candids, stills, portraits showing way of life that is treasured, fast fading
Adapted from the line, “Moutoussamy-Ashe’s series of monochrome images include candids of weddings, stills of a church gathering and everyday portraits of the island, showing a way of life that is treasured and fast fading.”
As a resident of the low country I love this story and feel for the people who created the culture that who lived on land now in the gun sites of developers who, like Lex Luthor, have an affinity for ‘Beach Front Property.’
The Gullah culture of the low country is certainly “a way of life that is treasured and fast fading.”
As a citizen of the United States of America, I can say, I know how you feel.
boats nets lying off off the sea-beach, quite still, boats separate, row off
TWO boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, Ten fishermen waiting—they discover a thick school of moss- bonkers—they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water, The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers, The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore, Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankle- deep in the water, pois’d on strong legs, The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them, Strew’d on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water, the green-back’d spotted mossbonkers.
A Paumanok Picture by Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass (Boston, Thayer and Eldridge, 1860).
two years, ten years, and … people ask what place is this? ask where are we now?
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now?
I am the grass. Let me work.
Grass by Carl Sandburg as published in Cornhuskers (1918)
Yesterday I stood in history or maybe, stood on history.
I was on the front steps of the United States Customs House in downtown Savannah, Georgia.
The building opened in 1852.
The building is kitty corner to the Savannah City Hall on Bay Street and it was on Bay Street, on December 21, 1864, that General William T. Sherman reviewed his Army of the Tennessee after the March to the Sea that started in back in Atlanta, Ga on November 15th.
In the sketch of the event, General Sherman is in front of the old City Hall building and there across the street, is the once again, UNITED STATES Custom House.
In the pictures of me taken yesterday, I am in front of that self same building, 161 years later.
On the steps of history.
Then this morning I was reading an article about the restoration of the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
That building has been in place … since 1100.
Oh …
Before that my morning Bible reading was in the book of Judges and the story of Samson.
Samson, the feller who fell for a girl who lived in … Gaza.
Samson is thought to have been a Judge back in 951–931 (BC).
Oh …
Still, I was sitting on granite steps that had first been sat on 175 years ago.
No Haiku For You 