Branford Camera Club

 Tomorrow night at the Gateway Gallery is the reception and award ceremony. The two i entered. Methodist Mice and Impression Swallowtail. It is always a guess at to what to enter. 

Red Devils

Grounds of silence

Johnclarestokes 

Who will pause upon the opening day

To have a moment of silence

For that which went away

They loudly proclaim the need

The poor children were suffering

And we dare only quietly agree

You cannot educate in the past

We must abide by the code

Devils pride out east will last

So honk if you love ole things

stoke the bonfires and sing  

Old Devils! Keep your pitchforks

Sharpened.....

Stage Flight

 Stage Flight

Johnclarestokes 

Between the final act of life

(Of what is left of it)

Save for the five-minute smoke break

(At intermission )

Lungs shot to hellacious 

Forgotten chain-sucking Thespian

The lines of the Bard mumbled,

"Nor moody beggars, starving for a

time, of pell-mell havoc and confusion".

The disengaged,sullen orderly wheels

Henry the fourth

off stage to room five b with

The drawn curtains,

(Yellowed-fingers tremble)

Bed bound the encore call cord

beyond reach,

O'er and o'er the lines lipping 

"O the ignominy sleep with thee in

the grave, but not remember'd in

Thy epitaph!"

In thy epitaph!

Tug a tore

Tug a tore

John Clare Stokes

It's a painful thing

This pull to reclaim

The works of man

We hew the pew

From the oak

Sew the curtain

From the cotton

Then comes the briar

The branch

The worm

To reclaim its own

We held so long

The burning of the

Slow pulling rope

Stings

Taking men's things

Across the line

Winning every time.

Verbenadale Church

Williston

Them Bones

 Them bones

John Clare Stokes

Tell us a mystery 

I shall tell you one

How opened upon

The old pulpit dusty

Dry bones long dead

Began to tremble

And then assemble

When words were read

Come forth His cry

You army of bones

To Zion march on

Ye shall not die

What a mystery!

Days of Job

Days of Job

John Clare Stokes

When Sabeans maul

When fire falls from heaven

When Chaldeans storm

 When great winds come

When one escapes to tell

When grief is poured

When in dust you dwell

Blessed will be the name

Of the Lord still.

 

Gary

 

Melanie and i went to the funeral of Gary Byerley today in Wellborn at the Mt Olive Baptist. We went back with Gary to Westside Baptist. He was a founding member when it was a mission church of Parkview Baptist.That church later became Grace Life church which sold the church on us90 and planned to build a three phase structure down the road. In fighting ensued and only phase one was completed. Gary was instrumental in gaining a radio station 90.1.New leadership came to Grace Life and Gary and others underwent great persecution. He finally had enough and joined Russell Taylor and others in his home church and later at westside community center. The church Grace Fellowship later merged wth Fellowship Baptist os Suwannee County after Russell left and Aaron Turner became pastor. Gary played the keyboards through it all and was a member of the group Seven Days. Gary later left Fellowship with others when Aaron left to move to Missouri. Gary then joined Mt Olive. He continued playing keyboards. Gary studied to show himself approved and was studying to master Greek in order to better study scripture. 

Five Years After

The final vehicle

Five years ago my good friend Ray Carpenter saw me coming out of Baya to get into my vehicle from being fired. He didn’t know they had let me go but offered me a job taking photos of vehicles for the web pages of the dealers. Three years later we find out the photo department locally of Ray, his son and I are being outsourced by a company starting Monday. Well, though I didn’t need to, for the two weeks I kept the log Ray, the boss, asked us to. In other words, I stayed true even though I didn’t have to. 

Only thing I can say is, though I trust I was a good employee, it’s very important who you hire. They can ultimately cause you to be…outsourced. Peace out.

Five years after i am not working at Morgan. They kept me on and i became a porter up until May when i had a stroke and had to quit. The building we worked out of, I-75 motors has been torn down making way for a Wawa. Ray is doing quite well as a real estate photographer, Jacob works for the Sheriffs department, Katrina PregnAncy Center. 

Mrs Mary

 Mary Robinson Davis Rudd  1885-1960. My fathers first appointment to the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church was the tiny Mayberry-like town of Sopchoppy in Wakulla County in 1955. The panhandle town of under 600 was located on the banks of the crooked dark waters of the Sopchoppy River, which ran into the Oclockonee River, which ran into the Gulf at Panacea. My father preached one sunday at Sopchoppy, then the next at the county seat of Wakulla in Crawfordville.  My mother taught fourth grade at the nearby native stone school and during the day Mrs Mary kept me. Mrs Mary and Mr Emory Rudd lived next door to the church and parsonage on Rose Street in a wooden one story white cracker style house with the two front rooms and the rear kitchen. I loved the time with the Rudd's, looking forward to Mr Emory showing me the rats he had trapped in the barn the evening before, saving me his match boxes and Prince Albert tobacco tins to play with.  A good carpenter, Mr Emory made me a nice wooden high chair I could use to sit at the kitchen table with.  Mrs Mary and I would walk about the yard and collect the eggs the chickens had laid in the barn and under the bushes in the yard. She would then make me my favorite food of all time, her special bread pudding.  It had to be the eggs I assumed, for even to this day, the consistency has never been matched. Mr Emory was a fiddle player in a band that played down at the skating rink across the street on the river and he liked to rock a horse me on his foot and sing to me.  They had a nice front porch swing under the shady magnolia I would lay upon and watch as the occasional car would pass. One morning in 1960, mamma told me I would not be going to Mrs Mary's today. I remember looking out the window in our living room to their house and seeing a hearse. That evening mamma took me over to the house and there Mrs Mary was, lying in wake in the front bedroom.  It was one of the first death's I had seen, yet somehow I understood at the age of five. Soon after I went to stay with Mrs Porter, then the beloved Angeline Donaldson, who kept me in our home. But of all the dear ladies who kept me, none were loved more than Mrs Mary.

Where the Methodist church now is on the left was once Mr Emory and Mrs Mary’s home. The magnolia tree over hanged the front porch. Across the street was the Sopchoppy River.

Burning Suwannee

 

RL Lewis used my photograph of the Suwannee. 

Branford Camera Club Contest

 

The two entries in the photo contest at the Gateway Gallery. One is a double exposure of a Giant Swallowtail on Vinnia called Impression Swallowtail, the second Methodist Mice.

The mice had torn up a hymnal and made a bed. From Mt Tabor Church. 

Dance with a Queen

 The year was 1960. She was voted Most Popular by her classmates. I was in reality five years of age. But in the world of purple haze I was able to dance with the Queen.