Journeys Back in Time 6-29-10

Atlanta, Georgia

Archeology has always been one of those wondrous mystical realms – dusty mysteries of long forgotten civilizations. Perhaps iconic to the science of archeology are pyramids. One thinks of the great pyramids of Cheops and the Sphinx. As tantalizing, perhaps more so because of the incredible art work and speculations attached to them, the pyramids built by the Maya during the Classic age are every bit as compelling. So it is that I am finally joining up with professor friends to visit ten of the primary Mayan sites. We anticipate with glee clambering over Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Chacchoben. Laminai, Tikal, Ek Balam, Palenque, and perhaps four other major sites. I might even be a junior archeologist with Mayan specialization when this is all done.

Today I joined up with two Clemson folks and we drove to Atlanta about 5 PM to spend the night with the sister of a long time friend in the Spanish language department at Clemson University. Ginger and her aunt have conducted study tours for forty years to the remotest parts of the Mayan domain. Tomorrow we will meet with Paula and Jorge, a field guide, and driver in the Yucatan and head south to Chetemal on the border with Belize.

A rather colorful omen of our journey’s success presented itself in the form of a double rainbow as we arrived in Atlanta. Sunset proved inspiring and seven of shared a grand meal before hunkering down for a 5 AM run to the airport.

Building for the Kingdom 6-13-10

Tappahannock, Virginia

A cerulean Sunday morning was given to a journey down peninsula to visit a homeless church. An Episcopal congregation there was put out of its building about four years ago as a result of an upheaval in the Episcopal world. The vibrant congregation of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church is meeting in the back yard of a house. The congregation was in a celebratory mood because the Virginia Supreme Court ruled two days ago in favor of this congregation regaining possession of its fine Carpenter Gothic facility, a quaint small all-wood church built in a style popular from about 1850 to 1905. This intrepid congregation of about forty has been the lightning rod for a test legal case than churches throughout the world have been watching closely. In some circles this recent decision is considered epic. My experience of the congregation in its unusual setting must have been much like those times when faithful gathered on the hills of Palestine to hear of Another Way of living – grand, perhaps epic. Even with this recent decision it may be a year or two before this congregation gets its building back. The wheels of justice turn very slowly.

A few blocks from here is another grand church made of board and batten. It has been standing over this tiny town for 160 years. For about a week I have been driving by it, wondering what it amounted to. I had heard it was a quaint church with pretty windows. Sunday afternoon is normally good for catching up on sleep. Today it afforded an opportunity to ‘collect’ what proved to be another superb example of Carpenter Gothic church building from the mid 19th century. This church proves to be a fine repository of several styles of stained glass, including the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, America’s glass master of one hundred years ago.

The church is in pristine condition with a newly installed cedar shake roof with the delicious aroma of cedar oil still emanating from it. The interior of the church has been finished with more recent inventions such as dry wall, giving the church a pleasing open freshness. Carpenter Gothic churches tend to be rather dark inside if still finished with dark woods and stained glass windows. The exterior contains very clear architectural elements unique to this still of church building.

As so often happens, I was granted private access to the building and was able to set up cameras on tripods and capture most every aspect of the interior. Making the experience nearly an act of worship was my friend Beverly sitting at the grand piano and letting loose with wondrous renditions of some of my favorite music forms. I was immediately reminded, happily, once again of the affable GK Chesterton’s observations about flecks of paradise washing up onto the shores of his life. I had several wash up on mine today.

Blessings

Layers of Memories - Tappahannock VA 6-12-10

Tappahannock, Virginia

One of the interesting things about renovating an old house is the opportunity to indulge in a bit of archeology. Humans tend to live their histories in layers. Archeologists digging down through layers of earth, pottery shards, and ash in mounds known as tells are sometimes able to reconstruct the history of entire civilizations. It seems we do the same thing within our residential structures.

Peeling down ten layers of paint and six layers of floor covering reveal prevailing tastes over many decades, even revealing periods of prosperity. One layer of asphalt tile laid down in 1938 was still in place, still in view for the next sixty three years. In 2001 just before Christmas it was covered over with a layer of linoleum. A stray front page from a newspaper announced big doings in Iraq and insured a very recent date for the laying of the last three layers of flooring. I had guessed the middle layers to be much older that the newspaper proved them to be. A 1999 dime embedded in the second layer proved the flooring to be much newer than initially thought. It was a bit like doing radio-carbon dating. I did wonder why one floor was good enough for sixty three years and why four more floors were put down in a mere nine years. I wonder what this says about our culture. Do our floors reveal more about our discontent with things as they are than we want to admit? Those floors were all in good condition when we pulled them up.

Another interesting form of ‘layering’ comes with school reunions. Schools will often have reunions at five year intervals. Classes convene in the summer to see who has gained weight, lost hair, married, become famous, ad infinitum. Each class has its station in history, anchored with its favorite music of the era, current fashions, cultural challenges, even great movies that have become icons of the day. It’s great fun to remember shared history, to see how the class nerd became CEO of a Fortune 500. Poignant is the absence of those who got a short straw in life and succumbed to medical misfortunes or quirks of fate.

What is true of both ancient archeology, recent explorations under the kitchen floors, and cultural anthropology at class reunions, are the realities of life’s seasons. We have those seasons when prosperity and health are granted. At other times life is a challenge.

Today I was granted invitation to the summer reunion of a prestigious girl’s boarding school. Festive tents were set up on the riverfront lawns where we plowed through mountains of blue crabs harvested out of Chesapeake Bay. At sunset we explored layers of years and rejoiced at our good fortune in life. For those able to spend five years in this school with its lavish field trips overseas suggests they had been granted a privileged station in life. For me to spend the day mining the history of an old house and my evening mining a pile of blue crabs suggests I have been granted a privileged station in life.

Metaphors of Transformation 6-11-10

Tappahannock, Virginia

The transformation of a squishy caterpillar into a graceful butterfly of splendiferous colors is certainly a metaphor for the not-so-little project that has engaged me for three days now. Dismantling a 72-year old house and attempting to save all the lumber out of it for re-use can be a bit of a complicated process. Taking a twelve-pound hammer to the interior of this house full of memories makes little sense. Splintering the history of three generations does not add to a local sense of community or history.

The veracity of this thought was proven when the grown granddaughter of the woman selling this house stopped by in the afternoon to see what we are doing to ‘her’ house. She welled up with tears when she saw that I had just carefully removed a small glass-fronted cabinet from the kitchen wall and saved it for use as a book cabinet in another room. It seems we have a sacred responsibility to respect the history of even the smallest innocuous house. It was once bigger than life to a small girl who went to Granny’s house. The cabinet was carefully made by her grandfather decades ago.

When butterflies emerge from cocoons, their struggles to get free actually cause fluid to course through the veins of their wings, giving them necessary stiffness for flight. If one cuts open cocoons and butterflies don’t have a struggle, young wings never ‘inflate’ and the hapless creatures will die. Strength and life comes from struggle.

Tracy Kidder wrote a grand book, House, chronicling the compelling true story of the construction of a home in Massachusetts. More than 300 pages describe the evolution of the design, the negotiations with builders, the ground breaking, and the roof raising. What added great success to Kidder’s work is the portrayal of struggle and victory coming from embracing a large complex project and staying with it through thick and thin. He focused entirely on the human aspirations and struggles behind the project.

As we attempt to take a tiny little house filled with memories of three generations of a family and make it into a new home for another family, I am reminded of new life that comes from struggle. In the afternoon butterflies made visits to us, challenging us to stay the course, knowing the best things in life require a good bit of work, rarely presented on a silver platter.

Evening was given to wandering around a bucolic school campus on the river, collecting images of another day of transformation.

Night Journeys 6-10-10

Hoskins Creek, Virginia

There is something utterly enchanting about playing at the edges of day, especially in the southern summer that is just now becoming incendiary. The middle and hottest part of the day was given to work, ‘my’ project to transform a little old house, literally fastened together with an admixture of duct tape, masking tape, electrical tape, and nylon cord tape, into a house of some substance and historical value. I am finding the substance of the house to be very good, even if I have to excavate the most amazing accretions of cockroach guano, mice pellets, and other unknown matter that accumulated for 72 years. Two loads to the dump have helped clear the air greatly.

I have a curious mixture of people monitoring my progress on this house. Faculty and staff from a prestigious boarding school are curious if one of their department heads is going to become homeless because of my destructive activity. Relatives and friends in British Columbia may be wondering if a favored niece is going to be looking for a reason to travel 3,000 miles for a place to sleep. Siblings and parents in Richmond may wonder about the merits of asking a guy from an e-mail thread to come ‘work on my house.’ Fairly quickly, I will need to start putting something back in. We bummed a dump trucked from the school and bought a load of sheetrock and other necessaries after making the guano drop at the landfill. There is an inkling of hope this house will be sort of habitable before winter sets in again.

The cooler dusky edge of a hot June day was given to a wandering down along the Rappahannock River and then a drive a bit further on to Hoskins Creek. A couple of days ago I saw a grain elevator at dusk near Hoskins that had great promise for interesting photos. I was not disappointed. The elevator almost seemed as an apparition in the thin pink and blue light of late twilight.

While up on the bridge over the creek with a fine view of the grain elevator, a Great Blue Heron proved quite willing to pose in the fast fading light. While ‘collecting’ this grand icon of soaring flight, a harbor cruise boat pulled up at a nearby dock, affording some wondrous images of transition to night. A large group of alumni from a nearby girl’s boarding school filled the night with their happy joy of seeing each other after a hiatus of years. Twenty second exposures allowed me to capture the great light of lives being lived in the brilliance of renewed friendship and school day memories.

The odds are 100% you will find beauty, if you but look for it.

The Edge of Day 6-9-10

Richmond Beach, Virginia

The recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has brought to national consciousness the importance, beauty, and fragility of marshlands, salt water bays, and the diversity of life to be found in these brackish coastal areas. Virginia has been endowed with extensive coastal wetlands. At sunset last night I landed in the small town of Tappahannock where I expected to have a very different kind of life experience – far from the gird. And so it has been. The brackish marshlands and Rappahannock River here define the topography.

Barbara Streisand’s direction of the 1991 film Price of Tides, based on Pat Conroy’s book of the same title included astonishing opening cinematography of South Carolina’s coastal wetlands at sunset. The film was nominated for best cinematography because of Stephen Goldblatt’s fine work. I have ever since wanted to photograph wet lands at sunset. A journey down to Richmond Beach just now allowed me opportunity to explore the astounding palette of orange, gold, yellow, and alizarin that cascades across life at dusk. Beauty was everywhere around me.

After spending the day tearing out the insides of a 72 year old house and de-nailing all the materials for re-use, going down to the shore to capture the amazing images of the Virginia wetlands was a grand reward. Somehow, rebuilding an old house in Virginia seems congruent with 'collecting' the natural beauty of the shore. Being able to salvage a bit of fine craftsmanship from builders now passed on, seemed congruent with capturing the beauty of a day about to pass on. Being able to capture the glory of the wetlands here in Virginia reminds me of the struggles those in the Gulf States are now facing as their worst nightmare unfolds.

These images are here for those in the Gulf States – a gift from Virginia.

Jefferson’s Vision for Knowledge 6-8-10

Charlottesville, West Virginia

It had been my plan to visit Monticello today but the keepers thereof advised me I would not be allowed to take any photographs of it and I would still be assessed $22 to wander around it for an hour. I opted out as I wandered around years ago. My point was to ‘collect’ it and share it with the world. With a bit of time to spare I enjoyed a nice hot breakfast in the hotel before going instead to the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. There I found myself immersed in the most glorious of academic environments possible. Finding a parking place under a shade tree, I embarked on foot for five hours to see the grandest of university campuses, with an architectural coherency that is rare on university campuses.

Thomas Jefferson believed the surest way to safeguard a viable democracy was to diffuse knowledge among the people. He championed a multi-tiered system of education with a capstone consisting of a university “where every branch of science, useful at this day, would be taught at its highest degree. Jefferson was 75 when the Commonwealth voted to establish the University of Virginia in 1819.

The Rotunda is considered by many architects to be one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. Every aspect of this academic basilica is stunning – siting, landscaping, interior use of light. The circular hall on the third floor must be one of the most magnificent academic rooms in the world. This room reserved for ceremonial academic purposes is quintessential America at its very best. Those defending doctoral dissertations in this room are truly privileged. I was certainly privileged to wander around alone in this grand space for as long as I wanted.

Those that have lived in the Pavilions around The Lawn are truly privileged. Students of academic excellence are granted private rooms up and down the long borders of The Lawn. Behind them is an amazing array of fine walled small gardens, renown for their serpentine brick enclosures. This campus is certainly a destination in its own right. For those with any interest in American architecture, history, or academia, this is one stop shopping at its best. Perhaps I should take a doctorate here so I can defend in the great hall of the Rotunda.

While walking around a fine amphitheater I had a most pleasing conversation with an affable woman out taking a walk during her lunch hour. A couple hours later I learned of a hall filled with epic murals in Clark Hall, once the home of the Law School. During my search I ended up in the graduate library reading rooms to find it. There I found none other than Linda I had met hours earlier on the other side of the campus where I had twenty minutes of pleasant conversation. The University felt rather user-friendly to me.

After ‘collecting’ hundreds of wondrous images of Jefferson’s oasis I set off for the east, passing around metro Richmond. Driving out Route 360 I passed through the very flat but pleasing rural land of eastern Virginia. At sunset I landed in the small town of Tappahannock where I expect to have a very different kind of travel experience – far from the gird. The brackish marshlands and Rappahanock River here define the topography. At sunset I was granted some of the most colorful coastal images possible.

Other Worlds 6-7-10

Green Bank, West Virginia

I had an other-worldly day. After going to bed in West Huntington at 1 AM I still managed to be up and out by 9 AM, heading for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, some 330 miles to the east in the remote mountains. The Radio Observatory is intentionally very remote and entailed 75 miles of winding mountain road to get on site, and the other way out was even more rugged, but so worth it. West Virginia has this pristine uncluttered uncrowded sensibility throughout much of the state. For most of my distance driving today I was nearly alone on the roads – a pleasant usually forgotten sensibility. A rather bright spot en route was the gilded dome of the State Capitol at Charleston, as handsome imposing structure along the river.

As a marginalized nerd throughout childhood with his head in the cosmos, seeing the vast telescopes at Green Bank was something I always wanted to do, not unlike scampering around Carlsbad Caverns. I remember driving 3,600 miles round trip to New Mexico once to visit Carlsbad only to find the caves closed because of a blizzard. It was another seven years before I finally got there. After fifty years of wishing, I finally made it to Green Bank at 1:30 PM today.

Astounding to me was being given permission to roam at will, unaccompanied, throughout this vast facility with its eight giant telescopes. The largest of these is 485 feet high and the dish is 110,000 square feet. It was built as a replacement for the 300-foot telescope that collapsed in 1988. It is the largest moveable man-made object on land. I walked about four and a half miles around the place, never seeing anyone except an occasional worker in the distance. I was again a seven-year old starry-eyed kid who got to see the universe beyond the alcoholic childhood I was dealt. I seem to keep ending up in these epic places all by myself, having opportunity to just soak in the experience, quite undistracted by others.

I was given permission to walk around if I promised to not use anything electrical whatever. I saw a graph of the electromagnetic interference given off by a single discharge of a digital camera. The use of a digital camera within two miles of one of these giant radio telescopes can completely overwhelm the data being collected from distant galaxies. The signals picked up by these vast telescopes are so weak, as to be obliterated by even a dog’s heating pad. A 1-watt cell phone on the moon would give off a signal so powerful as to be ‘brighter’ than anything else in the sky, excepting for the sun. Fortunately one of my cameras has an ultra long lens and I was able to easily get images of the telescopes at 2 miles, outside the so-called ‘quiet zone.’ 13,000 square miles are designated as a quiet zone without cell phones, Wi-Fi, or other noise of them modern era. Actually, it did seem rather peaceful out there.

After four hours roaming around this cosmic wonderland, I crossed over the Appalachian Mountains between Green Bank and Charlottesville, where I have landed for the night. The journey over was wondrous, silent, and emerald. Appalachia is such an amazing space to be in. It is curious how things sort out. I wrote a piece just this morning about a recent journey on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I got off at a random exit of the interstate west of Charlottesville to film the sunset and found myself at Mile Post 0 of the Blue Ridge Parkway where it begins at Rockfish Gap. I have been on it many times but never at its Virginia origin. Sunset today was most splendid up there.

Tomorrow I expect to ‘collect’ Monticello.

New Horizons and White Satin 6-6-10

Ashland, Kentucky

Curiously, I spent the morning planning and organizing the details for a honeymoon that didn’t get organized, for reasons unknown to me. What an interesting 'project', pulling from my own adventures to create this just-in-time life experience for others. I was amazed my judgment would be trusted. I really needed to get this right. I organized a stay for them in the grand old Mount Summit Hotel in Farmington, PA.

About noon a torrential thunderstorm unloaded on us, casting great doubt on the prospects for a happy photogenic wedding in the park. Rather dark foreboding clouds coming in from the west suggested we were going to be crammed inside a small room for our wedding event and reception. I was not looking forward to doing the wedding photos with flash under fluorescent lights. We guys fled the house and went to Shoney’s and tried to settle Bill down. He was a nervous wreck and his bride to be was little better. The climate did not help.

We went back to the house about 2 PM to clean up and suit up for the nuptial festivities, fervently praying that there would be a dove with olive branch showing up and a parting of dense cloud soon thereafter. In fact, about 3 PM the clouds parted and a magnificent cerulean sky presented itself; the air taking on the clarified sensibility of an October day. Photographing this wedding in Ashland’s Central Park was going to prove easy after all, except for one snag. The preacher never showed up. We set up in the gazebo, placed folding chairs, detailed the reception, ad infinitum. 4 PM came. The preacher didn’t. An hour later Bill and Judy were pacing the park, melting down.

Somehow a preacher was found who came just long enough to perform the barest essentials to make it legal. He was in attendance about five minutes, if that. In that hour of agitated waiting I was able to organize all the attendees and make a fine set of hundreds of pictures in the most glorious light. Ultimately I loaded 655 images on the bride’s computer. Perhaps most entrancing were two beautiful young girls in white satin with blue ribbons dispersing white petals on the glistening flagstones of Central Park

With the ‘paperwork’ made legal and anxiety levels in freefall, we shifted attention to a colorful reception. A couple hours of happy time ensued with dancing and photo ops. People eventually drifted off to other destinations. A dear friend in attendance wanted to go to dinner. We enjoyed a splendid shrimp dinner in a fine Italian venue and then Gayle offered to drive me around Ashland at sunset and I was able to collect wondrous intense images in that brilliant aureate sunlight that colorizes just before dusk. I finally got back to Bill and Judy’s house about 10 PM. They headed off about 10:30 PM for Lexington. I stayed up three hours indexing and organizing wedding photos.

I never planned on organizing weddings, honeymoons, and making a sunset photo journey when I got up today, but then life always does have these grand surprises; made far better if one can take others along for the ride.

Explorations and Remembrances 6-5-10

Huntington, West Virginia

The day before their wedding, would-be brides run around frantic, organizing a million details of peri-nuptial bliss. At such times smart guys get scarce and go find something to do to stay out of the line of fire. I took Bill with me on a little road trip while Judy did those things only brides know about.

Huntington turns out to have glorious public amenities and cultural treasures. It’s a curious delight of travel to do just-in-time learning of a new city and then show it to the locals. So often I find things locals have never seen. How grand it is to show them beauty in their own worlds. Ritter Park is a serpentine emerald swath that stretches several miles through the southern aspect of this city arrayed along the Ohio River. Ritter Park contains a splendid Memorial Arch to those who died in the Great War, an arch reminiscent of the inspiring Wellington Arch in London or the grand Arch de Triumph in Paris. Along either side of the park is an amazing collection of magnificent house built in the past century in every conceivable style. What fun it was to ‘collect’ dozens of these with cameras, knowing I don’t have to pay the taxes or mow the grass. The several locals I inquired of had no knowledge of the even larger Rotary Park on the east end of town.

On top of the hills enclosing the city to the south one find a grand art museum complete with a fine conservatory filled with resplendent tropical plants. The manicured gardens contain fine bronze castings of various sorts.

Some cities are presented with certain iconic experiences they would not embrace if given a choice. New Orleans has Katrina. New York has the Twin Towers. LA has earthquakes. Ad infinitum. Huntington has the fateful jet crash in the fall of 1970 in which seventy-five football players, coaches, and supporters from Marshall University died in a fiery disintegration of a DC-9. This vast tragedy for a tight-knit college town was made into the tastefully done film, “We are Marshall”. For reasons unknown to me this event has always tugged at some inner part of my being. Going to the Marshall University campus today and visiting the memorial to those lost forty years ago was a bit like going on some kind of mini-pilgrimage. I don’t know what this was about but it was most poignant. There was a powerful serenity in the inner commons of this compact city campus.

Huntington has developed its waterfront with a small amphitheater and a vital pedestrian shopping district with horse drawn carriages. A town that has faced severe economic challenges for decades and other social challenges on top of epic tragedies shows plenty of evidence of new vitality and promise.

I got with the guys in the evening for Bill’s last supper before he becomes an old man tomorrow. It was grand fun, almost like long ago when our school mates were getting married off when we were merely in our twenties – a pleasant reversal of time, if but for a few days.

Northern Transitions 6-4-10

West Huntington, West Virginia

There’s some kind of perverse satisfaction at being able to say I drove across six states today and a whole lot of mountains. There’s even greater joy that comes from seeing many wonders of creation. Setting out without a specific agenda does make for a freer kind of journey; allowing one to experience serendipity. Generally, journeys are of as much value as final destinations. Woe to those who get ‘jack rabbit fever’ and think of nothing but getting there and missing out on all those grand treasures dotting the amp.

Ninety minutes into my journey the North Carolina Botanical Gardens southwest of Ashville beckoned to me. Only three miles off my chosen route to Kentucky, the short detour and two hours was a small price to pay for seeing a hundred acres of botanical gems in the midst of mountain spring blooms. These gardens have been greatly enhanced since my last visit to them some five years ago. A fine series of heritage gardens have been installed. A stupendous bonsai house contains a fine array of displays in the most open, tasteful, and accessible arrangement I’ve seen. Rather grand educational and entertainment venues have been erected and staff members were busy taking advantage of the cerulean day to plant, prune, and promote the spectral delights of a grand garden. I have noticed in the past couple of years an increasing excellence in the curation and planning of botanical gardens on both sides of the Atlantic; and so it is the case with these pleasing gentle and unpretentious gardens.

After crossing over North Carolina, I stopped in a tourist info center in Tennessee and a most affable fellow put me onto a place called Bays Mountain, one of the largest city parks in the US, administered by the city of Kingsport. This mostly wilderness park proved a pleasing mid-afternoon venue to wander in the woods. While there about two hours I managed to photograph wolves, otter, white tail deer, timber rattlers, red eared turtles, and some most interesting bugs. There are simply so many interesting things to ‘collect’ out here in the world. Several people visiting were very happy for me to show them how to use their very expensive Nikon digital SLRs

Virginia has always been one of my favorite states to drive across. Many happy memories have been created here. My major experiences in Virginia will be deferred for a few days. Today my experience was limited to the panoramic mountain views at Benge’s Gap.

My last journey to Kentucky was a happy one of wandering in state parks two years ago for a week with a friend who has since found love and is getting married on Sunday. Bill has recently moved over to West Virginia but will be getting married in Ashland’s tranquil Central Park. My journey in Kentucky today was limited to interesting images of large scale industrial sites at sunset. There is a certain kind of haunting beauty attached to vast steel works and oil refineries at duck.

Driving across West Virginia is always a most pleasing experience. I always think of West Virginia as having these glorious mounds of emerald mountains unfettered by bill board and commercial clutter so ubiquitous in many states. West Virginia is a most pleasing “Wild and Wonderful” state. The best thing I got to see all day was my friend Bill’s face and that of his bride to be, Judy. Happy conversation took us until early morning.