Well-Swept Yard

Written by W. T. Daffron, my grandfather, of Millport Alabama, probably in 1932. It was the height of the Great Depression.  The Hayseeder’s Lament What do you think About the gink And all this high-brow clan Who congregate And advocate Bankhead’s reduction plan We raise our cotton For markets rotten We freely will admit But it’s a fact This Bankhead Act Don’t help a doggon bit We plant the seed And tend the weed Side dress with guano We plow and hoe Keep on the go No rest so help us Hannah We work and sweat Just fume and fret And worry every day Haul it to town And with a frown Give half the stuff away We have to sign On dotted line At every turn we make Then buy permits And send remits With that we can rake We pay the ginner The real winner In this old game of chance His biz is brisk He takes no risk Your see that at a glance We count our dough And hope to go Right out and buy a shirt

Overheard in Christmas decoration section of a local store.  I don't know why you like that one. It doesn't look anything like an angel. Might need to include that in my Prolegomena To A Study Of Pretty Bad American Christmas Decoration.

"Google Domains" lists the following Top Level Domain suffixes. The explosion of TLD's has an impact on those of us who have used TLD's in Google searches. The impact may not be as serious for those who search for things at educational institutions (an example these searches: ["coral mortality" site:edu] ["slave narrative" site:edu or site:org]. On the other hand, as a photo historian I will need to lengthen the domain search to "Wet Plate Collodion Tintype" site:edu OR site:org OR site:photography OR site:academy. Even then I may miss a useful domain.  The source of the proliferation may because it will be a boon to commerce ["road bike" site:bike].  Is it really worth the bow to business? By the way, when I searched for ipad site:cheap I notice that I got ad results from ordinary .com's.  Source:  https://support.google.com/domains/answer/6010092?hl=en   More information at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Int

Begüm Yamanlar   Begüm Yamanlar, untitled (1/3), from Zone Series  Begüm Yamanlar, untitled (2/3), from Zone Series Begüm Yamanlar, untitled (3/3), from Zone Series Begüm Yamanlar, an Istanbul photographer and video artist explores the mystery and uncertainty of space, urban space, rural space and objects in indeterminate space.  Her Zone Series consists of landscapes that simultaneously invite and repel, give the viewer easy entrance tempered by doubt or dread.  Each image includes a path running from the viewer's location into a forest until the path curves out of view or disappears in an unexplained fog. Would I step into the scene? In a dream perhaps; otherwise I move on to the next image. But I always return and contemplate, wondering if I haven't detected a whisper from the image. The artist clearly has a catalog of tree trunks, limbs, foliage and fleeting spots of light. She uses these judiciously in a way that pulls the individual ima

In Facebook: Many years ago, around around 1970 I guess, I was in the back, passenger part, of an Afghan truck. I don't remember where I was going. Doesn't matter. I was sitting on a wooden bench along one side of the truck. On the bench on the other side was a wom an holding a baby (with a husband or brother next to her). The woman wore a chadri (burka); she was covered from head to foot. The baby began crying. The woman raised the chadri enough to suckle the baby. My eye caught sight of the mother's breast. I quickly looked away. Then I sneaked one more glance. In this natural, universal act of motherhood and babyhood I had seen the breast of a woman whose body was otherwise hidden from me. The truck was quiet. The passengers were content that the baby was in the arms of its mother sucking for nourishment and contentment. I felt content too.

" for birds sake ," an online exhibition by Cemre Yesil and Maria Sturm, begins with a statement offering a fascinating bit of history and contemporary politics: Since the time of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul has been a very important city for aviculture. The city’s geographical location for bird migration has led to the establishment of a huge culture devoted to birds and their care. The photographers’ statement goes on to describe the purpose of the photographs: This work is about the birdmen of Istanbul and focuses on the shrouded relationship between the bird and the birdman, one full of contradictions of love, possession and pleasure. The birds compete to determine which has the most beautiful song of the day. The authors of the show put it this way:  an illegal tradition  an addiction a meditation Something they need in order to feel good. The first photograph shows two hands pulling apart curtains that hang over a birdcage. We can see past the do

Among recent works exhibited by Ege Kanar is a remarkable series of portraits on glass called Mortals . Kanar is a photographer steeped in theory and philosophy. His work explores being, existence and the unfathomable relationship that photography has to being. He writes How can photography, a tool that is presumably incapable of depicting what is beyond the visible, that which lies not on the surface but beneath it, possibly be used to contribute to the formation of a new transcendent representative state, a hypothetical real, which exists beyond dualities such as visible or invisible? Mortals immediately reminds one of nineteenth century portraiture, that time when Europe and America celebrated the surface and rarely questioned what the surface really meant. I find that Kanar's Mortals journey back, taking with them the questions that should have been asked but were not. Because the surface ideas of photography's beginnings remain with us, Kanar's work is releva

A couple of months ago I signed up for a MOOC ( Massive Open Online Course) offered by the Harvard Divinity School and taught by Laura S. Nasrallah , Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity. I was enthralled, pulled in, captivated. From the syllabus The letters of Paul are the earliest texts in the Christian scriptures, written by a Jew at a time when the word “Christian” hadn’t yet been coined. What is the religious and political context into which they emerged? How were they first interpreted? How and why do they make such an enormous impact in Christian communities and in politics today? Nasrallah's scholarly passion comes through again and again especially in the numerous videos in the class. The introductory video is a good example. I will not describe the full course. You may still visit the archived portions of the course. I want to stress the value of the MOOC as a learning platform and from my point of view a learning platform perfectly suited for

"What is art?" is a question impossible to answer. Eduardo Galeano avoided the question and wrote instead about the function of art. My favorite Galeano function is the first one in his Book of Embraces .  The Function of Art/1. Diego had never seen the sea. His father, Santiago Kovadloff, took him to discover it. They went south. The ocean lay beyond high sand dunes, waiting. When the child and his father finally reached the dunes after much walking, the ocean exploded before their eyes. And so immense was the sea and its sparkle that the child was struck dumb by the beauty of it. And when he finally managed to speak, trembling, stuttering, he asked his father: “Help me to see!” Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces , page 17.

What is wrong with this picture At our (university) faculty meeting today we were given permission to skip teaching our classes tomorrow so that we can catch up with paperwork.

I just want to wake up dead That is what my father always said about dying. A gentle, uneventful passing.  This is what happened. He awoke on the fateful day, got up, ate his usual cholesterol-rich breakfast, and then returned to bed for a nap.  He was in his mid-nineties.  At some point somebody noticed that he did not look quite right. A check at the bedside revealed that he had died during his nap. As I see it, things turned out better than he had hoped for. He woke up, had a good breakfast, fell asleep and died.  I'm glad he had the breakfast.  

The Special Needs Of Old Cats Caring For Your Elderly Feline  I am guilty of not remembering the name of a special cat of my childhood. The older I become the more I love cats and forget things such as names. Well, Cat lived outdoors and would sneak in the house from time to time. My mother did not want animals in the house (well, other than we three sons). The attitude was rooted in an incident from my mother's childhood on the farm, on a day when a goat got in the house at a time when my grandmother was any-day-due with a child. Not pleasant. Not for the people and not for the goat. The goat returned to the outdoors and my grandmother soon gave birth to a healthy little girl. But I digress. Cat visited the back door of our house every day signally meal time. This was in the 50s and we fed the cat from a can of what I suspect was the cheapest cat food at the grocery store. Can and large spoon in hand, I walked to the back of the yard where a long unused chicken coop sat. The

Cultural Institutions & Wikipedia: A Mutually Beneficial Relationship Webcast (Library of Congress)  This is good news. Acceptance of the Wikipedia as a serious and useful should be bolstered. And by the way, I found an objectionable phrase in the Wikipedia this morning and before a note reached the editors the phrase had been removed. Here is what the Library of Congress says about the video cast (or transcript download) TITLE: Cultural Institutions & Wikipedia: A Mutually Beneficial Relationship SPEAKER: Dominic McDevitt-Parks, Kristin Anderson EVENT DATE: 08/13/2012 FORMAT: Video + Captions RUNNING TIME: 87 minutes TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window) DESCRIPTION: Over the past few years, cultural institutions have formed partnerships with Wikipedia in order to increase their visibility on the web and connect with a vibrant community of online volunteers. As a purpose-driven, non-profit educational project, Wikipedi