Cape Girardeau History and Photos

May 13, 2014May 13, 2014

Ken at the Kennedy

Curator Jessica said we needed to go to the Kennedy Museum of Art at The Ridges to see a couple of my photos that are on exhibit.

I fit in well there because the Kennedy is housed in what was once the administration building for the Athens Lunatic Asylum. Within two years of its opening in 1874, it was rebranded The Athens Hospital for the Insane.

That was only the first in a long list of names it would wear as public sensibilities changed until the facility closed in 1993. The hospital would be called, among other things, the Athens Asylum for the Insane, the Athens State Hospital, the Southeastern Ohio Mental Health Center, the Athens Mental Health Center, the Athens Mental Health and Mental Retardation Center, the Athens Mental Health and Developmental Center, and then (again) the Athens Mental Health Center.

It is still a stunning building

Despite the fact that parts of the facility have been allowed to deteriorate, you can see how ornate the fixtures were. The patient rooms were designed so that each would have a window. The original plan was to make the rooms so small – roughly 100 square feet – that they wouldn’t house more than one patient. Curator Jessica said that overcrowding forced them to put two and three to a room at times.

I’m uncomfortable with the A-Word

Even though I went through Ohio University under a fine arts program, I was never comfortable using the Art-Word in connection with my photos. I saw them as news when they were taken, though they have become history now that they’ve acquired some whiskers.

Part of that reticence is that art galleries like to search for hidden, deep meanings, and expect art to make bold statements. This, for example, appears in the room that houses my two prints.

I have always contended that my photos are straight-forward, what-you-see-is-what-you-get frozen slices of time converted to ink squirted on toilet paper and pitched in a puddle in front of your house.

Two shots from the protest era

The two photos the museum elected to display as examples of testing boundaries aren’t what I would consider to be my strongest images from that sequence, but I’m honored that they made the cut at all, I suppose.

The picture on the left is of graffiti on the Main Green’s War Memorial. The boundary it was stretching was polite discourse: one of the words written on the statue was a less euphemistic term for male bovine excrement.

The second photo was of a line of male and female protestors linked arm in arm marching exuberantly down the town’s main drag.

You can see the photos in this Kent State era post. The first shot is number 9 of 86; the marchers are in number 15 of 86.

May 12, 2014February 20, 2016

A Change of Seasons

Friend Anne, who flew into Columbus Sunday to roadtrip to Florida with Curator Jessica got a completely different view of Old Man’s Cave than Foodie Jan did in February 2013.

February vs May

I told both Jan and Anne that one of the nice things about the park was that the gorge has enough twists and turns that you feel like you are alone even when other people are in the park. That statement certainly was true when the temperature was about 24 degrees.

That doesn’t apply to Mother’s Day Sunday after a cold winter, we found. The park hosted the biggest crowd I had ever seen there, and the noise levels were proportional to its size. There was lots of kid hollering and squealing going on all around us.

Still, I don’t begrudge them their fun. From what I saw, it was Mother’s Day they’ll remembered.

No crowds at Pencil Sharpener Museum

We didn’t have to fight with the crowds at the Paul A. Johnson Pencil Sharpener Museum. I think Anne was impressed.

May 11, 2014

The Cafe Was Closin’…

I’m in Athens, Ohio, working on a couple of projects with Curator Jessica and getting ready to head up to Columbus Sunday to pick up Friend Anne, so the two of them can Road Warriorette back to Florida with me.

I hit town and promptly came down with a killer sore throat. I managed to make it through a 2-hour video interview, but by the next day my voice was reduced to a croak and my head felt like there was a basketball inside trying to get outside. I alternated between being completely stopped up and having to carry a bucket to capture the drips.

Saturday afternoon was spent wandering around a huge rural cemetery looking for a grave that would “tell the rest of the story” of one I did in 1970. The man and his wife weren’t were they were supposed to be, so I guess I’ll have to try again later.

A greasy burger called my name

I took a two-hour nap and woke up feeling both better and ravenous. Somewhere in Athens, Ohio, I knew there was a greasy hamburger calling my name. There was: I ended up at the Union Street Diner, and it was all I had hoped for.

On the way back to the motel, I stopped to shoot night photos of a number of small businesses, some of which had been in business when I worked here.

Only a few cars were left in the Dairy Queen parking lot, and the waitress was stacking chairs getting ready to clean up the day’s messes. I decided it was worth a U-turn.

While shooting this, John Prine’s song, Far From Me started playing in my head.

As the cafe was closing on a warm summer night
And Cathy was cleaning the spoons
The radio played the hit parade
And I hummed along with the tune

She asked me to change the station
Said, the song just drove her insane
But it weren’t just the music playing
It was me she was trying to blame

And the sky is black and still now
Up on the hill where the angels sing
Ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle
Looks just like a diamond ring
But it’s far, far from me

Y0u can read all the lyrics here, or listen to John sing it here. You can click on the images to make them larger.

May 9, 2014

Early Mother’s Day Gift

One of the last things Brother Mark asked me to do before I left Cape was to check out Mother’s hedge trimmer. He said the last time he used it, it gave him a little buzz, and not the good kind. He thought maybe the power cord should be replaced.

I remembered it well: it was probably about as old as I am. It had a metal case and a 12″ blade. Since our house was built long before three-prong plugs were invented, somebody – probably Dad – had broken off the ground prong so you could plug it into a two-prong outlet.

That meant if the trimmer shorted out, YOU were the effective ground, particularly if you were standing in wet grass.

I quietly slipped out and went to the local emporium of tools and toys and bought her a newer version that has a longer blade, more power and was lighter than her old disaster-waiting-to-happen trimmer.

That’s ENOUGH!

Mother isn’t big on change, so I bought a mushy Mother’s Day card and a cute bow (which, observing the Family Frugality Rule, I affixed in such a manner it could be reused) and left it in her spot on the kitchen table while she was sleeping.

To my surprise, she loved it. Loved it so much that nothing green in the yard is safe.

“That’s ENOUGH!” I said. “You’re not going to have anything left but a stump.”

I turned around and saw her attacking a dandelion that had the audacity to stick its head out of the ground. “Wow,” she said, “I can even use this like a weed eater.”

For the record, I did a finger count when I left town. She had ten digits when I pulled out of the driveway. I hope she doesn’t think she can use the hedge trimmer on finger and toenails.