Ms. Darby

CBS evening news reports tonight that space is running out at Arlington National Cemetery. The two-minute segment, brought to you as a Memorial Day feature, focused on the sacrifices made by our dead American soldiers, with high honors bestowed as lots of Arlington dirt.

The Seed of Human Race by Yangzi Sima

To me, the field of over 260,000 white crosses represent valuable lives lost due to lies told and perpetuated in order to benefit the rich and make them richer. We should be considering WHY our space is running out at our national cemetery reserved for slain soldiers, instead of where we will place them 20 years from now when they will not have the option to share this sacrosanct dirt.

When war was honorable, as in, the leaders of nations were on the frontlines with the masses – white or black, educated or disenfranchised – perhaps a ceremonial plot in which to lay our dead together as one had more meaning. If we care to honor our young men and women today, best to not honor them to death.

Filed by darby at 6:11 pm under rants
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As promised, Gus and his gator kind have a fascinating existence and history. From Diane Ackerman’s The Moon By Whale Light:

Crocodilians, birds, and dinosaurs had a common origin about 230 million years ago, in the Mesozoic Era. Today, there are 3 groups of crocodilians: crocodiles, alligators, and caimans/gharials. But it is easy to confuse the three main types of corcodilians… Here are some rules of thumb: Alligators have round snouts, wheras crocodiles have pointed, triangular snouts. Alligators’ nostrils have a space between them and look like an open V that doesn’t meet at the bottom (wheras crocodiles’ nostrils are closer together). Alligators have much less agressive personalities. If you can see both upper and bottom teeth, it’s probably a crocodile; but alligators have more teeth (eighty) than crocodiles do (seventy). Gharials are mild-mannered, fish-eating crocodilians with long, slender, graceful snouts and sometimes, a big knob right at the end. And caimans look like alligators but have short, blunt noses. Within the order of crocodilians, there are about twenty-nine different forms.”

In order to “sex” an alligator, one must check out the slit under its tail, called the cloaca, a cavity in which the sex organ lies. Males have penises and females clitorises. Gus could be Gracilia, but I won’t personally be researching such a thing.

Filed by darby at 12:51 pm under General
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Finally, Gus has come for a visit. I took this picture right out our back door today, and it is the first time I have seen Gus in our lagoon. I have been hearing about him since I moved here, and am excited to finally meet him. More on Gus and his kind later…

Filed by darby at 6:19 pm under General
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The old shutters from inside our Hotel Aiken room

Saturday morning, David and I travelled through small town South Carolina on our way to Aiken, where their 2nd annual bluegrass festival was underway. As we climbed from the Lowcountry into the hills, we witnessed the depressed backdrops of southern small town America. While listening to John Prine, his famous line, “there’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes” took on a whole new meaning while I watched the bleak and forgotten places roll by.

Interestingly enough, between Aiken and Allendale lay the Savannah River Site, which we discovered is government owned land and a hotbed of plutonium production. I keep wondering if there was ever big industry here, but it is hard to tell and looks as if it packed its bags generations ago.

Aiken, on the other hand, is an historically rich and thriving town. The festival attracted some big-time musicians and the town was a buzz, especially outside the Aiken Brewing Company. Their handcrafted beer was a treat, and Aiken definitely caters to beer lovers. To sleep it off, Hotel Aiken boasts a recent total renovation. While it still needs some polishing, the high ceilings, old-school original elevator, shuttered windows, and Peter Rowan wandering the halls in his pajamas, guitar in hand, all added to the charm.

The town is known for its equestrian roots, which were kindly brought to it by northerners who preferred the warm climate in the winter. They liked it so much, they eventually brought their horses and are the source of the equestrian presence there today.

Filed by darby at 7:07 pm under General
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An elusive and blurry line has thumped itself down in documentary work, probably since we humans began to document our lives and tell our stories. (I can see it now: the Anasazi pictographer being ostracized for her version of “the hunting and gathering.”) While watching The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachia, the question persists; at which point does one cross the line from documentation to exploitation?

Shelby Lee Adams has been taking pictures of the Appalachian people of Kentucky for thirty years now. Born in Hazard, Kentucky, Adams comes across as sincere while explaining that the people of Appalachia, or “holler dwellers”, are his people and his friends. The subjects of his photographs, whom he has known for decades, reiterate this sentiment. It seems that Shelby Lee’s detractors come in the form of native, local Kentuckians, embarrassed by a part of their past and present, and art critics looking for new and ready subjects to discuss.

And who can blame them? The line here is blurred, and becomes even more hazy as Shelby Lee’s Kentucky drawl becomes more and more, well, noticeable. (Not to say that my Laawng Islaand doesn’t emerge the closer to the L.I.E. that I get, but I digress.) No one can ever know the true intention of another, and even worse, we are hard pressed to understand our own motives at times. It seems that Shelby Lee Adams thinks that his intentions are pure and documentary in nature. It also seems that he will do anything to preserve his relationship with this community; whether to ease his guilt of having a classist father, protect his cash cow, or truly to celebrate the lives of these people and retain their dignity, I can not say.

I can say that, to me, the images Adams’ creates do not provide dignity to these people, but rather, perpetuate the Deliverance stereotype we have all grown up with. Because the deeper in the holler one goes, the more isolated and poverty stricken the families become. Because images of families of eight in a one room house with no shoes for the kids but satellite TV’s and dead pigs and sinister, inbred smiles DO NOT provide dignity. (I have to say, the serpent handling rituals are fascinating, but still…) And perhaps my own classist reaction is shining through more than Adams’ portrayal of the Appalachian way of life. If, however, I am to transcend the stereotype of a particular social group, you must give me more than magnified visions of the same.

Filed by darby at 3:15 pm under Arts
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