Perry County Archives

April 21, 2014

Celebration of Red and White Quilt Exhibit in Altenburg

I live with a quilter and have several friends who are deeply into the craft, so I can appreciate how much work goes into a handmade quilt.

The Lutheran Heritage Center & Museum in Altenburg is hosting A Celebration of Red and White quilt exhibit through the end of April (not much time left to get up there). The exhibit is the personal quilt collection of Ann Meyer Hazelwood: author, former president of the National Quilt Museum, quilt appraiser, public speaker, and quilting expert.

The exhibit features world class examples of historic and modern quilts with a red and white theme, as well as a large collection of ornate Victorian-era red embroidery on white linen “Splashers”–used to protect the wall from wash basins.

The exhibit is open daily through April 30, from 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.; 75 Church St., Altenburg, MO. Admission is Free. For more information call: 573-824-6070 or go to the museum website.

The staff and volunteers are friendly folks who will make you feel like you’ve known them forever. Tell ’em I sent you.

Photo gallery of quilts

Click on any image to make it larger, then use your arrow keys (or click on the sides of the photos) to move through the gallery.

April 20, 2014

Tower Rock Overlook

I’ve shot Tower Rock from about every angle except underwater (and I came close once to doing that when Brother Mark and I walked over there). I’ve been on the top of it, flown over it and have seen it from both the Missouri and Illinois sides.This is the view from the parking are where most folks see it.

The one place I HADN’T seen it from was the overlook.

In the summer and fall, the leaves are too thick to see anything and in the winter, I’m not crazy about a long, cold walk.

Overlook hangs out over hill

On April 18, though, I didn’t have any excuses. The day was cool enough that I wouldn’t overheat, the sky was blue and there was no rain around. I drove across the railroad tracks (Stop, Look and Listen) and went up the road a couple hundred yards until I came to a wide spot that looked like the start of the trail.

Mother suggested I take a couple of deep swigs of water before heading up the hill. She said she’d stand by to dial 9-1-1 if I keeled over. I told her not to bother. There’s no signal down there.

The climb is moderately steep in some places, but it flattens out toward the top. You’ll definitely feel a burn in your thighs if you aren’t used to exercise. When you get close to the top, you look at the tiny platform hanging out over space and feel a little twinge of concern, but closer examination shows that it’s solidly built and in good condition.

Didn’t use polarizing filter

Photo geek stuff: I keep Hoya circular polarizing filters on my lenses all the time. I find that being able to kill reflections improves many photos, even indoors. It also protects the front element of my lens from scratches.

Most folks think of them useful only to make skies darker, but that’s not the case. When I was rotating the filter to get the best result here, though, I quickly saw that the reflection of The Rock in the river added to the photo, so I kept as much of it as I could. It was a lot less interesting picture with the reflection knocked out.

Higher than The Rock

Overlook is the right word. You are clearly higher than Tower Rock. If you are going to see it, better hurry, I think the trees will have too many leaves for a clear view before long.

Booms for river spill

While we were in Altenburg, we heard scuttlebutt that a barge with fuel of some kind had run aground on a sandbar north of Wittenberg and that equipment was being staged at the boat ramp there. We saw about a dozen vehicles and two trailers of orange flotation booms in the parking lot, but there was nobody around to talk with.

Some of the trucks and trailers had “SWS Environmental Service” on their sides.

I called my friends at The Missourian with the tip, but told them I didn’t see much photo opportunity there, and I wasn’t even sure it was worth a story. I haven’t seen anything in the news, so either they couldn’t find out anything or it really wasn’t worth covering.

I didn’t offer up a photo because the last time I went in with a spot news photo I was told they don’t pay even a token amount for submitted photos these days.

Wonder if this was it?

On the way from Tower Rock, we could see some activity close to the shore north of Wittenberg. We could tell that it wasn’t a string of barges. I heard traffic on the marine radio about trying to make fast some lines, but they were afraid they were going to foul. The action was too far away to see clearly, plus I was getting hungry.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

If you are interested in my small picture book, Tower Rock “A Demon that Devours Travelers”, stop by the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum in Altenburg for a copy.

March 29, 2014June 6, 2015

Last Generation Sneak Peek

I mentioned my Last Generation project on March 26. I’ve been working like crazy to get a video presentation done so I can talk with a SEMO historical preservation about shooting regional history (or something like that. I usually don’t know what I’m going to talk about until I get in front of a group).

I finally got it whipped into passable shape this afternoon. Some of the transitions between clips are a little rougher than what I like, but I think the stories Dorothy, Edgar and Myrtle are more important than the technical stuff.

Shooting video is a whole different ballgame than shooting stills, even if you have been shooting picture stories for years. For one thing, the audio is as important, if not MORE important than the images. The best segment of the three was with Edgar Dryer (shown above when he was 8 or 10). He was 78 last fall when I photographed him. I couldn’t have asked for better natural lighting. He was also the first person I used a wireless mike on. That made a world of difference.

The biggest challenge was getting all the audio levels to match when you are shooting different subjects in different places. Watching tutorials and reading the manuals to figure out how to do it was mega-nap-inducing. I got the levels within acceptable levels, but I’m sure someone who knows what he or she is doing could have saved me hours of work.

The Last Generation video

I hope you enjoy the video. I have at least another dozen Perry County folks to work on before the Perry County Lutheran Historical Society’s Third Biennial Immigration History Conference in Altenburg October 23-25.

By the way, if you want to enlarge the video, hover your mouse over the bottom right-hand side of the vido screen. You’ll see a square box that says Full Screen. That will make the video fill your monitor screen. Press ESC to get it back to normal size.

March 26, 2014

The Last Generation

I’ve been working on The Last Generation off and on for about two years. It tells the story of the last generation of the original East Perry County pioneer families who spoke German as their primary language. I’ve had an opportunity to meet interesting men and women who grew up in an era before electricity; when little girls died of “winter fever” and telephones were just arriving.

The challenge has been to edit the videos and recordings down to a workable length. I have more material than I can use, and I was planning on interviewing some more people when I go back to SE Missouri next week. It’s been a race against the clock. Several of my subjects have died since the project started. Here are three of my friends.

Myrtle Schilling Kuehnert

Myrtle Schilling Kuehnert, above, met her future husband at Altenburg’s Trinity Lutheran Church when she was 13. She said he would have to ask her father for permission to ask her out after an evening church service. Her father told him she had to be back home by midnight because she had to help him milk cows at 4:30 a..m. She said they went uptown to a tavern where they played the jukebox and each drank a beer.

“AT 13!?!?” I exclaimed.

“Well, there weren’t any restrictions at that time.”

She wrote “Ernie” close to a thousand letters while he was serving as a turret gunner in the Pacific during World War II. She has all his letters, but he had to, “with a heavy heart,” throw her letters overboard when the ship had be be lightened during a storm.

Edgar Dreyer walked 4 miles to school

“Uphill each way. In the snow,” he said.

Edgar Dryer is a great and funny storyteller, but he grows solemn when he talks about his sister, Irene, who died when she was 13 years old, on his 4th birthday. He still remembers her coffin being brought into the living room or “die gute Stube,” and the strain it placed on his family. “She died of ‘winter fever.’ It’s pneumonia these days.”

He went to school until the tenth grade, then his father said, “Son, now you have to go to work.”

Electricity was a big thing

Dorothy Weinhold – and several of the other subjects – said that electricity was the biggest change they remember in their lifetimes. Her mother actually bought an electric iron before the house was wired for power because she was tired of firing up the wood stove to heat the old flatiron.

After she said their bathroom was outdoors, I asked, “Sears and Roebuck catalog or corncobs?”

She laughed and said, “I remember the Sears and Roebuck catalog.” Pausing, she added, “but I’ve heard about the corncobs.”

Presentation and exhibit in the fall

I’ll show the videos and exhibit prints from the project at the Perry County Lutheran Historical Society’s Third Biennial Immigration History Conference in Altenburg October 23-25.