Ag Museum

I went to the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Museum today with the Nikon as a photo expedition.  I've been wanting to get out somewhere for awhile and shoot some, and this seemed like a good place to go.  I had planned to go last week, but the weather wasn't as good, and I never was able to get up my momentum, so I lost that opportunity.  Today, I was determined, and I was walking out of the house pretty early.

The weather today was absolutely delicious.  When we actually get spring here, it's a gorgeous thing.  All the plants that bloom here are starting to open tentatively, and that hazy green mist that is the breath of the season is hanging in the tops of the trees.  The drive over was mercifully free of psychopaths intent on running me off the road or proving their manliness, so I soaked up the sun and joy of being behind the wheel. 

When I got to the museum, it was early still and mostly empty, and I walked around the collection of old buildings outside shooting whatever caught my eye.  It has been years since I have been there, but the place still brings back memories of Saturday and summer trips with my Granny and Granddaddy.  They'd load my two cousins and me up and take us over for the day, taking us through the inside museum and the outside "small town" I was walking through telling us stories about the things we were seeing since all of it was actually things they knew from personal use.

I gravitated toward the church at the center of the town.  It was quiet and cool, still, despite the increasing foot traffic of parents and small children.  I sat down on a pew and stared up at the complex patterns of board and bat, of arch and beam, that had gone into the construction of that simple country house of worship at some point.  Its crowning glory is a stained glass window of lilies.  I shot it repeatedly, but, as is so often the case when I try to capture something, I never got a good angle on it.  There was a pendant light right in the way, and although I think I tried every angle except for standing on the little piano in the corner, I don't really like any of the pictures of it I took.

After leaving the coolness of the church, I went to the General Store.  I had been thinking about a glass-bottle Coke since I had gotten in the car that morning.  Even though I don't really like Coke because it's so very, very sweet, an ice-cold glass-bottle Coke is something very special.  I used to love getting them in Japan and Thailand.  Here, they are very hard to find.  They, too, bring back memories, places I've been, times long gone.  Today, I enjoyed sitting on the porch in the breeze and drinking that fizzy beverage.  Even though it was a small one, I lingered over it.


The rest of the afternoon was pretty much a wash, but I got what I had wanted at the museum.  Even though the pictures are NOT some of my best by a long, long shot, I feel peaceful and calm just from going and taking them and from the walking with the memories that came from the location.  All in all, it wasn't a bad way to spend a day.