Moments of Clarity

 

Fireworks, Matt and Taylor's wedding, Old Ground Farm, Big Pine, Madison County, NC 2016

There was a moment in time recently when it hit me. I was at the Marshall Fashion show, photographing a swirling group of young people, modeling clothing made by other community members. So beautiful, and assured, and clearly in control. It was sweaty hot, the audience was packed, cheering wildly, moving too to Erich and Danni's driving beat. I thought, "I am really old and this is no longer my world."

I've had more than a few such moments of clarity lately; brief flashes of understanding in a world gripped by transition and disruption. As if to say, "So this is what the world will look like."

There was the bittersweet moment of Jamie's leaving. But, today, gone a week, he called and we chatted long, our normal weekly update for so long now.

The melancholy of my own children - the eldest clearly, and happily, on his own path in his own place. Child #2 taking the necessary steps we all know toward her own world. But me, thinking of times not long ago when it was the four of us here, always. And missing that.

Fay, the kindest of mothers-in-law, on her own journey, sometimes here, with us, but more often in her own world of increasing darkness.

The loss of relationships, once close, that have fallen victim to our disjointed times and a sense, an acceptance really, of who I am as a person. "How," I wonder, "did we ever stay friends so long?"

At Matt and Taylor's wedding party, it's light passing through a dress that first catches my eye. Like a moth, I'm drawn to such things. It blends with the flowing arc overhead, framing the music, highlighting the party. And then the gift arrives, the moment of clarity. It comes from stage left. Comfort for an old person that life will not only continue, but a particular community and way of life will also move forward.

 
 

At Matt and Taylor's wedding reception, Old Ground Farm, Big Pine, Madison County, NC 2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

The New Road

 

JD Thomas Walking Away from his Burning Home Place, Sprinkle Creek, Madison County, NC 1997
 

I know while JD's momma was still at home, after his dad died, I said, 'Momma, what if that road comes through your land?' And she said, 'Aw, woman. It'll never change. It'll never happen. We'll never have a road like that; it'll never be. I'm not worried about it.' It's just unreal. We used to walk over all those hills. We used to go after school and on the weekends, and we'd walk all the way to Big Knob. We'd play, and we'd go up in the fields and pick apples and grapes and all that stuff off the farm. It never even dawned on me that this was going to happen to that place. He won't admit this, but I knew that night they burned the house I could see tears. It hurt him. It really did.
                                                              Lela Thomas, Sprinkle Creek
                                                              - from The New Road: I-26 and the Footprints of Progress in Appalachia 

 

The New Road: I-26 and the Footprints of Progress in Appalachia will soon be out of print. This is Book Two of my proposed trilogy of books from Madison County. The book uses photographs, oral histories and narrative writing to tell the detailed story of the largest earth-moving project in North Carolina history. If you have yet to add this book to your collection, now is the time to do so. I will gladly sign and inscribe as you wish. Go to robamberg.com/store for information.

 

Dellie Feeding

 

Noted balladeer, Dellie Norton, Feeding Her Pets, Sodom, Madison County, NC 1975

Beginning October 1, and running throughout the month, Mars Hill University will be hosting a celebration to recognize the 100 year anniversary of Cecil Sharp's arrival in Madison County. Sharp was a British musicologist who came to Madison searching for ballads that had origins in the British Isles. He found more ballads, and singers of ballads, in our county than any other place in the country.

The ballad tradition is alive and thriving in Madison County. The University will be hosting an exhibit in Weizenblatt Gallery that looks at Sharp's legacy in the county. Artifacts, photographs, memorabilia, sound stations will be on display. An opening reception and ballad swap, which is a long-standing tradition at the Bascom Lamar Lunsford Festival, will take place in the gallery, beginning at 5 p.m. The Ballad Swap will feature singers who are descendants of the people Sharp collected from, some of them are 8th generation singers. Please join us for this remembrance of a very significant piece of Madison County History.

 

 

Supervisors Inspecting

 

Supervisors Inspecting site of a recent blast, Buckner Gap, Madison County, NC 1997
- from The New Road: I-26 and the Footprints of Progress in Appalachia

A worker stops, surprised to see me photographing among the just shattered rock. He warns me to watch out for unexploded blasting caps that could still detonate, if I were to step on them. 

 

On Sheila's Porch

 

On Sheila's Porch, Madison County, NC 07/09/16

I say to students, 
Look beyond the subject to the background. 
See that it's not interfering or competing.
But rather, enhancing and completing.
Sometimes you'll be surprised
And pleased by what you find.

And so it was on Sheila Kay's porch.
Me, making portraits.
Her, on the swing.
Quiet, pensive, assured.
Dreamy.
Like the background behind,
A reflection of the reality before.
A contemplation of her.
 

 

Time with Donna Ray

 

Donna Ray Norton, Sodom, Madison County, NC 2016

I had the good fortune to spend a few hours this past Sunday with Donna Ray Norton at her childhood home in Sodom. Donna is one of a small group of young people who continue to sing the ancient ballads that Madison County and Sodom are noted for. She is an 8th generation ballad singer and has a voice to die for. You can listen to her on this video that was produced by the Knoxville News Sentinel about seven years ago. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89g5hg-LpJM

In 1916, Cecil Sharp, the British musicologist, arrived in Madison County with his assistant, Maud Karpeles, where he collected more ballads than anywhere else in his travels through the southern mountains.  He famously claimed that people in Madison County were more comfortable singing than speaking. His work resulted in the definitive volume: English Folk Songs from the southern Appalachians, which was published in 1934. This fall Mars Hill University will mount an exhibition to celebrate the Cecil Sharp Centennial as part of their annual Bascom Lamar Lunsford Festival, which will run from September 26 to October 21, 2016, with an opening reception on October 1 from 5-6 pm during the Festival. 

 

A Visit from Carl

We had a visit a month or so ago from our friend Carl Schinasi who lives in Birmingham. We've known Carl for ten or twelve years. He is a retired English professor at Miles College, a native of New York City, a writer, painter and budding photographer. We met over pottery and baseball, but have found over the years we have so much more in common than that. We share literature, art, and political leanings born in the sixties. Last summer we visited him and went on a great tour of Civil Rights/Birmingham with his good friend Virginia who was on the front lines of that struggle during the sixties.    

With Carl in our kitchen, PawPaw, 2016

A few years ago Leslie and I were taking a trip to Maine and Nova Scotia and were looking for someone to house and farm sit. Carl was interested as he could hunt for pottery while staying centrally located and free. Seemed good for all involved. We had some initial concerns like when he got out of the car and mentioned he was deathly allergic to cats. We had five in the house at that time. Later, explaining our feeding and egg collection system, Leslie suggested he watch out for black snakes who sometimes ate eggs and rested in the nests. "Why," he asked, "don't you kill it or remove it?" "Well," Leslie responded, "He helps with the mice and rats." Carl, in his best NY accent said, "Great. Rats and snakes, my two most favorite things." He had never really been on a farm before or even out in the country all that much. 

 

 

But we left. Carl called a few days later to check in and mentioned he hadn't been sleeping that well. "Why?" "One of the dogs, Ralph I think, barked all night long, just wouldn't quit and I was sure there was something out there. Then I remembered the headline of the newspaper that came today and was sure the guy was out there, coming to get me."  We assured him that wasn't the case and if, in fact, the guy had been out there lying in wait for Carl, he would already be dead. 

A few days later we were staying in an old sea captain's house on the Bay of Fundy that had been turned into a B&B. It was quite idyllic. Our phone rang about ten that night. The house was asleep. It was Carl. "I think Isabell died under your bed." "Why?" "She's been under there for thirty-six hours and won't come out." "Why? Did you have any rain, thunder?" "Yes, and she's been under there ever since." "Get a bowl of grease or a hot dog and try to lure her out." Next call ten minutes later. "Didn't work. She didn't budge. She growled at me." Leslie grabbed the phone, "Plug in the vacuum cleaner and shove the nozzle under the bed. See if that works." Next call, "She ain't dead. I stuck that nozzle under there and she came out like a greyhound."

 
 

 Carl Schinasi with his affectionately named Dick Tree in Birmningham, AL, 2015 

 

FROM or OF

High School Graduation, 1965.

Madison County, NC 2010

One of the underlying reasons for my solo road trip last fall was to think about my relationship with the place I’ve called home for the last forty-three years. To be honest I was tired of the place in a way that had not happened in the past – tired of the maintenance work around our farm, tired of the daily drama that often seems like the lifeblood of the community, tired of the expectations of others regarding my work.

Don’t get me wrong, I love where I live and continue to believe that moving to the mountains was the single best decision I ever made. But increasingly as I’ve aged, and ostensibly “seen it all,” I find myself asking what if? And if that question was persistent enough, what would I do about it?

Throughout my time in Madison I’ve heard the old adage, you ain’t from around here. I’ve generally ignored it, but lately I’ve come to understand its truth. My upbringing, my values, my cultural influences, my manner of speaking and acting, and many other characteristics all mark me as an outsider. Sometimes, those ways of being come into conflict, but most often they don’t because I’ve learned if I can’t be from the place, I can be of the place.

The difference is subtle. I think of it as the difference between thought and instinct. I’ve been able to learn how to live here: How to sort of manage our place – the firewood, the water, the gardens, the mowing, the dead animals; how to live and relate in a community as foreign to me as some small village in Sicily. I learned the dialect, and about ballads and tobacco, and how to be moderately self-sufficient. I learned about darkness and quiet. Some of those lessons were hard learned and few, if any, came instinctually.

What comes naturally for me are Italian Delis, Broadway Musicals on Sunday morning and Blues and Rock the rest of the time, and the ever-present light and hum of a big city. I know the proximity and abundance of people, the availability of anything I want, anytime I want it. I can talk fast and do so without thinking. I love to dress up. I know pavement and chain-link fences and comfortably motor the DC Beltway. I effortlessly find my grandparent's graves in Arlington Cemetery or my parent's in Gate of Heaven. Of course I can, this is where I'm from.

It's the same for people who are from Madison County or the wider region. I watch them – how they interact, or dig, or grow things, walk and talk, how they live their lives - and I say, “They are from here.” There is an ease about them – a sense that what they say or do comes from a knowledge learned long ago, so ingrained it’s now part of the DNA. “How do you know that?” I might ask a local friend about something that stumps me. “Why,” he would answer, “I just do. I'm from here.”

Debbie and Dellie

 

Debbie Chandler brushing her grandmother's, Dellie Norton, hair, Sodom, Madison County, North Carolina, 1991

 

I've been thinking a lot about Dellie .
I'm not sure why today.
Most days I see photographs of her hanging in my studio
so it's not like she isn't around. She is.
But for some reason, today, she's popped in my mind and stayed. 
I'm fine with that.

This photograph was made about two years before she died.
She had been in declining health for a couple of years prior.
Here, after a stay in the hospital, back home,
with family members taking turns in her care.

Perhaps that's why she's stayed with me today.
Because of our own situation caring for Leslie's mom.
Watching her age, needing more and more, 
content to sit and be quiet.
Me knowing, it won't be long. 
 

 

Redbud

 

Paw Paw, Madison County, NC 2016

It's been five weeks ago now that I took a walk thinking redbuds.
It's not like me to do that,
 go out with camera in hand and nature in mind.
I've not been much of a landscape photographer.
People and culture have been my thing.
But it was a vibrant spring day,
bright and crisp and
the redbuds were waiting patiently for me.

I've long thought it trite and repetitive to do this type of picture.
It's what we see in camera club contests and
postcard racks, 
on facebook. 
But here I was.
In the woods,
searching for the mix of angle and light,
wondering, 
how is it I've not photographed such beauty before?

 

A Community Coverlet

 

Quilt Presentation, PawPaw, Madison County, NC 1983

Back in the olden days,
(Oh, how I love being able to say that)
 new people moving into Madison County
began a tradition of making and gifting quilts.
For weddings, or new babies, or friendship.
Receiving a quilt meant a certain acceptance.
An embrace.
You were part of the community.
A member of the tribe.

It's a tradition that continues with young people today.
And I think, how rare is that?
Except in places like ours.
Small, close knit, and hands on.
Welcoming. 

In this photograph Vicki Skemp, aka Vicki Lane, is
thanking her neighbors and friends for the
20th Anniversary Wedding quilt
presented to her and her husband John.
It's a Sister's Choice pattern, 
organized by Vicky Owen and Fay Skemp Uffelman.
It was a potluck day, of course.
This one held at Wayne and Fay Uffelman's farm on Paw Paw Creek.