The Chinook - Still remarkably unsightly, but carrying an all important message.
PawPaw, Madison County, NC 04-23-21
Benny is 41 Today
Benny at the Rat House, Marshall, NC 1985
I’m sure most parents say this, but it’s hard for me to believe I have a child who is forty-one years old.
This picture was made when Benny was five. I was newly single and struggling to get my photography work in front of people. We moved a lot in those first years—the cabin on Big Pine, downtown Marshall in a converted warehouse space, The Rat House, a house in Asheville, an apartment in Durham, and finally closing the circle and moving back to Big Pine. We did this in four years.
Benny was a trooper throughout and I look back at our time together then with fondness. Time at the beach, marching in Civil Rights Rallies, playing in Wilson Cove Branch on Big Pine, train rides.
The Rat House is not one of those fond memories. The place was fine when we moved in, but within weeks we were seeing rat droppings and then rats most mornings. We set out bait, and traps, and knocked them back for a few weeks, but they always returned, in seemingly greater numbers, and wise to our defenses. We moved.
I bring this up because Benny and I are dealing with rats again. Benny at his house in Portland and us in our barn on Paw Paw. Again, we set out bait and traps. We moved our chickens to a rat-proof enclosure and removed access to their food sources. We await warm weather and the awakening of the two black snakes who live in the barn. Benny called an exterminator who set traps and bait. That first morning he called to say he had caught three baby rats in one trap, all craving their first, and last, taste of peanut butter.
The Last Day of Women's History Month
“Gram,” Silver Spring, Maryland 1992
I’ve thought a lot about what to write on this, the last day of Women’s History Month. Although I’ve written about my maternal grandmother before on this blog, I could think of no other person more important to my history than her. Jennie Lozupone Galeano.
She was born in Gioia del Colle, Italy, and migrated to this country with her family in 1906. In that regard her story is no different than the millions of immigrants who came to the United States fleeing poverty and political strife, all looking for opportunity and a better life.
She married young to a Sicilian immigrant, Joe Galeano, and they had four children in quick succession. Along the way she discovered she had a gift with her hands and began working in Jimmy Bello’s tailor shop in downtown Washington. There, she made suits for Franklin Roosevelt and robes for the Supreme Court justices, along with dresses and suits for her grandchildren.
She and Joe fashioned a good life. Sunday dinners with family and friends, poker games on Saturday night (my grandmother loved cards, and bingo, and the racetrack), and enough money to buy a house in suburban Maryland. My mother would tell a story of coming home from school, or her job, and finding her parents sitting at the kitchen table, a open jar of hot peppers and a bottle of anisette between them, both of them laughing and sweating like there was no tomorrow.
That proved to be the case for my grandfather who died from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in the summer of 1948, when I was six months old. They had just bought their house on University Boulevard and Gram immediately understood the difficulty she would have paying the mortgage. So, my parents, with me in tow, moved in with her so she could keep her house. My mother went back to her government job and my grandmother became my caregiver for the next three or four years.
During that time my grandmother imprinted with me: the memory of her childhood in Puglia, her accent and mix of Italian and English, the smells and tastes of her food, her belief in family. Much of that has stayed with me to this day. Four years ago when Leslie and I visited Italy, we stopped briefly in Gioia del Colle and I was struck by how familiar and comfortable the place felt, even though I’d never been there before. I can only understand that as genetic memory, my grandmother’s imprint on my young mind.
Jennie eventually went back to work at the tailor shop until it closed. She continued sewing for us kids and later made vestments for the priests in our Catholic parish. As she aged, her eyesight began to fail so she shifted to crochet, making multi-colored Afghans, which she called “Africans” because her language couldn’t quite comprehend the word “Afghan.”
She gifted me the first one she made and, to this day, I sleep under it every night, secure in my memory of her and the history she bequeathed to me.
Week 4, Women's History Month, Mothers
Without Mothers,
There Would Be No History
Madison County, North Carolina
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Fargo, North Dakota
Madison County, North Carolina
Madison County, North Carolina
Madison County, North Carolina
Charlotte, North Carolina
Sparta, Georgia
Charlotte, North Carolina
Eastern Shore, Virginia
Madison County, North Carolina
Madison Coumty, North Carolina
Week 3, Women's History Month
Madame Lili Kraus, Burnsville, NC 1978.
The Asheville area has always been a bastion for the Arts. From writers—Charles Frazier, Thomas Wolfe, and O. Henry—to musicians—Robert Moog, Warren Haynes, and Doug Wallin—to visual artists—Will Henry Stevens, George Masa, and Julyan Davis—and many, many more—Asheville has produced or attracted a plethora of incredible artists.
One of the more amazing, but little known, artists, a musician I had never heard of, was Madame Lili Kraus, who lived her last few years in Burnsville and died in Asheville in 1986. Kraus was considered the foremost interpreter of Mozart during her career. She was born in Budapest in 1903 and studied in Vienna and Berlin before beginning an international touring and teaching career. While playing in Java at the beginning of World War II, she and her family were incarcerated by the Japanese and held in concentration camps until the end of the war. She resumed her career after that, playing thousands of concerts around the world and recording over a hundred albums. She eventually settled in Fort Worth, Texas, where she became the long-term artist in residence at Texas Christian University.
In addition to her musicianship, Kraus was also fluent in seven languages, a formidable athlete, and a fierce lover of life. I thank Martha Abshire, the founder and publisher of the Asheville Arts Journal, for sending me to Kraus’s farm outside of Burnsville, where I spent an afternoon walking in her gardens and receiving a private concert from the master.
Week 2, Women’s History Month
Eva Wolfe, Cherokee, NC 1985
Eva Wolfe was a master Cherokee basketmaker. She was born in the Soco community of the Qualla Boundary in 1922 and lived and worked most of her life in the Big Cove community, where she died in 2004. Wolfe mastered the intricate double weave tradition that utilized rivercane in her baskets. She often used over 100 strips of cane in one basket, which were dyed with native plants, such as bloodroot and the roots of the butternut tree. Wolfe was the recipient of numerous awards for her work including the North Carolina Heritage Award from the NC Arts Council, the Brown-Hudson Award from the NC Folklore Society. In 1969, Wolfe’s baskets were part of an exhibition at the Renwick Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC.
I was fortunate to photograph Ms. Wolfe twice—once for the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual in Cherokee and later for the NC Arts Council. In addition to her amazing baskets, Wolfe raised eleven children, raised a huge garden, and was a noted community elder. Her double weave baskets continue a fading tradition.
Thank you, Anna Fariello of Western Carolina University, for the excerpts from her book, Cherokee Basketry: From the Hands of Our Elders.
The Long Hiatus
I see that my last post was July, 2020, a long time away from this blog. It’s hard to say why I stopped—Covid, boredom, depression, simply nothing to say. For the longest time I’ve wondered if the world would continue. I’m sure many of you have felt the same way. But I’m ready to return to the fold. I’ve had my two shots and can see a light at the end of the tunnel. The world will go on and I, once again, will likely have something to say about it. So, thank you for your patience. Shots, or not, wear your mask. Keep your distance, but hug your grandchildren. Be careful. Be safe. It’s still the same old world, but it feels entirely new. Perhaps what is new is our appreciation of the old.
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
On Anderson Branch, 2020
I so tire of this shit.
I’m walking and come around one of the many steep, hidden bends on my route.
It’s pleasant - not too hot, or cold.
The dogs are with me and they’re behaving,
Not chasing cars.
And then, there it is.
Evidence of yet another asshole in this world.
Someone who thinks they can dump their crap wherever they like.
Too lazy, or too cheap, to go to the landfill.
No respect for others, or the land itself.
I just don’t understand.
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
Dellie Norton stringing beans and singing with Nancy Morris, Sodom, Madison County, NC 1975.
When I first moved to Madison County, it seemed to my suburban self that the county moved on “slow time.” People spoke slowly and their movements were deliberate and purposeful. No one got in a hurry. I was more impatient. Over time, and with age, I’ve begun to learn the art of “slow time.” But, ironically, it’s the county that now moves at a faster pace. We’re busy all the time, with no time to visit or share a meal. There are times of the day when traffic on the bypass is unruly. We allow ourselves no time to appreciate the beauty in which we live.
Our imposed and necessary isolation has served to put all of us on “slow time.” We’re at home more and on the road less. Learning to entertain ourselves, we’re gardening more. Walking. Reading. Making music. Learning the nature of quiet. I’ve read that with people driving less, air pollution has dropped significantly worldwide. And absent the daily docking of cruise ships, Venice Bay has cleared and dolphins have returned to the canals. There are lessons here we should heed.
I mourn the loss of physical contact with people. We had a rash of visits just before the shut down and I wonder when we’ll be able to do it again. At the same time, while shut off from closeness, it seems that we’re having more conversations - in person at six feet, and by phone, and email, and zoom. And we’re talking with people we haven’t spoken to in years. It seems everyone feels the same urgency to be in touch, perhaps concerned it could be our last contact.
Now, three months in, I, like many of my friends, wonder when it will end. Will I ever hug again? Will I ever be able to go to a store without worry? At my advanced age, I ask if I’ll ever travel again. How will this change us? How has it changed us already?
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
Peace, PawPaw, 2020.
PEACE!
Where you least expect to find it.
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
In 1987 I was on staff with the Rural Advancement Fund, a non-profit, farm advocacy organization with a field office in Pittsboro, North Carolina. In addition to working with small, family farmers throughout the two Carolinas, RAF also ran a Justice Project in rural Robeson County in the southeast corner of the state.
Robeson County’s population is one-third white, one-third African-American, and one-third Lumbee Indian and racial strife has long been an issue. The County is noted for the Battle Hayes Pond, which took place in 1958, when hundreds of Lumbee confronted the Ku Klux Klan and ran them out of the county as they were attempting to stir animosity among the races. Despite the positive outcome of that situation, the County has been plagued by unsolved murders and extra-judicial killings throughout its history. The photographs here are from a Justice Rally in the county seat of Lumberton, demonstrating against the killing of Jimmy Earl Cummings, a native-American man, by the county Sheriff’s Department.
For obvious reasons these images have been on my mind for the last few weeks. I look at them and see faces, and signs, and situations that could easily be transposed to today’s world. And I think, I made these pictures thirty-three years ago, and yet, here we are, fighting the same battles, with the same adversaries, demanding the same basic rights, freedoms, and respect. And certainly, this fight has been going on a lot longer than that. And the battle doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.
Often, the most simple observation is the most prescient. And I keep coming back to Rodney King, who asked with an almost childlike wonder, “Can we all get along?”
Happy 4th of July.
Lumberton, NC, 1987.
Lumberton, NC 1987
Lumberton, NC 1987
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
Our Pasture, PawPaw, Madison County, NC 04/20
These days
With time suspended
Not knowing one day from the next
Mind muddled from the effort of keeping track
Easily confused
Surrendering to the lethargy.
Why bother?
I mean, will we even be here in a year, six months?
Solace comes from our pasture and
The woods around it.
The daily changes in light and tone.
Bursts of green after a rain
Followed by heavy mists that give the Smokey Mountains their name.
Drought that drives even the grass to crackle.
The longer movements come season to season.
The deep shadows of fall that open to
The long visions of winter.
The smell of spring.
The breathlessness of summer.
Yet for all the change,
Both long and short,
There is the sense that
Nothing changes.
Maybe this is particular to the time in which we are living.
But what if it isn’t?
What if it will always be as it is now?
What if it always has been?
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
What Was Once the Bridge to Home, Paw Paw, 2020
The owners left a few years ago.
Moved to a manufactured home,
high on a hill nearby.
The house is much like the bridge,
falling in, rotting, the inside black with mold.
There’s history here.
A man shot, killed by his step-father.
I don’t know the details, but
the killed man, the stepson, was supposedly drunk,
high on drugs, shooting into the house,
from just beyond the bridge.
With his mother inside.
It was ruled justifiable.
Likely, I’d have done the same.
I pass this spot on my daily walks and
think about what must have been an awful night.
For everyone.
The terror of it.
A mother’s son, dead,
by the hands of her husband.
How does one live with that?
It’s peaceful there now in its disrepair.
Quiet, almost picturesque,
slowly becoming part of the landscape.
Part of the heritage of place.
There are beaver in the creek building their own home.
The creek rises and falls with the rain, sometimes
taking the beaver den downstream in high water.
They try to build back, but are washed out again.
And again.
Until finally moving to a more agreeable location.
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
Marshall, North Carolina, at its absolute finest. I’m proud.
Marshall, NC 06/06/20
Marshall, NC, 06/06/20
Eight minutes and forty-six seconds, Marshall, NC 06/06/20.
Eight minutes and forty-six seconds, Marshall, NC 06/06/20.
Black Lives Matter Rally surrounding memorial to Robert E. Lee, erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1926 ,Marshall, NC 06/06/20. It’s time for a change.
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
Kelsey Green, Sodom, Madison County, NC 04-15-20
Leslie and I drove over to Sodom on Friday to visit with Kelsey and buy some plants for our garden. It was Leslie’s first time out of the house since she broke her foot four weeks ago so she was ready to get out. In honesty I was more than ready, too, to see a different place and a fresh face.
It was a beautiful day - sunny and bright with a cooling breeze. Kelsey was working in her greenhouses when we got there. She owns and operates, Our Friendly Allies, www.ourfriendlyallies.com, a nursery that specializes in medicinal herbs, along with edible plants. It was her busiest time of year and her folks, Sherry and Eric, had her boys for a few days affording her long, uninterrupted days to work.
I’ve not been dealing well with our mandated isolation. Lethargic, lacking motivation, accomplishing the bare minimum. Wondering if time will be like this for the rest of my life. Masks. No travel. Fear of being out in public. Little to say that hasn’t been said.
Seeing Kelsey, and other young people in our community, is heartening. They adapt to necessary changes and take the necessary precautions. They maintain distance, but offer abundant air hugs. They do their work. For Kelsey, having her own herb farm has been a long-held dream. And while this virus has been more than a little disruptive, it has not altered the dream.
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
Ben at five, Asheville, NC 1985
It’s hard for me to believe this beautiful young boy turns 40 today.
All parents understand there is something special about their first born,
And so it is with Ben.
An easy child.
Predictably, a more difficult teen.
An adult who knows his own mind.
At 40, a delight to have in our lives.
Maybe not quite as cute as he was at five,
But special beyond compare.
Happy Birthday, Son.
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
Digging John Henderson’s Grave, Big Pine, Madison County, NC 1988.
Six feet.
Graves.
Fathoms.
That magical height I aspired to,
But never came close to achieving.
It just wasn’t in the genes.
Six feet,
Our imposed social distance.
No hugging,
No coming close.
Gifts exchanged at a distance.
We are all wearing masks,
Afraid to share the same air.
This loss of touch is unsettling to me.
As if, it, too, is not in my genes.
Six feet.
I look at this photograph of men digging their friend’s grave.
The intimacy of it.
The sharing of close space.
The smell of sweat and
Men wiping their brows.
Tasting the earth.
The stories you know they are telling.
Will we ever see intimacy such as this again?
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
Catherine Galeano Amberg. Mom at nineteen, Washington, DC, 1940
Were she still alive, my mother would have been 99 years old today. She died in 2007. I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately.
My mom was a first generation American, born to Italian parents, and raised in the Italian ghetto in Washington, DC. She achieved much in her life. From a poor upbringing she went to secretarial school and on to a much decorated career as an administrative assistant in the Army Corps of Engineers. She survived the Great Depression and World War II, the social upheaval of the sixties and seventies, and the terrifying beginnings of the 21st Century. She and my father built a home in the suburbs and raised their four children there. They retired comfortably. They travelled frequently to see their children and grandchildren, and to Italy to see Mom’s family and other far flung destinations. She had come a long way from Morse Street in NE Washington.
But my mother was never the easiest person to satisfy. I think it is part of the immigrant DNA to always strive for more, for both her and her children. As she aged, becoming more infirm, and often alone, her oft-repeated refrain was, “Where are the Golden Years?”
How does one answer that question from one’s own mother? To me, it seemed she had achieved a lot, done more than she ever dreamed of doing as a young woman of nineteen. Why would you want more?
I don’t put much stock in Hallmark holidays or catchy phrases, so the idea of Golden Years kind of washes over me. I’ve always thought you just lived your life until you didn’t. Yes, I expect to slow down as I age, travel more, visit and walk, and not worry so much about stuff - money, children, drama. But as for some kind of golden light illuminating my life after age 65 that grants entrance into some entitled senior enclave - I don’t think so.
So, now, firmly entrenched in my Golden Years, I’m still working, traveling to see the children, friends, family, and faraway places, and looking forward to more of it. I move more slowly and deliberately.
But suddenly, we (all of us) find ourselves in the midst of a game changing event - something, be we young or old - that will irrevocably mark the rest of our lives. We hear, “Stay At Home. Wear Masks Outside. Avoid Travel. Keep Six Foot Distance.” Let us hope this event doesn’t erase the memory of Golden Years, however illusory that memory may be.
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
Our driveway, PawPaw, Madison County, NC 03312020
I saw it on my walk.
Lifeless in the culvert pipe.
Firm and cool to the touch.
The tail the giveaway.
Hairless, the body possum gray.
Born dead, or aborted from its mother’s pouch.
Perhaps it lost its grip and fell out on its own.
Either way, it’s dead now.
I’m not one to mourn possums.
I don’t like to see them killed randomly.
But when they kill our chickens, they must be dispatched.
They kill in a most gruesome way,
sucking blood from the bird’s neck and head,
leaving the meat to rot.
I won’t worry about this one.
Yet, this baby’s death touched me.
Partly, it was knowing
It would never experience whatever joy a possum feels.
The taste of chicken blood.
Hanging by its tail from tree limbs.
Testing their ability to cheat death by deception.
It would miss all of that, and more, I’m sure.
Rather, my emotion was about the time we’re living in.
Socially distant.
Suspended.
Fretting, worried, scared,
for ourselves, our families, our communities.
Wondering how long this will last and how it will play out.
How will we know when it’s safe to come out and play once again?
Emotion so overwhelming that
the death of a baby possum
leaves me saddened for the world we live in.
The "Stay at Home" Pictures
Zuma, Marshall, NC, March 5, 2020.
The next to last day we were among people.
Charlie was so excited to play with Bobby Hicks in the Zuma Jam.
We were excited to hear him. And we did hear him.
Along with a young man with a voice like Hank Williams.
Little did we know what was coming.
Now, Zuma is closed and voices are stilled until further notice.