know Marta?"
My eyes must have gotten big as beachballs. I said I absolutely do!
I pulled out my phone and a photo from that shoot, way back in 2011.
Turns out, I had been speaking with Epharim Issac, an Ethiopian scholar of ancient Ethiopian Semitic Languages and was the first professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard. To name just a few things.
"I have a Wikipedia page," he told me. I looked it up. He sure does. That and more.
I was just amazed to meet someone from a far away country in a coffee shop in a nearby town and we both know the same person from that far-away country.
It really is small world.
Read more, see more photos from that trip:
jerseystylephotography.wordpress.com/2026/06/24/its-a-sma...
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