Journalism Archives

October 30, 2011February 23, 2015

A Fortress Penetrated

Saturday was a day dominated by song lyrics and emotions I can’t explain.

When I became a newspaper photographer, I was sure my press pass was bulletproof and I thought my camera lens was a magic shield that protected me from the things that my camera was recording. It was only years later, that I discovered that the lens wasn’t a shield, it was a magnifying glass that etched a movie deep into my memories, a movie that often plays when most normal folks are asleep.

Most of the time I’m the guy Paul Simon sings about in I Am A Rock.

I’ve built walls

I’ve built walls,

A fortress deep and mighty,

That none may penetrate…

I touch no one and no one touches me.

I am a rock. I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;

And an island never cries.

An auction caused a crack in the wall

Friend Shari Stiver and I were headed up to Tower Rock in Perry County when we stumbled across a yard sale. The folks there said we might like to stop at a home auction going on about a block up the road. I’m not going to mention where it was, because it’s not important and I don’t want to invade anyone’s privacy. They said the owners were a well-regarded elderly couple getting on in age who decided to sell their home and possessions to move into a smaller place.

The auctioneer was moving rapidly through small lots of odds and ends, having to work hard to get a $5 or $6 bid. When he finished, he invited everyone to step inside the modest little house to look at the furniture before he moved on to the farm equipment. The man was noted for restoring antique tractors, we were told.

Childish artwork struck me

There wasn’t much to look at inside. I was going to suggest to Shari that we get back on the road when we walked into a bedroom and I saw these scrawled pieces of art probably done by a grandchild. I made three half-hearted exposures. The light was lousy and the color balance was funky. It didn’t feel like a situation that was going to make a picture good enough to work any harder.

For the record, I love shooting old, abandoned buildings. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I can feel vibrations from the folks who have passed through those places.

THIS building wasn’t abandoned enough for my taste. I felt something looking at those pictures on the wall that caused me to suddenly tell Shari I had to get out of there.

When Shari and I walked back to the car, I didn’t tell her how those scrawled pictures hit me. All I told her was that John Cougar Mellancamp’s Rain On The Scarecrow, the story of a family farm being auctioned off, was playing in my head:

” When you take away a man’s dignity”

And Grandma’s on the front porch swing with a Bible in her hand;

Sometimes I hear her singing, “Take Me to the Promised Land.”

When you take away a man’s dignity and he can’t work his land and cows,

There’ll be blood on the scarecrow, blood on the plow.

Maybe the end is closer than the beginning

Over some fine Italian dishes that evening at Mario’s Pasta House, Shari volunteered that maybe we’re getting to the point in our lives where we’re starting to see the end more clearly than the beginning (my paraphrase). Maybe I saw those photos on the old couple’s wall and flashed on Grandson Malcolm’s scrawled artwork for his grandmother on OUR refrigerator.

Should I write about it?

Tonight I pulled up the 500+ frames I shot today and tried to decide what I was going to put in the blog for Sunday. All of the other photos neatly filed away under geographical categories: Tower Rock; Cemetery near Dutchtown; old barn near Egypt Mills…

When I got down to the three frames from the auction, I almost deleted them, something I hardly ever do. I pulled them up on the screen and felt a wave of emotion sweep over me. I called Wife Lila back in Florida and said, “I’ve got a photo that I think I’m going to run, but I don’t know if I should.” I tried to give her the 25-word-or-less version, but found my voice cracking. Finally, she said, “If it touches you, maybe it’ll touch someone else.”

So, here it is. We’ll be back in the fortress tomorrow and all will be well again.

October 11, 2011June 3, 2021

99% Movement – 1970 Style

A Facebook friend who has become taken by the Occupy XXX movement of late can’t understand why I’m so cynical about it, particularly since she perceives me as being somewhat left of center.

I tried to explain to her that I’ve been the protest / demonstration route, got the T-shirt AND the gas mask.

When I was working at The Athens Messenger in Athens, Ohio in the late 60s, early 70s, we didn’t get up to Columbus all that much. I don’t have any idea why I shot this Tax Reform demonstration in the state capital on April 18, 1970. It has a lot of the trappings of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

(You can click on any photo to make it larger.)

These guys are wearing blazers and wingtips

A number of things caught my eye in this photo

The two black guys in berets in the front row. You generally didn’t see blacks involved in demonstrations in Athens unless it was a Civil Rights issue. They understood how things could suddenly get ugly and they were pretty sure who would be the first targets when the cops started taking off name tags, covering badge numbers and breaking out the bats and hats.
There are frat-type business majors in suits and blazers walking next to some neatly scruffy students. Some of these guys are wearing loafers and wingtips and TIES, no less.
There’s a conspicuous absence of stereotypical hippies in tattered clothes and long hair.

How is the message being received?

Based on the expressions on the faces of these two women, it looks like a mixture of curiosity and “What’s the awful smell?”

Youth response isn’t much different

This boy’s furrowed brow and crossed arms reads to me that he’s wondering “What’s this all about and what does it mean to me?”

Deja vu

So, why am I cynical? Our political system is broken. It’s all about politics, posturing and fundraising, not about governing. I’d love to see it changed, but I don’t think that 99% of the people feel that way. Even when young males had a personal stake in not being shipped off to a war in Southeast Asia, there wasn’t 99% acceptance of the antiwar movement.

The folks who are in the Occupy XXX may be in the group of the population that is not in the top 1% of the wealth, but they are far from having 99% of the country behind them. If I had to do a breakout, I’d say you have the 1% who control the wealth and have the focus to keep it; you have the .0001% who are in the movement, and the remainder of the population is watching Dancing with the Stars.

What happened to these kids?

I wonder what happened to the people at this demonstration? They have a serious look to them, for the most part. They have a mixture of union support, black militants, preppies in ties, a Clean for Gene overall appearance (referring to the kids who made the ultimate sacrifice – cutting their hair and dressing up to campaign for Gene McCarthy) and an air of seriousness.

The young man on the left looks defiant and challenging with his clenched fist salute, but the young fellow on the statue at the right, is delivering his salute with a smile. In fact most of the faces show a mixture of smiles or boredom.

What a difference a few weeks makes

The envelope sleeve says that these photos were taken April 18, 1970.

President Richard Nixon announced the Cambodian invasion on April 30.
Ohio Governor James Rhodes said student protestors were“worse than the Brownshirts and the Communist element and also the night riders and the vigilantes. They’re the worst type of people that we harbor in America. I think that we’re up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America. We’re going to eradicate the problem, we’re not going to treat the symptoms.”
Four students were shot dead at Kent State on May 4.
Ten days later, on May 14, police fired for about 30 seconds on a group of students at Jackson State in Mississippi, killing two and wounding 12 others.

For What It’s Worth

So, where are we headed? This demonstration’s import was so little that I don’t even recall what it was about.Whatever it was about was buried by the events of the next few weeks.

The Buffalo Springfield’s song For What It’s Worth has become a cliche for the 60s. I’m beginning to hear it being played again.

There’s battle lines being drawn.
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.
Young people speaking their minds,
Getting so much resistance from behind.
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down.

What a field day for the heat.
A thousand people in the street,
Singing songs and carrying signs,
Mostly say, “Hooray for our side.”
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down.

Here’s an excellent interpretation of the song, by the way.

Is the next verse going to be a replay of OHIO?

I wonder if this generation will have a Neil Young song to commemorate it?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Sorry for getting all political on you. Someone on Facebook posted that journalists have the right, if not the obligation to take political stands. I argued that was wrong. As soon as you are seen as an advocate, then you cease to be effective. People assume that you are unable to cover an event objectively. For that reason, I never actively supported a political candidate, sported a bumper sticker nor participated in any action groups. I commented in the thread that I was sure that no candidate I ever covered had any idea what my personal feelings were.

“One of these days you’re going to have to choose a side”

My biking partner, also a journalist, said she was discussing the thread with a friend who mentioned my comments. I was pleased to hear that he told her, “I worked with that guy for 16 years and I never had a clue where he stood [politically].”

I had some classes at OU with a young activist I truly admired. She was smart and did more than talk about being involved. In her spare time, she worked with poor Appalachian children and took up other causes that weren’t mainstream.

One afternoon I was at the jail when a busload of protestors was being brought in for booking. I recognized my friend and asked if she was OK or needed anything. I’ll never forget the look she gave me when she said, “Ken, one of these days you’re going to have to put down that damned camera and choose a side.”

She was wrong.

October 9, 2011October 9, 2011

Pipeline and Perry County Photos

I played hooky last night. Son Matt and I were out late working on a couple of prototype books for me to bring back to Cape next week when we celebrate Mother’s Birthday Season. We printed up about 25 copies of Tower Rock: “A Demon that Devours Travelers” to see if there’s any market for a small, inexpensive photo book about Tower Rock in Perry County. We’ve been working with the Altenburg Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum on a bigger project, so we’re going to see if they think there is a market in the gift shop for this.

Longest Suspenstion Pipeline

On the way to photograph Tower Rock, I have to pass what has been called the longest suspension pipeline in the world, carrying natural gas from Texas to Chicago. Over the years, I’ve shot it from the air, from a ferry underneath it and from the Missouri and Illinois sides. It’s an interesting structure that looks different under every lighting condition. I haven’t done the layout and copy for it yet, so it may get folded into the Grand Tower book if my critics tell me that it needs more “weight.”

If things don’t change, I expect to be northbound toward Cape Tuesday. That means you may have to go back to reading some of the older pages for your morning fix if I don’t shoot something on the road. A good place to start is to go to the bottom of the page where it says “Sitemap” in tiny, tiny type. Click on that and it’ll take you to a listing of everything that’s been published.

September 23, 2011September 24, 2011

Ohio Halloween Horrors

I saw Halloween decorations and costumes displayed in one of the big box stores tonight. Later, I was moving a bunch of old slides out of Kodak slide trays and putting them into plastic sleeves to save space when I ran across this copy slide of a print. The two events brought a story to mind.

What’s that hanging in the tree?

I was blasting through the rural Southeastern back roads on my way back home right after dusk when, rounding a curve, my headlights picked up something odd on the side of the road. When I got to where the beams lit it up a little better, I slammed on my brakes. It was a body hanging in a tree out in the middle of nowhere.

Murder wasn’t unheard of in that part of the country, but I hadn’t read about any lynchings in our area in decades, so my first thought was a suicide. (All of the murders I had worked were pretty straight-forward; they just got the job done without getting creative.)

I positioned my car to where it lit up the area, then cautiously approached the scene. When I got close enough to get a flashlight on it, it became clear that I had been taken in by a dummy hanging in the tree. I looked around to see if there were any teenagers laughing at the sucker, but there was nobody around.

Only a journalist would have mixed emotions about this: happy because it wasn’t a body; feeling foolish about being suckered in; being disappointed because he didn’t break a story.

The next morning I mentioned my find to some of the guys in the office. “Oh, yeah,” one said. “They’ve got a quaint custom in that area of hanging dummies at Halloween time. If you go back, I bet you find more.”

Indeed, when I went back in the daylight, I found this guy hanging in the middle of downtown Shawnee.

“It’s too grim”

Wife Lila, proofreader when I finish a post before she goes to bed, and general arbitrator of good taste, said, “It’s too grim. I didn’t make any changes, but I didn’t like it.”

So, to lighten the mood, here are some examples of Halloween costumes she inflicted upon the kids over the years.

I’d be lion if I said Matt made a pretty woman

Son Adam, left, went for the full-face mask effect the year Wife Lila did this makeover on Son Matt.

I shouldn’t mock Son Matt too much. Mother managed to make me into such a convincing girl that I won a prize in Mrs. Kelpe’s first grade class because nobody could guess who I was. I was still in costume when we went down to visit my grandmother in Advance. She had a bunch of club women over that afternoon and they were properly impressed with my transformation. Just to set the record straight, I scrawled “I BOY” on a piece of paper and kept showing it to them.

Going to the dogs

Both boys got a crack at the dog costume. This was Matt in 1978.

Matt as firefighter

This might have been the only costume I contributed. Matt swiped my bunker coat, fire helmet and Red Wing boots for this Halloween.