Today the French government purchased the patent for the daguerreotype photographic process.
Today I celebrate the memory of Kodachrome slide film and the darkroom days of tri-x with acidic acid yellowed fingers mixed with D-76.
Often I come upon the little medal Coach Robinson awarded me in 1973 and wonder if it was a one time type of award, for I do not know if it’s done annually at WHS. I wasn’t a particularly good basketball player, I seldom got to score, though I was adept at ball handling and defense. Maybe Coach recognized my giving up football after JV to concentrate on basketball, a decision to this day I rue. Maybe it was for sheer will and determination and hard work when all my white friends gave up basketball to the East Williston talent.
Whatever the motive or reason, in the end, though all will forget, I’ll fondly recall being Mr Basketball of 1973.
Today we pay tribute to those who inspired us on this journey we call photography. Early on one who especially inspired me was W Eugene Smith whose haunting scenes from Minamata, Japan, particularly Tomoko and her bath, made me want to get beyond just pretty scenes and take photographs on a it makes a difference scale.
It’s been fairly easy finding the pretty scenes, but the makes a difference scenes too far and few in between. One came in the last meeting of my mother and her friend Margaret. While all we’re glad handing in the background unaware this emotional moment was taking place, I was fortunate to see and preserve the moment. It wasn’t the camera, it was an iPhone, it was in the taking, the seeing.
Watch light burning
John Clare Stokes
For so long we've watched
Kept the lights on
Lit the pathway home
Kept the door unlatched
Then upon the fading
When dim grew the light
A far call in the wee night
The flickering abating
Why the coming comes
With the going out
The many angry shouts
From God I run
Saying why now at dying
Holding dear mothers hand
I don't understand
The silence abiding
Can the light burn long
Til the loved ones return
The fallen past spurned
Before she is gone
Eclipse of Monday sun
Into your crescent I'd gaze
Blindness all my remaining days
If all Lost would just return.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Edvard Munch, painter of the Scream wrote, sickness, insanity and death were the Angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life. The quiet, studious non-assuming Edward lay on his bed with his stack of books. I never asked what bought him to this first room off the side wing, home of those in various stages of scream. But in his sparse confine, surrounded by his books, I imagine he was quite free, very far from the Plantation.
A coontre far bewest,
Where savage pepell planted are
By nature and by hest,
Who in the mold
Fynd glysterynge gold
And yet for tryfels sell?
with hy!
john clare
it wasn't long after I was born
that I came home from Bluefield
from the West Virginia snow storm
back to Vicco, Kentucky to live
but for a spell for daddy heard
the call to come to Sopchoppy
to preach the Methodist word
and so in the Packard we journeyed
making it around June of fifty-five
naturally I was only five months
from being a native Floridian
or a Kentuckian if just once
daddy would not have left mamma
to fend for herself sending
her to Granny Orander to have me
while he was busily preaching
a dubious duty to rely upon a
drunken brother to carry one
over icy roads in a hard labor
wondering if on Pinnacle Rock I'd come.
So I came, and so we stayed
in Sopchoppy eight years until
the conference sent us packing
saying, come over to Monticello
and to that wonderful two story
Victorian parsonage with a view
of Washington street from my
upper left window where I would
sit and dream before bicycling to the
painting class where in oils I
learned there was more to life
than Sopchoppy and stick figures
and so I lived for a year in my
third house, the only house with
an upper room, save the Asbury
year with ZT Johnson and
the Emory Gray over his
garage apartment marriage
And so they tore down that third
home, for a parking lot and the first
just because, while the second
the fourth stood, the fifth moved,
the sixth moved, the seventh standing,
the eight remaining, the ninth and so the tenth too.
But of all the homes
it is the third home that I miss the most.
And I do know that every boy
should have a two story Victorian
with a view of Washington Street
at least once in his life time.
In the long ago journey to Bluefield
We would know our journey was ending
As we neared the East River Mountain tunnel
Going beneath the hills of Virginia
Opening into the mountains of West Virginia
Where we'd stop at the Blue Ridge station
To ride the little Red Ridge Runner train
Peering over the cliff to see grandmothers
Home on Cumberland road below
Impatiently taking the last switchbacks down
Into the town of Bluefield
To point out the familiar landmarks
St Luke's where two were born
The telephone station where another worked
Castlebury where another lived
Pulling up into the steep drive
Across from the dairy and the twins
Parking behind Monnies Black Buick
Beside Uncle Kermit's just introduced
Mustang
For he was a Ford salesman
And we'd look up upon hearing the
Ridge Runner high above us
It's whistle telling us
Another family had made it under
The East River Mountain
And too would soon be home
Looking up from their side of
Paradise.
Some days I get this hankering
For some deep sea fishing
Even though I’ve never been
Think I’ll drive down to Mashes Sands
See if I can find Fred Boen Becton
I expect he will be ready and expecting
The little toe head who called his name
Seeing him trying to slip into church
Late after a morning out fishing
For years you laid by my side,
Never lonely in the cold night.
Silently you listened when I cried,
Close you snuggled in my frights.
Days grew long, and so did I,
Beside the bed you were placed.
Now as a big girl, to no longer cry,
All such a rush at such a pace.
Now in school, far from home,
No friend have I by my side.
Often at night, when all alone,
Do you hear the tears I cry?
Down the aisle as a bride,
Tears of joy welled within.
Yet, something missing inside,
Mother, my doll would you send?
Now a golden grey, I await the end,
My children seldom find time for me.
Alone and afraid, how I miss my friend,
Oh, just once more, in her silence to be.
And from the attic within the dark,
A dolls muffled cry is heard.
Then silence, as her soul departs,
the doll now snuggled, without a word.
we the living
holding onto the
ebbing we could see
slipping from us
no plea or chant
no incantation could
stay the bleeding
beneath the suits
of black
we reached for a warm hand
a warm touch
a glimpse into a wet eye
a whispered word
anything
Even the distant crow
Anything to stay
our empty day.
