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family / friends / history / IU / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
8
Jun 16

A walk around part of the IU campus

Today one of our friends and colleagues gave us a walking tour around the main part of the campus. It is a big place. Quite attractive. Almost all of the buildings are made from local limestone, so it sort of looks like Hogwarts. But it is also big enough that a quick walking tour makes it all a bit hard to digest. (Mostly I started wondering what they aren’t good at here. The reputation of this place is pretty incredible.) It’ll take a bit of time.

But, here, this is part of our new building, Franklin Hall:

When I was up for my interview at the beginning of the year the students were still working away in Ernie Pyle Hall. The great journalist was an Indiana student and that’s his statue out front, there. When the students come back in the fall they’ll see his statue there, the famed Ernie Pyle desk inside and a lot of new opportunities.

Franklin dates back to 1907 but is right now enjoying the finishing touches of a $22 million renovation. You can’t go inside just yet. Next month, though, we move in. (Which is fine, I’m ready for a break from lifting and carrying cardboard.)

Franklin Hall was once the library, and later an administrative building and will now be home to the newly created Media School. It is going to be an incredible facility. My office is in there somewhere:

Right next to Franklin are the Sample Gates. Designed to look older than they are. They only go back to the 1980s, but the gates have a weird history prior to that. In the 1960s a donation toward building some version of the gates was consider “wasteful alumni spending” and ever since then alumni everywhere have been sure to spend their own money wisely.

Anyway, they are named after Edson Sample’s family:

In a twist of fate, it was long-time University director of scholarships and financial aid Edson Sample that provided the funding to build the Sample Gates in honor of his parents.

Schweir, the historian, says walking through the Sample Gates makes her feel like she’s stepping back in time. Starr, the artist, views them from a 21st century perspective.

“Every time I walk by it now, I don’t just see the Sample Gates,” says Starr. “I see Obama and Edward from Twilight and zebra skin and cheetah skin. You really transform the psychology.”

It took 90 years to get there.

We built our new grill and gave it a tour tonight:

I tasted beef and roasted vegetables. No Edward from Twilight, though.

cycling / family / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
7
Jun 16

The B-Line

Riding some of the trails this morning:

This was, I believe, on the B-Line. Bloomington has created a three-mile long paved path that basically bisects the city. It is part of a larger plan which, supposedly, will provide paths and trails to all points of the town when the project is completed. Part of that path is just behind our house and you could walk on it and the various sprawling sidewalks and paths that sprout from it for a fair distance. (Forgive the imprecise measurements. I’m new.)

Anyway, nice and scenic. This is more for walking and running and maybe a casual ride. You wouldn’t, we found this morning, put your bike on this and start hammering at it. But, still, a pleasant route, and one without cars.

We had to get in the car today. Drove up to Indianapolis to pick up my mother-in-law from the airport. It wasn’t a bad drive, except for the construction. I wonder how many times I’ll say that before they finish the construction. (Exactly the number of times I have to go to Indianapolis, would be my bet.) They are working on a giant interstate project and part of that work is between here and there just now. I’m sure it’s coming along with all due speed.

Anyway, she’s come to visit and help us get settled. She got in the house and was ready to work. What a lady. Good timing, too. My progress has slowed to road construction levels. We joked that we were leaving a room for her, and we’ve left part of that room for her to unpack. I’ve pretty much had my fill of it all.

Cardboard is an adventure, until you start getting cardboard cuts. That’s a powerful disincentive.

family / history / photo / weekend — Comments Off
2
Apr 16

A place still called New Hope

We journeyed to New Hope, Georgia. Dallas, Georgia, really. Dallas is a narrow spot on a road. New Hope doesn’t appear on a map. It is between here and there, Chattanooga and Atlanta, west of Marietta. To be such a small place a lot has happened here. We were there for a memorial of the crash of Southern Airways 242. My grandfather died on that flight, the largest aviation disaster in Georgia history. This, then, is thought to be one of the longest-running memorials of its kind in the country. I wrote about it a few years ago, and a version of that also landed on the Smithsonian Magazine’s site.

The plane touched down and crashed just down from this church:

On Monday, April 4, 1977, at 4:18 in the afternoon, a Huntsville to Atlanta DC 9 Jetliner crashed into the small community of New Hope, northeast of Dallas, Georgia. The jet plane’s first contact with the ground was about fifty yards from the New Hope First Baptist Church. A piece of the plane’s metal fell on the church property. This was on the same ground that the great battle of New Hope was fought on May 25, 1864, when so many lives were lost. There were eighty-two passengers and crew aboard the Southern Airways plane and at least sixty-one passengers lost their lives. Eight local residents perished due to the accident. Two of these were members of the New Hope First Baptist Church.

This happened during a thunderstorm. It was a dark rainy afternoon and strange as it may seen, this was the type weather that was described on May 25, 1864.

[…]

The aircraft hit in the middle of the 92 Highway then seemed to shift with the wind, clipping power poles, electric lines and cutting trees as it went. It was kept closely between the many stores, New Hope Elementary School and the volunteer fire station and was seemingly under control when suddenly the plane touched down in front of Newman’s Grocery Store where two gas pumps were hit, causing an explosion.

[…]

Residents all around were bringing out sheets, blankets and anything they could to help, trying to provide and assist as best they could. Some helped in pulling the injured from the wreckage, putting them in their cars and for Paulding Memorial Hospital.

According to the hospital’s timeline, the first victims arrived just 10 minutes after the crash.

The accident investigation ultimately concluded that everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The storm the plane flew into was so thick that it swallowed radar signatures, so their equipment didn’t see it. The hail cracked the cockpit windshield and cause complete engine failure. The air traffic controllers made some critical errors, too. Ultimately the two pilots, Captain William W. McKenzie and First Officer Lyman Keele, who were accomplished military aviators had to try a desperation landing on a country road. Eyewitnesses say they put the landing gear down on the centerline of the road, but the wings clipped the poles and they lost control from there. One of the last battles before Sherman burned Atlanta took place there 103 years prior. And evidence suggests that before that, apparently, there was a great Native American conflict there, too. All of this in one cursed spot.

The wooded area bordered a house where a mother and her children who had been playing outside just moments before. I know one of those guys, and his mother. Sweet lady. Just behind what was then their home is the site of the Civil War battle, a place called Hell Hole. The locals brought survivors through the lady’s house, in the front door, out the back, down through the woods and to another road behind them. That was the only way they could get cars to the site, through the debris. Every crash victim who went in through her front door survived.

One of the local facilities has a display of contemporary newspapers:

adventures / family / history / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
24
Mar 16

More family photos

There are whole chunks of things I don’t know about. That’s only my fault. So I try, on some of my visits, to fill in the gaps.

For instance, these are my grandmother’s parents:

That’s a familiar picture, though I don’t remember the two of them. Here’s a picture of them I don’t think I’ve ever seen before:

The boys in the background are my great-uncles. The years melt away, but the same mischief is just noticeable in the eyes you can see on the left margin of the shot. That’s a familiar look. They were old when I was young, but only in that way that adults are old to children. Their creeping up there in years now, of course, but you still see that in the eyes. To see them as ankle biters themselves is amusing.

This picture is a few years later than the previous one. This is my grandmother’s senior portrait:

Cute girl, right? She grew up in the narrowest wide spot in the road in a tucked away corner of northwest Alabama that it is still hard for most people to find. In her yearbook she quoted a first century Syrian, taken as a slave to Italy where he won the favor of his master, who freed and educated him. Publilius Syrus became a writer and actor. The quote: “When we stop to think we often miss our opportunity.”

My grandmother was in the Glee Club and Future Homemakers of America.

Me and my grandmother today. Still a pretty lady:

This is my grandfather’s father. Never met him:

Back with the folks. Allie has been patiently waiting at the table for a treat.

adventures / family / photo / weekend — Comments Off
19
Mar 16

I have three theories about weddings

My cousin got engaged some time back. And it seemed I was going to be asked to be the photographer. Most weddings in my family seem to be family affairs. I’ve been a DJ and a photographer and even in a few wedding parties. So this was not so surprising, even if just attending is an easier day.

So I figured on the nondescript tie. Doesn’t draw attention, projects authority and authenticity.

But I ultimately wore a different tie. On Tuesday of this last week I got a text about not shooting the wedding, but taking on some other role. These things are family affairs.

I have three theories about weddings: The first theory is that every wedding has its own character. Usually it is a flaw or something quirky or some environmental condition or something going on in the world that day. But its the thing that everyone remembers when your wedding ceremony comes up. Oh, a bridesmaid fainted? Yep, people will laugh at that for years. It was a 128 degrees at your wedding? That’s always the first thing people say about the lovely ceremony. (This one I know from firsthand experience.)

So I did some research and did some other work chose a different tie and then last night helped assembled the bulk of the wedding venue’s decorations. The bride had done a great deal, of course, and I’m sure her kids were kids and the groom was a groom and so I was up on the top of a 10-foot ladder in this event venue last night, clinging to a mount bar and stringing lace and tule and beads and lights for reasons that make sense to smarter people than me. And we did that because we’d already put all of the table centerpieces in place. I figure just doing the work, just being seen working hard, might mean something to the teenagers who are present, but who can say? I realized, too late, that if I’d just told them to do things, they would do them. They don’t always take initiative. Sounds familiar.

But I was happy to do all of that. Ask me to be anything but a wedding photographer. If you do ask me, I will take your pictures and send you a flash drive of unedited photographs and you can do whatever you like with them.

I have three theories about weddings: The second theory is that weddings are needlessly expensive. (I know, this is more of an immutable, universal law.) Just adding the word “wedding” to a vendor’s order increases the bill by several orders of magnitude. There is a reason wedding photographers get to charge what they charge. And that’s also the reason that I get asked to shoot weddings, because I can’t do that to family.

So after all that last night we left the venue and sat around and told jokes and the bride did last minute things for her wedding and then shifted to working on one of her class assignments. She’s a woman in her 30s who is raising a brood of kids and going to school and it is all a level of impressive that the rest of us who merely did college or parenting one at a time probably can’t understand. Also, she planned and pulled off her whole wedding.

And it was held at that place. The wedding got a late start, because fires and other crises had to be addressed. Photos had to be taken. Vows had to be written at the absolute last possible minute. And then the music played — one of my folks pushed play on the tablet, because these are family affairs. The playlist was shared, literally, as we were on the way to the venue. Oh, and also the matron of honor backed out, and the dresses were late, too.

Which is what I told them when they came to stand before me. Yes, I married them. This amused some people to no end. Others probably had different reactions. But it was a pretty decent service. And it had happened after a heck of a week. They’d lost their pastor, because that guy’s son had to go sign a college football scholarship. He’d set them up with a backup, but they didn’t like him. So they asked me on Tuesday if I would marry them on Saturday. So I wrote a ceremony that day and today watched as my aunt and uncle sat down at the front of the room. My uncle married us in 2009. I stood there watching him while everyone else watched the groomsmen and the bridesmaids all came down the aisle.

Before I started the service I said, just to them, “Do me a favor. Becky, look at Jeremy. Jeremy, look at Becky. Take a deep breath.” And I shared with them my third theory about weddings: At the end of the day, no matter what else happens, you’re still married.

I realized, midway through the service, what I forgot to add to it. I thought about ad libbing, but things were going pretty well and the bride and groom hadn’t mentioned it when they previewed the thing anyway. And, at the end, I realized that no one stood when the bride came down the aisle. And, sure, dresses were still getting hemmed moments before the service, and that even as we started almost half an hour late. Of course the pictures between the ceremony and the reception took way too long, so everyone was hungry. After all of that and more, which had happened in the weeks and days and hours just before this important day, they were still married.

So I signed the license and then played songs, because I somehow got tricked into being the DJ anyway. But I didn’t take the first picture. They still got married.