my dad's high school yearbooks from 1970-1972

Well, you probably gathered from the title that these are photos from my Dad's golden years at Robert E. Lee High School in Montgomery, Alabama. Please forgive the quality on some. He doesn't have a scanner and will not allow these to depart the house. So many are real art.

quoteworthy

"He is in an aisle seat with Esther's absence next to him."

- Zadie Smith Autograph Man

flannery imagining "the misfit" - age 2-3

This is a photo of Flannery O'Connor at the wee age of two or three. Yes, it makes me grin the size of Texas. There is a new biography of sorts by Brad Gooch drably titled "Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor." There are highlights of her teaching a chicken to walk backward as a child, her peacock obsession, and the funny fact that priests would cross themselves after passing in front of her house after the release of "Wise Blood." She was a private woman and so, I want to know as much as I can gleam about her. Someone please buy it for me. For now, I am reading snippets of the book via reviews which is not advisable but free.

paris

All of these were taken last May with a Holga. Yes, the prints were hand processed and not made with that evil new I-Phone application.

new mexico

All photos were hand made using a Holga camera and so, those little red bursts are light leaks which is all part of the form.

quoteworthy

"And by how much are fourteen days less than
fourteen years, fourteen centuries?"

- Ivan S. Turgenev

brooklyn flea

As the days get colder, the flea is departing Ft. Greene for Dumbo. Here is a photo of a dress taken as the sun had most definitely bid goodnight. This is no flash, steady hand.

good writing

I can only hope to write sentences this good...

"The important thing, rather than the subject, was the conversation itself, the quick agreements, the slow nods, the weave of different memories; it was like one of those Panama baskets shaped underwater around a worthless stone."

An amazing line from "The Happiest I've Ever Been" by John Updike.

quoteworthy

"Please don’t go. We’ll eat you up. We love you so."

— Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

coney island

I visited ole Coney on her off season with Mark and my dad. I used a Polaroid and my digital. My favorite is No. 1 and the happy accident of that car driving by.

quoteworthy

"I think "taste" is a social concept and not an artistic one. I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are to ourselves."

-John Updike

quoteworthy

"Keep looking at the bandaged place. That's where the light enters you."

Rumi

a gift

These are images from a southern recipe card pack gifted to me by Miss Sara Kaye Larson who is currently residing in Memphis. The recipes shown are fried green tomatoes, peach cobbler, and sweet potatoes with marshmallows. I relish how they are both beautiful and disgusting in turn which is pretty much the norm for southern cooking.

montgomery gets a compliment

1. Cross Garden - Prattville, Alabama
2. Cross Garden - Prattville, Alabama
3. Martin Luther King, Jr March - Downtown Montgomery
4. MLK, Jr. March - Downtown Montgomery
5. F. Scott Fitzgerald House Memorial
6. F. Scott Fitzgerald House - Front View (there's a side patio and back porch, etc)
7. Dexter Avenue Church
8. Historical Placard


BECAUSE Montgomery, Alabama just doesn't get compliments I have to share one. I gave Jimmy George Francis some tips of things to see in my hometown and this is his day one report:

Jimmy George Francis: Montgomery, Alabama is currently the GREATEST PLACE ON EARTH!!! I either hit the jackpot or everyone here is as friendly/fun/intelligent/hospitable/awesome as you! I hung out at F Scott Fitzgerald's old house last night and drank beer on the back porch! I also went to Tomatinos!...

You can see in the link that follows F.Scott Fitzgerald's house where he married Zelda Sayre. My mom dressed me up for summer tea and biscuit parties until I was ten. It's also a simple but no less lovely museum. There is a great quote by Zelda about the street when they lived there, "Every place has its hours...So in Jeffersonville (Montgomery) there existed then, and I suppose now, a time and quality that appertains to nowhere else. It began about half past six on an early summer night, with the flicker and sputter of the corner street lights going on, and it lasted until the quiet incandescent globes were black inside with moths and beetles and the children were called into bed from the dusty streets."

This is a link to the museum: http://www.fitzgeraldmuseum.net/index.htm

Tomatino's has great pizza and sits across from The Capri, the one remaining revival style theater.

Yes, My hometown was the cradle of the civil rights movement and you can't slap its wrist enough. That's more than fair. In relation to the civil right's movement, you can see Dexter Ave and attend the Martin Luther King, Jr. March (a no-music, stomp only procession to the Capitol in honor of MLK). Those are my favorites but of course there are museums and markers for the legendary Rosa Parks as well. Outside of that topic, we have a baseball team whose mascot is a biscuit (for the opening season game they shoot biscuits out of a cannon), insane folk artists who paint old refrigerator's, the Hank Williams Museum, and so many ghost stories you will require a steady influx of whiskey and ginger.

through the lens

These are assorted photographs from a show at The Palace of The Governor's. I was not supposed to be using my camera and there it is in the second photo.