Literary Epiphanies

I went to the annual Eudora Welty teacher workshop Friday.

Getting there was nightmarish.  Ice had gridlocked the entire city of Jackson.  All roads in and all roads within were obstructed by wrecks.  The dreaded "stack" where I-20 and I-59 go their separate ways was completely closed.  Insanity reigned supreme with selfish motorists refusing to move out of the way of incoming emergency services.  I personally sat about five miles outside of Brandon for 45 minutes, engine off, waiting for some accident I never saw any trace of to be cleared.

When I finally got to Welty House, I was late.  I scurried in and took up a seat in the back.  The two stories we were to have read before arriving were already under discussion.  I quickly got my pen out and started filling pages of notes.

These moment where I get to be a student again are precious.  I love to learn, feed on it just as much as I get nourishment from any kind of food.  I don't know how people function who never take in new knowledge somehow.  I always feel like my brain is like a pool, and if no new material is added, I swear I can feel it getting stagnant and brackish.

The two stories we were contrasting were "The Wanderers" by Welty and "The Dead" by Joyce.  I've been on something of a Joyce kick lately (the Moderns in general, but Joyce particularly).  F. got me started on the Joyce, an author I had avoided for years because of all the pretentious blather he gets in my field.  I can't think of another author who has more of what I have always thought of as the "Emperor's New Clothing Syndrome" attached to his name than Joyce, by which I have heard people who quite obviously had no more idea than the man in the moon what was going on in his works loudly discussing him like they were going to get some kind of celestial brownie points for doing so.  In any case, at F's urging, I decided to see what the fuss was about.

(Side note about that:  He sort of had to prod me a lot, and I was fairly grumpy and grudging with my acceptance. You would think by now I would just accept what F. said and go on.  He is the one who got me to listen to Dylan and at least a couple of other things I had decided that I was not going to fool with because of all the loud-sounding nothing that surrounds them.  He is right about things I will like to a degree that I do not understand.  I haven't reached the point of just going along with it, though.  I am aware that it is a character flaw.  If you try to push me toward something, you can be pretty sure I'm going to move it to the bottom of my list of priorities or refuse it altogether.  I know this behaviour is hardheaded and almost certainly unwise.  Can't seem to fix it, though.)

I was surprised when I liked what I was reading.  There was none of the deliberately abstruse stuff I'd always heard of.  The stories were engaging.  I finished Dubliners quickly and moved on to Ulysses.   I got about halfway through it before the semester started jumping up and down on me with its great black jackboots, so I am still plowing my way through it in doses.  It requires more concentration than Dubliners, more than most works I've read in my time studying literature, and while I like that about it tremendously, at the end of a long day, I don't always have that to give.

In any case, when the conference rolled around this year and I saw the pairing of Welty and Joyce, I was pretty excited about it.  I had never really thought of them together, but when I saw the titles, putting them together seemed perfectly logical.  Both are acutely interested in place and how it shapes culture and the characters they present.  I expected to learn a great deal and maybe figure out how to put both stories into the course syllabus I'm always in the middle of tearing apart and putting together, a little like faithful Penelope and her permanently unfinished weaving.

What I did not expect was a sharp and personal revelation.

Both stories have at their heart a trapped wanderer who has to lose what is precious to become free.  There are two different reactions reflecting the drastically different world views of the two different authors behind them.

Both Welty and Joyce were themselves wanderers.  Welty left Jackson for a long time for school and travel, but she had that permanent and inexplicable need to return that seems to be something we take in with the waters here in Mississippi.  She came home to take care of her family when they needed her.

Joyce left Dublin, that big city that felt so small, and refused all aspects and claims of its culture and practices.  He refused even to kneel at his mother's deathbed.  He was constantly seeking something somewhere else, yet his writing stays eternally tied to Dublin, picking it apart piece by piece in his works. For him, there is a paralysis that settles over life in Ireland, something caused by politics, religion, family.  All of it was a crushing weight that froze an individual in place, and in his stories some who are trying to escape come to a realization that they are not what they thought they were, become "sadder and wiser" because of it.

Welty, too, feels the power of place over her characters.  Family ties and cultural expectations reach out and twine around her wanderers, too.  She has a gently satirical eye for all the human frailty and foolishness that is a part of every community.  Unlike Joyce, though, I think Welty can see that there is good mixed in with all that stuff, too.  Her Wanderer, Virgie, has gone out and come back.  She has given up years of her life trying to fulfill the requirements of family and cultural duty.  As the oldest daughter, it's her job to take care of her mother.  At the end, when all the ties of family and property and obligation fall away from her, unlike with Gabriel in "The Dead," a sense that she is going to be okay now comes.  She has been changed, shaped, by all her experiences and decisions, but there is hope at the end.

And that is a critical thing.  That is the thing that I kept missing in Joyce.  I enjoy his stuff, but at the end of the day, I miss that glimmer of hope.  Maybe it's a Mississippi thing.  I see the same difference when I compare Faulkner and Hemingway.  I love them both, but there is usually a comfort at the end of Faulkner that I cannot always find from Hemingway.

I have to believe that this possibility of hope and comfort *is* present if we will look for it.  I think Welty gives it to us maybe in part because she comes back to a place that is probably not exactly where she wanted to be but she lives in it and makes something of it.  Instead of it becoming a stagnation that destroys, for her, it becomes an exercise in seeking the good, finding it wherever it appears, the garden, her friends, the ridiculous, the beautiful, the everyday miraculous.

I want to be more like Welty.  I, too, feel completely trapped here.  I am a wanderer who came home, and I can feel the weight of obligations and cultural issues sitting on me like bricks on bird wings.  Sometimes, it almost feels like there's not enough air to breathe.  I don't want to be like Joyce, though, and just lump the baby and bathwater together as I toss it all out the window.  There *is* the possibility of hope and comfort.  There are lessons to be learned if I persist.

Hamlet (you knew he was showing up sooner or later, right?) says that "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."  I have been so focused on all the things I do not like about being home that I am forgetting there are a great many good things here, too.  I think it's time to adjust my focus.  Lincoln famously said, "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."  Time to pick Welty's Wanderer instead.

Flying Roadtrip

Thursday, my best friend and I took a flying roadtrip west.  We started in Port Gibson to see the giant golden hand on the top of First Presbyterian.  From there, we went on the back road that never ends to see Windsor Ruins.  Finally, we finished up in Natchez where we ate at Mammy's Cupboard and toured Longwood before we had to turn back home.

I'd been on mostly this same trip last year and shot a ton of pictures.  It was so different having my friend along.  We talked in that way that people who have known each other forever can do as we traveled, and it wasn't necessarily that anything earthshattering was said.  It was just nice to have someone to say something to.

For both of us, this was sort of an abbreviated version of a long trip we took in 5th grade, the Mississippi Trip.  Both of us remember bits and pieces of that tour of our state.  My friend had a Polaroid camera, and she took pictures everywhere we went.  On this trip, she had her husband's good Nikon instead.  There was a gentle echo of that other trip so long ago as we traveled.

The sites themselves were much as I saw them last time.  Windsor didn't have a carload of thugs napping under the shade trees this time, and part of the single-strand wire fence built to keep people out of the structure was down, but everything else was just like it was before.  The big gold hand in Port Gibson was still large and golden.  Longwood was still frozen in time, silent, majestic, dreaming.

Of them all, Longwood always moves me most.  I don't know why I keep going back there.  There's something about the innovation and the forethought that Haller Nutt put into the design of that house that makes the unfinished part so much more poignant. The potential for wonder that is revealed in all the existing details is tantalizing and somehow saddening as well.  What would it have been if it could have been finished?  Would it still stand today, or would it have been torn down, burned up, forgotten and discarded?

Every tour I've had through the house has been a bit different depending on the docent.   The only thing I don't like about any of these tours is that the guides don't give you enough time inside simply to absorb the history and the feeling of the place.  It deserves a moment of quiet contemplation, of silence, of listening to the wind through the oaks outside.  It deserves a moment for the mind to paint the red brick walls with lustrous plaster, to create the missing statues in the domed niches, to remove the planks that hide the interior or the onion dome and add the mirrors that would have lit the whole house with their reflection.  Instead, there is sort of a brief patter, a quick "run-through," and next thing you know, you're being ushered politely, gently out the graceful front doors and into the nuclear heat of a Mississippi summer where, quite frankly, it is not possible to imagine much of anything that doesn't involve glacial cold.

It feels like there are a million untold stories in Longwood.  I am sure this is true of every house, past and present.  There is just something lingering in the air and the objects there, though, that invites imagination to embroider details.  There are paintings of those who lived there through time, and there are the very beds and books they used and loved.  The hand-drawn plans of what was to be created line the walls.  Tools and packing crates with hand-written address labels sit as though workers will return to tidy up soon.  Objects picked with care to provide comfort and beauty remain.  It feels like a place that lives in a half-life, wanting to be more but knowing that somnolent state is all that it will ever know.

Today is the 149th anniversary of Haller Nutt's death.  Heartbroken by the way his fates fell during the Civil War, he contracted pneumonia and succumbed.  I can't help but think that when he died, he must have been so worried about everything, his failing fortunes, his family and what would become of them after he was gone, the treatment he'd received at the hands of a government he had not defied.  He was a brilliant man by all accounts, and that shattered half-finished magnificent experiment of a house is terribly, terribly sad.  I wondered how often he stood in the center of that main floor or roamed the upper levels forbidden to modern tourists, worrying and hoping about the future, seeking some way, any way to bring some level of control and sanity back to his world.

I don't know if I'll make this same trip again, and if I do, I don't know that I will  go back to Longwood.  Likely, at some point, I will travel that way again.  There is so much in Natchez to see that I wouldn't have to go there to have something to do.  I am pretty sure I will make my way up that curving and treelined drive again, though.  The sad majesty of what awaits at the end seems to demand it.

Chimneyville 2012

I was a day late getting there, but I did make it at last.  Chimneyville is one of the two big craft/art events I look forward to every year.  I always have the best time with my friend and with the artists who come to show there.  This year was no exception.

I went on a mission.  I knew I wanted some very specific things, a piece from Michael Hayman who creates silver jewelry with Celtic and Norse motifs; an owl from Peter Rose who is probably one of my two favorite US potters; a dragon from Sam Clark, the other favorite; and another pen or something from Cadman and Cummings Studios, makers of all sorts of gorgeous writing instruments.  Anything else would just be gravy, but I had been thinking about these pieces for a long time.

I also wanted to find things related to mythology since I am VERY much on a kick with that right now, my natural and long-standing interest in all the stories and legends having been pushed into overdrive by the teaching of the course.  I thought my chances of finding interesting objects with their beginnings in myth might be better there than anywhere else.

The first piece I found proved me right.  A craftsman from Texas had wonderful metal creatures on sale.  I loved them all, cute, creative, and detailed as they were, but the small white Pegasus was perfect.  I reached, mostly impolitely, past a woman who was standing and staring aimlessly at the tree and plucked it up for my own.

Then it was off through the aisles.  It never ceases to amaze me what wonderful stuff people bring and how much diversity there is to the offerings.  Some people are there every year.  Some were newcomers.

Finally, though, my friend and I wandered onto an aisle that had Cadman and Cummings on it.  I looked at their selection, and my eye was caught by a beautiful bright red sketch pencil.  If you're not familiar with that concept, they have a very large lead in them, and the comfortably bulky pencil body allows for long use without as much hand fatigue.  I am not an artist, but I do sketch sometimes.  I have been wanting one of these for a long time, but the only ones I ever saw were from Levenger and they were bright florescent yellow.  Not for me.  This one has a body of turned red acrylic.  It has that same subtle sparkle that you might see in a bowling ball (which makes sense since they're both of the same material).  I used it as soon as I got home, and it is an absolute pleasure to write and draw with.  Piece one on my list accomplished.

The second piece came when we finally found Peter Rose.  Nobody was where they usually are this year.  I had almost given up finding him when we turned up a row and I saw his distinctive creatures peeking out from behind a divider.  As always, I sort of wanted everything.  It is so hard to choose between all the lovely things he has.  He had more ravens this year, some of them large and grand, some of them small enough to hold with one hand.  I love them.  No matter how many of them I have, they make me happy every time I see them.

He also had a variety of other things, and I tried to focus on the owls.  I have been saying now for about three years that I was going to get one of his owls for the collection I have at school.  Each year, some other piece has seduced me.  This year, I forced myself to look at other things before gravitating back to the ravens, and something else snagged me.  It was a hawk with a gorgeous Bizen-ish/Tokoname-ish red-brown glaze to it.  While the glaze was pure Japan, the shape was almost Egyptian, and all I could think of was "Horus."  The markings on the wings look almost like hieroglyphs.  When I picked it up and ran my fingers over its beautiful beak, I knew I had to have it.  Two other things should have told me I was looking for a hawk today, the fact that I'm teaching Ancient Egyptian mythology tomorrow and the fact that as I drove to Jackson today, a lovely hawk sat on the powerline right over the interstate and watched me go past.

One of the reasons I love so much to go to this show is perfectly exemplified in the buying of my hawk.  The artists like to talk to the people who come to see them.  It's so nice to be able to speak to such talented people.  Peter Rose is always fantastic.  I look forward to going by his booth every year as much for the conversation as for the art.  This year was no different.  He actually gave me a little raven to take with me when I was leaving.  I was overwhelmed.  It was so incredibly kind of him to do that. That little raven will join its brother from last year in my classroom, and now I shall have Huginn and Muninn together.

That left only two things on my list.  I had been by Michael Hayman's booth earlier, but I wanted to walk around and think about the piece I'd seen there and liked.  Before I arrived, I had been thinking about his pendant of Mjollnir, remembering it as something I might like to have.  I already have two pendants by him and a pair of raven earrings, but I had also been wanting something with Yggdrasil, the world tree, on it since I'd taught Norse mythology recently.  He had a pendant that has Yggdrasil with a tiny raven under it and a little acorn that dangles from the bottom.  Check, check, and check.  To me, even though the world tree is supposed to be an ash, the acorn stood for Ratatosk, the little squirrel who spends all day stirring up crap between the eagle at the top and the dragon gnawing the roots.  It was perfect.  After seeing everything, I still wanted it, so I went back and got it.  I'm wearing it now.  I'll wear it tomorrow.  It is exactly what I wanted.

Only one item on my list went undone.  (If you've been paying attention, you already know what this is.)  I had intended to get one of Sam Clark's reading dragons today.  I had the money and everything.  What I wound up without, however, was Sam Clark.  He has been at every single Chimneyville I've ever been to, and he, like Peter Rose, is one of the artists I most look forward to seeing and talking with.  No joy this year.  I hope nothing bad has kept him out of the festival and that he will return next year.  It just wasn't the same without him and his smiling, coffee-drinking frogs and wise, sly, grinning dragons.

All in all, it was a great day.  I have new things that will make me happy each time I look at them or wear them, useful things, lovely things.  I will remember the people I talked to, the time with my best friend.  Every year I come away from Chimneyville feeling refreshed and inspired.  I hope that maybe the people who exhibit there do, too, somehow despite the long hours sitting and the distance and difficulty of travel.  I'd hate to think they got nothing but money, as nice as it is, from it when those of us who go to see get so very much more than the tangible.

A Good Day

I slept fairly late this morning, got up, took a hot shower, put on my jeans and a favorite tshirt, put a hot battery in the Nikon, and headed out.  Today was the Soule Live Steam Festival.

When I got out of the car, I could hear the music of the calliopes.  Even though it was fairly warm, the plumes of steam trailed into the air.  As I got closer, those unmistakable smells of the engines reached out to me, burning wood, machine oil, and sawdust.

I love the Live Steam Festival.  I look forward to it every year.  The engines themselves are fascinating.  I also love the people.  I like to watch the parents with their kids.  I like to watch the hard-core fanatics talking and exchanging information.  I like to watch the men group together and talk, gesture, explain.

This year, I did two things that I haven't done before.  I went to the Railroad Museum, and I made a sand mold.  The Railroad Museum was a lot better than I was expecting.  They had this tremendous wall of railroad lanterns that was beautiful.  To my surprise, there were all sorts of people there selling railroad related items.  Two vendors were just selling model trains. I took photos of their tables.  The colors were interesting.  Amtrak had these little "junior engineer" paper hats out for the kids.  You have no idea how tempted I was to get one for myself....

The Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum where the Soule festival is held is getting better every year.  They have more engines, and this year, they had a tremendous number of traditional crafts on display.  People were happily learning about loom weaving, broom making, wood carving, and printing.  Some of those crafts were actually hands-on.  In the machine shop, the belt-driven machines were being operated by students from a local community college.  I stood for a long time and watched them turning steel rods on the lathe, making things in the blacksmith shop.

For several years I have thought about making one of the sand molds they pour every year at Soule.  Either the tables were crowded or I was in a hurry.  This year, I just decided I was going to do it regardless.  It was relaxing.  I made an owl, but I didn't stay for the 4:00 pouring.  I have to go back and get it tomorrow.  I can't wait to see the end result.  I hope it came out well.

I spent the rest of my afternoon fiddling with the pictures.  Even though I have shot that area pretty thoroughly, I got one or two pictures I was happy with.  The most important thing was how nice it felt to be out with the camera seeing something I don't get to see everyday.  I feel more relaxed now that I have in a long time.  I wish there were more things like this to do.

Well, Now You've Just Pissed Me Off....

The Land Mass thing is everywhere on the web right now.  Some of it is amusing.  One bit of it, though, pushed the big red button.  Fasten a seatbelt and enjoy the ride.

A comment on a friend's FB status about the Land Mass read, "Why SHOULD Mississippi be considered a state?  What has it ever given the US?  LOL"  I started to respond there, but I decided I needed more space than I had and also that I didn't want to scream at the top of my FB lungs.  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  Are you really that ignorant?

Oh sure, we here in-state gently and not-so-gently mock ourselves, but we know very well that not everything that comes out of here is bad.  While it's okay if we are laughing at ourselves, it's not okay for somebody from the outside to point fingers and make accusations.  It's not that we don't have problems; heaven knows we do.  It's that it's just RUDE, honey.  We may have all kinds of issues, neuroses, and battles, but at least we know not to point fingers.

What then has Mississippi given the US?  Here's the short list:

• Musicians - Marty Stewart, B.B. King, Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters, Jimmie Rogers, Charley Pride, ELVIS, Jimmy Buffett, Robert Johnson, the entire band 3 Doors Down, Leontyne Price, Faith Hill, 
• Writers - William Faulkner, John Grisham, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Natasha Trethewey, Tennessee Williams, Walker Percy, Nevada Barr, Greg Iles, Thomas Harris, Anne Moody, (and I'll just STOP here.  there are too freaking many.)
• Entertainers - Jim Henson, Sela Ward, James and Robert Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, Oprah Winfrey, Diane Ladd
• Athletes - Walter Payton, assorted Mannings, Oil Can Boyd, Brett Favre, and so many others there is just a separate list of them available online
• Art - George Ohr, Walter Inglis Anderson
• Creators - Hartley Peavey, James Hardy, Haller Nutt

There are more.  So many, many more.  Check the PAGES of stuff on Wikipedia for what Mississippi has given to the rest of the country.  Then, if you please, fold your stupid comment in four corners and insert it somewhere where it might remind you not to be so much of what you are next time.

Too Darn Hot

I decided to go to town today since the thing with the bank has finally resolved.  As soon as I left the house, it was like being hit with a draft of air from a blast furnace.  Wet, scorching heat wrapped around me.  As I drove, I was aware that the air had a yellowish haze hanging just above the treeline, the nastiness literally made visible.

Welcome to summer in Mississippi.  I hope you packed your flip flops, your sunscreen, and lots and lots of liquids....

I checked Swackett to see how hot it was, how hot it was supposed to be, and for a short time, the GPS in it was firmly stuck on Brasilia.  I had to laugh.  I don't blame it.  The high today was 79 in Brasilia.  If I had a chance to stay in that comfortable, non-humid climate, I'd take it, too.

When Swackett finally hit a weather station near me, it registered 101 degrees.  The "feels like" temperature with the heat index is 109, though.  109.  We're not even close to August yet, which is when our weather usually gets super-stupid.  109.  Cheezus.

I dragged my stuff in the house when I got home and mixed up a jug of pink lemonade.  Just looking out the door at that shimmering golden goo that is passing itself off for atmosphere at present makes me feel hot and thirsty.  It's a good day to spend the rest of the afternoon on a couch somewhere with a fan turning above you.  Luckily, I happen to know just the right place for that.

What to Say and How to Say It

I've been working on the presentation about Mississippi that I will need to take with me to Brazil for the past day or so.  It has, in the way of such things, turned into a monster project.  Whenever I start making a PowerPoint for something, it tends to get massive, anyway, but when I know I'm going into a group that has no background knowledge, I want to make sure I give lots of images, multimedia when I can.  This makes the presentation hard to build, massive to store, huge for a machine to handle.

The hardest part hasn't been the technical assembly.  PowerPoint, the medium I chose because it works best in an environment that has limited tech access, and I are old friends.  The hard part has been trying to figure out what to say.  If my job is to give an overview of my state, what do I put in?  What do I leave out?  This is complicated if you're from Mississippi.

There are so many ways to approach my state.  You can take the Glorious Past route with strains of "Dixie" playing in the background.  You can take the Tourism route with casinos and Pilgrimage homes shining in the afternoon sun.  You can take the Race Hate route and display all the ugliness and inequality that have been a part of life here in the past.  You can take the Redneck route and show the poverty and ignorance that abound. You can look at the Arts, show the massive contribution Mississippi has made to literature and music.  You can even go with the Southern Sports life route, focus only on all the aspects of football and hunting if that's what floats your boat.  This is not even an exhaustive list.  Mississippi has all these things and more for people to pull out of her depending on what it is they personally want from her.

So what about me?  As I am planning to try to tell others about my state, what should I leave in?  What should I leave out?  What is the best way to explain what this state is?  I am not going to bash it.  Certainly I think there are things it does poorly, but I think that can be said of anywhere, everywhere.  I think we are a mixture of good things and bad things, just like every other place.  At the same time, I don't think it is right to gloss over the bad things in our past, pretend like everything has always been some kind of sterilized Technicolor dream here.  When people have fought and bled and died, you don't dishonor that sacrifice because it doesn't make for good PR.  We have a huge horrible thing in our past.  America has a huge horrible thing in her past.  We are still moving on from it.  That doesn't mean that we have the right to sweep it under the rug because it makes us or others uncomfortable to look at it.

And yet.  All so many people know of Mississippi is a stereotype of poverty, racism, and...well...bare feet and overalls.  They seem to think we're all Snopeses somehow.  Those of us who were born here and live here are sort of used to that misunderstanding.  We know there is a lot more to us than that, that things here have changed tremendously, that we are frequently generalized and misrepresented, that we have great good as well as struggles we are trying to overcome.  What I want to make sure that I do, though, is find a way to show  us accurately.  When it is as complex as this situation is, though, how can I be sure to do that with honesty and sensitivity?

All I can do is try.  It makes me nervous to say, "Here is my state.  This is the truth of it."  Instead, what I would like to say is "Here is my state.  This is the way I see it."  This would be more comfortable and more true.  Who among us can really know the heart of a place, the whole of it?  Even though I have lived here my  entire life, I find new parts of Mississippi all the time, every time I meet somebody new or go somewhere I haven't been before in the state.  It would be arrogant to think I knew it through and through just because I happened to be born here.  Maybe if I approach this presentation with that mindset, I will be more comfortable.  Of all the things I'll be doing, this is the one that is difficult.

History Speaking - Old Capitol Museum

Today, I went to Jackson seeking things to take to Brazil.  I knew that I wanted to take things that were as representative of Mississippi as I could, things made here, crafted by people from here if possible.  The big problem is finding things like this, especially affordable things in the quantity I needed.  I picked up my best friend, and we made a day of it.

Rotunda, Old Capitol Museum, Jackson, MS

We started at the Old Capitol Museum in downtown.  I had remembered a large gift shop there from when I had gone a long time ago, and I decided it would be a good place to start.  The Old Capitol was damaged heavily when Katrina came through, and it underwent major renovations after that.  It was very different.  The restored building has multimedia exhibitions and is very nice.  It is a very pleasant place now.

One of the exhibitions is a screen that scrolls down from the ceiling in the former House chamber on the hour and half-hour.  A film is projected onto it with actors recreating the debate that took place when Mississippi chose to secede from the Union.  It is rather intense to stand and watch as the actors attempt to persuade you to vote for or against secession.   As I stood on the third-floor balcony looking down at that film playing to the huge chamber, empty except for my friend and me, it struck me suddenly that I was standing in the place where that decision had happened, that it wasn't an abstract nebulous concept, some random string of dead letters on a page, but real people who had argued with each other and had come to the decision that the best thing for the state was to leave the Union.

Somehow, even though I have lived here and grown up as any Mississippi native or transplant does surrounded by the Past (with the capital P on purpose), it seldom feels real.  Maybe it is exactly because we are so inundated with it that it lacks sharpness.  You don't have to go far to see it.  It might be a redneck with a rebel flag sticker or a devout bunch of costumed Civil War reenactors on a major holiday, but keeping the past alive is a full-time hobby or job for people here.  There are even holidays that nobody else takes, for example, my trash didn't get picked up because it was Confederate Memorial Day. (Who takes THAT?  Apparently my trash guys.)   I think all this familiarity breeds contempt, though, or at least builds up a giant callus. We drive past major moments in history everywhere, and I think that sometimes we need to shake off that ennui and remember that real people struggled, chose, lived, and died during them.  I don't mean that every moment needs to be dedicated to glorifying or resurrecting that past, but when we become so numb to it that it becomes just another part of the background, I think something important has been lost.

Doorknob Detail
Governor's Office Door

The museum had a very fine edge to tread, and it did it well.  While we have some things and some people of which we may be very rightly proud in our state, Mississippi's past, let's face it, is not exactly 100% glorious.  I won't absolve my state of any past transgressions nor will I try to gloss them over, but I will say that we are not alone in that in this nation.  We are not alone in that in this world.  Every place has some part of its past that it must overcome. Every place, just like every person, has some scar to carry with it, some wound to heal.

 That's the other reason museums and the going to them are important.  For better or worse, even if it's something quite terrible, I think it's always better to know who you really are and what you really come from.  Know your good and your bad, your strengths and your weaknesses.  Such self-knowledge gives a firm foundation to build a future on.  The museum is a living example of that, and not just in its exhibitions. In its various stages and phases of renovation, it has physically removed the bad, that which has decayed through time so much as to be no longer functional, and it has replaced those things with that which supports, that which meets the needs of the current day. One whole room chronicles the various changes the Old Capitol has had to make to survive including removing original brick in some cases because it was crumbling or damaged and of course restorations after not one but two hurricanes sheared away its roof.  I guess we can use the Old Capitol as a bit of an object lesson, not just for what is housed inside it but also for the structure itself then.  If we as a state and we as individuals within it can manage to do as well as this one museum,  perhaps we can all use the past, whatever mixture of good and bad it may be, to reinvent ourselves gracefully to meet the challenges ahead.

Want.

Sam Clark has been making dragons again....  Everything he does is so fabulous.  I want this.  If he lasts just a bit longer, he will be part of my birthday indulgences.  Love, love, love him.  He's small (about 3 inches), so he's a "baby" compared to the other red dragon I have, but the glazes are brilliant and I just adore his detail.  Do Want.  Will Have.  (you know...unless somebody else beats me to him....)

Chimneyville Again

Every year, I look forward to Chimneyville.  Almost from the time I'm stepping out the door and headed back to the car with my arms loaded with my loot, I am anticipating going back, in fact.  It is one of the highlights of my year as far as seeing wonderful and unusual handmade things.  This year was no exception.

I got up a little late, left my house a little later, and wound up having to fly to meet my friend on time.  Once again, I was struck by the fact that frequently it's not how many horses one has under the hood but what one is willing to do with them.  I was only about ten minutes late in the end.

My best friend and I ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant we both like and headed over to the Trade Mart.  I knew there were three artists I particularly wanted to see if they were exhibiting.  They are the ones I go to every year, moon over, and most years, buy from.  I also love to look at all the others, though.  There is such unbelievable diversity in the crafts presented.  New artists come in every year, too, so one never knows just what you will see.  It's always a nice mix of new and old.   It makes me feel humbled and happy just to know that there are people in the world who can do these things, who can take their hands, apply them to raw materials, and produce wonder.  When I come away from a really great crafts exhibition, I always feel just a little more hopeful about the world.

My friend and I are profoundly creatures of habit.  We always go the same route through the booths.  Today we took our turn to the right, and we started looking.  It wasn't long before we came to the first of the three I had hoped to see there, Sam Clark.  Sam Clark makes, among other things, these fantastic dragons.  They do different things.  The most wonderful ones read books.  I LOVE them.  They always look so clever, amused, and knowing, everything you'd expect from a dragon.  I have a small red one I bought two years ago, and a "micro" one I got last year that I keep at school.  This year, because of the state of my finances, I knew I probably was going to be in that hellish situation of having to look but not touch with his stuff.  It's not that his prices are extreme; quite the contrary for the level of detail on each piece.  It's that I'm so obscenely poor right now.

Imagine my delight when he had a new line of pieces that he has added that are functional, bowls and containers, teapots and vessels of all kinds.  They have his gorgeous line drawings on engraved into the surface of the clay.  And...I could afford one that had a dragon on it.  I got my dragon after all!  I was grinning from ear-to-ear.  It was like fate took pity on me today.

A few aisles over, we found my best friend's friend, the maker of mouth-blown glass beads and pendants.  His stuff is fantastic.  I already had two of his pieces, but I wanted something blue (school colors and all that).  As I looked at the selection, I saw some that looked remarkably like eyes.  That looked awfully familiar, and sure enough, when I asked, my suspicion was confirmed.  They were a reinterpretation of the charm worn to protect against the evil eye.  I love jewelry with meaning; symbolism is sort of my life as an English teacher.  I bought one that looks for all the world like a gorgeous blue iris  with a black pupil in the center because, well, you know the thing I have with blue eyes... (ha)

The third artist I love, Peter Rose, was further over.  I have three of his crows (I call them ravens), already.  They make me happy every time I look at them.  His pottery is all wood-fired in the traditional Japanese fashion.  I love to talk to him every year when I go to see his stuff.  It's a little piece of contact with the world of Japanese pottery that I miss so much.  I was all ready to get one of his owls this year since I finished out my trio of ravens last year.  I even had picked out the owl I wanted to get.  Then I turned my head and saw that he has started making "mini ravens."  That was the end of that.  I had to have it.  I will take that one to school.  It's just fantastic.  Again, since it was a small piece, I was also able to afford it without going broke.  It was just a wonderful gift from the craft gods.

As I went through the other booths, I stumbled across another thing I loved:  fountain pens.  They were all from exotic woods.  My best friend laughed at me because I just started making little squeaking sounds as I stroked my fingertips over first one and then another of the lovely polished surfaces.  They were exquisite.  I could have bought at least five that I saw, but one caught my eye more than any of the others:  a "miniature" pen made of a wood called purple heart.  I haven't seen purple heart in large qualities since I was in Costa Rica, but I love it.  Without being dyed or tinkered with at all, it has a gorgeous dark reddish color.  It is going to be my "pocket pen."  I've wanted a small one like this for a long time, and it is everything one could ask for.

Chimneyville is just a joy.  The quality of everything you see, the friendliness of all the craftspeople, there's really just nowhere else I know like it.  I was struck again this year by that personal element.  Because I buy from those same artists every year, they have come to recognize me.  I was a little amazed by that (you know, old forgettable me), but it was really nice.  That's what keeps me buying handmade whenever I can, too.  Whether it is from my favorite folks in Jackson every year or the makers I can connect with on Etsy, I just believe that there is something special about this sort of connection that enriches the item itself.

Soule Live Steam Festival 2011

I got up this morning and walked the dogs aware of the brisk chill in the air.  The weather meant it would be a perfect morning to catch the steam coming off the engines at a festival I'd been waiting for since I left it last year.  The Live Steam Festival would start in a few hours.

As I walked down from my parking place, I could hear the full-throated scream of the whistles mounted on the roof of the old factory, the rhythmic thumping of the big steam engines, and a new sound added to the mix this year, the merry singing of multiple carousel organs scattered throughout.  Plumes of white smoke and steam curled up into the sky and a pleasant smell burning wood hung in the air.

I saw many of the same engines there this year as last, and I focused on trying to capture them in new ways.  I used my new Diana lens to get some different angles on them, and then I went inside.  The Industrial Heritage Museum folks have done massive amounts of work on their buildings, cleaning out and building new structures inside.  It is wonderful how nice the place looks.  They have added little "shops" inside one of the buildings to showcase crafts like broom making, pottery, weaving, and have also taken all the materials from the print shop that so fascinated me before and set up a working printing press from the factory's belt drive.

A gentleman was printing Marks-Rothenberg ads today as a demonstration, and I talked with him just a bit about the process and took a couple of pictures.  He let me have one of the printed pieces.  It tickled me to no end.  Marks-Rothenberg is one of my special places and always will be whether it is the department store of memory in which I rode the elevator with that wonderful lady who was kind enough to put up with me when I was an overly-inquisitive child who asked too many questions while my mother shopped or whether it is the MSU Riley Center of today where I can go and see wonderful performances like Macbeth the other night.

I walked over and looked at the trains at the depot this year, and I sort of wish I hadn't for two reasons.  First, I saw what is left of the New Orleans and Crescent.  It was a tattered and fading exhibition with peeling paint and shattered glass.  It made me feel sad.  It feels too much like so many other things in town, a glorious and proud past that is disappearing.  Second, it struck me that "Whistlestop" part of the weekend could have been so much more.  Aren't there train groups out there that could bring in something fabulous the way the other groups involved have done?  It needed a little more work.  Amtrak had an engine on the tracks, but that was all.

One thing that was new and really fabulous was all the carousel organs.  They were just frilly and fantastic.  Everywhere you went in a two block radius and inside the building proper itself, they were sitting on corners and in open spaces filling the air with their glorious sound.  Some were hand-cranked and small enough to roll.  Some were so giant that they were an entire vehicle themselves.  Some were very old.  Some were made in the last twenty years or so in some guy's garage.  All of them made me smile in delight.  I love the sound of a carousel organ.  I have fervently wished the one in our local Dentzel were restored.  The recordings they have on CD are, I'm sure, very convenient, but it's just not the same as hearing the real thing.

I hope they continue to have the Carousel Organ Association come down and be a part of the Live Steam weekend.  It seems that they are a natural offshoot to me. It would be grand, in fact, if more things related to steampower wound up being centered on this festival.  Going back to what I said about the trains, I'd love to see some of the gorgeous steam engines come into Meridian somehow.  To me, it would be a resurrection of what Meridian used to be when she was at her best.  I don't know what kind of finagling that would involve, but maybe, someday, it could be possible.

And It's Gone

I shot this last year after I got my camera.  I took this from the middle of an overpass, got trapped on a pedestrian footpath by my own carelessness while shooting because I wasn't paying attention to the "locals."  Stuff like that happens to me when I go out to take pictures.  I sort of need a bodyguard, or at least a friend who can say to me, "Really?  Um....or not...."

I had wanted to shoot this building for a long time.  Its red sign advertising "European Plan" rooms with "reasonable rates" used to make me smile every time I saw it.  I knew that it was one of the things I wanted to capture when I got my good Nikon.  When I did a day taking pictures of various structures in downtown Meridian, I made sure I got this shot.  I am exceptionally glad I did, because today, they tore it down to make way for a new museum that may or may not get built on that site.

Time marches on.  Progress requires renovation.  You can't make omelets without broken eggs.  Whatever.

I saw pictures of the inside of the building that another very lucky professional photographer got to go in and take last week before they started razing the building, and it was completely beyond hope.  The west wall had begun to sag noticeably, and it's a well-known fact that there is water under and in some cases in the basements/foundations of all the buildings on Front Street where this thing is located.  After seeing the photo essay, even the staunchest of hearts, even I, couldn't say that there should have been restoration.

That doesn't mean it is easy to know the next time I come over that bridge there will be that gaping hole in the skyline.  That doesn't mean it will ease the absence of that somehow cheerful if fading red sign inviting us all to stay in a place that was once "new" and "fireproof" but that now will only exist in the memories of a city all too full of them.

Elvis Special

Today on my way in to school, I saw something that made me laugh.  I was stuck behind a slow-moving SUV blocking the passing lane, and as I was mentally shoving it along, I happened to notice its tag.  Apparently, the state of Mississippi now offers an Elvis license plate.  It was pretty awesome.  I'm sort of going to have to have one.

At school, we ordered lunch from a downtown restaurant, and I finally got to have their "Elvis Special," a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.  That may be one of the best things I've ever had.  Ever.  It totally made my day.  I could eat another one right now.  I think it had honey on it, too.  Everything is better with honey on it, though, right?

And I really needed all that honey and Elvis, truth be told, because the rest of the day was made of mostly pure suck.  Right now, it's like the universe has a backlog of suck it's got to ship somewhere, and so it's just slinging it my way as fast as it can box it up and get it out the door.  I'm trying to keep my little smile firmly fixed, but sometimes it's getting hard, especially when it keeps coming from the same sources over and over.  Some of it I can't do anything about, some of it will put me in jail if I try to stop, some of it I'm diligently and patiently trying to change, and some of it is just something I have to wait out in measured fear.

As long as there continues to be Elvis, though, I think I'm going to be okay.  God help us if there's not enough Elvis to keep all this stuff at bay....

Little Adventures

I started the day headed to the Chapel of the Cross, intending to take photos and enjoy whatever A Day in the Country turned out to be.  It has been a long time since I went to an Autumn Festival somewhere, and today was the perfect weather for something like this.  I love it when the weather starts changing.  Jacket-and-jeans weather is my favorite.  I grabbed the North Face I bought in San Francisco like an old friend and picked up my Nikon on the way out the door.

The drive was largely uneventful and in glorious light.  I don't mind driving in conditions like that.  There is always music, and it clears everything out of my mind.  Nobody needs anything from me, and I can relax, ponder, sing.  It's peaceful.

Once I actually got there, I didn't find much to interest me, though, which was a bit disappointing.  There was a small crafts fair, but I'd been to Prairie Arts recently, and that sort of spoiled me for anything else, I suppose.  I walked and looked, and then I tried to take a few shots of the Chapel, but it was covered up with small children taking turns ringing the bell and adults touring the sanctuary.  I shot what I could, listened to a band doing covers of Johnny Cash and CCR for a little while, and walked back through the crafts section to pick up something I wanted to buy.

One of the booths had heirloom plants.  I wanted to get something for my mother, a shrimp plant, and something for myself, a "grandmother yellow" rose.  My Nana's favorite flower was the rose, particularly the yellow one and one called the Miranda red which I have never been able to find.  Mine is also the yellow rose. I haven't been able to keep the delicate modern cultivars alive, though.  The light colors of roses, yellow, white, "sterling," and so forth, are not as hardy as reds are.  I am hoping this old-fashioned variety will be sturdy enough to make it here.  I would like nothing better than to look out in my yard and see bright yellow blossoms every year.

With my rose tucked under my arm like a small child, I hiked back to the pasture where my car was parked, and after nestling it into a spot on the floorboard, I went back to "civilization."  I spent some time (and far too much money) in Target.  I got Chewie a new toy, myself several retro-lovely things for Halloween, some supplies, and odds and ends that always find their way into the cart just because it's TARGET.  It's probably just as well there's not one here.

After Target, I was going to come on home, but as I was passing Crossgates, I looked at the window of one of my favorite little restaurants, Kismet's, and I hastily pulled in.  They have burgers and stuff, but their specialty is Greek food, gyros.  I love them, but I almost never get to eat there.  Today, I was all by myself, so I could do what I wanted.  I ate slowly and savored.  I ignored the two guys at the table across from me giving me the "chick-eating-alone" look (if you're not a woman, you don't know what I'm talking about) until they reinvolved themselves in their conversation about getting drunk at work and whether or not this was really a problem (what-the-actual....), and after that, I had a very wonderful meal.

It didn't turn out, then, the way I'd planned, but it was still a good day.  Maybe there will be a day of photography coming up soon. I still have Moundville on my list and maybe Birmingham if I can figure out a specific thing there to go do/photograph.  I am NOT driving all that way just because....  (And no.  The chance to drive like 95 mph on the interstate does not count.  Probably.)  I am stalking some new lenses to let me get some odd effects out of my Nikon, so if all else fails, I can always go play tag with the homeless guy downtown and reshoot old familiar things through new "eyes."

Giraffes Again

So I'm proud of this one.  Sue me.  I love the giraffes on the Dentzel.  I always have.  I shot them quite a bit yesterday, and although I know I do not have good control over my camera, especially compared to some people I know (Tree Boy, yeah, I mean you among others), I am very happy with this one.  I did process it through Picnick to make it look "Lomo-ish," a finish I like, but this one needed very little else.  It pleases me, and it's rare for me to say that.

It's hard to nail down exactly what it is about this pair of giraffes that I like so much.  Partly, of course, it's the detail.  I always perceive them as a male and a female.  I love that the maker took the time to paint and decorate them differently.  The male has light greenish eyes.  The female's are dark gold.  I love that their saddles have bright silver fringe or ivy.  I think, though, that they also look intelligent, perceptive.  They are graceful and elegant.  Even when I was little, the giraffes, the lion, and the tiger were always my favorites.

I don't know if I'll go back to take more photos there again.  I think I got everything this time, or at least as much as I am going to be able to do with my ability.  I have this image in my desktop wallpaper set now, so when it shifts through, I can see their tranquil expressions and smile.  

Prairie Arts 2011

My best friend and I went to West Point today for our annual trip to Prairie Arts.  I needed this get away so badly.  Last week was in many ways a thing woven from the fibers of hell, and all that helped me hold it together was the knowledge that I had this trip to look forward to at the end of it.  It was overcast and threatened rain off and on throughout the day, but this led to cooler temperatures than we've had in the past few years, making it a very comfortable day.

We saw all sorts of gorgeous stuff made by artists from many places.  Other than Chimneyville, it's the only time I get to see real craftsmanship.  Some of the same artists come to both, in fact.  I got another piece of metal yard art from the same people who made my rooster and flying pig, this time a nodding mule.  He's sort of awesome, if I do say so myself.

The stuff we bought wasn't the best part of the day, though.  The best part of the day was just talking and spending time with each other.  Both of us were tired, so at one point we simply sat down on the sidewalk across from some of the vendors and drank a bottle of water each and talked.  We went from West Point to Starkville and Little Dooey's and spent much longer than the chicken-on-a-sticks we ordered warranted because it was so good to sit and converse.  We've known each other so long; it doesn't really matter how long we go between conversations.  We always just pick back up seamlessly.

It was just what I needed.  When your world has gotten stupid, it always helps to have the company and conversation of a good friend.

Caravan

As I was taking Roux to the vet this morning for an allergy shot, I came upon a long string of Asplundh trucks slowly moving east on I-20.  I passed them, but I knew where they were headed.  They were an emergency clean-up crew headed for the Carolina coast and the damage Irene is due to leave in her wake.

The sight of that slow-moving caravan of out-of-state rescue workers made my eyes tear up.  I flashed back to our own post-Katrina days here in Mississippi when our local highways were full of power company crews and other heavy equipment from every state in the union trying to get our basic services restored and the debris and devastation cleared away.  I remember all the different logos and colors as they trekked up and down the interstates, trying to help us put our shattered lives back together.  They'd be gathered at truck stops and gas stations refueling themselves and their equipment.

I also remember after power returned finally and we all headed back to interrupted jobs, school years, lives, and we watched those people who helped us to do that packing their gear and turning their big trucks back toward Illinois, Indiana, Ohio once again....  I couldn't help but thinking that even though it was their job to come, even though they got paid by the power companies they represented to do that work, that they were heroes.  The battle that we were fighting to get to something like normal, as much as we were going to have after the hammer of the gods had hit us, anyway, was their battle, too.  Their work made it possible for us to recover, to survive.

I hope that Irene doesn't hold a candle to her older sister.  I hope that she's shy and stays away from society.  I hope that these slow and deliberate caravans headed toward the coast are just a sensible precaution.  Nobody should have to need those heroes in the heavy trucks, but it is a great comfort to know they're on the way.

McLintock (Drive-In 2)

I went back to the drive-in tonight.  They were showing McLintock with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara.  I had never seen it, but as my Nana was a huge John Wayne fan, and my dad has always loved his films, I wanted to see this one.  My interest increased when I heard it was based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.

I gathered my provisions earlier and better this time and set off.  I had plenty of snacks, and I sprayed myself with OFF before the movie began, so except for the bug bites I'm still healing from Tuesday night's horse adventure, I am mosquito free.  That made a big difference.  So, too, did the cooler weather that's begun to return at last.  It was nice to be able to sit there and it not still be 90-something degrees.  Their next film is September, and it should be pleasantly cool then, possibly even requiring jeans.

I really loved McLintock. The whole movie is a joy.  I think if I can't get it streaming on the Roku, I'm pretty much going to have to own it.  It made me laugh too much not to.   It was very funny.  The fight scene in it might be one of my favorite fight scenes in any movie.  People keep falling down and it keeps being funny.  Even John Wayne, the great god of heroes, keeps falling down.  It's wonderful.  And I love Maureen O'Hara.  I want to be her when I grow up.  She's awesome.  She's right in the middle of it, stabbing people with this feather pin thing she takes off her hat.  Love, love, love it.

I will say that somebody somewhere will think that I probably should get all grumpy woman about him spanking her at the end, but...I feel about that like I feel about the stuff that happens in Atlas Shrugged and gets called sexist.  Would I tolerate it happening to me?  Oh HELLS NO.  He would die.  A LOT.  I'd break him into about forty-seven neat segments.  Did it work for them?  Apparently.  In that case, I don't really think it's anybody's business and we need to stay out of it.  The whole movie is incredibly violent.  She knocks him out with a bottle; people punch each other repeatedly in sort of casual, happy-go-lucky way.  I think getting wound up over the bit at the end without seeing it as a part of the larger whole would be a little of that camel/gnat syndrome that seems so prevalent in society.

Anyway, without delving more into philosophy of movies and relationships this late at night, I will just end this by saying that if you haven't seen it, you should.  For something that was as funny as it was, there were actually quite a few deep things going on in it, not the least of which was the treatment of social class and the issue of the Native American tribes being resettled.  For a western of its time, it caught me off guard with its tone there.  I think this is probably one of the reasons why it has lasted so long.  Treat yourself to it, and let me know what you think.  I'm curious to get your opinion.

Just Your Average Tuesday (Plus Horse)

School was nothing remarkable.  It was a standard second day.  I'm starting to put a few names with faces.  We're finishing up the tedium of opening procedure.  Things continue to run smoothly.

At the end of the day, I had a knot between my shoulder blades that would have made the Gordian knot look like an amateur effort.  After standing almost thirty minutes of bus duty, I came in and put my aching head on my desk and closed my eyes for awhile.  I was just plain worn out.  Like any other major endeavor, it takes time to get back into the right physical condition for teaching all day.  As I have on many other days, I thought of the magic hands of that guy I knew at the Wesley at MSU and wished I could just sort of teleport him in to have him get that pain out of my neck and shoulders....

I came home at five and went to Mom and Dad's for supper, mostly wrapped in a zombie haze.  I came out of it some on the way home, which was a good thing as it turned out.  My day took a hard left turn about 7:00.

As I rounded the curve just after the one where a deer plowed into the side of my car so long ago, suddenly, there was a brown horse in the road frantically darting back and forth.  Of course, there was a truck in the other lane.  Both of us slowed and swerved on the wet pavement trying to avoid hitting the frightened animal, and we managed to get around it.  The truck kept going, but as the horse darted down a long road leading to a locked gate to somebody's property, I backed up and followed it, blocking it in.

Where I'm from, you don't just let somebody's stock animal run loose and hurt itself and other people if you can help it.  You try to prevent the injury to the animal the best you can.  You do it because it's right, right for the animal first of all, and also because it's right for others.  You also hope that if you happen to be a person with stock animals yourself that someone would do that for you if your own animals ever slipped the fence as they will inevitably at some point do.  Mississippi has some massively punitive laws about what people can do to you if they hit your livestock with their car because your cow or horse was somewhere it wasn't supposed to be.

I called Mom on my cellphone and told her what was going on and asked her to get a phone book and start finding out whose animal it was.  This took longer than you can imagine.  Everybody was either not home or didn't know.  Mom finally tracked down not the owner but somebody who could help us take care of it by driving to the owner's house and blowing the horn until somebody came, and they came with a key and opened a gate to get it back inside a fence.

In the interval, I just stood outside there in the gloaming with the horse watching it pull kudzu off the edges of the dirt tractor trail for an hour.  The horse was gentle and fairly small, thank God, but not very interested in me.  This was fine with me.  I just stayed near the car to expand the barrier I'd created with the PT Cruiser if I needed to and kept watch.

Sometime during the wait, Mom came back to let me know she'd found somebody, and a neighboring dog appeared, a big yellow lab.  He was SO HAPPY to see us ALL.  My first thought was overly enthusiastic dog + already nervous horse = disaster.  We managed to persuade happy dog to go away repeatedly until the people with the key could arrive, and thus a good time was had by all.

I finally got home about 8:00.  It felt wonderful to hit my couch.  Every fire ant and mosquito in the county has gnawed on me, but at least that poor horse has been fed and is no longer in danger of being struck by one of the road warriors racing the blacktop out front tonight.  Let no man say life in the country is dull until he has tried it for a little while.

Visiting Windsor

State Road 552 (if my memory serves me, but you'd better check a map) is a 13 mile curving loop that arcs through the woods behind Port Gibson and touches several historic sites including Windsor, a Native American mound, a church, and a Civil War battle ground before passing by Alcorn State University and the Natchez Trace before dumping back in Hwy 61. Every note I found online said that getting to Windsor would be hard, that the roads there would be "primitive."  I was expecting to find the ubiquitous red dirt road and was wondering if my little PT Cruiser was going to be able to make the journey, even had a moment of yearning for the Evil Jeep.  When I turned through town, headed into the shady green of the rural deeps, I laughed to myself.  Those people must demand a great deal of their roads.  The ruins of Windsor are tucked away on a two-lane paved road that is in much better condition than the one I live on.

Windsor has fascinated me for years. I think most Mississippians grow up with it being a part of our state mythology.  If you don't know what it is, you can click here to learn more.  I've wanted to go ever since I first heard the story of the ruins sitting silently there in the woods, sentinels to the passing of the ages.  I don't remember exactly when I first heard the story, sometime in elementary school perhaps.  It always seemed too difficult to get to, too far away to go.  Certainly my desire to go there was reinforced when I became aware of the connection the ruins had to Welty.  She took photos there herself, and my favorite story by her, "Asphodel," is said to have been inspired at least in some part by the majestic crumbling columns standing in the wild woods there.  There is a photo of hers I love, the columns with her shadow on the ground in front of them, that is wonderful.  I wanted to get a duplication of that with my shadow, but I was there at the wrong time of day, and actually since there were storms rolling in, there were no shadows at all to be had.

The ruins are well-kept.  There is a single strand of wire around them with some very polite signs asking people to stay out because the ruins are unstable.  No ranger or watcher is there to run you off with a stick, and I was very tempted to cross the wire to get a couple of shots.  My ingrained Mississippi manners kept me out.  I thought to myself, "This is why this works here.  We're like this.  We don't cross that strand of wire."  I am not quite sure what that makes us, but I think mostly that's a good thing.  I like to think of it as polite.  I would not have hurt anything if I had gone in; certainly I would not have touched the structures with so much as a fingertip, but they asked me not to go in so I didn't.

The columns are crumbling but beautiful.  I think the ruins there may be the most lovely historic thing I've seen in the whole state.  I don't know why that should be true, but of all the homes I've been to, there is something about them and their stubborn endurance in the face of hurricane, fire, and exposure to the elements in their abandonment by man that is powerful and grand.  I do wonder how I would have felt if I had been driving out there to see another big house put up before the War and fading into that sort of genteel-poverty, chipping-paint, museum existence.  Would it still have had the same power to move?   I think, like many other things, perhaps, it has come to be what it is by the loss of what it was designed to be.

I shot about forty pictures at Windsor.  I took every angle I could get, changed lenses, took detail photos, ate every inch of those columns and capitals, replaced with caresses of my eyes what I could not touch with my hands.  And I did want to run my hands over that cracking plaster, feel those exposed bricks which I suppose were made somewhere on the grounds as was common for the day.  I did want to sit at the base of one of those columns and feel the strength of it, the age of it, like sitting at the base of a very old oak, stare up into its tiny abbreviated cast iron canopy.  Ultimately, as is always the case when I shoot that many pictures at any one place, I only kept about ten of the pictures since a lot of the shots were duplications or just things I wound up being less than pleased with.

Windsor was one of my "lifetime shooting list" locations, and even though my skill with the camera is not very great compared with some of the people I know, I feel so happy that I got to go there.  I can carry it around with me now, see that beautiful clearing open up in my mind anytime I like.  And the next time I see Mr. Don McInnis striding out of the underbrush to disrupt the retelling of that story and the taking of that blackberry cordial, I know exactly what the setting should look like.