Graceland

 After years of being curious, I finally got to go to Graceland last Wednesday.  My best friend and I got up, ate a hotel buffet breakfast, and braved cross-town traffic to arrive in an nearly-empty parking lot.

We paid our fee, passed through a queue and an unexpected photo stop, were handed the headphone set/audio guide that has become de rigeur at tourist attractions, and loaded onto a small shuttle bus which rolled across Elvis Presley Boulevard, through open gates, and up a small hill.
And there it was.

I am not sure what I was expecting.  This wasn't it.

Maybe I just expected the sort of excess that one sees in the homes of Hollywood elite today, flash, excess, too much of everything to be a truly livable space.  Instead, what was there was a home.  Large, spacious, elegant, but still a home.

Our little headphoned herd passed through the large front door and on either side of us were the home's public spaces.  There was a formal parlor, furnished in white, gold, and blue, on the right, and to the left, there was a formal dining room, the height of elegance for the time period in which it had been decorated.

We looked into a couple of bedrooms tucked down a small hall, and then we went around a corner to the kitchen.  It was here that the contrast of the two parts of the house really struck me.  The kitchen was described as the heart of Elvis's home, and I could tell the difference automatically.  It looked like a place real people could cook and eat and sneak down to raid the fridge in the middle of the night.   In fact, there was a stairwell that would allow just that. It looked like real people had at one time had real lives there, not just a set for photo ops or a display of conspicuous consumption.  

The downstairs rooms and even the famous Jungle Room felt the same way.  The private spaces of Graceland were comfortable and functional, full of expensive things, perhaps, but not a museum, not a slick spread in a magazine.  People used and enjoyed those rooms.

I liked it quite a lot.

The divisions he'd created, the idea of a public formal space in which he could meet those who perhaps were not close to him, is a very Southern thing.  The formal front parlor has been around for a long time.  I found it interesting that he had continued that tradition in his home.  He had enough money to have created anything he wanted, but what he created was a home.

Of course, the house itself is only a small part of the tour.  The outbuildings that have been converted or added are storehouses of memorabilia, costumes, personal items, and above all, gold and platinum records.  Trophies of all kinds were everywhere.

We finished up in the memory garden where the graves are.  People were snapping image after image of the graves, and to me, it felt a little odd.  To me, the graves were a private place, and the neverending parade of tourists, myself included, seemed a little inappropriate.  I admit that I've toured cathedrals of Europe, and I certainly took pictures of Dante's monument in Santa Croce and Shakespeare's in Holy Trinity, but this hit me differently.  I felt like I'd crawled over a fence and invaded someone's privacy.

We loaded back up, were carted across the road, and got off in the miniature theme park where we'd started.  We dutifully toured the automobile collection, browsed in shops, had our photo made with Elvis through the magic of Photoshop, got pressed pennies, bought the obligatory t-shirts.

We took a break and ate a hamburger and a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich with some of the best fries I've ever had in one of the two restaurants on the Graceland property, and the 50s diner decor included the obligatory beautiful Wurlitzer filled with Elvis's music.  We listened, ate, and took a minute to refuel. The whole time, though I couldn't stop thinking about what Elvis himself might have thought about this whole thing.  He had tried to make a home, a refuge for himself and those he loved.  He hadn't built a palace to excess, although he certainly had the financial means to do so.  This means that he treasured that space and what it represented.

So would he have been okay with what it has become?  Would he have seen it as just another part of the business, or would it have bothered him that we were traipsing through his kitchen, snapping photos of his formal parlor?

The question continued to resonate with me all the way back out to the now-filled parking lot and all the way down I-55 to my own refuge.  It lingers still.

Travel Companion

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where –" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"– so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
~ Alice and the Cheshire Cat, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
____________

For a long time, I have wanted to have something to take pictures with on my travels.  I suspect this started when I saw Amalie.  I (and the rest of the entire universe) loved it when she sent her father's gnome travelling.

As a part of the Teachers for Global Classrooms program, I met people who had been doing this for years.  One of them has a sock monkey who actually has his own Facebook page.  Another has a laminated cut out of her high school's mascot.  I started thinking about it again when I saw theirs, but I couldn't find anything that was small enough not to be a nuisance.  I know enough about myself as a traveler to know that if it's a hassle, I'm not going to fool with it.  I considered several items - a small beanie of our school mascot, an exceedingly tiny and grumpy sock monkey, a small blue owl someone gave me - but none of them seemed right.

A couple of weeks ago, a teacher buddy of mine started putting up pictures of a tiny finger puppet of Vincent Van Gogh she'd gotten at a museum.  I had a forehead-smacking moment when I saw it.  I actually have the William Shakespeare from that same series.  I bought it at the Frazier Museum in Louisville the first year I read for the AP test.  It's been guarding my Diet Mt. Dew in my classroom since that summer.

However, I didn't want to travel with Will.  I have so many things that are Shakespeare.  I love him.  I just didn't want to travel with him.  I looked over the line of the puppets from the Unemployed Philosopher's Guild for another option. They're all so cute and funny that the kid in me wanted all of them.  The adult in charge of the checkbook managed to limit that other aspect to purchasing two:  the Cheshire Cat and Emily Dickinson.

I got Chessy today.  I am pretty positive that he will be the one I travel with.  The quote at the top is most of the reason why, but there are other quotes that fit every long journey I've ever been on.  The one that springs to mind is the famous:

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "otherwise you wouldn't have come here."

As anybody who has ever traveled knows, there comes a point (maybe the exact moment you break out the suitcases) that this quote becomes painfully true....

I also like Chessy because he's a cat. That fits in with many things, the real-life furry beasts sleeping on my furniture that I miss when I'm travelling, the mankei neko I collected in Japan, the mascot of my school.  Cats are also good travel buddies because they remind you to be curious, to dress simply but with elegance, to enjoy any and all luxuries that come your way, and to sniff at unfamiliar things (possibly also while smacking them lightly with your paw) before accepting them.

It's a silly little thing, but I am looking forward to taking Chessie with me to Turkey.  If I can get a picture of him inside the Hagia Sofia, then that's going to be a very good thing.

Through Linoleum

"They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze.  They should photograph me through linoleum." ~ Tallulah Bankhead

Exactly.

The Bridge of Sighs

Beautiful, isn't it?  Clean white limestone shining above the canal.  Graceful arches, delicate carvings.  Yes, this is the famous Bridge of Sighs, one of the great sights in Venice.  The name sounds like a dream, like a place where lovers go to repine over unreturned affection.  The reality of it is somewhat less glamorous.

The Bridge of Sighs connects the official rooms of the Doge's Palace to the prisons.  It took its rather fanciful name from the fact that the last sight of the free world for most of those who crossed it was out the intricate metal lattice of its windows.  The prisoner could see the beauty of free Venice and give one last sigh of regret and loss before the darkness to come swallowed them.

While I was in Venice, I got to tour the Doge's Palace, now a museum.  It's more than a little overwhelming, which was its original intent.  All who came to the Doge's Palace were to feel the wealth and the power of the city-state of Venice pressing down upon them as they traveled through the government offices.  Ceilings of rare woods covered in plaster relief and pure gold compete with paintings and frescoes by known masters.  Sculptures and bronzes stand in pools of light from Murano glass windows.

This excess of ornamentation is only one part of the Doge's power in Venice.  As the tour progressed, we saw the rest of it.  The dungeon prison cells of the palace are windowless, cold, small.  They do not face each other, so although there are some cells with walls of woven iron bars,  there could have been no possibility of the simple comfort of finding a human face nearby.  The lower the floor for the cells, the less space and air they provided.

It was cold on the day we visited, yet it could not be called deepest winter.  Venice also floods on a regular basis, the street level being submerged under enough water to cause walkways high enough to serve as seats for tired tourists when the water isn't up.  Just thinking of that as I walked through those cells made me shiver with something that had nothing to do with the chill in the air.  Suddenly, the idea of being in those stone walls with water rising was a claustrophobic hand around my throat.

One of the last parts of the tour was a walk over the Bridge of Sighs itself.  I was still mentally in the jail cells when I walked up the short staircase onto it.  I glanced out a window and saw the canal.  Suddenly, I realized where I was.  I stood for a long time, running the tips of my fingers against the smooth cold stone walls.  All I could think of was how many people never made the journey I was making, how many only took the trip in the other direction.  How could it carry any other name?

Another short set of steps led back down into opulence.  I walked over to one of the many windows that spilled light and air into the chamber and stared out at the short expanse of stone upon which I'd just been standing.  Eventually, I turned away and followed the sparse crowd to another part of the museum.  Even after I was walking in the spotty sunlight of Saint Mark's Square, some shadow of that limestone passage lingered.

The Road to Dixie

The week started off on quite a tear.  Monday was a nightmare of problems getting a prescription filled, a car that suddenly started leaking fluid in massive quantities in a parking lot, impending wrath-of-God weather, and to top it all off, a headache that robbed me of all cognizance.

I woke up on Tuesday with what I have come to think of as a "migraine hangover," still unable to focus, still processing with a significant lag, and also having the new element of a sore neck to go with it.  It was fabulous beyond words.  I desperately wanted to come back home and fall unconscious, but I had my Comp class to teach, and so instead of being able to leave at the last bell, I had to stay until late into the evening.  I came home and found the beginnings of good news with my car repaired fairly inexpensively and waiting for me to pick it up.

Today, all the clouds both mental and physical had rolled away.  The weather was cold but gorgeously clear.  The sky was that shade of blue that makes me breathe as deeply as I can as if I could somehow inhale some of that bright glory.  The daily schedule was shot to pieces because of an assembly.  It didn't even phase me.  A friend sent me a link to the new Josh Ritter album on NPR First Listen, and I spent what remained of my lunch hour exploring all that new wonder.  My copy is due to be here tomorrow.  Rarely have I watched the progress of a package on my little iPhone app with more anticipation.

The day my car tried to die, I took it through a back street in town to get it to the mechanic who cobbles it back together routinely.  I hadn't been all the way down it in a very long time, and near an overpass I drive across every single day, I found a hidden gem.  Tucked right beside the concrete arch is an old sign for the Dixie Oil Company.  The building that went with it is gone now, but this one incredibly well-kept sign stands sentinel over the mowed emptiness.  I wanted to shoot it the moment I saw it, but I had only my iPhone and a car that was trying to overheat as well as thunder capable of vibrating windows, so I kept driving.  I promised myself I would come back.

It wasn't exactly safe.  There's no question of that.  It's not in a good part of town, and it's rather isolated.  (Does this sound familiar?)  I couldn't not shoot that sign, though.  I kept thinking about it, about the light I'd like to catch on it.  Today, since I was feeling so good, I brought my camera to school and waited.  When the day was finally done, I packed up and ran for it.

The light was perfect when I got there.  There is a golden time in the morning and the afternoon when all the colors are more vivid, when everything seems glossed by wonder.  Even the old neon sign was made something more, something mystical by it.  I shot frame after frame of it, took some with my phone, and scooted back to my car without incident.  The result can be seen above.

So far, the week has been a real mix of things.  Tomorrow is payday, and so it should mark a significant upswing.  As long as it doesn't try to backslide to Monday's fun, I think I will make it out.

A Little Helpful Advice

(a read-between-the-lines-tongue-in-cheek-list-story)

• When trying to shoot an object, it's often good to take many shots of it from various angles.  Try close-up shots as well as framing more of the subject.  You can always crop down, but you can't add stuff around the edges.
• Late afternoon light is highly appealing for shooting.  It makes interesting shadows and has that dreamlike golden quality to it.
• Places of unexpected beauty are tucked away even in the most ruthlessly functional locations.  Always wear good shoes when shooting just in case you need to do a little walking on uneven ground to get in to where the shot is.
• It is not easy to walk fast on crossties.
• If and when that little instinctive voice whispers in your head that it's time to get off the train tracks and out of the woods, then it is indeed time to get off the train tracks and out of the woods.
• Kansas City Southern trains have rather intimidating black locomotives.  Sometimes four or five of them.

• Despite what you may believe to be true, by the time you can actually see a train coming around the bend and hear its whistle, your proverbial goose is cooked.  They move incredibly fast.
• The amount of wind created by a passing KCS train is enough to move an adult woman back a step or so.
• And finally.....
• Apparently, I need a FULL-TIME KEEPER whose only job is to keep me alive when I go out taking pictures.  Any takers? 

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.

AFAR magazine

About three months ago, I opened my mailbox to find a copy of a magazine I really don't remember asking anybody for, AFAR.  Just the cover grabbed my attention.  The photography on the front was spectacular.  There were the standard little article blurbs there that caught my eye, too.  An article about traveling cross-country in an Airstream.  Travel tips for South Africa.  I had it open in the car and sat reading it in my driveway before I ever even took it inside the house.

As I read, I found that they have an app and a website.  I played with those, and they're great.  I can see some classroom applications for them and tons of personal ones.  I uploaded some trip pictures from various places I've been to their photo feed.

Since then two more issues have come.  I don't have many magazine subscriptions.  I only subscribe to Mental Floss and Real Simple.  This one, though, I want to keep coming.  It has high end and more realistic tips and travel helps.  I have never seen anything like it.  It is for people who love to go, even if they can only do it from the comfort of their favorite reading spot.  It has inspired me and brought out all that old urge that's never very far from the surface to throw all my crap in a box and run away.

While I can't do that for long periods of time yet, this lovely publication is at least keeping that flame burning.  It makes me remember how good I feel when I am somewhere else, soaking in all the mind-boggling, soul-healing beauty that is our world.  It makes me dust off the camera and look for somewhere good to go point it.

For a slim volume of pulp and printer's ink, I'd say this is no minor accomplishment.  Kudos to the team that puts this thing together.  Thanks to whomever saw to it that I'm getting it now.  It was something I did not know existed but that I needed terribly all the same.

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.

SuperMoon

I just got back home from, for lack of a better term, viewing the "supermoon."  I got Chewie into the car, and the two of us made an adventure out of it.  We got fast food at Sonic, something he's never done before, and except for a little barking at random things in the parking lot and a LOT of white dog hair in the back seat of my car, he was very good.  I bought him a plain kids' burger all of his own, and off we went.

We got to our place out in the country just before dusk, and Chewie and I ate.  The evening was lovely and quiet, only the distant and disturbing sound of a very large pack of coyotes breaking the whippoorwill and bobwhites' song.  Chewie explored his new surroundings, and I waited for the moon to make its entrance.  When it did, it was fantastically lovely.  Just after the sun dropped behind the horizon, the moon appeared through the treeline, gold and gigantic.

For a time, I just sat watching it ascend, listening to the night birds, noticing the random flickering of early lightning bugs like the last few pieces of glitter someone had dusted off his hands.  When the moon had risen sufficiently, I gathered my camera, left the porch, and wandered out into the pasture proper.

It was bright enough to see the settings on my camera without having to use any other source of light.  For all that, though, most of the pictures I took still won't turn out well.  I needed a tripod, and predictably, I left mine at home by accident.  It doesn't really matter.  I had what I wanted out of the evening sitting on the porch listening to the silence and watching the world turned silver.

When I got Chewie and me home, I started messing around in iTunes, and I was struck with the random notion to pull together a few songs that have "moon" somewhere in the title for tonight.  Then I noticed how many songs I have that have moon somewhere in the title.  A quick search of my library yielded 18 songs, almost an hour's worth of music, from exceptionally diverse genres.  I'm listening to the compiled playlist now and getting ready to try to finish a book I started yesterday.  Not a bad way, all in all, to have spent an evening.

The Wizard of Oz

Cowardly Lion: Courage! What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot? What have they got that I ain't got?
Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman: Courage!
Cowardly Lion: You can say that again! Huh?
~The Wizard of Oz, 1939 film
________________________________________________

This came today from Out of Print Clothing.  I've been waiting almost a month for it since I pre-ordered it when they first announced they were going to make it.  When they first brought out the design, it was only in their children's tees, and needless to say, I could not quite see myself fitting into one of those.

I love the design of the shirt.  It has everything I admire, vintage charm, my beloved books, famous art, archetypal characters, nifty colors.  More than this, though, while I've never been a hardcore WoO fan, I realized lately this work has started to sneak into the corners of my life while I haven't been paying attention in unexpected ways.  I reflected on how pervasive it is today as I unfolded my shirt.

Dorothy's Shoes
National History Museum

First and foremost is the famous pair of red sparkly shoes.  Dorothy's shoes have become an item of fascination for me.  I finally got to see the real thing (or one incarnation of them, anyway, since multiple pairs from the film exist) in the National History Museum when I was in DC.  To me, they represent the idea that we have the power to make the changes that we need for ourselves, power that we don't even know we have, magic if we would only recognize it and employ it properly.

When we were in London, we saw The Wizard of Oz musical, and something else about the shoes struck me for the first time.  Dorothy sees the shoes as a burden while the Witch is trying to get them.  The thing she is trying to get rid of, the thing she hates about herself, actually turns out to have been the solution to her problem all along.  She couldn't understand what was important or enviable about the gift she'd been given.  I wonder how often the rest of us are in that same situation about the gifts that we have.

The other thing I seem to be surrounded by without it being intentional is character references.  They keep coming up in odd places.  One of my best friends and I have long said, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" as one of our little in-jokes for when something stupid has occurred and we need everybody to look away.  I have an intermittent conversation/joke with somebody about the Tin Man.  The bit of song concerning the Scarecrow, "If I only had a brain," has been used as a codephrase more than once with my friends and family for acts of great "brilliance," personal or otherwise.  I have thought several times about getting one of the signs about the flying monkeys to put in my classroom.

Palladium Theater, London

Everybody has a favorite character, I guess.  I'm not much on Dorothy despite the shoes.  I enjoyed it in Wicked when she gets turned into the enemy, in fact.  It satisfied something I'd felt since I was a child; all that wide-eyed innocence and checked gingham just can't be trusted....  I love the trio of guys.  I go back and forth between the Scarecrow with his wonderful loyalty, humor, and secret cleverness and the Tin Man with his backstory and his brave actions motivated by feeling he doesn't even know he has as my favorites.

Just as everyone has a favorite, I think everybody probably recognizes themselves in one of the characters to some degree or another, too.  I personally am not a singing-ingenue Dorothy or a head-scratching Scarecrow.  I can't say I'm a hollow-chested Tin Man, either.  I see myself in the Cowardly Lion.  When they sing their songs, his is the one that resonates with me.  I have "the heart" and the "brain."  Too often what I think I need to grasp what I want in life is "the nerve."  I think too much (like my beloved Hamlet) about the consequences, the what-comes-next, and I do not take the opportunities that are put in front of me.  Not in everything, in so many things I have no fear at all, but in the really serious things, the issues of the heart, I am just like the Lion, looking for a hiding place, quaking in fear.

Maybe someday, I'll have his epiphany, realize that the courage I need is inside me all the time, "be a lion, not a mowess."  That is, after all, the overarching message of the entire work, that everything you need has always been there waiting for you the whole time to discover:  your true home, your true inner strength, your intelligence, your courage, your love.  That thing you think you never had or had lost was actually just waiting with love and patience for you to wrap your hands around it and take it up again.  It was never lost at all.

Perhaps that is what makes all incarnations of The Wizard of Oz intriguing and delightful whether it's Syfy's Tin Man, that musical in the West End, the 1939 film, or the original book.  This is what makes it such a rich source for reinterpretation and myth of its own.  It's so strong that it can even be deconstructed, rebuilt through a different lens and survive.  Take a look at Wicked (both the book and the musical, two very different creatures) for proof of that.  (I find it interesting that even though the focus character changes completely with Wicked, so much of the message stays remarkably the same....)

Tomorrow, I'll wear my new shirt happily.  Maybe it will give me some additional fortitude to face whatever challenges the day might bring me.  There's no way that could possibly be a bad thing.  I'll take any help I can get.

Claddagh Again

"The Claddagh's distinctive design features two hands clasping a heart, and usually surmounted by a crown. The elements of this symbol are often said to correspond to the qualities of love (the heart), friendship (the hands), and loyalty (the crown).

The way that a Claddagh ring is worn on the hand is usually intended to convey the wearer's romantic availability, or lack thereof.

Traditionally, if the ring is on the right hand with the heart facing outward and away from the body, this indicates that the person wearing the ring is not in any serious relationship, and may in fact be single and looking for a relationship: "their heart is open."  

When worn on the right hand but with the heart facing inward toward the body, this indicates the person wearing the ring is in a relationship, or that "someone has captured their heart".   

A Claddagh worn on the left hand ring finger facing outward away from the body generally indicates that the wearer is engaged.

When the ring is on the left hand ring finger and facing inward toward the body, it generally means that the person wearing the ring is married." ~ from www.claddaghring.com
___________________________

One of the main things I wanted to be sure to get while I was in Ireland was a Claddagh ring to replace the one I had bought last time that had gotten damaged to the point of being unwearable.  Really, that was such a metaphor for so many things in my life since that last trip...

The article I posted here kind of makes the Claddagh sound like a dating ring, a "hey, I'm single" or a "no, I'm not" sign.  I didn't want it for that reason.  (Although, as you can see from the picture above, I do have mine on in the correct manner.  Yeah.  That is mine and my "dainty little hand.")

I wanted the Claddagh for the same reasons I wanted it before.  Symbolism is in almost every piece of jewelry I buy, and I don't think you could ask for much more symbolism in a piece than there is in this one.  It's also symbolism I believe in.  Love, loyalty, and friendship.  This is what I'm looking for, and until I can find it all in one package, my ring will very much stay crown-down on my right hand, thank you very much.

This ring is heavier and simpler than the one I bought before, more durable, less likely to be damaged and lost.  That's as it should be.  Life is rough, and I'm not careful with my hands.  Let all my symbols be strong ones.

I'm happy to be able to look back down at my fingers and see that silver heart and crown again.  It is something that probably doesn't mean anything to anybody else, but it means something to me.  I can carry memories of Ireland with it and hope for the future that I will someday be able to find the person who will fit the three parts of its meaning, too.  Not bad for a bit of metal molded into a circle.  Not bad at all.  Symbols have all the power we're willing to give them, for good or for ill.  This one, then, for me is powerfully rich and positive. Spero, indeed.

Shakespeare Land

Tuesday, I got to go to Stratford-upon-Avon, or as I grew to think of it, Shakespeare Land.  Although I had been before on a flying trip through, this time I got to see several things I had long wanted to see.  It was a strange, but good trip.

Our wonderful EF tour director, Hadleigh, prepped us for arrival with a detailed lecture about Shakespeare's life.  It sort of kills me how casual the English are with their famous people, even their monarchs.  I love it.  Everybody is like a member of the family, deserving of a nickname and the loving scorn you'd give a cousin or brother who gets into trouble but is still loved.  I guess this is a Southern thing, too, because I totally understand that.  Anyway, he called Shakespeare "Shakey."  Love it.

Our first stop in "Shakey" Land, then, was at Anne Hathaway's Cottage, a place I had not been able to go last time.  It was lovely.  The gardens were just coming into bloom, and had we been there even two weeks later, I think they would have been stunning.  It is always so bizarre to be walking through those rooms and across those floors and realize that someone you read and study, someone so important like Shakespeare, was there, too.  It seems so improbable even though everybody had to live somewhere.  It just doesn't sink in, somehow, that it could actually be here, this place where you're standing at that present moment.

We went from the Cottage to lunch, and then from there on to the Birthplace.  I had been to the Birthplace before, they've done extensive renovations there, adding multimedia at the beginning, and more than ever before, it really did feel like "Shakey" Land.  It was grand, though.  They also had about a million guides inside who were very chatty.  I didn't remember that from last time.  It was nice, but it took a lot of time.

That meant that the last stop in the "park," Holy Trinity Church, was going to be a scramble in the time I had left.  But I was BY GOD GOING TO HOLY TRINITY.  I missed it on the last trip because of a kid and his meds, and this time, I was going to see the grave.  I teach that inscription every year, and to have to stand up in front of another class full of students and have to say, "Yeah....I've been there twice now, and no, I haven't seen it yet," was not going to wash with me.   One of the other teachers on the trip and I booked it across town.

It was amazing and powerfully moving.  Even though I've seen photos of it for years, I don't know.  Standing there in that space before the altar was incredible.  There is a huge bank of stained glass and five graves, one of which is Shakespeare's.  To finally see the resting place and the famous epitaph of the man who wrote all those words that make up so large a part of my life was a very personal thing to me.  It is hard to explain.  It was in many ways something like a holy moment.

Of course, I had one thing left to do....  I needed my own picture of the Black Fool that stands in the middle of town.  How could I, your very own Dancing Fool, not take a picture of that?  I was running so late that I did not have time to line up shots properly and from all the right angles.  I barely had time to point the camera and release the shutter.  I did get a couple of shots, though.  I guess that counts for something.  I really wanted to work that statue, though.  I guess that will have to wait for the next trip.

Yeah.

Right.

The Spirit of a Place

(Or, Ambitious but Rubbish)

Today, I got to go take some pictures at a place I've wanted to shoot at for a long time.  It's an abandoned amusement park in a nearby town.  I've been hearing about it for years and years.  It's been on my "Holy Grail" list for a long time now, but it's in a place that I should not really go by myself, secluded and lots of trees, possibly also inhabited by the homeless, so I have never been able to get in there and get any pictures.  Today, though, one of my friends came home from DC, and she decided that it was on her list of things to do as well, so her sister, she, and I hatted up and went to see Royal Land.

It was both oddly wonderful and oddly sad, which, I suppose, is to be expected of an abandoned amusement park.  We could find no equipment left in the complex.  All we saw were signs of others' presence, an eerie abandoned doll, wrecked and burned furniture, a child's shoe.  Clearly someone had been living there.  We didn't go all the way to the back, and we didn't stay inside the gates long.We took a lot of pictures outside and left.  As I drove home, I thought about the experience.

The town where I go to take many of my pictures has a pervasive problem.  Maybe it isn't unique to that single place.   It seems that all too often big projects get undertaken and abandoned; important things are allowed to decay and disappear; instead of preservation and appreciation, a great deal of quick, cheap replacement occurs.

I keep thinking about the general state of repair of things around town.  For a very long time, one of the great jewels, a movie palace from the heyday of film, was being allowed to fall into ruin.  The ceiling is spotted from leaks, the plaster on the walls of the stairwells is in need of repair, and nobody was using it at all.  Finally, someone came and saved it.  It is starting to recover at last.  Performances are being held in it once again.  Films are being show in its lavish walls.  While the restoration process is slow-going, it is no longer being lost.

Then there was the opera house.  There was a gorgeous gem hidden away, locked up, and forgotten.  Almost nobody cared.  It was out of fashion, like a diamond in a setting nobody wanted to wear.  Despite the efforts of a few local people, it took people coming in from outside to see its true worth and save it.  Now, it is a wonderful place to go and see concerts again.  We have world-class shows coming in to something that even ten years ago was still a dusty memory in the minds of most.

I photograph so many other things that are on the verge of being past reclamation, a skyscraper that has deco details that put it on the National Historic Register; an old train car that is a remnant of this city's legendary status as a rail hub without equal.  Some of what I've shot is actually already gone or beyond recall, an old hotel they waited too long to try to save, an amusement part that was never very good in the first place.  How many other things will join them in the pile of cast-offs and left-behinds?

What a city builds says a lot about it, what it chooses to create.  I think, though, you can also tell a lot about a place by looking at what it chooses to save, by whether it chooses to reclaim or destroy and start again.  Then there are the things that can be learned by what a place chooses to neglect....   I wonder what these choices are saying about this town?

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.

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.  

A Day of It

I knew I needed to get out with my camera today (Gypsy Feet), but I am flat broke right now (flatter than that, actually...is there anything flatter than flat?  If there is, I'm there...), so I knew I needed to do it cheaply.  I decided, after some serious plotting and scheming, to go back to some places I'd already been and try to capture some things that got away from me before close by.

The weather today was perfect for shooting, gorgeous light and a sweet temperature.  I could have stayed out forever.  I started at Rose Hill Cemetery.  Last time I was there, it was approximately 4,000 degrees and the middle of last August, so I took a few pictures and made haste to get back in my car before I burst into flames. Today, I took the time to walk all around the entire cemetery and shoot whatever detail of carving caught my eye.  I found all sorts of things that my heat-addlement (not a word, but..well...) last time caused me to miss before.  There are all sorts of wonderful inscriptions people put on the tombstones, some short, some full length poems, almost miniature essays.  I shot some of them.  I hope there was enough contrast to get them to show up in the images.  I'll process the day's shooting after I'm done here, so I guess I'll know soon.

Rose Hill also made me sad, though.  Since I was there last, someone has vandalized Kelly Mitchell's grave, knocking off the top part of the cross just below the "arms" of it.  It has been repaired with rather ugly cement, and as always, the grave is adorned with the traditional huge piles of Mardi Gras beads and so forth, but I just stood there looking at it for long moments before I took a new picture of it.  I felt as though someone should apologize to her.  I don't know if she could possibly hear or feel it, but my God, to die in a place like this of something as horrible and sudden as her illness was in that time period and then to have to suffer the constant indignity of generations of people mucking about with your resting place, I think somebody should apologize.  It disturbed me.  Everybody, even if or maybe especially if they weren't left in peace in life, ought to be allowed to rest in peace in death.

From Rose Hill, I went across town to our carousel.  I have been trying to capture the tiger there for quite some time.  He's sort of tricky.  I think I got him this time, though.  I shot the animals as best I could between the rides, and I even took a ride on it myself, something I didn't do last time and regretted.  I think that if you're near a carousel and you don't take a ride on it, you're only cheating yourself.  I plan always to ride them if I can from now on.  It was grand.  After I rode it, I stayed on a little while and worked on some more angles.  I happened to catch a bit of a lull between loads of little kids and pensioners, and the two high school girls manning the place let me go through the swinging doors onto the carousel platform and take all the angles I wanted.  I got the male giraffe, a shot I could not get previously, and I think I got the lion as well.      We'll see how it all comes out in the wash.

While I was there, I got asked by a lovely couple from somewhere else if I was doing research about the St. Louis Exhibition.  I had to tell them that I wasn't, but we had a nice brief chat about antique carousels.  Every time I go out shooting, I always have the greatest conversations with people who mistake me for someone who knows something because of the camera in my hand.  I love that.

I really would like to do some research, though, write about some of the things I shoot.  I wonder how people do that, find people to publish them.  My dad suggested that I do that, too.  I don't know if anybody would be interested in it, though.  Heh.  I guess maybe you could tell me....

After I came home, I picked up Chewie, and I went to the Old Place.  Chewie on his leash is one of the sweetest, sassiest, silliest things I've ever seen.  He alternates between prancing along beside me and grabbing the leash in his mouth and trying to lead me where he wants to go.  He had a good time today.  He had a bit of an odd moment where he balked at getting up on the porch of our country shack, but I finally convinced him that it wasn't some new sneaky vet, and he spent the afternoon sitting beside me while I read. We walked through the woods some to a spring that flows on the property, and when he got bored with exploring that, he grabbed his leash and promptly pulled me away.

I finished my day driving home with the windows down, cool air filtering in, Chewie drowsing on the seat beside me.  It's true that nothing I did was an exotic excursion, but it was just what I needed today.

Gypsy Feet

Even though I'm back in the school-year swing, I'm restless.  I need to go somewhere, do something.  I wanted to go out with the Nikon this past weekend, but I thought someone was going to come and take a look at Chewie, the puppy that was thrown out on me last Thursday, to see if they wanted to adopt him, and so I was sort of trapped here all day.

Chewie continues to live here on the hill.  I'm taking him to the vet later today to start him on his shots and so forth.  He's a sweet little thing, a little less than fully healthy, I think, but our vet is amazing, so I know he'll be right as rain soon enough, and we'll find him a family who can keep him.  He just can't stay here.  I have more mammal than I can manage as it is...

I wish I knew of more places to go to take pictures that qualified as "day trips."  It's getting to the point that most of the things I think of that I'd like to shoot involve overnight stays.  I can't really afford that, and it seems a bit silly when really and truly what I'm doing is not shopping, dining in exotic restaurants, etc.  I am literally driving, getting out, taking a bunch of pictures, hanging out a bit, maybe grabbing a bite to eat, and leaving for another site.  The photography, the seeing of it, is the thing.  I guess that's a bizarre sort of travel, but when I get like this, it's what I want to do.

It's been suggested that Birmingham would be a good place to go, and maybe that's where I should aim for next.  I don't really know much about it except for the fast driving, though.  I haven't been back to Tuscaloosa's Moundville in YEARS, not since that last disastrous trip with D. (Good frakkin grief.  How many places in my life do I have to label that way?)  So yeah.  Maybe I should go back there, if for no other reason than to have a memory other than those blue eyes, that little smirk and those painful moments over by the picnic tables as he sort of jumped up and down on my heart...yet again.... I'm also told there might be some good stuff to shoot over around Clinton if I can ever find any of it.

I just need to make some quick escapes for myself.  Exit doors for my gypsy feet to run through, if you will.   If I can do that, I might not have to take the big escape over the river bridge and into Louisiana and parts west that I sometimes contemplate late in the evening on rough afternoons.

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.