Meanwhile, In America...

Okay, I know I'm no Robert Frank. (Makes me think of The Online Photographer's immortal comment about how to shoot with a Leica. He said, when suggesting using a 35 mm lens, "I know Cartier-Bresson's favorite lens was a 50. You're not Cartier-Bresson." I can't find the link, but this is the start of the thread...) But I'm still stuck on my concept of "Meanwhile, In America ..." -- a modern, more upbeat version of Robert Frank's The Americans. So now you must suffer through more pictures of the sort I would do for that project...

Here we see the talent and producer (Kim Pinckney, the one holding the papers, is the producer) of WDBJ's weekday morning news show, Mornin'. (Yes, absent the G -- it amuses me.) They are looking at the ratings. They're number one.

Inside a Roanoke, Virginia, firehouse, shortly before it was closed and replaced with a new, more modern facility nearby. The stairs lead from the garage-like area where the fire trucks are kept to the living quarters for the firemen.

Jefferson Street, downtown (it always amuses me to say "downtown" in a town of 7,000) Lexington, Virginia.

The owner of Roanoke's Putt-Putt golf course, during a tournament involving both amateur and professional players. Yes, professional Putt-Putt golfers. Really. There's a tournament circuit, just like Tiger Woods plays, but with giant gorillas and giraffes and windmills and stuff. That's not why he's laughing; he was once a pro himself.

The president of Roanoke's Tea Party, shortly after I interviewed him for WDBJ7 at a July 4 rally in Elmwood Park. As I've mentioned before, I think the Tea Party movement is something to be respected and attended to, not ignored and dismissed. I still haven't grasped what it is -- and I asked him for the opportunity to talk some more in hopes of getting closer -- but I sense a geological force (not a "shift," as I think it taps into something quintessentially American, whatever that might mean) that the Tea Party represents.

I think there is a really important article, or story, or book maybe, to be done about this -- one that isn't snide or superior or disdainful. Something not written in the tone of an educated elite regarding the boobocracy as if they were animals in the zoo. Something not written by today's H.L. Menckens.

I had read about George Plimpton's fascination with fireworks a long time ago, but it stuck with me. I saw my opportunity this July 4, and convinced the station to let me cover the setup for Lexington's fireworks. I was surprised; just two guys, a lot of wood planks, some PVC tubes for mortars, and boxes and boxes of explosives shipped all the way from China. (That was a somewhat scary thought, I've got to say, when I learned it. There must be shipping containers full of high explosives [!] on the Pacific as I write.)

The guy in charge, shown here, just started when a friend suggested he help out on a show. His day job is as a barber. He's going to beautician school now, to expand his business.

Pray and Play, and effort by a black evangelical church to occupy youth in a poorer neighborhood in Roanoke. I ended up covering it when the minister called the newsroom one Saturday seeing if we were interested.

A gospel rap group, associated with the church, was also there. I gave them my card, and I hope they call. That would be a good story, I think.

This is Josh Harvey, a friend, playing organ for a wedding in Lee Chapel on the Washington and Lee University campus in Lexington. A nice picture of a nice guy.

All of the pictures have been shot with a Leica M3. For some I used a 34mm Leica Summicron, some a Zeiss 21 mm Biogon. Most were shot on Tri-X, though Josh's is on Plus-X, and I shot one roll of Fuji B&W film because it was in the fridge. (I'm working my way slowly through everything in the fridge, as I can't afford to buy new film. I'm also now out of negative sheets.)

NOTE: Keep checking back. On my first upload of these pictures, it's ten o'clock at night and I don't have all the data -- like names and dates -- in front of me. I plan to keep updating these entries as I get the chance.

Also, check back on previous entries. I've been adding pictures as I get them processed and scanned.

Once Upon a Time in America...

Most people nowadays don't remember that Ernie Pyle (if they remember Ernie Pyle) had a job before World War II -- one of the greatest jobs, in my opinion, ever. He was paid by a newspaper and then a newspaper syndicate (IIRC) to simply drive around the country, writing interesting little profiles of the people and places he encountered.

You could see the pattern that he later used in his war reporting: person, character study with details such as hometown and family, evocative place description, etc. But I came to think of him in that job recently for another reaason.

I saw yesterday in The Daily Beast a reference to a poll that shows that a stunning number of Virginians are what have become known as "Birthers." Those, to make it short, are people that believe that President Obama was not actually born in Hawaii in 1961, as claimed, but somewhere else, like Kenya or Indonesia. This of course would render him Constitutionally ineligible to be President. The whole movement itself has become controversial (and is, taken factually and objectively, absurd, if for no other reason than there's nothing really that could be done about it now), driving some like The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson positively to distraction. I sympathize, but I also wonder ...

This strikes me as a symptom of a greater zeitgeist, one that seems particularly prevalent -- or at least, one that I am running across in numbers too high for coincidence -- here in Southwest Virginia. I felt a hint of this earlier, with the rise of the "Tea Parties," which I think were unfairly derided -- or at least underestimated -- by many, and I see this as part of the same general movement.

Before I go on, I have to pause to note that I often encounter this in a group, or rather a demographic, that shouldn't be dismissed. Everyone has their claim to being indispensable to America, but theirs is as good as anyone's. These are the people who are over-represented in the military, the folks who go to work in factories, pay their taxes and just try to hold it together. Around here, a lot of them farm and do spot work, job-to-job, like construction, just trying to push through the recession. They're not quite the Okies of Grapes of Wrath, but I think Mr. Joad would "be there" for them.

At any rate, I keep encountering this ... thing, this movement, this general dread and discontent. It makes me nervous, in a way, even as it also gives me a sense of the great, sleeping beast that is America in an oddly good way. Which is what leads me to Ernie Pyle, driving around 1930s America.

Aside from the sheer simple pleasure I would get from a job like that, it would give me more confidence in moments like this. Is what I'm seeing just a localized phenomenon? Is it a product of my own personal biases? Is it driven by the current media fascination (and frustration) with the Birthers? I dunno'. But I sure wish I had the job that would let me drive around, ask a few people, and find out...

No teabagging jokes...

I've got to agree with some commentators that, tempting though it is, the current fascination of both open liberals and some "legitimate journalists" (put in quotes, because I'm not sure what exactly those two words are meant to mean in conjunction, sort of like "social justice") to make snotty comments about the Tea Parties last week -- particularly comments related to certain sexual activities and their slang names -- is not really commentary and is just an indication of a willingness to not take a serious thing seriously.  Would they dare make similarly dismissive and "humorous" comments about some of the wackier Islamic extremist terms?

Anyway, there was a Tea Party here in Lexington, Virginia, in the small park that sits in the center of town, attended, by my guess, by 100 to 150 people.

Here we look out into the town from the pergola in the park, past the speaker.  

Here we look back toward the pergola, visible in the background.  As you can see, it was a cool and drizzly day.

After the evening rally (from 6 to 7 pm), people lined up to sign letters to their congressman and senators.

I know I announced at the beginning of this blog that I wouldn't do politics, and I like to think I'm not doing that here, but a hundred people in a town of just 7,000, with a social scene dominated in many ways by two college faculties, turned out on a cold rainy evening to make a statement against an otherwise popular president.  This is something that deserves a reaction besides dismissive sarcasm...

POSTSCRIPT: An interesting comment today in the New York Times by David Carr, simultaneously doling out scorn to cable news for ginning up the Tea Party phenomenon and noting interest in the symbolic connection to history.  Who would have guessed an event in today's shallow culture would still use the resonance of an historical event to inspire it?