The care of things continues. Last weekend I had the pleasure of a visit from my darling little sister-- who stands 5' 7" to my 5' 3". She is one of the few people in the world who cares about the vanload of stuff I brought back from Mamaw's abandoned house in Pineville. We spent an afternoon looking at pictures from the 1920's to the 2000- oughts. I think the most poinient part was that the family is essentially out of touch with the descendants of the brothers Zekaney, Paul and Peter. Among Mamaw's effects was a college graduation pic of Paul, a 3 foot wide panorama of faces from 1927. There was also a certificate acknowledging Paul's right to wear the Logan High School letter.
There were postcards from Mamaw's sister Virginia, sent from California, the West and the South in the mid 1950's. They'd inquire about family members or offer a "wish you were here" type greeting. These l'il sis slid into 3x5 acid-free sleeves, to be viewed front and back. The holes on the sleeves weren't spaced exactly right for a 3 ring binder, so we had to punch them with a hole puncher, which wasn't as easy as it sounds.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Human Explosion
Vacationing on the Oregon coast.
Everywhere we go there are vacation homes going up, hillsides being razed of trees, lumber erected. This is a fairly remote portion of the coast, on Netarts Bay. Everywhere there are signs that there are just too many damn people. I look at my family and imagine us as the ants that happen to inhabit both this vacation home and our home in Baltimore. Ants crawling in our kitchen, to be killed for their very existence. Not because one hates ants per se, but because these ants are in the wrong place at the wrong time, on our lunch plates or in the bathroom.
Thus it is with humans, we are not bad per se, in fact we have many admirable traits, but the current structure of our society demands that we consume ever more and more, and need larger and larger accommodations, to the detriment of all other species. The average American family of four, post WW II, was satisfied with a 2 bedroom house, children sharing a room. The four-child families of the baby boom generation only needed 3 BR houses. Mothers cooked for years in galley kitchens and produced memorable meals. Now those same boomers, and subsequent generations, need mini-mansions, vacation homes, SUVs, 4 car garages...
As I take in the natural beauty of a sunset over Netarts bay & listen to the tide, I think about how the natural world will continue after the humans have gone. The puny party lights of our species will flicker out, but the pink and orange sunsets will continue for the fish and gulls to see. Our beautiful earth will continue to spin long after we have spoiled the atmosphere that sustains us. The sand, the salt air, the single cloud scudding across the sky will all still be here.
Last week at a Delaware beach, 3700 miles away, I commented to an uncle that the area would be under water in 50 years. His reply was “I won’t be here”, and he didn't seem to have a problem with the fact that his son probably would. That seems to be the prevailing sentiment- people think that since they won't personally feel the effects of global warming or environmental deterioration, it's OK .
No wonder the Chinese are kicking our butts with products that at best don’t work and at the worst poison us. They create and fulfill 50, 100, 200 year plans. We live paycheck to paycheck.
When did we stop caring about the future for our children and grandchildren?
Everywhere we go there are vacation homes going up, hillsides being razed of trees, lumber erected. This is a fairly remote portion of the coast, on Netarts Bay. Everywhere there are signs that there are just too many damn people. I look at my family and imagine us as the ants that happen to inhabit both this vacation home and our home in Baltimore. Ants crawling in our kitchen, to be killed for their very existence. Not because one hates ants per se, but because these ants are in the wrong place at the wrong time, on our lunch plates or in the bathroom.
Thus it is with humans, we are not bad per se, in fact we have many admirable traits, but the current structure of our society demands that we consume ever more and more, and need larger and larger accommodations, to the detriment of all other species. The average American family of four, post WW II, was satisfied with a 2 bedroom house, children sharing a room. The four-child families of the baby boom generation only needed 3 BR houses. Mothers cooked for years in galley kitchens and produced memorable meals. Now those same boomers, and subsequent generations, need mini-mansions, vacation homes, SUVs, 4 car garages...
As I take in the natural beauty of a sunset over Netarts bay & listen to the tide, I think about how the natural world will continue after the humans have gone. The puny party lights of our species will flicker out, but the pink and orange sunsets will continue for the fish and gulls to see. Our beautiful earth will continue to spin long after we have spoiled the atmosphere that sustains us. The sand, the salt air, the single cloud scudding across the sky will all still be here.
Last week at a Delaware beach, 3700 miles away, I commented to an uncle that the area would be under water in 50 years. His reply was “I won’t be here”, and he didn't seem to have a problem with the fact that his son probably would. That seems to be the prevailing sentiment- people think that since they won't personally feel the effects of global warming or environmental deterioration, it's OK .
No wonder the Chinese are kicking our butts with products that at best don’t work and at the worst poison us. They create and fulfill 50, 100, 200 year plans. We live paycheck to paycheck.
When did we stop caring about the future for our children and grandchildren?
Friday, July 27, 2007
Gone to Garden
The Russian Orthodox Slovenian bible I rescued from my Hungarian grandmother's house is falling from my book shelf, disgorging a few fragile pages. The Bible was found a few years after her death in a closet in her Southern West Virginia home. I was completely floored by the find, as I'd know my grandmother as a devout Methodist.
My cousin had lived in the house for a few years after Mamaw's passing, but all the accumulation of a four son family and a Depression era couple's small town civic life was still piled in the closets. Boxes of cards, photos, paintings, notes to self, newspaper clippings. Awards in frames. Hats. Hat boxes. A list of hats. Costume jewelry.
The house was built by my grandfather and his first and second sons. One of a brood of 12, did Papaw feel blessed with his college education and his house in town? Three bedroom, dining room, large kitchen, walking distance to the school.
The town house must've been a real step up from the house in McCraes, even though they had just renamed the tiny country enclave for the family's Civil-War-era patriarch. My one drive through the community formerly known as Tipple had shown me a collection of small houses along a twisty dirt road.
Mamaw was an avid newpaper reader who clipped stories, made notes on them and gave them to the people she thought they applied to. Her life was spent between her large eat-in kitchen with a red formica table, the school, the post office, the church, the trade school where they had the beauty salon, the garden, Mrs. Cooks house. Her red oval table was piled high with newspapers and correspondence, in fact her end of the kitchen table where the family ate daily was a little office, with stashes of bundled letters, rubber banded together. Notes, lists, phone numbers were left on the kitchen table and Frigidaire. I've inherited this proclivity for the gathering of facts and their re-packaging and re-distribution.
My own pictures and correspondences are collected in boxes, on shelves in the basement. Mamaw's pictures, rescued from the Kentucky side house, her cards, her college yearbooks... are all added to my collections. The life archive of my grandparents. If the images were photographed or scanned, the collection could probably be reduced a single CD. But of all the costume jewelery, hats, Boy Scout memorobilia, and correspondence, my favorite is a manila folder from a concern in Ohio, a piece of ephemera that sifted to the top of the pile, that contains a note as to Mamaw's whereabouts-- "Gone to Garden."
My cousin had lived in the house for a few years after Mamaw's passing, but all the accumulation of a four son family and a Depression era couple's small town civic life was still piled in the closets. Boxes of cards, photos, paintings, notes to self, newspaper clippings. Awards in frames. Hats. Hat boxes. A list of hats. Costume jewelry.
The house was built by my grandfather and his first and second sons. One of a brood of 12, did Papaw feel blessed with his college education and his house in town? Three bedroom, dining room, large kitchen, walking distance to the school.
The town house must've been a real step up from the house in McCraes, even though they had just renamed the tiny country enclave for the family's Civil-War-era patriarch. My one drive through the community formerly known as Tipple had shown me a collection of small houses along a twisty dirt road.
Mamaw was an avid newpaper reader who clipped stories, made notes on them and gave them to the people she thought they applied to. Her life was spent between her large eat-in kitchen with a red formica table, the school, the post office, the church, the trade school where they had the beauty salon, the garden, Mrs. Cooks house. Her red oval table was piled high with newspapers and correspondence, in fact her end of the kitchen table where the family ate daily was a little office, with stashes of bundled letters, rubber banded together. Notes, lists, phone numbers were left on the kitchen table and Frigidaire. I've inherited this proclivity for the gathering of facts and their re-packaging and re-distribution.
My own pictures and correspondences are collected in boxes, on shelves in the basement. Mamaw's pictures, rescued from the Kentucky side house, her cards, her college yearbooks... are all added to my collections. The life archive of my grandparents. If the images were photographed or scanned, the collection could probably be reduced a single CD. But of all the costume jewelery, hats, Boy Scout memorobilia, and correspondence, my favorite is a manila folder from a concern in Ohio, a piece of ephemera that sifted to the top of the pile, that contains a note as to Mamaw's whereabouts-- "Gone to Garden."
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