tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23541914107022698762024-03-13T11:48:22.169-07:00Alan HuffmanAlan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.comBlogger100125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-67752715506283228172016-08-06T23:07:00.003-07:002023-02-21T18:26:55.559-08:00Graveyards Destroyed for Mississippi Industrial Project<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>Governor's secret negotiations lead to relocation of historic white cemetery, possible destruction of adjacent black graves</i>
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<p>By Alan Huffman<p>
<p>Aug. 6, 2016<p>
<p>BOLTON, Miss. -- No one asked Ernestine Jones, or her sister, Bernice Jamison. The elderly African American sisters weren’t privy to confidential talks between Mississippi officials and a German tire manufacturer over the sale of public land near their home for a $1.45 billion industrial site.<p>
<p>Because of that, the developers were unaware of a key detail well known to the sisters. As Jamison, 94, recalled while sitting with family members in her small home about a half-mile from the site: “We used to bury there.”<p>
<p>“There” is an otherwise vacant, nearly 1,000-acre parcel where Continental Tire the Americas plans to build one of the state’s largest industrial facilities. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant announced the project in February, touting it as an economic boon to the financially stressed county that includes the state capital. But in their zeal to land the project without interference, state officials and private contractors avoided speaking with local residents and so failed to discover that an unmarked black cemetery stood in the way.<p>
<p>In a state with a notorious racial history, whose governor made headlines earlier this year for supporting and signing an anti-gay “religious freedom” law and who chose black history month to proclaim a new “Confederate heritage month,” the story of the cemetery offers a small but telling window into the widening chasm between conservative politicians and minority groups, many of which have historically had a limited voice. <p>
<p>“Those are our people buried there. People remember them,” said Alfenette Robinson, a relative of Jones and Jamison who visited the site unannounced in early June while a crew from the University of Mississippi’s Center for Archaeological Research mapped and worked on a test excavation in a nearby white cemetery. Robinson, who has compiled extensive records of the area’s often-overlooked African American history, was surprised to find that her family’s graves were still in limbo. “Why does no one seem to care?” she asked.<p>
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<p><i>Yvonne Horton, left, and Alfenette Robinson point in the direction of the unmarked black cemetery. Both women have relatives buried there.</i><p>
<p>The burial grounds became publicly known in February, prompting state officials to say they would take steps to ensure the graves were located and moved. But in early June, survey crews with small earthmoving equipment began marking and excavating graves in the nearby white cemetery, known as New Salem, but not in the unmarked black burial ground nearby. Asked about plans for the unmarked black graves, which had not been located or flagged, the crew leader said he knew nothing about them.<p>
<p>Such cemeteries, unmarked because the survivors typically did not have money for permanent markers, have in the past been bulldozed elsewhere in Mississippi and across the South – in one case, in the state’s Turkey Creek community, despite considerable public outrage. And there are few laws to prevent that from happening. Michael Trinkley, director of the state of South Carolina’s nonprofit Chicora Foundation, told CNN in an episode of its “Black in America” documentary series, “The problem with preserving these types of sites is that African-American cemeteries are hard to find. You can think of the people buried there as the invisible dead. And not knowing where they are, or how many there are, makes them susceptible to loss.” Even when gravesites are recognized, Trinkley said, they are sometimes destroyed for development. “What if in that grave was your mother or your child?” he asked. “It’s an issue of respect and an issue of dignity. It’s the last decision society and the individual make together.”<p>
<p>There is no official data on the number of unmarked cemeteries that have been desecrated or destroyed for development projects, sometimes even after supporters made their presence known. Cemeteries occupy an odd niche in American society: in one sense, sanctified, yet sometimes treated as dispensable, especially when valuable real estate is involved. The contrast is often at its starkest among abandoned, historic African American cemeteries in the South. For some, the seeming lack of concern for the African American graves on the Continental site is indicative of Mississippi’s troubled racial history. Such cemeteries, like the people buried in them, were historically given short shrift by the powers that be, and history, in the American South, was meanwhile largely written by whites.<p>
<p>The unmarked cemetery fell through the cracks decades ago, when burials ceased and the narrow, historic road that the sisters say divided it from the white New Salem cemetery was closed. The cemetery’s physical endangerment came about as a result of secret negotiations and secret research combined with what was, essentially, a secret history – one that historically has largely been ignored. <p>
<p>The environmental assessment of the Continental site, done for the state by private contractors, was withheld from public view, but a leaked copy reveals plans to relocate the white cemetery but makes no mention of the unmarked black burial ground. New Salem also includes a few unmarked graves and at least one grave of an African American, but over the years it has been treated differently than the black burial ground. Many of the New Salem obelisks have been damaged by falling limbs and trees, but when the Clinton School District, which owns the property, sold the timber several years ago, loggers avoided the white cemetery, which is clearly identifiable by its elaborate tombstones and filigreed cast-iron fences, while the area where the sisters say the unmarked black cemetery lies was clear-cut and is now a thicket of briars and vines. Until recently, both cemeteries were accessible only by a mile-long walk through rough terrain. On the day Robinson and others visited, a gate across the logging road that skirts the site was open, enabling them to drive in. “We wouldn’t have known they weren’t doing anything if we hadn’t come out here,” Robinson said. The road has since been closed with a padlocked chain.<p>
<p>Negotiations for the Continental project began as early as 2014, though few people know the precise date because everyone involved was sworn to secrecy. Rumors had circulated for years that a big project was in the works for the property, on what is known as 16th section land that is set aside for education funding, and the consensus was that it was essentially unstoppable because the governor was pushing it so hard. Even the local newspaper, <i>The Clarion-Ledger</i>, took the unusual step of agreeing not to publish anything due to concern that doing so might derail the project. Huge sums of money, a projected 2,500 jobs and powerful political agendas were at stake. Bryant officially announced the project on Feb. 4, 2016, only after the Associated Press broke the story. By then it was said to be a done deal.<p>
<p>How the unmarked graves came to light is a cautionary tale about public accountability, historical priorities and the lack of protection for abandoned cemeteries. But the key issue was secrecy. The state’s cultural resources impact report, which was used to gain the necessary federal site permit for the project, was deemed exempt from the state’s open records law. Likewise, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which issued the permit, declined to provide details from the report beyond noting that there was no mention of an unmarked black cemetery.<p>
<p>State Sen. John Horhn, the African American chair of the state senate’s economic development committee, in whose district the Continental site is located, said that before he was contacted for this story he had not heard of either cemetery. Once informed, he called Manning McPhillips, chief administrative officer of the Mississippi Development Authority, the lead state agency involved in the project, to ask if he knew about the graves. McPhillips said he did but that he was not authorized to respond to media questions and would arrange a follow-up call. McPhillips told Horhn the Development Authority was coordinating plans for the cemeteries and other relevant historical sites with the state Department of Archives and History, yet when Hohrn subsequently phoned archives director Katie Blount she said she was not familiar with the burial grounds and referred questions to the agency’s director of historic preservation, Jim Woodrick.<p>
<p>At the time, Woodrick said that given the revelation about the unmarked black cemetery, the state would have to revisit its project site assessment, though he added that there are few protections for cemeteries and the ultimate responsibility for deciding how to address them would be up to “the applicant.” In early June, Woodrick said he was unaware that work had begun on the relocation of the white graves, though Horhn said an MDA official had told him the archives agency was in charge of the process.<p>
<p>The website of the Corps of Engineers’ Vicksburg District lists the permit applicant as Gov. Bryant and describes the project as a 5.2 million square-foot industrial facility to be built along Interstate 20. Much of the site will be leveled for the project. The public notice of the state’s permit application, posted on the Vicksburg District’s website, does not indicate whether any comments were received, and an agency official said a Freedom of Information Act request -- plus a hefty fee – would be required for that information. Interviews with area residents indicate that few if any knew about it. Vicksburg District spokesman Gregory Raimondo said no public hearings were required or held and that notification went to adjacent landowners and anyone who signed up in advance to receive notices on the website. He said the impact report mentions a few unmarked graves in the New Salem cemetery but that he was unaware of a separate black cemetery. The report was not disclosed because “cultural and historical information is not provided outside of internal review to ensure the integrity of the site materials and locations,” he said.<p>
<p>Graves marked with impermanent wooden markers are among the most vulnerable to desecration, but even cemeteries with elaborate stone markers have been abandoned and forgotten, and many have been pilfered, damaged or destroyed, including a historic cemetery that contained the grave of the founder of the town of Bolton, just west of the Continental site, which was bulldozed for a subdivision in the 1960s (a resident of the neighborhood later retrieved the tombstones and erected them on an empty lot). In some cases, abandoned or unmarked cemeteries have been ignored even after developers were informed, such as one in the Gulfport, Mississippi, community of Turkey Creek that was paved over. The desecration of the Turkey Creek cemetery was highlighted in the 2013 documentary film Come Hell or High Water, in which resident Eva Skinner points to a parking lot and says that beneath it lies the grave of her son. Developers reportedly left undisturbed only a few of more than 200 African American graves and those were cordoned off by a fence with a padlocked gate.<p>
<p>Woodrick said property owners sometimes resist allowing visits to cemeteries by descendants of those buried in them. “There’s concern about liability – it’s a private property rights issue,” he said. “It’s a legal question whether you have to provide access.” He said the issue of private property rights also limits his agency’s involvement in the cemeteries on the Continental site. However, the proposed project is planned for what is now public land, and the applicant is the state itself, which has agreed to invest huge sums of public money, including millions in tax incentives. Surprisingly, Woodrick said, “There’s very little in state law that speaks to the protection of cemeteries. The primary responsibility for graves other than those of Native Americans is the county coroner.” A spokesman for the Hinds County coroner said the office would not be involved with any of the graves at the Continental site.<p>
<p>In a follow-up call with representatives of the state development authority, the law firm handling the land transactions and the consultants that commissioned the cultural assessment report, the consensus was that neither cemetery would hinder the Continental project – that those graves that can be located will simply be unearthed and moved. Headwaters Natural Resources Consulting vice president Walt Dinkelacker, who is listed as agent on the state’s permit application with the Corps, said current estimates are that there are 45 to 50 marked graves and 20 to 30 unmarked graves in the New Salem cemetery. Others estimate the number of graves are much higher. The graves are being mapped using ground-penetrating radar and will be exhumed and relocated to the Bolton cemetery, according to Chris Pace, with the Jones Walker firm. The consultants conceded there are likely multiple cemeteries in the area, yet a later visit to the site indicated no survey was underway to locate the unmarked African American burial ground remembered by Jones and Jamison. The precise number of graves in that cemetery is not known. <p>
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<p><i>Visitors explore the white New Salem cemetery in early June.</i> <p>
<p>During the last funeral the sisters remember at the unmarked cemetery, the now-abandoned road was still in use, though they recalled that it was in such bad shape the pallbearers had to carry the casket a great distance to prevent the horse-drawn wagon that transported it from getting mired in mud. The last known burial in the white New Salem cemetery was in 1937 but the black cemetery was used well into the 1940s, according to the sisters, who said their younger sister and an uncle are buried there. Another descendant, Yvonne Horton, said she was told that burials continued until 1957.<p>
<p>The state’s cultural resources report, prepared by Mobile, Alabama-based TerraXplorations for Headwaters and the Department of Archives and History in September 2014, details the white cemetery and notes the presence of a few unmarked graves amidst the marble obelisks that could belong to slaves. The separate black cemetery is not mentioned. Kathryn Blackwell, Continental’s vice president for communications, said in an email that she was not aware of the unmarked African American cemetery but that, “Continental was made aware of a cemetery on site and in fact I visited the cemetery myself just a few months ago.” She said that to her knowledge, “Continental has never encountered this before, which is why it is very important to us that this topic is handled with great sensitivity. Continental has asked the state to take great care in handling the cemetery, including involving members of the clergy to ensure this matter is handled with the utmost respect and sensitivity.”<p>
<p>The cultural assessment report contends there are no known records of the church that once stood beside the white cemetery, though other area residents point to documents contained in the archives of nearby Mississippi College that detail activities at the New Salem Baptist Church from the 1830s to the 1850s. Among the notable details is that although the congregation was founded by slave owners, the majority of the members were slaves who provided written permission to join from their owners or plantation overseers. By the time the congregation voted in 1851 to move to Clinton, where they founded that city’s First Baptist Church, there were 82 slave members and 25 white members. Susan Newman, whose family lives about a mile from the site, noted that even in the white cemetery there is a marked grave of a man identified as president of a nearby African American church. Most area cemeteries, including the one in Bolton to which the state has proposed moving the New Salem remains, are racially segregated.<p>
<p>Robinson said one of the graves in the unmarked black cemetery belongs to a deacon and founder of the Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist Church, which is also African American and stands near the proposed industrial site. She said she would be willing to help document the unmarked cemetery but that for now, recollections of older area residents such as Jamison and Jones are the best sources of information. So far, neither she nor the sisters has been contacted by the state or anyone else involved in the project, she said. Horton, who accompanied Robinson to the cemetery, said that when she phoned the county she was told there was no black cemetery there. “I said I have relatives who know this is here,” she said.<p>
<p>Another former area resident whose ancestors are buried in the white cemetery said the state’s persistent secrecy makes him wary. “The thing that really got my attention is that no one was willing to talk about any of this,” said Connely Farr, whose ancestors are buried at New Salem and who now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. “There’s got to be due process. A lot of public money is involved. It’s being built on public land. The public has to be involved. My concern is that if everything is so secret now, if they didn’t include local people in the site assessment and, as a result, they didn’t know about the other cemetery, and they’re even in bed with the newspaper, what happens if there’s a problem at the plant? Who’s going to be monitoring all of this?” <p>
<p>During the unannounced visit to the cemeteries in June, the historic fences surrounding white family plots were found scattered along the logging road. When asked about them, Stephen Harris, crew leader for the Center for Archaeological Research, said the keepers of the Bolton cemetery did not want the fences due to the difficulty of mowing around them, though he said it would be up to the state to decide what to do with them (In early August, the fences were moved to the Bolton cemetery along with the New Salem headstones, where they ostensibly awaited their associated human remains, though they were eventually stolen or otherwise lost). As Harris spoke, the crew worked on excavating the New Salem grave of a man whose former wooden casket was evident by a rectangular series of rusty marks left by nails about six feet down. Harris said the remains in such graves tend to vary in preservation, from skeletal remains to what is essentially bone meal.<p>
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<p><i>Cast-off cemetery fences lie along a logging road near the New Salem cemetery. After the state Department of Archives and History was notified, the fences were removed to the Bolton cemetery, but they later disappeared.</i><p>
<p>Horhn said that had he known that cemeteries in Mississippi have so few protections he would have introduced a bill during the 2016 legislative session to address that, but the deadline for filing bills had passed by the time he found out. He said it’s important for all of the graves to be sensitively relocated to an accessible site with an explanatory historical marker. <p>
<p>In Horhn’s view, the cemeteries and church records illustrate a complex history worthy of protection and further exploration. In particular, he said, “We have to go back and assess the black cemetery, and tell that story.” He said he was shocked to learn that surveyors were working in the white cemetery but that no effort was being made to locate the black cemetery. Afterward, he said, he contacted the Mississippi Development Authority to express concern over the possibility “that white bodies are being cared for but not with historical integrity and black bodies are being ignored.’”<p>
Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-3619400090423282122016-07-28T09:02:00.001-07:002016-07-29T08:44:27.047-07:00Junior Goes to the Fair<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Donald Trump Jr. looked a little hot and bothered as a small crowd gathered around him at the Neshoba County Fair, just outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he arrived on a sweltering Tuesday as a stand-in for his father, to address what looked like a strongly supportive demographic.
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The crowd at the fair, an annual event held since 1889, was uniformly white, and the hundreds of political signs plastered to trees, posts and cabin walls were almost all for Republican candidates. Oldies rock songs about the U.S.A. blared from speakers around the grandstand on the horse racing track where Trump Jr. was scheduled to speak, while a man paraded through the crowd with two oversized flags – one the U.S., the other the Confederate, which begged the question: Historically speaking, which side did he support?
<p>An unknowing outsider plopped down on the racetrack could have been forgiven for thinking the scene was an easy read – that this was an echo chamber in the red dirt hills of a county that became infamous as the setting of the murders of three civil rights workers in the summer of 1964. The fair is widely viewed as a Republican bastion, centering on a temporary town of hundreds of rustic family cabins, the consumption of copious amounts of food and drink, and, during political campaign years, candidate speeches. It’s where Ronald Reagan made his famous appearance after clinching the Republican nomination in 1980, during which he proclaimed his support for “states’ rights,” a euphemism for white political control.<p>
<p>But this being the bizarre 2016 U.S. presidential race, and the venue one of the most deeply conflicted regions of the Deep South, everything was not as it appeared to be. Underlying the cheering crowds when Trump Jr. appeared on the grandstand was plenty of evidence of questionable allegiances and unexpected opposition.<p>
<p>There was Bee McNamara, standing beside a Trump sign stapled to a tree, wearing shorts printed with GOP elephant logos, who said he wasn’t at all interested in Junior’s speech. “I’m a conservative Republican, and I won’t vote for Trump,” McNamara, a Mississippi native who now lives in D.C. and whose family has a cabin on the fairgrounds’ venerable Founders’ Square, said. McNamara also supports replacing the state’s controversial flag, which has the Confederate emblem in its canton corner. Given such conflicts, what would he do in November? “Probably vote Libertarian,” he said. The problem, he said, is, “It’s all about hate, on both sides.”<p>
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<p>If a conservative Republican wasn’t buying Junior’s spiel, the responses of other fairgoers illustrated that the overt outpouring of support was actually riddled with fractures. The main allure of Junior’s speech, according to many fairgoers, was for bashing the other side in entertaining ways, which made the fair a colorful local microcosm of the national campaign. There were plenty of staunch Trump supporters on hand, but every effort to raise a chant of “U.S.A.” or “Trump” quickly petered out. At a cabin festooned with numerous large Trump banners, one man looked annoyed when asked about his political leanings, and said, “We’re here to watch the races,” referring to the horses, not the candidates.<p>
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At a cabin with a Trump banner and another with an image of Hillary Clinton behind bars and the words “Hillary for Prison 2016,” Robbie Fournet was anything but politically strident. Instead, she offered food or drink – as routinely happens at nearly every cabin, and when asked about the banners, said, “I have a brother who’s a sign maker, who probably has stronger feelings than the rest of us.”
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<p>Like many fairgoers, Fournet is an expat who came home for the annual fair ritual -- she and her husband Richard now live in Singapore, and she admitted she enjoyed the unconventional campaign. “It’s nice for people to feel strongly about what they believe,” she said. “I like the lack of apathy. I don’t like the violence. Let’s talk without getting violent.” Then she issued an invitation to come back that night for a meal of her mother’s chicken and dumplings.<p>
<p>The undercurrent of past violence in Neshoba County is impossible to ignore, though the fair is far more mannerly than the comment threads of social media posts, and the county seat, majority-white Philadelphia, now has an African American mayor. As one woman with more liberal political views, who asked not to be identified by name, noted, “There are a lot of good people in Neshoba County, but we all know who the former Klan families are. They’re still out there. Trump has brought back those people from the Sixties whose hatred got pushed down, and went underground.”<p>
<p>Rob Hill said he was shocked earlier in the day when he encountered a group of young people in a truck as he was on his way to shop for groceries. Hill has a “Hillary for America” bumper sticker on his car and said the kids in the truck tailgated him for a while and then pulled up beside him and flashed a hand-lettered sign that read, “Trump! White Power!” Hill took a photo of the truck on his cell phone which shows the entire back window covered with a decal that read, “Give God the Glory.”<p>
<p>At another cabin facing the racetrack hung a lonely Hillary Clinton sign, small in comparison with the Trump banners.<p>
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<p>“It was the biggest one we could find,” said Kelli Nichols, a National Guardsman whose family owns the cabin. Not everyone in the family supports Clinton, she said, but they tolerate her views. Close quarters and long-time family relations and social connections require that, she said, even in the face of a divisive candidate like Trump. Being polite and hospitable are hallmarks of the fair, to the point that some families don’t allow political banners at all and, this year, some have forbidden discussing politics inside the cabins.<p>
<p>“There’s a deeper level of seriousness elsewhere, but here, we just want to chill out, hang out together,” Nichols said. “People don’t want to offend one another.” She said that if, for example, a black man walked up to a cabin that displayed a Confederate flag, he would be invited in for food and drink. It’s partly about manners, she said, “but there’s also a level of hypocrisy. When you leave, their conversation doesn’t change.” Nichols said her 17-year-old daughter is a diehard Clinton supporter and is excited about voting for the first time, but that many of her daughter’s friends support Trump. “They’re just going with a popular movement. And a lot of adults are worse,” she said. As if to support that observation, a boy of perhaps six who was walking through the fair’s carnival rides could later be heard lamenting, “I’m the only one in the cabin who doesn’t have a picture of Trump.”<p>
<p>Some fairgoers felt Trump Jr.’s appearance was inappropriate, in that he isn’t an actual candidate, and said it was foisted upon the fair by Mississippi’s conservative Republican governor. But others welcomed him with open arms. Soon after Trump Jr. made his entrance, three men proclaimed their support, though like many fairgoers, two declined to give their names. One of them was a fair aberration – an African American who wasn’t there to groom or race horses, so it seemed logical to ask if he, too, supported Trump. Unruffled by the obvious typecasting, he said he did. When Lindsey Lang, the only one who gave his name, said, “We need change, we need that wall,” he agreed. <p>
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<p>At her family’s cabin on Founder’s Square, Dianne Walton sat in a porch swing under a ceiling fan languidly parsing the humid air and said she had no intention of listening to Junior's talk, which was wedged between a cake walk and an Eagles tribute band.<p>
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<p>Walton said she was distressed by the preponderance of Trump signs on the fairgrounds, many of which had been placed by campaign workers. There was even one on the porch of the cabin of the family of football greats Archie, Eli and Peyton Manning, though in their defense, a neighbor pointed out that not everyone in every cabin could be held responsible for the signs out front. In his speech, Trump Jr. boasted of having been received in the Manning cabin, saying, “Now I know what it’s like to be one of you.” Some fairgoers said they had been approached about hosting him and had declined, but mixed support did not stop Trump Jr. from doing some late afternoon fundraising at select cabins. <p>
<p>For Walton, it was hard to write things off to simple political differences. “It breaks my little Christian heart to hear the venom spewing out of the mouths of people who claim their politics are based on faith,” she said. “I’m going to wax on Rodney King: Why can’t we just get along? Seriously, I’m scared to death. I’m scared of what our country would become under Trump. ‘Muslims: Go away!’ ‘Mexicans: Go away!’ I’m not in any of those groups, but what if I am in one of the groups one day?” Fairgoers in the quiet back alley known as Happy Hollow, which is known as a predominately Democratic neighborhood, expressed similar sentiments.<p>
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<p>But there was no visible dissent in the crowd that gathered to hear Trump Jr. at the racetrack, where “R-O-C-K in the U.S.A.” and other patriotic songs were blaring so loudly that older fairgoers could be seen bending their ears to hear each other. A young guy in a Trump mask posing for photos appeared at first to be a protester, but his t-shirt read “Hillary Wasn’t Invited” and he carried a Trump sign. When Trump Jr. came onstage, it appeared that someone asked the man with the flags to lower the Confederate one, and he complied – it was, after all, a tantalizingly damning photo opp.<p>
<p>Trump Jr. did not speak long. He noted the size of the crowd, which numbered in the thousands, and said, “I thought the RNC was big!” Then he talked about how he is a hunter (“He kills elephants!” Dianne Walton blurted out when she heard about it), and said the election is all about the Supreme Court and the 2nd Amendment, which drew polite applause and scattered cheers. Later, on the porch of a Happy Hollow cabin, a Clinton supporter noted that a lot of people went to Junior’s speech just for amusement, and that it was impossible to say how many actually support Trump. As for the size of the crowd, he said, “There were more people for Miss Neshoba County.”<p>
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Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-72303809468467263922014-04-09T18:15:00.001-07:002014-04-09T21:34:32.888-07:00<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fMsapUtyr1A/U0XuNhY3ppI/AAAAAAAABDI/_r_QUdivhCs/s1600/21344_466115386772882_1283068626_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fMsapUtyr1A/U0XuNhY3ppI/AAAAAAAABDI/_r_QUdivhCs/s400/21344_466115386772882_1283068626_n.jpg" /></a><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>The doors will be open at Prospect Hill Plantation house this Saturday, April 12, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., for anyone who's curious about one of Mississippi's most intriguing historical sites and willing to pony up $10 toward saving it./></a><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Jessica Crawford, southeast regional director of the Archaeological Conservancy, which owns Prospect Hill, has been working mightily to get the place presentable, to show what's at stake and explain how it can be saved. Jessica, who took the photo of Isaac, the resident peacock, above, is working to stabilize the seriously decaying structure in hopes of finding a buyer to undertake a full restoration; the Archaeological Conservancy's primary interest is in what lies underground at Prospect Hill -- the artifacts that can shed light on its remarkable plantation history. Still, the house and nearby family cemetery are the visible centerpieces of that saga./></a><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Prospect Hill Plantation was founded by Revolutionary War veteran Isaac Ross, who came to the Mississippi Territory in 1808 with a large contingent of slaves as well as free blacks who had served alongside him in the war. The plantation's history is unique among historical sites in the United States and significant to the history of Liberia, in West Africa, as well. It is as much about African American history as it is a tale of a divided slave-owning family, and it spans more than 200 years and two continents./></a><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The existing Prospect Hill house is actually the second on the site. Ross's original Prospect Hill mansion was burned during a slave uprising and the current house was built by his grandson in 1848. Ross was close to his slaves, and said to have been fair in his treatment of them, perhaps because, as is also sometimes said, he was related to them by blood. Out of fear that they would be mistreated by a subsequent owner, Ross wrote in his will that at the time of his daughter Margaret’s death Prospect Hill should be sold and the money used to pay the way of his slaves (who were to be emancipated) to the West African colony of Liberia, which had been set up for the purpose of "repatriation" by a group known as the American Colonization Society. This, Ross felt, was the only way for the slaves to gain control of their destiny./></a><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It’s a long story, but after Margaret died, Ross's grandson Isaac Ross Wade contested the will, not wanting to free the slaves, then sell the plantation and give the money to them. This was in the 1830s, three decades before the Emancipation Proclamation. The will was tied up in court for a decade, after which the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed its validity, which meant that the slaves were freed to emigrate to the region of Liberia known as Mississippi in Africa. But before that happened, midway through the litigation, there was an uprising among some of the slaves who suspected they would be denied their freedom, during which the Prospect Hill mansion was burned, taking with it the life of a young girl. Afterward, a group of slaves was lynched. It’s a grisly story, and it doesn’t end there. Among the more than 300 freed slaves from Prospect Hill who eventually emigrated to Liberia, a small group enslaved members of the indigenous people, who were themselves involved in the slave trade, and continuing conflicts between descendants of the two groups contributed to Liberia’s horrendous civil wars in the 1990s and early 2000s./></a><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Isaac Ross Wade managed to regain control of Prospect Hill – it appears he may have bought it himself or co-opted it from the estate, and because a group of Ross’s slaves chose not to emigrate, and Wade had his own slaves, he continued to farm the plantation. In 1848 he built the existing house on the site of the original, a short distance from the family cemetery, where the Mississippi chapter of the colonization society erected a monumental obelisk in tribute to Ross, and where Wade is also interred, though his tombstone was installed backward. The slaveholding family and their descendants were divided over the issue of repatriation, and it’s hard not to see the backward-facing tombstone as a recognition that Wade was essentially the villain of the story./></a><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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After buying Prospect Hill from its absentee owner, the Archaeological Conservancy hosted a homecoming-reunion of all the groups related to the plantation -- descendants of the divided slave holding family, the slaves who remained in the area, and the slaves who emigrated to Liberia. It was a remarkable gathering, illustrating the breadth of Prospect Hill's story.
The Archaeological Conservancy has plans to replace the roof on the house and undertake other measures to stabilize it, to be paid for by individual donations and a state grant that will cover a portion of the cost. /></a><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In addition to a rare opportunity to tour one of Mississippi's most storied houses, the admission fee -- $10 for adults, $5 for kids -- provides entertainment in the form of music by the Delta Mountain Boys. There will also be a food truck from Natchez on hand, and I’ll be there to sign copies of <i>Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today</i>./></a><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The following map shows how to get to Prospect Hill. Jessica also offers these directions:/></a><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"It's right down Tillman Chapel Road (1.7 miles on the left). I have put blue stars next to the turns. There are two ways to get there from Highway 61, depending on what direction you're coming from. If you're coming from Port Gibson, you'll get on Woodvine Road not far outside of town and you won't go all the way to Lorman. BUT, if you're coming from the direction of Natchez, you will go to Lorman, then turn east on Highway 552 and then take a left onto Woodvine at the Red Brick Church. If you are coming from 552, your turn onto Tillman Chapel Road from Woodvine Road will be a right, if you are coming from the Port Gibson direction, your turn onto Tillman Chapel Road will be a left. If you are on a laptop or PC, you can hold the cursor over the bottom of the picture of this map and download it. If you're on an ipad, you can hold your finger on the map, then choose 'save photo' and email it to yourself and print it."/></a><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mlr3J_jLcVM/U0XscWhDLfI/AAAAAAAABC4/gOohiE3-7RE/s1600/10003318_638527996217690_4029967270290051701_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mlr3J_jLcVM/U0XscWhDLfI/AAAAAAAABC4/gOohiE3-7RE/s400/10003318_638527996217690_4029967270290051701_n.jpg" /></a>
For more information, visit the Facebook page for Prospect Hill: https://www.facebook.com/prospecthillplantation
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Finally, sorry for the strange formatting at the paragraph breaks. I don't know where the />s came from, but don't include that in the link to the PH Facebook page.
Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-23118458976045484282013-01-06T11:30:00.001-08:002013-01-06T11:30:13.552-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Publishers Weekly just published their review of Here I Am, which will be released in March.
"To begin this compelling account of Tim Hetherington’s harrowing life as a photojournalist, journalist Huffman (Sultana) sketches the scene of his death, which came while covering the 2011 Libyan uprising. Bleeding from a mortar wound to his leg, 'propped against ammunition boxes' in a makeshift ambulance, Hetherington (1970–2011) died under the scrutiny of cameras close enough 'to pick up the stubble on his chin.' As a war photographer, Hetherington captured the subtle as well as the frantic—commonly switching from digital to film for a more intimate effect—on warfronts from Liberia to Sri Lanka. Huffman details Hetherington’s early career, friendships and experiences with rebels in Africa, and influences and aesthetic struggles. These set the stage for his years in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley working on the documentary Restrepo with Sebastian Junger, which earned an Academy Award nomination. Huffman glowingly propounds that '[Hetherington’s] footage and photos in the Korengal would be... among the best produced by any photographer in any war.' It’s this larger-than-life persona that enters Libya in the book’s second half. Following the frenetic group of photographers Hetherington took up with in Misrata, Huffman offers perspectives from firsthand sources to unveil the heroism and errors of his final days." Agent: Patricia Moosbrugger Literary Agency.
Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-54446594028440316672012-12-12T07:34:00.000-08:002012-12-12T07:34:37.282-08:00Here I Am<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The book is basically finished, galleys have been sent out to reviewers, and we're on track for publication and release in mid-March 2013. Here's the publisher's promo (at http://www.groveatlantic.com/?isbn=9780802120908):
<b>A compelling portrait of the award-winning British-American photojournalist and codirector of Restrepo, Tim Hetherington, who died while covering the 2011 Libyan uprising.
<i>Here I Am:
The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer</i>
By Alan Huffman
978-0-8021-2090-8 • $25.00 • Forthcoming in Cloth • Mar. 2013
Biography (Military)
Tim Hetherington (1970–2011) was one of the world’s most distinguished and dedicated photojournalists, whose career was tragically cut short when he died in a mortar blast while covering the Libyan civil war. Someone far less interested in professional glory than revealing to the world the realities of people living in extremely difficult circumstances, Tim nonetheless won many awards for his war reporting, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his critically acclaimed documentary, <i>Restrepo</i>. Hetherington’s dedication to his career led him time after time into war zones, and unlike some other journalists, he did not pack up after the story had broken. After the civil war ended in Liberia, West Africa, Tim stayed on for three years, helping the United Nations track down human rights criminals. His commitment to getting the story out and his compassion for those affected by war was unrivaled.
In <i>Here I Am</i>, journalist and freelance writer Alan Huffman tells Hetherington’s life story, and through it analyzes what it means to be a war reporter in the twenty-first century. Huffman recounts Hetherington’s life from his first interest in photography and war reporting, through his critical role in reporting the Liberian civil war, to his tragic death in Libya. Huffman also traces Hetherington’s photographic milestones, from his iconic and prize-winning photographs of Liberian children, to the celebrated portraits of sleeping U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Here I Am explores the risks, challenges, and thrills of war reporting, and is a testament to the unique work of people like Hetherington, who travel into the most dangerous parts of the world, risking their lives to give a voice to those devastated by conflict. </b>
Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-80909233100735729542012-07-10T03:37:00.001-07:002012-07-10T03:51:59.397-07:00Abdelkader Fasok<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Abdelkader has been missing since Saturday, when he was abducted with fellow Tabacs TV cameraman Yousif Badi while covering the first national election in Libya in 60 years.
Abdelkader and I met a little over a week ago while helping a friend, photographer Andre Liohn, stage a photo exhibition in Misrata, Libya, called Almost Dawn in Libya. The exhibition, which moves to Tripoli this week, was conceived as a way to help heal Libya through shared imagery of the war.
By all rights Abdelkader should not have been there. As we hung photos I noticed a prominent scar on his neck, and when I asked about it he told an amazing story of personal survival during the 2011 war.
Abdelkader is a slightly-built guy, 26, who worked as a documentary cameraman for the rebels during Misrata’s five-month military siege. Last June, as he turned his head while filming, he was shot in the neck by a Kalashnikov at close range. His scar bisects his throat, and there is a corresponding, hand-size exit-wound scar on the back of his shoulder. It was the third time he’d been shot during the war. His cousin fashioned a compress over the wound using his headscarf and they got Abdelkader to the field hospital in time. Along the way, he dreamed of people he knew who have died. He was in a coma for a week.
Abdelkader is a bright, hard-working, cheerful guy whose face invariably lights up in greeting. During the exhibition I met one of his brothers, who favors him and has the same high-pitched voice, and when I mentioned Abdelkader’s remarkable survival, he smiled and said, “It was a kind of magic.”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On Saturday, Abdelkader and Yousif were kidnapped by militiamen near the town of Ben Walid while covering the elections there. Their captors have since demanded release of prisoners held in Misrata -- or so it is said; the details are sketchy.
There is no effective government in Libya right now, and the National Transitional Council has limited control over the militias that rule the cities and countryside, some of which supported the revolution and some of which didn’t.
The consensus among my friends and contacts is that the abduction was an outgrowth of an old feud between Misrata and the Bani Walid-Warfalla desert faction. An attack by the Misrata militia has been discussed as a way to attempt their release, but at this point there are few hard facts aside from the abduction itself.
The video his captors posted of Abdelkader trying to negotiate with them is distressing, to say the least. No one expected recreating Libya to be an easy ride, but abducting journalists covering the first elections in 60 years isn’t a good way to start.
<i>Illustration by Ahmed Shlak</i>Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-17999455347061378382012-05-27T13:13:00.000-07:002012-05-27T19:58:01.027-07:00Postus interruptus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2TMgb-ofyAE/T8KJeUPlvPI/AAAAAAAAAvU/3XVecEvOVsw/s1600/428634_376749119001794_100000001260226_1621182_1400813491_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="299" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2TMgb-ofyAE/T8KJeUPlvPI/AAAAAAAAAvU/3XVecEvOVsw/s400/428634_376749119001794_100000001260226_1621182_1400813491_n.jpg" /></a></div>To those of you who've emailed to ask why I've neglected this site in recent months, I appreciate your interest and apologize for the long lapses. I've been consumed with the book tour for <i>We're With Nobody</i>, which I co-authored with Michael Rejebian (that's us in the green room with Jon Stewart before our appearance on "The Daily Show," which was by far the highlight of the tour). Most of my posts have been for the book's website, www.werewithnobody.com. The tour is over, and I had expected to get back in the saddle here, but a new book project has presented itself, so my posts will no doubt concern that, though they will likewise be sporadic because the book project is on a very tight deadline.
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The new book is about the work of photographer Tim Hetherington, a great man who was killed in a mortar attack in Misrata, Libya, on April 20, 2011. That's Tim, above, climbing out of a building in Misrata shortly before he was killed.
I'll be traveling to Misrata in June, and hope to be able to post from there. For now, I'm immersed in research, so I probably won't be posting much. I appreciate everyone's interest, and again, apologize for the long lapses.Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-44487978954473068572012-03-10T05:16:00.006-08:002012-05-15T06:39:16.158-07:00Warren County moves to demolish listed historic plantation house<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WCsYOM1ikYY/T1tT_73KcZI/AAAAAAAAAtw/Ob4ydWe_3zo/s1600/ceres.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="268" width="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WCsYOM1ikYY/T1tT_73KcZI/AAAAAAAAAtw/Ob4ydWe_3zo/s400/ceres.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Ceres Plantation, a rare surviving example of a pre-Civil War plantation house complex, is slated for demolition despite its 2011 listing by the Mississippi Heritage Trust among the state's 10 Most Endangered Historic Properties -- and despite efforts of preservationists to find a buyer to restore or move the buildings.<br />
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The Warren County Port Commission in the 1980s bought Ceres Plantation, located near the I-20 crossing of the Big Black River in the community of Flowers, Mississippi, with plans to develop the property into an industrial park, using the Greek Revival house as its centerpiece, hopefully for a corporate headquarters. Afterward, the Port Commission abandoned the house and allowed it to deteriorate, and in 2010 announced its plans to demolish the house and outbuildings.<br />
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It quickly became obvious that the commission had little interest in working with preservationists to save the structure, which remains in sound condition despite superficial rot that has occurred in the last decade. That led the Trust to include Ceres in its endangered list.<br />
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As preservationists continued searching for a buyer to restore or move the house, the Port Commission announced, though a series of nondescript ads in the classified section of the <i>Vicksburg Post</i>, that it will take bids for "demolition and removal" of Ceres and ancillary buildings. The commission posted the request for bids on March 6, 2012, though the opening date appears to be April 12.<br />
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Ceres anchored a large, working cotton plantation as recently as the early 1980s -- one of the few remaining examples in Mississippi where an antebellum home retained the archetypal view of broad cotton fields from its wide front gallery. The resulting Ceres industrial park was largely a boondoggle, with most of its sites still undeveloped after almost three decades. The Ceres house, despite its proximity to the Flowers exit on I-20, affording it a high-profile location for potential appropriate development, was allowed to languish.<br />
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Now, unless preservationists can intervene, the house appears doomed, despite the fact that the industrial park was built with federal funds, which cannot be used to destroy a federally listed historic property. The Port Commission has resisted any effort to have the house listed in the National Register of Historic Places, though it is likely eligible, and in many, if not most cases, eligible properties are afforded the same level of protection as structures that are already listed. In addition to its architectural significance, Ceres was used as a refuge by several notable Vicksburg residents during that city's Civil War siege. The plantation was founded in the 1820s by the Flowers family, who sold the house and land to the Port Commission in 1986 for an ultimately underutilized project named the Ceres Research and Industrial Interplex.<br />
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To contact the Warren County Port Commission: 601/631-0555; P.O. Box 820363, Vicksburg MS 39182. The executive director of the Port Commission is Wayne Mansfield. The board of directors, two of which are appointed by the county supervisors, two by the mayor of Vicksburg, and one by the governor, are Johnny Moss, Oren Bailess, John Ferguson, Mike Cappaert and Russell Hawkins.
Note: The sad end to this story can be found here: http://misspreservation.com/2012/05/14/warren-county-port-commission-spending-29000-to-demolish-recycle-ceres/Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-59931833812937958472012-01-09T07:22:00.000-08:002012-01-09T07:22:33.763-08:00We're With Nobody the book: Open Season: Politics, America, and Two Guys Chasing the Truth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-91X3Ewp1-qg/TwsF5Bf1WJI/AAAAAAAAAtI/FDcdBLouZCo/s1600/0104121827.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-91X3Ewp1-qg/TwsF5Bf1WJI/AAAAAAAAAtI/FDcdBLouZCo/s400/0104121827.jpg" /></a></div>If you haven't checked out the website for my new book with coauthor Michael Rejebian, you can find out about it (and watch the book trailer) here: www.werewithnobody.com. The book, which is about doing political opposition research across the U.S., will be published by HarperCollins on Jan. 24.Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-25894436721629194122011-12-29T07:40:00.000-08:002011-12-29T17:33:34.656-08:00"Can I help you find something?"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eRvtZfouoKY/TvyJz_mcpJI/AAAAAAAAAs0/QRfxH3nvtPg/s1600/IMAG0249-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="301" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eRvtZfouoKY/TvyJz_mcpJI/AAAAAAAAAs0/QRfxH3nvtPg/s400/IMAG0249-1.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Writers like to think their work confers upon them a kind of immortality – until they come upon their books in the remainder bin, for a dollar.<br />
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Publishing today is more about commerce than literary longevity. It’s like everything else: Most of what’s produced is disposable, trafficked in volume. The days of committed editors developing lifelong relationships with writers honing their craft are gone. Instead, we have publishers whose primary (and in some cases, only) interest is in selling gazillions of mostly formulaic books to ready-made markets. Once a book appears to have peaked in sales, they’re done with it.<br />
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My book <i>Mississippi in Africa</i> was published in 2004 and got mostly good reviews, though a couple of reviewers attacked it quite angrily, over comparatively minor things. Writing as a guest reviewer for the <i>New York Times</i>, an aging curmudgeon and “distinguished university professor” named Ira Berlin built his case against the book around a citation it contained – someone else’s citation, mind you, which I cited – that got someone’s name wrong. Here was glaring evidence that I had no idea what I was writing about. Professor Berlin, clearly outraged that a non-academic would have the temerity to write history, proceeded to tell the book’s fascinating story as if it were his own and he’d snatched it from my unworthy hands. <br />
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But, I digress.<br />
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My point is, after two not-insignificant print runs, in hardback and paperback, my publisher, Penguin Putnam, lost interest in <i>Mississippi in Africa</i>, so they chose not to reprint it and the rights reverted to me. Fearful of the prospects of the book going out of print, I sold the rights to University Press of Mississippi, a small publisher that had done my first book, <i>Ten Point</i>, and has an old-school way of keeping its books in circulation. University Press isn’t exactly at the top of the book marketing game, but, if nothing else, they will keep <i>Mississippi in Afric</i>a available into the foreseeable future. Which is not to say readers will be able to find it easily, alas.<br />
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I have a habit of looking for my books in whatever bookstore I visit, as I imagine most writers do. I note how many copies are on hand and where the staff chose to display them. It is not unusual for a book to be allotted the premium display space near the front door at the time of its release, only to be assigned to the bargain table a few short years later. It’s a brutal business, publishing.<br />
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Sometimes, as I wander a bookstore, I’ll find <i>Mississippi in Africa</i> in the history section; at other times I find it in the southern culture section, the African American section, or the “world” section (whatever that is). Wherever I find it, I typically ask the nearest clerk if they’d like me to sign their copies. Most stores are thrilled for me to do so, because for some reason readers really like it when their books are signed by the author, even if they never met them. I don’t really get this, but I oblige, if only because it attracts customers and the bookstores afterward get me to sign their remaining stock, which they can therefore not return to the publisher, and which they embellish with “Signed by the author” stickers and place in a more prominent display area. Once, for example, after my book <i>Sultana</i> was released, my friend Doug and I went into a bookstore in New York City so he could buy a few copies as gifts. As he was paying for the books he mentioned to the cashier that I was the author. She asked if I’d like to sign their stock. I said of course -- I thought you’d never ask! I then stood by the display, doing the equivalent of a drive-by book signing. No one asked me to prove that I was the author of the book. Afterward Doug and I considered going into another bookstore and announcing that I was some other author, and offering to sign copies of his books. We figured I might be able to pass myself off as William Shakespeare at Books-A-Million, where no one knows anything about, you know, books.<br />
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So: Finding my books is a favored pastime, and recently, while Christmas shopping at Lemuria, my hometown bookstore, I noticed that <i>Sultana</i> (“regional interest”) was there, but not<i> Mississippi in Africa</i>, nor, for that matter, <i>Ten Point</i>. Lemuria has always been good to me, hosting author events and giving me an author discount on book purchases, but I’ve noticed my books don’t excite them the same way as, for example, John Grisham’s, for obvious reasons: Lemuria is a store. They sell things. They especially like things they sell a lot of. But not seeing <i>Mississippi in Afric</i>a on display during the Christmas season, particularly after its recent re-release, was disappointing, and my disappointment grew as I began actually looking for it in earnest and was unable to find it anywhere. <br />
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Eventually Joe, who works there and handles author events, asked if I needed any help. I said, “I don’t see <i>Mississippi in Afric</i>a.” Mild panic appeared in Joe’s eyes. He began to scour the shelves – “southern writers,” “African American,” etc., but found nothing. Soon Johnny, who owns Lemuria, walked by and asked what we were looking for. “<i>Mississippi in Africa</i>,” I said, with unconcealed gravity. He then joined in the awkward search, noting, as he did so, that his inventory listed nine copies. I was impressed that he knew this off the top of his head, but it was cold comfort, given that the books could not be discovered by the person who wrote them, nor by the store’s staff. Eventually Johnny found the nine, huddled in the dark corner of a nether shelf – the part where perpendicular shelves adjoin, causing the end of one to be hidden entirely from view. In bookstore terms, this was deepest, darkest Siberia. Johnny pulled them to a more prominent spot. I didn’t even bother to ask about <i>Ten Point</i>, a niche market book that I’m very proud of, but which few stores seem to get. <br />
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After Joe and Johnny wandered off, I placed copies of <i>Mississippi in Africa</i> and <i>Sultana</i> in even more prominent positions, to catch potential customers’ eyes, as I always do. Typically I place my books in front of other people’s books that I think are getting too much attention.<br />
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I am in the business of selling books, and I admit that the serial dating aspect of the current book-selling market distresses me, and apparently I’m a glutton for punishment, because after I left Lemuria I went to Books-A-Million, a store I loathe, ostensibly because I needed something from the grocery next door and thought I’d pop in and see where they had <i>Mississippi in Africa</i>. As it turned out: Nowhere. I couldn’t find it, and when I asked a clerk, she looked it up on the computer and said, without a hint of regret, “We don’t carry that title.” Thank you for confirming everything I suspected about Books-A-Million! As she delivered this news, a man standing behind me, who had heard the title of the book I was looking for, volunteered, “Don’t believe everything your read in that book” – a comment I uncharacteristically chose to ignore, this being Books-A-Million. I later regretted it, of course. How many chances do you get to call out a hostile reader? Here he was, voluntarily instructing a stranger not to believe what I’d written in my book, not knowing who I was. He was a skinny, country-looking older guy. I would not have expected him to be in the book’s demographic, so I was kind of impressed that he’d even read it, even if he came away dissatisfied. Whatever. I satisfied myself that at least someone in Books-A-Million knew the book existed. <br />
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Afterward, I strolled over to the bargain bin to see what I could find. Sometimes you find good stuff there -- I once found Shakespeare in a bargain bin, and I took comfort in that, too.Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-59069445061042338472011-12-16T05:20:00.000-08:002011-12-16T05:21:40.167-08:00Two Greenvilles<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UqTYg_sxL8E/TutFMOQHL8I/AAAAAAAAAsE/kCToRfeihQA/s1600/Gville%2Bby%2BScott%2BHarrison.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="260" width="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UqTYg_sxL8E/TutFMOQHL8I/AAAAAAAAAsE/kCToRfeihQA/s400/Gville%2Bby%2BScott%2BHarrison.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rvp8ypwgi6k/TutFSCJcnFI/AAAAAAAAAsQ/t1znEycLVug/s1600/card00188_fr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="255" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rvp8ypwgi6k/TutFSCJcnFI/AAAAAAAAAsQ/t1znEycLVug/s400/card00188_fr.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Who knew? After posting the story about the November 2011 reunion at Prospect Hill Plantation and the two Mississippis, I came across a news item from Sept. 11, 2009, announcing that Greenville, Mississippi (in the U.S.) and Greenville, Liberia (in the area originally known as Mississippi in Africa) are now official sister cities.<br />
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Somehow I had missed that development. Serendipitously, a few days later I was informed by Evans Yancy, who is from Greenville, Liberia and now lives in Atlanta, Georgia (in the U.S.), that he had tried, unsuccessfully, to contact me in May 2011 about the sister cities announcement. Evans, who responded to an email from me, didn’t say how he had tried to get in touch, but said that he visited Greenville, Mississippi at that time as a member of the Greenville (Liberia) Development Association. The delegation met with Greenville, Mississippi Mayor Heather McTeer Hudson and the city council. <br />
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According to the news item, which ran on the website liberianconsulatega.com, the two Greenvilles entered into a sister city trade agreement in Monrovia, Liberia, with signatories including Honorary Consul General Cynthia Blandford Nash, of Atlanta; Greenville, Mississippi mayoral representative Ed Johnson; Greenville, Liberia Mayor Barbara Ann Moore Keah; and various other dignitaries, mostly from Sinoe County, of which Greenville, Liberia is the capital.<br />
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In case you haven’t read previous posts on this site about Prospect Hill and the two Mississippis, Liberia was founded by freed American slaves in the early 19th century and today encompasses regions named for various former homelands of the emigrants, including Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi and Virginia. In 2003, I published a nonfiction book on the subject titled Mississippi in Africa.<br />
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Typically, for sister city agreements, the Greenvilles’ alliance was described as a means “to further friendly diplomatic relations, enhance cultural and historic understanding and cooperation, and to promote international trade between Greenville, Mississippi of the United States of America, and Greenville, Sinoe County of the Republic of Liberia,” according to the news item.<br />
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Greenville, Mississippi is one of the more depressed cities in the U.S., located in the poorest region of the poorest state, yet no doubt seems flush compared with war-torn Greenville, Liberia (the nation was in civil war throughout the 1990s and early 2000s). <br />
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Coincidentally, Greenville, Mississippi Mayor Hudson is running for the U.S. Congress for District 2, a post currently held by Bennie Thompson. My friend Jefferson Kanmoh, whom I met while researching my book, represents Sinoe County in the Liberian Congress. <br />
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<i>Top photo, of Greenville, Liberia, by Scott Harrison; bottom photo, of Greenville, Mississippi, pulled from the internet at cardcow.com</i>.Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-76023172109855437132011-12-11T09:09:00.000-08:002011-12-12T19:19:48.207-08:00Letter from Mississippi<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6BfXNNTxzRo/TuTeZrpwhaI/AAAAAAAAApE/aISbhKIaZRY/s1600/DSCN4493.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="292" width="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6BfXNNTxzRo/TuTeZrpwhaI/AAAAAAAAApE/aISbhKIaZRY/s400/DSCN4493.JPG" /></a></div><br />
When she mentioned Mississippi, I had to ask which one. Because there are two. There is the one that everyone knows about, in the United States, and there is another, a kind of parallel universe, in the West African nation of Liberia, settled by freed American slaves in the early 19th century. <br />
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Evangeline Pelham Wayne is originally from Liberia, where her family owned a plantation-style house on Mississippi Street in Greenville, the capital of the region known as Mississippi in Africa. On a recent autumn day she visited the other Mississippi, in the United States, for an odd reunion of people who had never met, and who were, in a sense, returning to a place most of them had never been. <br />
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“When I was growing up in Liberia,” Wayne recalled, “my father always made me spell Mississippi aloud. M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i. If I missed one ‘S’, he’d make me do it again. ‘Try again,’ he’d say. ‘Think about it.’ ‘Think about what?’ I’d say. ‘Why do I have to spell this word?’ His answer: 'One day you'll find out.'” <br />
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The recitation of Mississippi’s repetitive crooked letters, humpback letters and “I”s is a childhood ritual in the U.S., but Wayne was baffled by her father’s preoccupation with the word. Years later, as a student at the University of Liberia, she was assigned to write a report about her family history, and by then her father had died, so she convinced her grandmother, Louise Ross Rogers, who was almost 90, to tell her the story. So began a personal journey that eventually led Wayne to the U.S. and, on a recent windy November day, to an abandoned plantation house known as Prospect Hill, in Jefferson County, Mississippi, where she hoped to find clues about her family and her own identity, which is complicated by many factors, on both sides of the Atlantic. <br />
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Wayne is a descendant of Africans who were enslaved and taken to the U.S., then allowed to immigrate “back” to Africa in the 1840s, to the freed slave colony in Mississippi in Africa. In 1992, Wayne immigrated “back” to the U.S to escape Liberia’s civil wars, which had begun two years before and would last until 2003, and which were, in many ways, rooted in a long-running conflict between the Americo-Liberians, as the freed slaves and their descendents were known, and indigenous groups, who vastly outnumbered them. Some of the indigenous tribes had been involved in the slave trade when the settlers arrived, and some Americos later enslaved them. Liberia’s history is among the more complicated in Africa, and though Wayne’s family had been there for more than a century and a half, she often felt like an outsider. She spoke no indigenous languages, and neither did any of her family. Now, in the U.S., she said, she is likewise considered a foreigner. <br />
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“To be honest, I’m unsure of who, and what, I am, and where I fit in,” she said. "In Liberia or America, I'm considered a foreigner -- someone who does not truly belong." <br />
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The event that brought Wayne and her family to Prospect Hill was hosted by the New Mexico-based Archaeological Conservancy, which bought the remote, endangered house in the summer of 2011 in hopes of saving it, along with whatever evidence of its complex history remains buried underground. Jessica Crawford, the conservancy’s regional director, had facilitated the purchase, and afterward was inundated with requests to see the remote, somewhat mysterious property, both from people who had a family connection to it and by others who were simply curious. She decided to hold a private event on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011, for those connected to the house, and a public tour in the afternoon, for a suggested donation of $25 per person to a fund to be used for stabilizing the structure. The conservancy’s goal is to stabilize the structure, then resell it to someone who will fully restore and preserve it, while retaining an archaeological easement so that the buried artifacts – around the big house, in the vicinity of the vanished slave quarters and other plantation structures, and in the former fields -- might one day be unearthed and studied. <br />
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Gathered on the lawn that morning, before the looming tableau of the dramatically deteriorating house, was an array of people of mixed races, ages and backgrounds who might otherwise have seemed to possess little in common. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NWZk1NBSoNc/TuTe633h9sI/AAAAAAAAApQ/dNWBWZ54xyY/s1600/DSCN4471.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NWZk1NBSoNc/TuTe633h9sI/AAAAAAAAApQ/dNWBWZ54xyY/s320/DSCN4471.JPG" /></a></div>They included descendants of Prospect Hill’s original slave owners; of plantation slaves who had, during an uprising in 1845, set fire to the previous house on the site; of interracial liaisons between descendents of the former slave holders and slaves in the early 20th century; and of freed plantation slaves who had immigrated, more than 150 years before, to Mississippi in Africa. There was no question about who attracted the most attention: Wayne and her family. The crowd broke into spontaneous applause when the group arrived, more than an hour late, after getting lost of the network of poorly marked local roads. <br />
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Being at the center of attention made Wayne a little nervous, partly because the gathering was so freighted, and partly because her own part of the story was riddled with asterisks and asides. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SbtaajX09i4/TuTfOK5REeI/AAAAAAAAApc/uoKrAOP3RGI/s1600/DSCN4491.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="145" width="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SbtaajX09i4/TuTfOK5REeI/AAAAAAAAApc/uoKrAOP3RGI/s200/DSCN4491.JPG" /></a></div>She has so far been unable to prove her ancestors’ provenance, though her grandmother mentioned a Mississippi plantation and “Captain Ross,” which Wayne believed to be Prospect Hill and Capt. Isaac Ross, the Revolutionary War veteran who established Prospect Hill and who had enabled the emancipation and emigration of his slaves to Mississippi in Africa in the 1840s. Tracing African American genealogy in the U.S. is a difficult endeavor, because blacks were not included in the census until after the Civil War, but in Liberia it is nearly impossible because most of the nation’s archives were destroyed during the wars. So far, Wayne has been able to document the origins of only one ancestor, who immigrated to Mississippi in Africa from the U.S. state of Georgia. “It seems the connection is there,” she said. “But at this point I can’t be sure.” <br />
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Arriving at Prospect Hill brought on a rush of unfamiliar emotions, she said. “Driving in, the closer we got, the odder I felt,” she said. She was exhausted and dazed after driving 18 hours, all night, from suburban Washington, D.C., where she now lives. Her large, expressive eyes were bloodshot, which made her self-conscious because she knew others were observing her closely. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y3MwJVkTGI8/TuTfaZYo6uI/AAAAAAAAApo/wRSkSJgqeLU/s1600/331983_2335170057870_1208393904_32206791_1922074068_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="228" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y3MwJVkTGI8/TuTfaZYo6uI/AAAAAAAAApo/wRSkSJgqeLU/s320/331983_2335170057870_1208393904_32206791_1922074068_o.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Everyone was looking closely at everyone, but perhaps more so at her and her family, because of who they were, or were believed to be. Wayne’s family represented a sort of triumphal return of the freed Prospect Hill slaves, who had walked away on a cold, rainy winter day in 1845.<br />
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Wayne began exploring her family’s possible connection to the place after coming across my nonfiction book, Mississippi in Africa, while researching her family’s history online. She had been researching her family since the early 1990s, but had so far reached nothing but dead ends. It seemed logical that the story would lead from Mississippi in Africa back to its namesake in the U.S., so when she heard about my book she contacted me to ask about Prospect Hill and Capt. Ross. <br />
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The subject of the two Mississippis had come up frequently when I visited Liberia in 2001. Roaming the streets of war-torn Monrovia, the nation’s capital, in search of anyone named Ross, I was frequently recognized as an American and asked what state I was from. When I answered “Mississippi,” a common response was, “Me, also!” at which point I would ask, “Mississippi, in Liberia, or Mississippi, in the States?” The answer was almost invariably: “Both.” <br />
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Liberians who hailed from the Mississippi region of Liberia were very much aware of the existence of Mississippi in the U.S., and were bewildered that the reverse was not true. Few Americans know anything about Liberia, including where it is. It is often confused with Libya, more than 2,000 miles away. During the civil wars, when Liberians on both sides called for the U.S. to intervene, a smugly ignorant Lou Dobbs warned on his news show that doing so might lead to “another Somalia,” though the two countries are as culturally and geographically distinct as Ireland and Uzbekistan. <br />
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Liberia was the first republic in Africa, founded in 1820 (though it did not gain its independence until two decades later) by the American Colonization Society, which was comprised of two groups with seemingly opposed yet overlapping aims: Abolitionists who saw “repatriation,” in the parlance of the times, as a way to make emancipation more politically palatable in the U.S., and slaveholders who were fearful of eventually being outnumbered by free black citizens (some members also saw repatriation as a way to Christianize the indigenous tribes). Liberia is located on the west coast of Africa, where prevailing winds were favorable for ships involved in the North America slave trade. As a result, many of the slaves in the U.S. came from West Africa, which played a role in the decision to repatriate the freed slaves there. Most of the freed slaves had never been to Africa, though, and in some cases were third- or fourth-generation Americans. <br />
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The colonial effort, which remains the only one that the U.S. has been directly responsible for, was private, but had the support of the federal government, which occasionally sent warships to quell disputes between the settlers and the indigenous tribes. The settlers, thrust into the wilds of Africa, typically named their communities after familiar places, much like colonial Americans gave their communities names such as New York, New Jersey and New London. In addition to Mississippi in Africa, there are today communities in Liberia known as Louisiana, Georgia and Virginia, and a county named Maryland, all harking to the original emigrants’ home states. The settlers viewed the indigenous groups with a mix of fear, disdain, pity and hostility, much the way British colonials viewed native Americans. Not surprisingly, similar hostilities quickly ensued.<br />
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The largest contingent of Liberian emigrants – about 300 – came from Prospect Hill and related family plantations, following a tumultuous decade-long court battle over Isaac Ross’s will, during which a slave uprising led to the burning of the original mansion, the death of a young girl, and the subsequent lynching of a group of slaves believed to have been the perpetrators. Most of the alleged perpetrators were hanged – ostensibly, from a white oak tree on the lawn, part of which momentously fell onto the existing house years ago, and whose dead trunk now lies in the yard, like a menacing stage prop. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ES1GfUfefyk/TuTf4PZuHII/AAAAAAAAAp0/CAXsWYVemlM/s1600/Invitation%2Bfront.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="197" width="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ES1GfUfefyk/TuTf4PZuHII/AAAAAAAAAp0/CAXsWYVemlM/s320/Invitation%2Bfront.jpg" /></a></div>The house was built in 1854 on the site of the original by Ross’s grandson, who had contested the will and managed to regain the estate after losing it in court (the will had called for Prospect Hill to be sold to pay the way for those of Ross’s slaves who chose to immigrate to Liberia). The slaves who chose not to immigrate worked in the existing house or in the adjacent plantation fields. The house is one of the few remaining landmarks of the entwined histories of the two Mississippis, and in a sense, everyone who attended the reunion was returning to the spot where their parallel stories had diverged. There are many different versions of what happened at Prospect Hill in the 1840s, and afterward in Liberia, and all of them came into play that day; everyone, it seemed, was working from a slightly different script, though with the same key players. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h7OqZsZsowQ/TuTgUMPdV9I/AAAAAAAAAqA/SeMSoAIWrTo/s1600/DSCN4501.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h7OqZsZsowQ/TuTgUMPdV9I/AAAAAAAAAqA/SeMSoAIWrTo/s320/DSCN4501.JPG" /></a></div>James Belton, whose father was born near the close of the 19th century, is descended from slaves who were involved in the uprising, though the two who directly participated had escaped into the woods, never to be heard from again. Belton’s great grandmother, Mariah Belton, chose not to immigrate to Liberia with her remaining son because she did not want to leave the other two behind. As a result, James Belton grew up in Mississippi, in the U.S., rather than Mississippi in Africa. When he and Wayne met, they came face to face with a person whose life represented what their own might have been like had their ancestors made a different choice in 1845. Neither was quite sure what to say, so they just embraced.<br />
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Everyone at the reunion was playing a stand-in role in a drama of profound historical consequence, which conferred new meaning upon their otherwise ordinary lives. James Belton was no longer simply a retired schoolteacher from McComb, Mississippi. He was Mariah Belton’s great grandson, returned to the scene of a major historical crime, which he viewed with a measure of pride and sadness, in that his family had sought to shake free the shackles of slavery, yet had been responsible for the death of the young girl. At one point Belton ventured alone to the Prospect Hill family cemetery, which is dominated by a marble obelisk erected in tribute to Ross by the Mississippi Colonization Society (a state chapter of the American group), and knelt at the grave of the young girl, whose name was Martha. <br />
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Later, as Belton spoke to the group about his research and how he had located the descendants of Mariah Belton’s long-lost sons, he was upstaged by a peacock that emerged from the bushes, strutted blithely behind him, then flew, in an awkward, noisy burst of wings, onto what remained of Prospect Hill’s front gallery and disappeared into the darkened parlor. Watching this, in confused silence, were four middle-aged sisters whose grandmother had been the last family member to live in the house, and whose more distant ancestors had fought against the immigration of the Prospect Hill slaves. Behind them was elderly Betty McGehee, descended from the side of the family that had supported the immigration, and so was divided from the sisters’ side. Then there were the descendants of the slaves who did not immigrate, as well as those who did, and finally, a woman and her children who, though they are African American, trace their lineage to Isaac Ross, the man who had set all their stories in motion. <br />
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When Crawford first came upon Prospect Hill, on a hot September day in 2010, the structure was overgrown and had been in serious disrepair for decades. Its eccentric last owner had done little maintenance and made almost no repairs, including to the leaky roof, choosing instead to paint interior rooms while exterior woodwork rotted and collapsed onto the ground. Crawford was aware of the plantation’s dramatic history, but that first visit was less like a typical old-house tour than a probe of once beautiful, now sadly deranged mind. The place had been ransacked numerous times and was in such bad shape that she had a hard time even appreciating its grand architecture. Large chunks of plaster had fallen from its 14-foot ceilings; paint was flaking from the elaborate Greek Revival trim; panes were broken in the towering windows, which were partially shrouded by ripped curtains and sagging, gap-toothed shutters. As she picked her way through the dank, shadowy rooms, Crawford observed signs of decay at every turn: Threadbare, moldering rugs, rat-gnawed tables, overturned and emasculated chairs, piles of rain-soaked, mildewed clothes. An empty bourbon bottle protruded from a mass of sodden debris atop a warped grand piano. An array of cooking pots, placed on the floor to catch water from leaks in the roof, had been overflowing for years. Books and papers were scattered everywhere, as if in the aftermath of looting. “It was as if a bomb had gone off inside,” she said. <br />
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Considering Prospect Hill’s torturous history, its transformation to a house of minor horrors struck Crawford as sadly appropriate. But for someone devoted to uncovering and preserving clues about the past, the structure’s disfigurement and the seeming inevitability of its loss were unacceptable. She had come to document what remained of the place, yet had not taken a single photo or note as she prepared to leave. “The scenes were just too ugly,” she recalled. “It made me sick.” Then, as she stepped gingerly toward the front door, wanting only to get out, she saw a patch of brilliant color from the corner of her eye. “I looked to the left, and there was this peacock standing in front of the bookcase in the front room,” she said. For the first time, she pulled out her camera and snapped a photo. In it, the peacock stands before a sunlit window, surrounded by fallen books and strewn bags of trash, its head cocked curiously toward her. <br />
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The bird had been left behind by the last occupant of the house, and because it was unaccustomed to visitors, quickly vanished from view, though not from Crawford’s memory. On the way home she thought of something her family’s housekeeper had told her when she was a child: As long as there is life in a house, its story isn’t over. As was painfully obvious, there were plenty of living things inside Prospect Hill -- rats, itinerant snakes, a beehive, at least two bats and an entire self-sustaining universe of insects and spiders. But the peacock hinted at a more engaging tale. Crawford chose its image as her take-away.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TYYiVty4CG0/TuThTr9E0_I/AAAAAAAAAqk/AHFofdXLi_4/s1600/335479_2123772104361_1547627010_1785830_1208541336_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TYYiVty4CG0/TuThTr9E0_I/AAAAAAAAAqk/AHFofdXLi_4/s320/335479_2123772104361_1547627010_1785830_1208541336_o.jpg" /></a></div>In subsequent visits, during which she began to clear the encroaching undergrowth and haul away debris, sometimes with the help of volunteers but usually alone, she began to feel an odd connection with the lonely bird, whose showy displays no one typically saw, and which she named Isaac, after Isaac Ross. He enabled Crawford to see past the enervating squalor of the scene, back to the story that had originally brought her there. She also discovered what she came to see as Isaac’s nemesis -- an unseen, unidentified creature that inhabited the debris of a collapsed rear room and growled whenever someone walked nearby. Together, the peacock and the unseen creature provided an allegory of Prospect Hill: On the one hand, the beautiful, unexpected display, and on the other, the hidden, growling thing. <br />
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In her effort to save the house, Crawford has inserted herself into a story full of interesting characters, historical and otherwise. After convincing the owner to sell the house, and her boss at the conservancy to buy it – both impressive feats, under the circumstances, Crawford enlisted the help of friends, strangers, descendants, even jail inmates, to return it to a point where it might at least evoke its outsized history. Slowly the house began to reemerge, as Crawford and company prepared it to reprise its role for the reunion. Among those who stumbled upon the house during the period was Tate Taylor, director of the movie The Help, who saw the near-ruins of Prospect Hill from a helicopter. Taylor had recently bought an antebellum house in nearby Church Hill and saw Prospect Hill while flying there from Jackson. He happened to be traveling with a friend, Charles Greenlee, who was descended from Isaac Ross, and the two subsequently returned with a retinue of Hollywood types. Greenlee recalled the strange effect of coming upon the weathered, overgrown house, framed by moss-draped trees, as Isaac, the peacock, greeted them from inside it with a disturbing cry that sent one of the actresses running back toward the car. <br />
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Greenlee also attended the reunion event, at which Crawford and representatives of the state’s historic preservation community spoke of the need to preserve the property. Before the conservancy bought the house, the Mississippi Heritage Trust had included Prospect Hill on its 2011 list of most endangered historic structures in the state, and the trust’s director, David Presiozi, spoke during the reunion, as did Jennifer Baughn, chief architectural historian at the state Department of Archives and History. But the formal presentations at the event were mere monologues. The real action took place in conversations between the guests. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QbTw_AtQyoQ/TuTiJ9lpCgI/AAAAAAAAAq8/_78j--nD-vw/s1600/P1010285.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QbTw_AtQyoQ/TuTiJ9lpCgI/AAAAAAAAAq8/_78j--nD-vw/s320/P1010285.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Before the event, some of those who planned to attend had expressed concern that there might be tension, and many of the conversations were, in fact, riddled with tiny red flags. One woman asked, more than once, how frequently rape occurred on slave plantations. But for most of those in attendance, the default setting was to be polite. One of the sisters whose grandmother had lived in the house, and whose ancestors had fought against the immigration effort, had earlier wondered aloud how the Liberians would view them. Old times, clearly, are not forgotten, in Dixie or in Liberia, and she was concerned that her family might be perceived as somehow hostile, or be viewed with hostility. Likewise Betty McGehee, who, though she as descended from Isaac Ross and the side of the family that supported freeing the slaves, wondered if her land holdings and heirloom antiques represented “a kind of greed, really -- for me to have these things, and hold onto them?” The question wasn’t an idle exercise; as Wayne observed, McGehee seemed genuinely concerned about how differently her own life had played out than those of others whose paths ran parallel for a while at Prospect Hill. Laura “Butch” Ross, meanwhile, observed that despite the obvious, the story of Prospect Hill was anything but black and white; she was living proof of that, as a black Ross descended from white Rosses. <br />
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The stories the people at the reunion shared while roaming the dark rooms of the house, or the cemetery, or while sitting beneath the aged cedar trees, were personal, but had an epic cast, spanning two centuries and two continents. Everyone existed somewhere along the vast network of interconnected circuits, and now the circuits were all lit up for the first time; everyone seemed to want things to go smoothly. <br />
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Most, like Crawford, were surprised that the event received little media attention. National Public Radio had initially planned to cover it but later cancelled, saying the story seemed too complicated to explain in radio. Meanwhile, an NPR correspondent was elsewhere in the county, covering a more conventionally black-and-white story, about an unsolved civil rights era murder. All of which meant that the reunion unfolded more or less in private. <br />
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Toward the end of the day, as the crowds dispersed, Crawford, Wayne and I departed for dinner on the riverfront in Natchez, a few hours before Wayne and her family would set off on a midnight, marathon return drive to Maryland. As we sat at our table, debriefing each other about the day, Wayne’s thoughts drifted back to the other world -- Liberia. Each time the waiter approached to take our orders, it seemed she was in the middle of describing something tumultuous, and he politely continued on. During the Liberian civil war, her sister was raped and murdered. Wayne herself was accosted by both government forces and rebels, who attempted to kill her husband and two sons, as she wandered the dark streets of Monrovia, in labor, trying to get to the hospital. Her story is full of dramatic asides, both historical and recent, and everyone who had met her that day seemed intent on helping her nail down the necessary details, and to find a kind of closure at Prospect Hill. But like the bigger saga, the day was complicated, and not entirely satisfying. Connections were made, or reestablished, but many, many questions remained. At the center of the cultural mashup was Crawford, who, in a comparatively short time, became a key moderator of the story, as well as the protector of the house, and in her own right, a character in its saga. <br />
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Crawford’s goal, initially, was straightforward: To save the archaeological evidence. It soon expanded to encompass the existing house, without which the story would be disembodied. She noted that given the attention that’s recently been focused on Liberia as a result of the awarding of the Nobel Prize to its president as well as a Liberian peace activist and a political activist in Yemen, “It seems like the perfect time to explore the connections that were made there.” <br />
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“What struck me,” she added, “is that the place means so much to so many people, for so many – and often very different – reasons.”<br />
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<i>Photos by author or courtesy Jessica Crawford</i>Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-36283160552822028682011-11-08T16:39:00.002-08:002011-11-11T05:53:59.427-08:00Returning to Prospect Hill after 165 years<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xrU17VAj-Qc/TrnLgVDvC6I/AAAAAAAAAns/SISjkC9HSb4/s1600/329785_2475104031511_1069768666_2906915_1489401360_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xrU17VAj-Qc/TrnLgVDvC6I/AAAAAAAAAns/SISjkC9HSb4/s400/329785_2475104031511_1069768666_2906915_1489401360_o.jpg" /></a></div>A very unusual reunion will take place this Saturday at an abandoned plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi – the haunting, seldom seen Greek Revival house known as Prospect Hill.<br />
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Coming together for the first time will be descendants of the plantation’s original slave owners; of a group of slaves who escaped into the woods after setting fire to the first house on the site, in 1845; of slaves who remained on the plantation until their emancipation during the Civil War; and of freed slaves who immigrated from the plantation to the freed-slave colony in Liberia in the 1840s. As if that weren’t enough to get the conversation going, also attending will be descendants of mixed-race liaisons between Prospect Hill’s former slave owners and slaves in the early 20th century. <br />
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For $20, you can be a fly on the wall.<br />
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Most of the descendents have never seen the place, nor met each other. They’re coming together for an event being staged by the New Mexico-based Archaeological Conservancy, which in August bought Prospect Hill to stabilize the house in hopes of finding a buyer to restore and preserve it. The 10-room structure, which was included in the Mississippi Heritage Trust’s 2011 list of the state’s 10 most endangered historic properties, is one of the few surviving landmarks of a pivotal chapter in American and Liberian history, and it is in danger of being lost. <br />
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The story behind Prospect Hill, which was the subject of my 2004 nonfiction book <i>Mississippi in Africa</i>, begins in the 1830s, when Revolutionary War veteran Isaac Ross sought to ensure a better life for his slaves after he and his sympathetic daughter Margaret Reed were gone. Ross and Reed stipulated in their wills that the plantation be sold and the money used to pay the way for those of its slaves who chose to immigrate to a freed-slave colony established for the purpose by a group known as the American Colonization Society. Their destination: A part of the Liberian colony known as Mississippi in Africa.<br />
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Ross and Reed no doubt knew their plan would be controversial, but they could not have known how sweeping the impacts would be. Ultimately, they unwittingly set the stage for a tumultuous court battle over the estate, filed by Ross’s grandson, Isaac Ross Wade, and for the divergence, in the 1840s, of the paths of each of the groups that will be represented at Prospect Hill on November 12. <br />
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The Rosses and Wades were divided over the repatriation effort, and the slaves themselves were divided over whether to go or stay; likewise, those who sought to immigrate were divided over whether to take matters into their own hands to overcome the obstacles placed in their path to freedom by Wade.<br />
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Now, more than 150 years later, their paths will once again converge at Prospect Hill. Among the most notable guests will be 12 Liberians, the adults of whom escaped to the U.S. during their country’s civil war, in the 1990s and early 2000s, which was rooted in the conflict between the freed-slave descendants and Liberia’s indigenous groups; the 12 now live in Maryland.<br />
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Some of the descendants will speak at the public event on Saturday afternoon. Also speaking will be Jessica Crawford, with the Archaeological Conservancy; Jennifer Baughn, architectural historian with the state Department of Archives and History; David Preziosi, director of the Mississippi Heritage Trust; and me.<br />
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The Archaeological Conservancy hopes the event will draw attention to the intended sale, and meanwhile enable the descendants to compare notes on their related yet conflicting histories for the first time. The Conservancy plans to keep an easement to the Prospect Hill property so that its buried artifacts may one day be studied, and since the purchase Crawford, its southeast regional director, has been laboring to clear the undergrowth that threatened to consume the house, to remove the waterlogged debris from the last owner’s residency, and to undertake emergency repair work on its leaking roof and rotting beams. <br />
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The descendants will get a private tour of the property on Saturday morning, with public tours to follow at 1 pm and 2:30 pm. Speakers will discuss the history of the plantation, the house and the adjacent cemetery, site of a monumental obelisk erected in tribute to Ross by the Mississippi Colonization Society in the 1830s.<br />
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Prospect Hill and other related family plantations served as the point of embarkation for the largest contingent of emigrants (about 300) to Liberia from the U.S., following Wade’s failed decade-long contest of the estate, during which a slave uprising led to the burning of the first house on the site, the death of a young girl, and the hanging of a group of slaves believed to have been the perpetrators (though at least two escaped into the woods and were never recaptured). A few of the slaves chose not to immigrate to Liberia and remained enslaved, as workers in the existing house (built in 1854) or in the adjacent cotton fields.<br />
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The Conservancy is asking for a tax deductible donation of $20 per person to help with the expenses of emergency stabilization work on the house. Anyone interested in attending should call or email to reserve the number of spots needed. Crawford noted that if someone calls and gets voicemail, their call will be returned as soon as possible. The number is 662/326-6465; email is tacsoutheast@cableone.net. <br />
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Crawford also stressed that the grounds around the house were recently mowed for the first time in five years, and some of the landscape is rough, so sensible walking shoes are recommended. And because parts of the house are badly deteriorated, a temporary entrance has been constructed for viewing the interior. <br />
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Prospect Hill is about 10 minutes east of Lorman, a 45-minute drive from Natchez, about 20 minutes from Port Gibson, and approximately an hour and a half from Jackson. Because the house is comparatively isolated, Crawford suggests that attendees either bring a picnic lunch or have lunch at the Old Country Store in Lorman. <br />
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<i>Photo by Jessica Crawford, November 2011</i>Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-67914097272795333452011-10-26T12:27:00.000-07:002011-10-26T12:39:35.297-07:00Letting go<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-og-cUfXcxh0/Tqhe__kXHUI/AAAAAAAAAlw/tT2EcDLY2JY/s1600/mardi_gras2_2_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="318" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-og-cUfXcxh0/Tqhe__kXHUI/AAAAAAAAAlw/tT2EcDLY2JY/s400/mardi_gras2_2_2.jpg" /></a></div>I had met this guy the week after Hurricane Katrina. We were on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, surveying the wreckage of historic homes. I didn’t know him well, but now he’d come to visit my home in rural Mississippi, for a party, and we’d driven to the grocery store for some last minute items. <br />
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We’d taken his car, and on the way back he drove very, very slowly, which was frustrating because I was in a hurry. My house was already full of people and many more would be arriving later in the day, and he was driving exactly as he’d driven through the debris of Beach Boulevard – about 10 mph, though we were now on a wide-open country road.<br />
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Finally, I said, “Do you mind if I drive?” He said OK, so I took the wheel. I don’t remember pulling over to make the switch. Why would I? What mattered was that I was in control. At the next turn – the next-to-last before the drive to my house, I suddenly began to feel disoriented. The world looked unfamiliar. It felt like I’d made a wrong turn, though I’d made the trip thousands of times. I wondered if I was having a seizure or suffering some kind of flashback, or – what? I didn’t know. <br />
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The road seemed to unfurl forever, and as I became increasingly unsure of myself, I saw something even more perplexing: We were coming into a town, at a place that should have been open countryside. At that point I became more suspicious than concerned. It occurred to me that I might be dreaming. <br />
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As I drove through the unfamiliar town -- which was fairly busy, with lots of people in the streets, coming in and out of gas stations, hardware stores, a small factory of some kind, the Wal-Mart -- I looked for any sign of its name. There were signs everywhere but none that sounded like the name of the town. I mentioned to the Katrina guy that I’d never seen the town before, and didn’t understand how we’d gotten there. It looked like someplace in, maybe, east Texas. He didn’t seem at all concerned. I told him to keep an eye out for a sign that might tell us where we were. Then I glanced at the backseat and saw my friend Paul, who lives in New York City, and who I hadn’t realized was with us. Though it made sense that he’d be coming to the party, the fact that I hadn’t known he was in the car made me more inclined to think I was dreaming, which of course I was. <br />
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It’s an odd feeling, to recognize that what seems real isn’t. Naturally, you resist, at first. The first time I remember realizing I was dreaming I was 15 years old, driving with my friends in my mother’s Impala. It was a beautiful summer evening and one of my friends suggested I put the top down, so I did. As we drove, with the wind tousling our hair, it dawned on me that my mother’s car was not a convertible. The only explanation was that I was dreaming. I mentioned this to my friends in the car, who were skeptical and, ultimately, annoyed. “Are you saying I’m not really here?” one of them asked. That was exactly what I was saying, I said. “That’s bullshit,” he said.<br />
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Now, as I drove the unfamiliar streets of the seeming east Texas town, I mentioned the convertible dream to Paul and the Katrina guy. I said I know it sounds weird but I think I may be dreaming now. The Katrina guy just shrugged, and continued eyeing the signs, but Paul gave me this distressed look, then vanished. He didn’t want to be a character in someone else’s dream, I guess. Oh, well, I thought. See you back in the waking world! <br />
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About that time I noticed an outdoor market up ahead, so I pulled in. I told the Katrina guy I was going to see if I could find a newspaper or something – read the headlines, find a date, just to verify whether this was real. He waited in the car. I approached a stand selling “antique” items – mostly junk, really, which included old newspapers. Here was a stroke of dream-mind brilliance, I thought. There was no way to prove or disprove that this was a dream, based on the newspapers. My mind was trying to trick itself, in plain view. I thought of asking the guy who ran the stand for the date, but it seemed kind of weird to, and anyway he was waiting on customers. So I went back to the car and we drove on. The Katrina guy didn’t even ask if I’d discovered anything. He was, I suppose, the perfect dream-mate.<br />
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Down a narrow side street we came upon a river – a very wide river, like the Mississippi. There were many oddly narrow pedestrian promenades angling off from the river, which was flooded. Every river in my dreams is flooded, for some reason, so this was familiar territory. OK, I said, now I know I’m dreaming. I’m sure of it. The street we were on descended into the floodwaters up ahead, remained submerged for a short distance, then returned to dry land. I decided to test my theory and drive into the water. The Katrina guy was alarmed, and put his hand out in front of me, as if to stop me, but I said, Don’t worry, if I’m dreaming we’ll be just fine, and if not, I’ll stop before the water gets too deep. I drove into deep water and kept going. I passed another car, also driving on the river. The Katrina guy got excited when I told him we could do whatever we wanted now -- we didn’t have to worry, because it was a dream. We could fly over buildings if we wanted to – something I’d done numerous times before. I was curious, though, what the dream was going to be about, and was repeatedly thwarted in my efforts to find out. I’ve always assumed that dreams are mechanisms for the brain to explore hypotheticals without repercussion, to help us sort through potential scenarios in our waking lives. For my purposes, however, this resulted in all sorts of dream obstacles. The Katrina guy seemed to be having a good time, even if it was a dream, but he soon vanished, too. I didn’t really notice until I found myself alone, on foot, in an abandoned factory, trying to find my way out. <br />
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At this point the dream seemed intent on capturing me, though I knew I was dreaming. Each door I passed through deposited me into an anteroom with another door. It sounds like a potential nightmare, but because I knew I was dreaming I felt a measure of control. Every door opened when I turned the knob. After several passages I realized I was in the middle of a sequence, and I began to count. I was up to seven doors when the last one opened into the sunshine. Once outside, I saw an interesting scene across the street: Some guys working on a water main, talking with a pretty, flirtatious woman. I decided to snap a picture with my cell phone, in part because I still had some minor doubts about whether I was dreaming, and I’d noticed in the past that using my cell phone – including its camera -- was a maddeningly frustrating dream endeavor. Sure enough, though the picture-taking seemed to go OK at first, the screen on my cell phone was unfamiliar and the camera kept snapping pictures before I was ready. Sloppy dream-direction, I thought. <br />
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Thus chastened, my dream-mind attempted to exert more control. I walked purposefully back to the truck and got in, drove a short distance, and arrived at my house, which, predictably, was full of guests. Even though I knew I was dreaming, I expected this to be awkward. Not many people like being told they aren’t real, and anything can happen in a dream. A series of frustrating misfires followed. An old girlfriend, waiting for me in bed, asked for a cup of coffee, and when I went into the kitchen I found I couldn’t make any because another woman was using the coffee maker to make some kind of herbal tea, etc. Predictable dream complications. As I waited for the woman to finish, someone asked me to help move some chairs, and a few new guests arrived, and before I knew it, a long time had passed. <br />
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Considering that I was at least marginally in control of the setting, and of the unfolding plot, it struck me as odd that I was running into so many problems. If I was dreaming and knew it, why couldn’t I just dispense with the complications? Probably because the complications were the point. I believe dreams can be both psychic and psychiatric exercise, so I am always aware that my control is tenuous. For that matter, even controlling my waking thoughts is sometimes tenuous. Introduce a night-bird that my sleeping ears interprets as the voice of Satan in a dream, which continues to call out after I awake, and all bets are off. In a very profound way, we are all subject to our own dreams.<br />
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As I tried to deal with a swelling crowd of imaginary guests, I fiddled with my cell phone, determined that if I could freely move between the waking and the dream world I should be able to find a way to create a record of it – to bridge the gap. This, alas, is how my sleeping mind often occupies itself. It tries to take notes, and even photographs, of an imagined world. It’s hopeless, but I often spend what seems like hours, even days, during a dream, trying to create a waking record of what happened – a note scrawled in a pad on the nightstand, or spray-painted on the wall of a building that I know to be real, to which I might actually return when I’m awake. It never works, but that doesn’t stop me from trying.<br />
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In this case, I eventually gave up taking photographs and decided to mentally record what was happening, so that I’d remember the dream once I awakened. I spent the rest of the dream studiously trying to log everything that happened, escaping now and then to a rare quiet place to go over it in my head, to reconstruct everything that had happened from the moment when the Katrina guy was driving to the moment at hand, so I’d be able to review the dream when I was awake, for clues. This is what passes for rest, in my world. This post is the inevitable result. Even in my dreams, I cannot let go.<br />
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Dreams are so rich and have such an authentic feeling that scientists have long assumed they must have a crucial psychological purpose, as an article I later read in the New York Times observed. “To Freud, dreaming provided a playground for the unconscious mind; to Jung, it was a stage where the psyche’s archetypes acted out primal themes. Newer theories hold that dreams help the brain to consolidate emotional memories or to work though current problems, like divorce and work frustrations.” OK, the judges will accept that.<br />
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The article cited a paper published in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience by a psychiatrist and sleep researcher named Dr. J. Allan Hobson, who argued that the main function of rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM (when most dreaming occurs) is to warm the brain’s circuits for the sights and sounds and emotions of waking. “It helps explain a lot of things, like why people forget so many dreams,” Hobson said. “It’s like jogging; the body doesn’t remember every step, but it knows it has exercised. It has been tuned up. It’s the same idea here: Dreams are tuning the mind for conscious awareness.”<br />
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Psychics often claim that dreams are a delivery mechanism for messages from other worlds, and who’s to say they aren’t? I’ve gotten messages from dead loved ones in my dreams, some of which turned out to be true, and which I hadn’t known about before. Psychiatrists have also speculated that dreams are how the brain sorts out its own issues, on its own time. Hobson’s position is that dreaming is a parallel state of consciousness that is continually running but suppressed during waking. If that’s the case, I suppose it’s possible that dreaming is all of those things.<br />
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Another neurologist-physiologist cited in the article, Dr. Rodolfo Llinás, countered that dreaming is not a parallel state but is consciousness itself, in the absence of input from the senses. Once people are awake, he argued, their brain essentially revises its dream images to match what it sees, hears and feels -- the dreams are “corrected” by the senses.<br />
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In evolutionary terms, according to the Times, REM appears to be a recent development; it is detectable in humans and other warm-blooded mammals and birds. “Studies” suggest that REM makes its appearance very early in life -- in the third trimester for humans, well before a developing child has experience or imagery to fill out a dream. “None of this is to say that dreams are devoid of meaning,” the Times noted. “Anyone who can remember a vivid dream knows that at times the strange nighttime scenes reflect real hopes and anxieties: The young teacher who finds himself naked at the lectern; the new mother in front of an empty crib, frantic in her imagined loss.” <br />
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According to the article, “research suggests that only about 20 percent of dreams contain people or places that the dreamer has encountered. Most images appear to be unique to a single dream.” That is most assuredly not the case with me – my dreams have frequent, recurring sets and guest stars, sometimes over the course of years, whom I have never met in my waking life. The scientists claim to know that most dream characters are one-time walk-ons “because some people have the ability to watch their own dreams as observers, without waking up,” the Times reported, at which point I began to feel a now-wakeful sense of disorientation. As an intra-dream observer, I should not be hosting those recurring characters. All of which tells me that if you want answers about dreaming, you’re just as likely to find them in a popular dream-interpretation book. Still, the subject is interesting, particularly when reading about it on the heels of a vivid dream. <br />
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The Times continued: “This state of consciousness, called lucid dreaming, is itself something a mystery — and a staple of New Age and ancient mystics. But it is a real phenomenon, one in which Dr. Hobson finds strong support for his argument for dreams as a physiological warm-up before waking.” In dozens of studies, according to the article, researchers have brought people into sleep laboratories and trained them to dream lucidly. “They do this with a variety of techniques, including auto-suggestion as head meets pillow (‘I will be aware when I dream; I will observe’) and teaching telltale signs of dreaming (the light switches don’t work; levitation is possible; it is often impossible to scream).”<br />
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Those same sleep researchers contend that lucid dreaming occurs during a mixed state of consciousness, -- “a heavy dose of REM with a sprinkling of waking awareness,” according to the article. Sleepwalking and night terrors, Hobson said, represent mixtures of muscle activation and non-REM sleep. Attacks of narcolepsy reflect an infringement of REM on normal daytime alertness. And what to make of someone, like me, who sleepwalks, has occasional night terrors, and is often aware that he is dreaming? The article didn’t say. Hobson’s point is that those two consciousnesses are separate systems that can operate simultaneously, which begs the question: If a person can be awake enough to recognize he’s dreaming, is the converse true? Could he be awake yet not recognize he’s drifting off into a dream world? Sort of?<br />
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Sure enough, the article noted that people who struggle with schizophrenia suffer delusions of unknown origin, but Hobson suggested such flights of imagination may be related to an abnormal activation of a dreaming consciousness. “‘Let the dreamer awake, and you will see psychosis,’ as Jung said,” the Times noted.<br />
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“For everyone else, the idea of dreams as a kind of sound check for the brain may bring some comfort, as well,” the article reported. “That ominous dream of people gathered on the lawn for some strange party? Probably meaningless. No reason to scream, even if it were possible.” To which I say: Try telling that to someone who has lost control of their dream, for whom the succession of doors in the anterooms ceases to open. <br />
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In my own dream, I eventually left the party that I had virtually thrown but had never quite controlled (even in the dream sense), and decided to go for a run, which is always fun in my dreams because each step spans 10 feet or more and I have boundless energy. As I ran through a darkened city (another familiar landscape in my dreams), I eventually came upon another man, a walker who began to run, too, as I passed. I was singing aloud – this was my dream, so why shouldn’t I? – an original REM song that I was inventing as I went along. I know: REM. Rapid Eye Movement, logically filed beside the band REM in the recesses of my brain. I was enjoying the song because it was at once REM’s and mine. I’d never heard it before. Then, as I ran with the new, unidentified runner beside me, he began to sing along. Eventually I ran out of words – I couldn’t “remember” what I in fact was inventing – but he continued on, singing multiple stanzas. I have no idea who he was – I would have preferred Michael Stipe, but it was his song now, transferred from a hodgepodge of REM sound bites stored in my brain, through my own consciousness, through my dream, to him, an imaginary character who knew more about what was in my brain than I did. <br />
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Whatever; finally, I was happy to let go. I let him sing the song, though in a sense it was actually me who was doing the singing, through an imagined character. By then, I guess, the dream had accomplished what it set out to do. My brain had the sensation that it was letting go. When I awoke, I felt at rest, and only wished I’d found a way to write the lyrics down.Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-15023897541773788542011-10-20T13:12:00.001-07:002021-09-27T06:21:01.420-07:00The intruderAlan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-5862794082788058742011-09-20T12:04:00.000-07:002011-09-22T06:20:37.710-07:00A world with no mosquitoes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cqKFspSaBCo/TnjjtHk25cI/AAAAAAAAAhY/28fhYLiMalk/s1600/anopheles-mosquito%2Bfrm%2BNGeo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cqKFspSaBCo/TnjjtHk25cI/AAAAAAAAAhY/28fhYLiMalk/s320/anopheles-mosquito%2Bfrm%2BNGeo.jpg" /></a></div>A homeless guy who set up camp down the road from my place in Mississippi suffered what I suspect was, at least partly, a mosquito-borne psychosis. The consensus among the neighbors was that he had simply lost his mind. But losing your mind is never a simple matter -- a mind has to go someplace to get lost, and if, whenever it gets there, it finds its body tormented by mosquitoes, 24 hours a day, it’s liable to do far crazier things than it might otherwise have done. <br />
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I’m talking about a guy standing alone in the woods shouting, “God-damn it! Quit! Quit!” for hours on end, so that a synaptically stable person who lived within earshot came out of his house one morning, heard it and noted: Meltdown. When the person who lived in the house returned from the grocery store several hours later, he observed that the rant was still going on; even later, as he sat on the sofa watching TV, he realized (during the brief lull in the audio), that the voice yet cried in the wilderness; it did so deep into the night. <br />
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I wouldn’t disagree that the guy’s behavior was, for lack of a better word, crazy, and there had been plenty of other signs and portents. But one day, when the incessant buzzing of mosquitoes in my ears drove me to my own tiny breaking point, and I began shouting at them, I thought of him and wondered. <br />
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Another neighbor had reported hearing endless counting in the vicinity of the homeless guy’s sad little camp, much like chants, going up into the thousands, for hours on end. Was this, I wondered, perhaps a manic enumeration of mosquitoes? Whether the mosquito mania was cause or effect is hard to say, but sitting alone in the woods for days on end, with nothing to do, is one thing, and doing so while being eaten alive by mosquitoes is another.<br />
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I never had a chance to confirm my suspicions about the homeless guy’s breaking point – the sheriff’s deputies eventually escorted him off the property. But I'm pretty confident about the role mosquitoes played in pushing him, if not over the edge, at least into a realm that most of us fortunately never go. People tend to want to distance themselves from his sort of behavior, and rightly so. It’s like wanting a screened porch. If you knew about this person, you would feel sorry for him, but you would not likely attempt to intervene. That’s what deputies with Kevlar vests and loudspeakers are for.<br />
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The homeless guy spent the entire summer squatting on someone else’s property, without even a tent. It was a long, hot summer, most of it with relatively low mosquito activity, owing to a drought, but it was bookended by the inevitable counterbalance – droves of mosquitoes that were basically looting the world, with nothing to lose. By the end of August they were emerging from high-mortality conditions and no doubt instinctively knew they were headed, in a few short months (a lifetime for a mosquito) into colder weather. Once they got the moisture they needed to reproduce, they began dive-bombing every living thing. <br />
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For those of you who do not already know, because you are, what? school children? I should point out that when I refer to “mosquitoes” I’m talking about the females, which are the ones that bite. As a result of what seems a creator’s oversight, the females need more protein than they can generate on their own to develop their eggs, and the only way for them to get it is by stealing it. I suppose you could argue that we steal protein, too, from cows and tofu and so forth, but at least we build things, right? Mosquitoes take and take and appear to give nothing in return, which is another reason to hate them, if we needed one. One wonders: Is their dreadful buzzing and biting really necessary, from a cosmic perspective? Someone (me) innocently emerges from his house, planning only to take out the garbage, and therefore has not bothered to slather on ridiculous amounts of Deep Woods Off; is this really reason for parasitic party time?<br />
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I’m into the whole positive and negative forces of the universe thing. I understand that you have to have the good and the bad. God needs Satan, and the feeling is mutual. But sometimes the balance seems to tilt too far in one direction, which appears very much to be the case with mosquitoes. Normally, nature doesn’t like it when any one organism triumphs too well. The natural response is to strike the victor down. Why is that not the case with… vectors?<br />
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Seriously, this September. I have never seen the like of mosquitoes in Mississippi. It’s not possible to go outside at my house, which, admittedly, stands near the confluence of two sluggish creeks, without being bitten. If you spray yourself down with bug repellent they go after your eyes and lips and into your ear canals. Forget peeing outside. I love summer, and don’t mind when it’s 100 degrees and 90 percent humidity outside, but at times like this the idea of a frost holds certain attractions. And I say that knowing that “we need a hard freeze to kill the bugs” is total nonsense – it doesn’t work. Even after we get hit by one of those “Arctic clippers” that keep the weather channel people engorged between tornado outbreaks, when the temperature goes down to 14 degrees and everyone’s pipes freeze, two days later it’s 70 degrees and the mosquitoes are back at it. They apparently have places they can go, unlike the homeless guy down the road.<br />
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To put this September in context, it was extremely dry in July and August, and after a tropical storm came through and dumped a foot of rain on us, everywhere became an emergency mosquito breeding ground. Wedged between protracted drought and inevitable colder weather, they went on a hedonistic binge, which required blood, and lots of it. Their behavior reminded me of how bad the mosquitoes sometimes get on Horn Island, out in the Gulf, where, when you step ashore with your attractively exposed and remarkably thin skin, word quickly spreads among a population that must otherwise stick its probosci into animals protected by fur, feathers or hides that are used in the manufacture of handbags and cowboy boots. You, in your board shorts, are a mosquito’s dream come true.<br />
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At Holly Grove, therefore, retrieving something from the woods behind the garage – a den of unparalleled mosquito fervor – means putting on a rain coat, with a hood, when there isn’t a cloud in the sky, and meanwhile withdrawing your hands into the sleeves, like children do. Even then, you’re liable to get bitten on the nose. <br />
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My dog, whose name is Girl, spends her days lying or walking in a cloud of mosquitoes, her coat frightfully adorned with scores of them at any given moment. She is a veritable moveable feast. I’ve tried spraying her with Off, too, because it’s an awful sight to see, this unchecked mosquito-feeding upon your dog, but all that’s accomplished is to make her run from me when she sees me with the can. In order to pet Girl Dog I have to let her into the house, which is not so attractive for her as it normally would be, because I have to wave my hands over her and hurry her along to disperse the hordes of mosquitoes and prevent her from escorting them inside. Even when I’m outside, slathered with Off, and see Girl Dog approaching, I dread her getting near because I know what attends her. Sometimes, in fact, the tiny universe of mosquitoes gets to me before she does. I have, on occasion, when walking to my truck, resorted to running to avoid being repeatedly bitten, and once safely inside, have heard the tiny menacing sound of mosquitoes tapping on the glass. Seriously: There is such a sound. It’s insane, which is why I felt especially sorry for the homeless guy, and also why I decided to do some internet research to find out what it would be like if there were no more mosquitoes in the world, forever and ever amen. <br />
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Would that be a bad thing – the disappearance of mosquitoes, which are, you know, one of God’s creations, etc.? I know it would be nice for us, but I also know about what biologists refer to as the “web of life,” and the interconnectivity of species, and how if you remove one thing (even if it is, to us, a bad thing), it can have dangerous consequences for everything else. Like, if you got rid of all the snakes, you’d be overrun with mice and rats and thus, the plague. Every single thing plays a role. But, I wondered, would it be worth sacrificing a few good things, if that’s what it took, to rid the world of mosquitoes? I mean, if something has to go extinct, could it not be them?<br />
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You could argue, as some biologists do, that mosquitoes provide food for birds, or whatever, or even that, like viruses, they keep various populations in check, including ours. But if you argued that, who would vote for you? Even biologists who study mosquitoes, who’ve formed their professional identities around them, and make money from studying them, tend to admit that they’re basically a bad thing. These are people who submit tranquilized mice to captive mosquitoes, which then drain the mice of their blood, for science. The mosquitoes, by the way, would do the same to you if you sat out in the woods long enough. They would actually suck you dry.<br />
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The best source of information I found online for fantasizing about a world without mosquitoes – anopheles snuff porn, if you will – was an article in the July 2010 issue of Nature magazine titled “A World Without Mosquitoes,” which summarized its findings this way: “Eradicating any organism would have serious consequences for ecosystems — wouldn't it? Not when it comes to mosquitoes, finds Janet Fang.”<br />
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Fang. OK. The author.<br />
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What Janet Fang found, among other things, was that a scientist at Maryland’s Walter Reed Army Institute of Research actually raises mosquitoes, feeding the larvae ground-up fish food and offering “gravid females” blood to suck from the bellies of unconscious mice — they drain 24 of the rodents a month, and who (the scientist) has been studying mosquitoes for 20 years, yet “would rather they were wiped off the Earth.” The last part serves as a reminder that the scientist is, in the end, comprised of flesh and blood. One wonders if she’s ever tempted to open the door to her mosquito chamber and bomb it with Raid.<br />
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The scientist’s sentiment, Fang writes, “is widely shared,” if for no other reason than that malaria, which is borne by mosquitoes, infects some 247 million people worldwide each year, and kills nearly one million. Mosquitoes also spread yellow fever, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, something with the catchy name of Chikungunya virus, and West Nile virus. Plus, in the Arctic, mosquitoes form swarms thick enough to asphyxiate caribou.<br />
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If, by magic, the world’s 3,500 species of mosquitoes (only “a couple of hundred” of which bite or otherwise bother humans) disappeared, the drawbacks would be largely acceptable, according to the article. Sure, some insects, birds and fish would lose a food source, and some plants would not get pollinated, but the consensus seems to be: So, what?<br />
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As the Nature article notes, “in many cases, scientists acknowledge that the ecological scar left by a missing mosquito would heal quickly as the niche was filled by other organisms. Life would continue as before — or even better.” I should point out that there’s a hidden message in that statement, which is that if mosquitoes disappeared, something else would start biting us just as bad. Insect ecologist Steven Juliano, of Illinois State University, in Normal, told Fang that when it comes to the major disease vectors, it’s difficult to see what the downside would be to the removal of mosquitoes, other than what he characterized as “collateral damage.” <br />
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“Collateral damage” is a freighted term, if ever there was one, and no doubt some scientists would disagree with the Normal guy’s assessment. A world that is safer for humans is not necessarily a stronger world, after all. But for most of us the disappearance of every last mosquito on Earth would, not surprisingly, be viewed as pretty good news. <br />
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The article also quotes a North Carolina entomologist who observed that without mosquitoes the number of migratory birds which nest in the tundras of the far North could be cut in half, due to the loss of a primary food source. The article does offer a disclaimer that some scientists believe the seasonal abundance of mosquitoes in the tundra – and thus, their importance as a food source for wildlife -- may be overestimated, for the simple reason that they’re so annoyingly attracted to us. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the mosquitoes, in other words.<br />
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Among the potential ramifications of a theoretical worldwide mosquito eradication, perhaps the most interesting involves those caribou herds, which are thought to select their migratory paths facing into the wind for the purpose of escaping mosquito swarms. As the article notes, “A small change in path can have major consequences in an Arctic valley through which thousands of caribou migrate, trampling the ground, eating lichens, transporting nutrients, feeding wolves, and generally altering the ecology. Taken all together, then, mosquitoes would be missed in the Arctic — but is the same true elsewhere?”<br />
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Well, yes, in fact. Some species of fish would likely go extinct without mosquitoes, according to the article, including the appropriately named mosquito fish (Gambusia affinis), which would cause a ripple effect throughout the food chain. Many species of birds, insects, spiders, salamanders, lizards and frogs would also lose a primary food source. This would happen, basically, all over the world. Mosquitoes breed everywhere there is moisture, with some needing stagnant bodies of water but others requiring only a puddle in a tree stump or an old tire, or even the moisture that condenses on the undersides of leaves. Mosquitoes feed on decaying leaves, organic detritus and microorganisms, and they can do their thing in a very short time, such as during the brief summers of the otherwise frozen North.<br />
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One scientist quoted in the article agreed that despite the downsides, other organisms would fill the void if mosquitoes disappeared, and offered the not-entirely-reassuring analogy that, “If you pop one rivet out of an airplane's wing, it’s unlikely that the plane will cease to fly.” Still, some of the downsides would be impossible to predict. As a New Jersey scientist pointed out, people would also love to get rid of biting midges commonly called no-see-ums, but if that happened, tropical crops of cacao would no longer get pollinated, which, perhaps more alarmingly than the specter of a planet losing one of its wing-rivets, “would result in a world without chocolate.”<br />
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Obviously, the ramifications of planet-wide mosquitocide are debatable. As Fang notes, mosquitoes provide an ideal route for the spread of pathogenic microbes, yet those, too, are crucial to that pesky web of life. In the end, the ecological effect of eliminating harmful mosquitoes would be: More people. “Many lives would be saved; many more would no longer be sapped by disease,” Fang concludes. So: Good for us, and probably bad for the planet.<br />
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It’s interesting to think about, but that’s all we’re going to do. Planetary mosquito eradication is not going to happen. Mosquitoes are incomparably adaptable, due to their fecundity and short life spans -- that much we know. But it doesn’t stop us from imagining a world from which they are gone, or of trying to eliminate them from areas nearby. <br />
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I remember, as a child, the excitement I and my friends felt when we heard the approaching sound of the compressor on “the mosquito man’s truck,” which, on certain summer evenings, filled the city’s neighborhoods with a thick, white cloud of pungent insecticide. The sound of the mosquito man’s truck was more thrilling even than the tunes emitted by the ice cream truck when it made its presence known a block away. We enjoying running behind the truck, getting lost in the cloud, to emerge, perhaps, on another street, unsure where we were, our respiratory tracts filled with nervous toxins. No one seemed to care about the health risks back then, our only admonition being that we not get hit by cars as we ran into and out of the cloud.<br />
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Eventually, due to studies which showed that whatever insecticide was in that fog was harmful to the environment, the mix was changed and the mosquito man’s truck began emitting a clear, boring mist. We sat on our porches and watched the disappointing specter pass us by. At least there were no mosquitoes.<br />
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A friend of mine recently told me that he had a new anti-mosquito misting system installed in the eaves of his house, which periodically releases a non-toxic, natural mosquito repellant, which works very well, though only if you’re on the porch or nearby. Chemical insect repellent is likewise only moderately effective, and feels pretty gross. And scientists tell us that bug zappers – those black-light contraptions that people install by their patios, are not only ineffective at controlling mosquitoes but may kill far more beneficial insects, including some that feed on mosquitoes and their larvae. Not that people with bug zappers care. In the endless conflict between us and them, it is enough, apparently, to hear that zap and imagine that there’s one less tiny, insistent, buzzing menace in the crazy, mixed-up world.<br />
<br />
<i>Photo originally published in</i> National Geographic.Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-10556454396432321972011-09-18T22:01:00.000-07:002011-12-17T12:03:16.152-08:00Author photos<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YnHQhFqNjpQ/TnbdM8NawCI/AAAAAAAAAfw/2EHkq4j6zf4/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="168" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YnHQhFqNjpQ/TnbdM8NawCI/AAAAAAAAAfw/2EHkq4j6zf4/s200/images.jpeg" /></a></div>There are two tasks that most writers detest: Pitching story ideas to publishers, and having their author photos made. The former will always be with us; the latter is something that rears its head periodically, dragging with it the weight of years that have somehow failed to steel the author's invariably sensitive ego, which is now charged with publicly personifying both itself and its creation, the book, for skeptical shoppers and for posterity. Vanity, is what it is. Although, I must say, this elderly gent doesn't seem to mind it one bit, and he pulls it off pretty well.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8A8DBlc3DFg/TnbRhqb-BRI/AAAAAAAAAeo/Zt4S-VHoJgE/s1600/images-9.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="194" width="166" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8A8DBlc3DFg/TnbRhqb-BRI/AAAAAAAAAeo/Zt4S-VHoJgE/s200/images-9.jpeg" /></a></div>Who shall I be? The pensive author, perusing a book (inevitably, his own), sitting at a desk, refillable ink pen in hand, musing at a computer monitor or, in olden days, a typewriter? Chin resting on the palm of his hand in a paneled study? Glance around the room, surely there’s a pipe in there somewhere. But wait, this guy's actually using one for a prop, still.<br />
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Also, those look suspiciously not like books on the shelf behind him, which makes you wonder what he's staring at.<br />
<br />
It's possible to pull off the reflective author with pipe thing, of course. This guy did it pretty well -- in fact <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LlSWBZlGrjI/TndJDqkOKgI/AAAAAAAAAhI/QMqF7Eq-rs4/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="157" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LlSWBZlGrjI/TndJDqkOKgI/AAAAAAAAAhI/QMqF7Eq-rs4/s200/images.jpeg" /></a></div>he's probably got 10 author photos where he's holding the stereotypical prop. It appears to have been a kind of branding, but considering that he's the greatest writer in American history, to date, I guess we should give him a pass.<br />
<br />
Then there's the glossy head-shot, with all it evokes about success, but not to the point of implying inaccessibility. Everyone is attracted to good-looking people, right? So long as they don't appear to be overly aware of their good looks. This one works, I think, though it may simply be because she's so pretty.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CeW-PGRBqkY/TnbShnw8uUI/AAAAAAAAAew/D2YbRN9A1A0/s1600/images-2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="151" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CeW-PGRBqkY/TnbShnw8uUI/AAAAAAAAAew/D2YbRN9A1A0/s200/images-2.jpeg" /></a></div>There’s the happy author, the offbeat author, the serious author, the author "in the field," the author posing with his dog, each with their own special lighting, backdrops and facial expressions. And what to wear? You dress like a writer, which is to say, your clothes say very little. <br />
<br />
But I keep coming back to... the hand, used as a prop, literally. Lots and lots of those.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Tp3AI-rENg8/TnbUZHTgOnI/AAAAAAAAAfI/4SbPPt9P6SA/s1600/images-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="156" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Tp3AI-rENg8/TnbUZHTgOnI/AAAAAAAAAfI/4SbPPt9P6SA/s200/images-1.jpeg" /></a></div>The updating of the author photo is now upon me and the co-author of my next book, Michael Rejebian, and though the photographer we used had an original take, and chose a suitably decadent venue – an abandoned building in the ruined Farish Street neighborhood of Jackson, Miss., she could not quite overcome my distaste for posing for author photos, and it shows. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A47PRYzjk2g/TnbWEzvn6UI/AAAAAAAAAfQ/sGNf9vJPL3g/s1600/AH047_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="221" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A47PRYzjk2g/TnbWEzvn6UI/AAAAAAAAAfQ/sGNf9vJPL3g/s320/AH047_2.jpg" /></a></div>In most of my author photos I am borderline morose. This one is actually my slightly happy pose. Also, I’m staring away from the camera, as if to say… what? That I don’t know my picture is being taken?<br />
<br />
For my first author photo I used a picture taken by my friend Nancy Goldman on the occasion of my 40th birthday trip to Italy. It was a truly candid shot, taken by someone I liked, at a happy time. That’s why it worked so well, right up to the point that at a signing for my book Mississippi in Africa, in 2003, someone asked, in passing, “When was this picture of you taken?” The only possible subtext of the question was that it did <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-402stVqpsIM/TndL6wl-5AI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/FCEiXyqiDEM/s1600/1%2Bfirst%2Bmug.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="152" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-402stVqpsIM/TndL6wl-5AI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/FCEiXyqiDEM/s200/1%2Bfirst%2Bmug.jpg" /></a></div>not appear to have been taken yesterday. I had to face the fact that as much as I liked to think so, I no longer looked precisely as I had looked just eight years before. I didn’t even know, until the question was asked, that it had been that long. <br />
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This is how you get those occasional obituaries in the newspaper where someone who died at age 92 looks, in the photo, as if he wasn’t a day past 40. He just didn't like most of the pictures taken during the last 52 years of his life. <br />
<br />
Thus chastened, I arranged to reshoot the Mississippi in Africa author photo for the first paperback edition, using something more “up-to-date.” James Patterson, a very skilled photographer in Jackson, took a series of photos that he and his then-assistant pronounced really wonderful, but in which, I couldn’t help but observe, I looked considerably older than the 27-year-old I still saw myself as. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LJOcr6LGhqI/Tnbco4tzHUI/AAAAAAAAAfo/gudPbgrZkWw/s1600/Sultana%2Bauthor%2Bphoto_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="224" width="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LJOcr6LGhqI/Tnbco4tzHUI/AAAAAAAAAfo/gudPbgrZkWw/s320/Sultana%2Bauthor%2Bphoto_2.jpg" /></a></div>Next up, the author photo for my book Sultana, taken by a photog friend in New York City, Everett McCourt. It's artistic and striking, but I look a bit ill. Also, I appear to be as grave as a monk -- actually an appropriate look, I suppose, for the author of a book in which thousands of people die, but still. <br />
<br />
For the upcoming book, We're With Nobody, I needed to look the opposite of morose, because the book is both serious and funny – quirky, even. But in this effort I was thwarted by the photo-shoot dynamic, in which I appear to be very studiously considering what I look like, to the detriment of how I look. <br />
<br />
So I went back to James, who had taken a series of photos at my house for a magazine article, and offered to let me use any of them for my author photo, gratis. For the purposes of the upcoming book, I’d have actually rather gone with something less mainstream, such as the next one you see, below. But at a certain point trying to look “different” speaks to a familiar paradigm – look how little I seem to care about the paradigm of author publicity photos, even as I artificially showcase my face for an author publicity photo. Also, I think this photo is about eight years old now, too. And one of my eyes is open a little wider than the other.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3rcvLOmYDB8/TnbiHpLo-CI/AAAAAAAAAg4/_6fpVifOzf8/s1600/IMG_1868_2_2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3rcvLOmYDB8/TnbiHpLo-CI/AAAAAAAAAg4/_6fpVifOzf8/s400/IMG_1868_2_2.JPG" /></a></div><br />
It could be worse, I guess. You could always come off looking strange, like these people who turned up during a Google search of "author photos:"<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tnJ2K07Dulc/Tnbgm8sL8II/AAAAAAAAAgY/t0fPjze8eCE/s1600/images-8.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="258" width="196" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tnJ2K07Dulc/Tnbgm8sL8II/AAAAAAAAAgY/t0fPjze8eCE/s400/images-8.jpeg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--j7hwPBAARg/Tnbgu3zhz2I/AAAAAAAAAgg/maJV7-e8JmY/s1600/images-7.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="275" width="184" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--j7hwPBAARg/Tnbgu3zhz2I/AAAAAAAAAgg/maJV7-e8JmY/s400/images-7.jpeg" /></a></div><br />
Or just, not someone whose book you'd want to read.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-olv3VXbIg4E/Tnbg48kGyJI/AAAAAAAAAgo/-6ykIuNhoSU/s1600/images-10.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="275" width="183" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-olv3VXbIg4E/Tnbg48kGyJI/AAAAAAAAAgo/-6ykIuNhoSU/s400/images-10.jpeg" /></a></div><br />
But there's always the possibility that you'll look cool, middle aged <i>and</i> appropriate to the subject matter, such as my friend Sebastian, who's got a lot to work with.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SlEKZJNrS2o/Tnbha2h0b7I/AAAAAAAAAgw/Z9zeGC-gAr4/s1600/images-11.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="194" width="259" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SlEKZJNrS2o/Tnbha2h0b7I/AAAAAAAAAgw/Z9zeGC-gAr4/s400/images-11.jpeg" /></a></div><br />
In the end, I’m thinking of going with this one, taken by James, but I go back and forth. I'm still not looking at the camera, but at least I'm not morose, or weird, and I'm not propping my head up with my hand. Plus, 10 years from now, it’ll look young to me.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cOsLWJDOy8g/Tnbelo0GxgI/AAAAAAAAAf4/SMl9DoM6q_0/s1600/DSC_5331.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="266" width="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cOsLWJDOy8g/Tnbelo0GxgI/AAAAAAAAAf4/SMl9DoM6q_0/s400/DSC_5331.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Like I said, it's all about purposeful vanity. I've posted a note about the process of selecting a photo of myself, as if you should care, and used it as an excuse to highlight various photos of myself, in none of which does my bald spot show. That is one more reason why this is such a distasteful task. I need you to like my photo.<br />
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This is Michael, by the way, having his author photo shot by Christina Cannon:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i8YcKszm4HA/TnbmSPcvvwI/AAAAAAAAAhA/E5wotuqPmtA/s1600/0525111836a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i8YcKszm4HA/TnbmSPcvvwI/AAAAAAAAAhA/E5wotuqPmtA/s400/0525111836a.jpg" /></a></div><br />
All of us, when we see ourselves in a photo with a group of people, our eyes invariably land on our own image first. We care how the world sees us, and I can assure you that it's even worse when you need to personify a product that you very much want the world to buy.Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-64530999457801069962011-09-18T07:00:00.000-07:002011-09-18T07:48:25.063-07:00Writing, and the Like<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZAr6Ex1fNJk/TnX3-W0R45I/AAAAAAAAAdo/nP5nuvz4no0/s1600/0315111155_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZAr6Ex1fNJk/TnX3-W0R45I/AAAAAAAAAdo/nP5nuvz4no0/s400/0315111155_2.jpg" /></a></div>As some of you know, my next book, co-authored with Michael Rejebian, is about doing opposition political research across the U.S., and will be published by HarperCollins in January. <br />
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As part of the publicity effort for the book, our publicist has given us a homework assignment: To expand the reader base of my existing online sites, as well as to create a new website and Facebook page for Michael and me that's specifically about the new book, to generate buzz.<br />
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If you're like me, you may be a bit resistant to promotional use of Facebook, and if that's the case, feel free to disregard the notification you may receive asking you to "like" the "Alan Huffman Like" page (for lack of a better term to differentiate it from my personal Facebook page, which is also, logically but a bit confusingly, called "Alan Huffman"). The "like" page is where I post links to www.alanhuffman.blogspot.com, as well as updates about other articles and books I've published, author signings, related news stories, etc. <br />
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If, on the other hand, you do want to know what's going on with the new book and with my other publications, liking the Facebook page will keep you up-to-date and will meanwhile help us get the word out -- something that's pretty vital now.<br />
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Here's the link to the Alan Huffman "like" page (unfortunately, you'll have to copy and paste -- blogspot doesn't automatically convert the url to a hyperlink): <br />
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http://www.facebook.com/pages/Alan-Huffman/67586220217?sid=5134bfb0b56"><br />
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You can also link to the blogspot and Facebook updates pages from my website, www.alanhuffman.com. The blogspot page gives you the option to be a follower, if you'd prefer that route over Facebook. When the new book website and Facebook page go up, I'll post the links.Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-39787318531613376432011-09-16T17:42:00.001-07:002012-04-01T09:41:07.064-07:00Mississippi in Africa update<i></i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yvkI37muI88/TnPsWcS2x_I/AAAAAAAAAdY/hAq3JLUeqOM/s1600/Liberia%2BKaiser.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="289" width="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yvkI37muI88/TnPsWcS2x_I/AAAAAAAAAdY/hAq3JLUeqOM/s400/Liberia%2BKaiser.jpg" /></a></div>Kaiser Railey, January 2001<br />
<br />
It was a remarkable story that seemed to unravel into thin air. Several versions had been in circulation for generations -- for more than 150 years, in fact. But in each of them the screen went blank just as the plot started getting good. <br />
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That's precisely how writers find themselves in the throes of writing a book. Once I heard the story of Mississippi in Africa, I had to know how it ended. How could anyone hear that a group of slaves had emigrated from a Mississippi plantation, decades before the Civil War, to a place in Liberia called Mississippi in Africa, and not want to know what had become of them? <br />
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The plot was launched in the 1830s, when an antebellum Mississippi cotton planter and Revolutionary War veteran named Isaac Ross decreed in his will that after his daughter’s death his slaves should be freed and his plantation, called Prospect Hill, should be sold, with the proceeds used to pay the way for the freed slaves to a colony established for the purpose on the coast of West Africa, in what is now the nation of Liberia. A very weird story. I can't say, unequivocally, why Ross did what he did; you can decide for yourself by reading the book. But perhaps not surprisingly, some of his heirs were averse to the idea of selling the plantation, freeing the slaves, and paying their way “back to Africa,” in the vernacular of the times, though most of the slaves had been in America for many generations, and no doubt knew as much about the African continent as a person in Des Moines named O’Reilly knows about Ireland. <br />
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After a bitter, decade-long contest of Ross’s and his daughter’s wills by his grandson, Isaac Ross Wade, during which a slave uprising led to the burning of the Prospect Hill mansion, the death of a young girl, and the lynching of a group of slaves, approximately 300 of the slaves did immigrate to Liberia, beginning around 1845, to a parallel universe called Mississippi in Africa. A few of the slaves were not given the option to immigrate, for unknown reasons, and one family was freed outright and allowed to move to a free state in the U.S. What ultimately happened to the ones who were freed outright is still unknown; I hoped my book would spark some revelation about them, but so far, no go.<br />
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Because there were many conflicting versions of the story, I set out to find descendants of all the relevant groups in the U.S. and in Liberia. The immigrants from Prospect Hill were the largest group to settle in Liberia, a nation established by the American Colonization Society, which was comprised of abolitionists and slave holders who had different, yet strangely complementary reasons for wanting to export freed slaves. The book <i>Mississippi in Africa</i> was the result of my research; this note was prompted by a reader’s email inquiring about the people I interviewed and got to know during the course of my research. <br />
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During that research, which began in the late 1990s, I interviewed Isaac Ross’s descendants in Mississippi, most of whom were proud of his legacy of having freed his slaves (and who, in a curious twist, turned out to be both black and white); I interviewed descendants of the heirs who had contested the will, who had a decidedly different take on the story, and descendants of the slaves who had chosen to remain in Mississippi, enslaved, and, finally, of descendants of the freed slaves who had immigrated to Mississippi in Africa. <br />
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In Liberia, which was at the time mired in a bloody civil war, I found that the immigrants had largely assumed the role formerly assigned to their masters, occupying the top tier of Liberian society, and that while some had been benevolent toward those less fortunate than them, others had oppressed and even enslaved members of the indigenous population. That disparity contributed directly to the nation’s two civil wars, from 1989 to 1996 and from 1999 to 2003, illustrating that Dixie isn’t the only place where old times are not forgotten.<br />
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The Prospect Hill story became more remarkable the deeper I probed, and along the way I met a remarkable cast of characters who shed light not only on its outcome but on the complex racial dynamics and cultural legacy of Ross’s actions. As readers of the book may recall, among those characters were three young men, the Railey brothers, native Liberians whose ancestors had come from Mississippi, who were, in 2001, when I arrived, trapped in a war zone. The Railey brothers made sure I was safe while I was in Liberia, and we remained in touch for many years. I still occasionally correspond with one of them, Augustus. <br />
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I also occasionally get emails from readers who are curious about certain aspects of the story, and I recently heard from one who wondered how the Raileys and a few other people mentioned in the book are faring today. Here was a reader after my own heart, someone who recognizes that no story ever truly ends, that as long as the characters live and breathe, it continues to unfold. I only wish I had more information to impart. <br />
<br />
In any event, herewith is what I do know, 10 years later. <br />
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In her email, the reader, a woman named Susan Hataway, wrote that she wondered “if the people all survived these past ten years... especially the Railey brothers and Peter Robert Toe and family. Well, actually, I wonder about all of the Raileys including ‘The Old Ma’.” <br />
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Among those, Peter Toe Roberts (whose name, I regret to say, I transposed in the book, as Peter Roberts Toe) was the man who was to have guided me to Mississippi in Africa from the nation’s capital, Monrovia, until that plan fell apart. The Old Ma was the Raileys’ grandmother, a delightful, indefatigable woman who had carried on her Mississippi ancestors’ tradition of quilting, at which she was quite accomplished. As far as I know, the Railey brothers themselves – Edward, Kaiser and Augustus -- are all well, but I only know bits and pieces about Peter. <br />
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For many years the Railey brothers and I corresponded by phone and by email, as they sought to extract themselves from the poverty and violence of a nation at war with itself. What they really wanted was to go to college, either in the U.S. or at the University of Liberia, in Monrovia. I was never able to find a U.S. university or institution to sponsor them, and it takes money to attend the University of Liberia, which is something that was always in short supply. Theirs was not an easy lot, but the brothers are, if nothing else, persistent. <br />
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During our correspondence, I received this thoughtful email from their sister, Princess:<br />
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<i>Hi Alan,<br />
Hope you are doing fine as we are. We, my brothers and myself would like to wish you happy belated birthday and pray God's choicest blessings upon you. <br />
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Augustus is getting married on the 19th day of July and has chosen you as one of his Patrons. Hope it meets your approval. Have a pleasant Easter as we all retrospect on our risen Lord and Saviour.<br />
<br />
Bye for now and stay blessed.<br />
<br />
From all of us:<br />
Princess, Kaiser, Augustus and Edward Railey.</i><br />
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Just so you know, a patron, in this context, is just what it sounds like – a benefactor.<br />
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In another email, Augustus informed me that their mother and grandmother, the Old Ma, had died within a few months of each other. The Old Ma had suffered a stroke during a meeting to discuss funeral arrangements for another family member. Edward emailed to say that before she died “she asked us as to weather we can still hear from you, and we told her only by e-mail.” <br />
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Ouch. OK.<br />
<br />
Also since deceased is Rev. Charleston Bailey, a descendant of freed American slaves whom I interviewed, at the Raileys’ suggestion, in Monrovia. Rev. Bailey was a font of information, and I was sorry to hear that he was gone. He was 90, which is impossibly old by Liberian standards.<br />
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My other guide while I was in Liberia – he was really more of a “fixer,” in the parlance of journalists, the chief person I relied upon to ensure that I didn’t get into trouble -- was Jefferson Kanmoh, who I identified in the book only as a “student activist” for fear that he would suffer repercussions from the insane and violent government of then-President Charles Taylor. Only after the war ended and Taylor was exiled did I feel comfortable revealing his name. <br />
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More than anyone I met there, Jeff, who was imprisoned, nearly starved and was shot during his time as a student activist, serves as a shining beacon for Liberia -- brilliant, fearless, circumspect, noble and morally upright. Once legitimate elections were held in postwar Liberia, he was elected to the national Congress, representing Sinoe County, which encompasses Mississippi in Africa, as well as Louisiana, which was settled by freed slaves from that state. Jefferson and I continue to stay in touch. <br />
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Through a mutual acquaintance who introduced us, Jefferson had set me up with the Raileys, and with Peter Toe Roberts, who planned to host me in Mississippi in Africa, before the Taylor government intervened and prevented me from going there. Peter, who endured his own travails, was more or less a doctor in Mississippi in Africa, and, like Jefferson Kanmoh, is an honorable, compassionate and committed man who has saved many lives. He and I remained in touch for several years, but have since lost contact. Sorry, Susan. And sorry, Peter.<br />
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I contacted a mutual friend of Peter’s in hopes of finding out how he is getting along, but I haven’t heard back, and my googling produced no results. I did find a younger man named Peter Toe on Facebook who hails from Sinoe County and now lives in Monrovia, but so far I’ve gotten no response to my message asking if he is related to the Peter Roberts I knew. The last word I got about Peter was from an American doctor working for a missionary group who had rented a house from him in Greenville, the capital of Sinoe County, in 2008. At the time, he was doing well. <br />
<br />
Another key character, Nathan Ross Sr., the son of a Prospect Hill slave who emigrated to Liberia and fathered him when he was an old man – remarkably, the math adds up -- died in 2004 in Maryland (in the U.S., as opposed to Maryland, Liberia). I have lost touch with his son Nathan Jr., who, at last report, was living in the U.S., and his nephew Benjamin, who I interviewed in Monrovia when he was attempting to emigrate to the U.S.<br />
<br />
Among the notable sites I visited in Liberia, two institutions are still in operation: The J.J. Ross High School, a private school in Monrovia established by the Ross immigrants; and the National Museum, which was looted numerous times during the civil war and today houses a collection of only about 100 of its original 6,000-plus artifacts. Fortunately, several historical paintings were protected during the fighting by a man who barricaded himself inside a building across the street to prevent their destruction.<br />
<br />
Back in the U.S., Ross descendant Turner Ashby Ross, who I quoted in the book, is also since deceased. But Ann Brown, who helped me piece together the Ross family’s genealogy, is still around, diligently documenting graves throughout Jefferson County. And James Belton, who is descended from Prospect Hill slaves who chose not to emigrate to Liberia, and who filled in some of the most important blanks in the story, is retired now, living in McComb, Miss., busying himself with researching his family history and organizing reunions.<br />
<br />
The Prospect Hill house itself, which is the second on the site, having been built in 1854 after the first was burned in the uprising, by Isaac Ross’s grandson (the one who contested the will, and somehow managed to regain the estate), still stands, but it is badly deteriorated. It was recently bought by a New Mexico-based group called the Archaeological Conservancy with the aim of stabilizing it until someone can be found to buy and restore it; the conservancy plans to retain an archaeological easement to ensure that the plantation’s buried artifacts remain available to scholars in hopes that they can shed light on the property’s history. <br />
<br />
The conservancy’s regional director, Jessica Crawford, who facilitated the purchase of the house, represents the newest addition to the cast of characters of the Prospect Hill saga, having put in countless hours cleaning out the structure, nailing down rusty tin on the roof, and clearing underbrush from the grounds and the adjacent cemetery, which is the site of a towering monument erected in Isaac Ross’s honor by the Mississippi Colonization Society. Jessica has also located several descendants whom I never came across, and has befriended a peacock left behind by Prospect Hill’s last owner. The peacock is currently the only occupant (unless you count the unidentified growling thing that inhabits the rubble of a collapsed rear room); Jessica named him “Isaac.” <br />
<br />
Among the other key figures in the Liberian saga, former Liberian President Charles Taylor remains imprisoned in The Hague following the conclusion, in March 2011, of his three-year trial for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in neighboring Sierra Leone during that nation’s civil wars. His judgment is pending. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kpstpnGJl20/TnPs8bDHx7I/AAAAAAAAAdg/R5rAu7FDSdQ/s1600/Isaac%2Bgreets%2Bwith%2Ba%2Bbutt%2Bshot.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kpstpnGJl20/TnPs8bDHx7I/AAAAAAAAAdg/R5rAu7FDSdQ/s400/Isaac%2Bgreets%2Bwith%2Ba%2Bbutt%2Bshot.JPG" /></a></div>"Isaac" on the grounds of Prospect Hill; photo by Jessica CrawfordAlan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-60395583039331642772011-09-12T16:26:00.001-07:002019-03-11T04:16:09.856-07:00In search of Jan-Michael Vincent<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nj8p7nI-jo0/Tm6WJgUC3CI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/j988755T4bU/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="247" width="204" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nj8p7nI-jo0/Tm6WJgUC3CI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/j988755T4bU/s400/images.jpeg"></a></div>
<i>Originally published in Lost magazine</i>.
It started with an old episode of “Gunsmoke,” about a troubled kid in curiously tight pants who brings grief to everyone, including himself, before finding redemption through the decent folks of Dodge City. <br />
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TV’s Dodge City was a painted backdrop of a town, fabricated in the sixties to represent all that was popularly viewed as right and wrong about the American frontier. Redemption was a common theme that often took curious forms in Dodge, where the most unassailably upright citizen was U.S. marshal Matt Dillon, who thought nothing of drinking whisky shots, while on duty, in a whorehouse at 10 a.m. <br />
<br />
The plot of this particular episode was mildly provocative yet ultimately reassuring, typical of a formula that made “Gunsmoke” the longest running dramatic serial on TV (until it was supplanted by “Law & Order”). Each show revealed something poignant about a character’s life story. The positive forces of the universe usually prevailed in the end. Some of the details in this episode were revealing in other ways, such as that the fledgling actor who played teenaged Travis Colter was the only young man in town who apparently had to be shoe-horned into his pants. That, and the carefully framed shots of his chiseled face, indicate that the director knew what he had to work with, which was a young actor with the makings for a major TV heartthrob.<br />
<br />
Guest appearances on “Gunsmoke” were a starting actor’s dream in the sixties and early seventies, much as they are on “Law & Order” today. Among the lucky ones who went on to great things were Harrison Ford, Jodie Foster, Charles Bronson and Kurt Russell. Not all parlayed their appearances into stardom, of course. One frequent guest, Zalman King, became a successful producer of soft porn. Others went into sales. You can find out easily enough through search engines on the Web, if you’re so inclined, which I am.<br />
<br />
Like many nosy people today, I need only half an excuse to google anything, and I am particularly interested in stories that illustrate the wildly variable things that can happen to promising people over time. By the time I encountered Travis Colter, I had already developed a habit of wasting potentially productive hours piecing together the random life stories of actors whose careers began as I lay on the floor in front of my family’s black-and-white TV. For this I blame not only myself and Google, but TV Land and Tivo. <br />
<br />
When “Gunsmoke” first aired, I was a boy growing up in the quiet suburbs of a sleepy southern town, and one summer day, an actual troubled youth showed up and supposedly tried to kidnap me and my best friend. We were about six years old, sitting barefoot in the grass, watching a steam roller pave our street. I say “supposedly” because I have no way of knowing the man’s intensions. All I know is that he appeared out of nowhere and suggested that we go with him to the creek, and instructed us to go home and get some shoes, then meet him at his car on the corner. Our mothers prevented the follow-through, and another group of women on a nearby street, whose sons had been similarly approached, called the police. After they caught the alleged kidnapper, the police informed our parents that he was 19 years old, the son of a doctor, and had escaped from the local mental institution. That was it. In the years since, I have often wondered what his intentions were, and how his life played out, but there is no way to know. I cannot even google him, because I do not know his name. Finding things out is easier with someone whose life unfurls in full public view. You may never know what it is like to be that person, but you can see the structure of their life in bold relief, and draw your own conclusions about what can happen to people over time. <br />
<br />
When the credits rolled on the Travis Colter episode, I learned that the actor who played him was Jan-Michael Vincent, who, I later found, went on to fame in scores of movies and as the star of the eighties show “Airwolf”, which reportedly made him the highest-paid TV actor at the time. One of Vincent’s best known flicks was 1978’s Hooper, starring Burt Reynolds, in which he plays a hunky stuntman who comes up with an idea to pilot a rocket-propelled Trans Am across a gulch. Vincent also appeared on “Lassie”; played a journalist in Nicaragua who falls in love with a beautiful Sandinista (in 1983’s Last Plane Out); was immortalized in a loin cloth in The World’s Greatest Athlete; and hosted the Disney series “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour”. Sadly, my googling also unearthed a darker vein: Vincent’s career eventually ended in a massive train wreck, the result of substance abuse problems. If you can believe what you hear, the marshal of Dodge City wasn’t the only one taking shots at 10 a.m. <br />
<br />
It is hard to know how much of what has been said about Vincent is accurate – we’re talking about Internet gossip, for the most part, but there is no question that his career crashed, and that it was related to his drinking. He eventually went on the “Howard Stern Show” no less than four times to talk about it, and his behavior grew increasingly notorious even after his televised confessionals. He was reportedly arrested for public drunk on multiple occasions (one court case, in September 2000, involved his wife of then-three months, whose name was Anna; more on that later). The deal was cinched when Vincent crashed his car and suffered a broken neck and permanently damaged vocal chord. At that point his career was finally disabled. In his last movie, a lamentable gangsta flick called White Boy, released in 2002, Vincent plays a drunk cop whose rheumy eyes look absolutely authentic, and the camera seems intent on exploiting the damage, lingering over the disturbing ruins of his formerly perfect face. After that, Vincent disappeared. A 2004 blog, posted when Vincent was 60, indicated that he was living in seclusion in a remote cabin near Redwood, Mississippi, with a few horses and a female companion who possessed “an outrageous wardrobe.”<br />
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In addition to spending hours googling different combinations of anything, I happen to live about 30 miles from Redwood. So while I had only passing interest in Vincent beforehand, I could not ignore the fact that his flaring bottle rocket had spent itself and landed in my own backyard. Redwood, Mississippi is an unassuming encampment of old houses and mobile homes just off Highway 61, a few miles north of Vicksburg, where a line of steep bluffs overlooks the flatlands of the Mississippi Delta. There are waterfalls in the wooded hills and great expanses of brooding swamp below, which give the area a certain presence, but it is not the kind of place that rich, famous, good-looking people dream of ending up. When someone mentions trailers in Redwood, they are not talking about movies. It is, however, a place where a truly outlandish wardrobe might actually set someone apart, and that fact, coupled with the interest that a tragic former movie star naturally engenders, held the promise that Vincent’s strange saga might be attractively within my reach. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed time to log off and hit the road. <br />
<br />
I suspected that Vincent had probably abandoned Redwood by now, that his move there had been another in a long series of misadventures, but it’s always nice to have a focus for a leisurely outing, especially if it gives you an excuse to stop everyone you see and ask questions while glancing over their shoulders to see how they decorate their living rooms and what they’re watching on TV. If nothing else, the search held the potential to produce any number of women whose neighbors considered their wardrobes to be in bad taste. It was possible that Vincent really did not want to be bothered, and had moved to Redwood to basically disappear, but if that were the case, it would be evident soon enough and I would leave him alone. All I needed was a little prodding, and it came from my friend Neil, who listened to my idea and said, “Let’s go.” <br />
<br />
Neil and I are old friends. We are both former farmers, and for about two days in the eighties I worked as a cowboy on his family’s cattle operation, until I was demoted to carpenter because I was scared of horses. We once made a memorable road trip out West, during which we entertained ourselves with odd characters we encountered against passing backdrops of lonely neon signs and purple crested buttes. The idea of solving the riddle of Jan-Michael Vincent attracted us both for several reasons, not the least of which was the question of how he had ended up in Redwood, Mississippi, of all places. Our interest, I hasten to add, was not of the Brangelina sort, but sprang from a simple fascination with plot. Though Vincent’s one-time celebrity was obviously part of the equation, we were more intrigued by the unfolding tale, which, despite its haplessness, had an epic cast. If we were lucky, perhaps we could view at least one scene from this oversized drama at comparatively close range – something between seeing a movie and actually watching the “based-on” story unfold. As is no doubt painfully obvious, we also had some time on our hands. <br />
<br />
It was a balmy day in late November when Neil and I set out for Redwood. Our first stop, just north of Vicksburg, was at an Orbit gas station with a Bud Light sign advertising fresh bait, including worms, minnows, crickets, as well as ice and cold beer. Inside, a friendly woman greeted us from behind the counter. “Can I help you?” she asked. Her smile sagged a little when I asked if she knew where Jan-Michael Vincent lived. “He’s an old actor,” I added. She said sorry, she didn’t know, but that she’d ask. A moment later an older woman with a gray ponytail came out of the kitchen drying her hands. “I’ve heard of him,” she said. “I’ve heard he lives off Redwood Road. I hadn’t met him. I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.” She offered a half-smile, indicating that Vincent’s fame still faintly flickered, though at about the same level of intensity as the burgers sizzling on the griddle behind her. At least it appeared that Vincent was still in the area. We had reason to drive on. <br />
<br />
There was another store on the other side of the highway, which was also a barbeque joint. Rural stores typically serve multiple purposes, such as selling gas and groceries, renting movies, and doing your hair and your taxes. A few miles back, on the outskirts of Vicksburg, stood Margaret’s Grocery, which at one time doubled as a bar and church, and presented to passing motorists a candyland façade of red and white striped cinderblock turrets and other fantastically quirky constructs, surmounted by a hand-painted sign proclaiming, “All is Welcome Jew and Gentile.” Inside, an elderly man named Rev. Dennis preached the gospel while his wife sold beer, aspirin and chips to a ragtag band of regulars who sat around playing cards at a table scarred with cigarette burns. In the corner, next to a shelf loaded with paper towels, was a homemade Ark of the Covenant, which Dennis crafted from a wooden box, some castors, a glass doorknob symbolizing the all-seeing eye of God, and some PVC pipe spray-painted gold. At least that’s the way it was the last time I was there, when cats were sleeping in the Ark. We had decided to pass on Margaret’s Grocery this day because it was doubtful that Rev. Dennis had ever heard of Jan-Michael Vincent, and anyway, he always made it so hard to get away. He tended to follow you out to your car, preaching even as you rolled up your window.<br />
<br />
In the combo store-barbeque joint we found a group of men in hunting caps drinking coffee at a table. Two others worked the counter. Everyone called out good morning when we came through the door. I approached the counter and asked the older of the two, who turned out to be one of the owners, John Harper, if he perhaps knew anything about a guy named Jan-Michael Vincent. “I sure do,” he said. “He comes in the store all the time. He came in a week or so ago.” This was something of a surprise. We had expected Vincent’s presence to be more of a secret. The younger guy, Shane Davis, added, “He’s got a old girl he lives with. She’s always driving him around. I remember him from movies but he don’t look like that anymore. He’s wore out.” I sensed interest stirring at the table behind me, and one of the coffee drinkers volunteered, “You go up Highway 3 to Ballground, past Ballground Plantation to Bell Bottom Road, past the big ammonia tank. When you get to Bell Bottom Road, it goes straight, and when you come to a curve there’s a house on the right. It’s behind that house.”<br />
<br />
“It’s a trailer,” a man in a camo hat said. “But I tell you who you should really talk to: Old Man Henson. He’s 95. He used to be a logger. If you sit up here in the morning with a cup of coffee and ask him a few questions, you’ll be shocked by what he can tell you. How many men you know who logged with oxen? If his knees weren’t bad, he’d work you to death.” Clearly, for him, Old Man Henson and Jan-Michael Vincent existed on the same plane. I liked the idea of talking to Old Man Henson, because who knows, he might have a story to tell, but we had our plans for the day, and anyway Old Man Henson had already gone home. <br />
<br />
“The lady he’s with said they live at Eagle Lake now,” Harper said, steering the conversation back to Vincent. “She’s from California someplace, too. Evidently he knew somebody here and he was tired of all that. He don’t get out much now.”<br />
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“I live right there by him and I don’t know anything about him,” another of the coffee drinkers reported. “I bet it ain’t one percent of the people in Warren County even knows he lives here.”<br />
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“I’ll tell you what you need to be writing a story about: The mayor,” the camo hat said. “He’s corrupt.” <br />
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“You can tell at one time she was a looker,” Harper said of Vincent’s companion. “You’d never recognize him. Looks like he’s 90 years old, probably don’t weigh 100 pounds. I was a big fan. I recognized him ’cause I knew he was in the area.” He added, cryptically, “We’re on the barbeque circuit,” then unfurled a barbeque contest poster with pictures of his cooking crew.<br />
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Davis, the young guy, added, “They got a convertible Mustang.” <br />
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Harper then asked if anyone remembered the movie Vincent was in with Burt Reynolds, but didn’t seem entirely convinced when I said Hooper. At that point it seemed we had pretty much exhausted their Vincent knowledge, so we thanked them and drove on, toward the big ammonia tank at Ballground Plantation. If we didn’t find evidence of Vincent there, we’d try Eagle Lake, about 15 miles to the west. <br />
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Contrary to what you might expect, Bell Bottom Road is named not for the pants but for creek bottom land settled by the Bell family. The first thing you see after turning off Highway 3 is an outpost of trailers clustered around a weathered wooden house, in what is essentially a low hollow at the base of the bluffs. On this day, a month or so before Christmas, the landscape was overwrought with lawn decorations, solar sidewalk lights from Wal-Mart, decomissioned appliances, small tractors, both freestanding and trailer-mounted yuletide decorations, and other assorted items that tended to get lost in the dazzle. As with Redwood, one got the impression this was basically an encampment, the only question being: For how long? Some of the trailers were homey and neat, but overall the place expressed tentative, rural disorder. <br />
<br />
Most of the residents appeared to be at work, but there were a few operational vehicles parked here and there, so we started at a double-wide whose yard was a fenced corral of small concrete animals. There were the requisite Christmas decorations, an inordinate number of stylized metal suns affixed to the trailer’s front wall, and two identical orange plastic baby swings hanging side by side on the porch. The gate was open.<br />
<br />
Approaching a country house unannounced in the middle of a work day is problematic. Everyone has guns, even if they’re just hunting rifles, and owing to the proliferation of crime, strangers are often suspect. Here, the blinds were closed on all the windows, so the place didn’t exactly beckon. Beside the front door was an unexpected fixture that both invited and repelled: An intercom. I pushed the button and a woman’s raspy voice replied, “Can I help you?” A small dog barked in the background. I heard it both through the wall and over the intercom.<br />
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“Sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I’m looking for Jan-Michael Vincent. I was wondering if you could help.”<br />
<br />
There was a pause, then the disembodied voice croaked back something unintelligible. It was a cheap intercom and the sound quality was poor. I begged the voice’s pardon, asked for a repeat. Speaking more slowly and loudly, which actually emphasized the dissonance, the voice said, “Used to live in that single-wide right in front of my house, but he’s gone. You might check the place across the way, the junky looking one. They might know.”<br />
<br />
I glanced back at Neil, who had opted to wait in the truck so we did not seem too threatening, and at the trailers and the rustic house, trying to determine which one looked the junkiest. It was a judgment call. <br />
<br />
Back at the truck, we deliberated. There was what could be construed as a junky hodgepodge of used appliances waiting to be recycled beside the house, but in its front yard, directly before it, was the most woebegone mobile home imaginable, rusty and mildewed, with a few broken windows and three washing machines lined up on the sagging porch. It had a shed built over it, perhaps because the roof leaked so badly that it was easier to build another one on top. This, I had just been informed, was lately the home of former movie star Jan-Michael Vincent. It looked grim, so we opted for the house, where a white Chevy truck was parked at an odd angle, as if it had crawled out of the woods. As I approached the house I got an ominous vibe. A chain was wrapped around a porch post, at the end of which was a spiked and glaringly empty dog collar. This menacing country still life evoked all sorts of disturbing sensory images, despite the comparatively welcoming presence of a group of wicker chairs, a porch swing and a barbeque grill nearby. I took one look at the empty dog collar and headed back to the truck. Neil and I agreed that it made sense to leave the driver’s door open so I could beat a hasty retreat if necessary. Then I went back and rang the bell. The blinds, as with the double-wide, were closed. There was no sound from within. After a moment, I gave up.<br />
<br />
We backed out across the yard, because there was no real driveway – in fact, we basically had to drive across a shallow ditch to enter, and nosed our way back past the original double-wide. We rocked across some ruts and emerged through a screen of brush to another trailer that managed to be even more uninviting than the last, its defensive aura strangely enhanced by the presence of haphazardly strung Christmas lights, which were on. There was not a shred of vegetation in the yard and the windows were sealed off with aluminum foil, an indication that the person probably worked at night and slept by day. “Do not approach,” the trailer said, unequivocally. Out front was an old, rusty, Deliverance-set piece of a truck, complete with Georgia plates. We backed away.<br />
<br />
Fortunately there was another double-wide nearby, so we stopped there. There were three small blue cars out front, all in an orderly row, and the trailer's windows were open to the breeze. Evenly spaced poured-concrete stepping stones led from the drive to the door. There was some actual landscaping as well as a plywood Santa and an odd blue fountain sunk into the ground, of a configuration that brought to mind a small, weirdly shaped hot tub, at the center of which was a narrow pipe dribbling water. <br />
<br />
“Hello,” I called out when I reached the heavily tinted storm door, which swung open to reveal two women wearing shirts emblazoned with the logo for a store called Big Dog. I apologized for interrupting, and stated my mission. “He don’t live here anymore,” the older one, who wore a ring in her brow, said. “He moved about a year ago. I heard he’s living on Highway 465.” This was the road to the aforementioned Eagle Lake. Then she added, “He’s not well,” and hesitated, trying to decide if she should say more. “He could tell you some stuff,” she said, measuring her words. “His girlfriend is named Anna.” Something in her tone indicated that she felt empathy for Jan-Michael. I couldn’t help thinking of Miss Kitty talking with Matt Dillon on “Gunsmoke” about the trouble in Travis Colter’s life.<br />
<br />
Back on Highway 3, a gentle breeze sent yellow leaves fluttering past a man with a garbage bag slung over his shoulder, who was picking up cans on the road shoulder. Living in Mississippi, you have a tendency to get inured to the poverty, but when you take the time to stop and talk to basically everyone you see, and get a close-up view of things, and put it all into the context of someone like Jan-Michael Vincent ending up there, you realize just how poor a place it is. At one point Neil asked, “Which county in Mississippi do you think has the most trailers?” Based on what we had seen so far, we agreed that it must be this one. There was every kind: New, faux French Provincial ones; old, rusty ones; put-together-side-by-side ones; concealed-under-a-new-roof-and-vinyl-siding-so-they-look-more-like-a-real-house ones; others that you know the owners would prefer you call manufactured housing; and the worst, the abandoned and forsaken ones. There was no question that Vincent for a time existed at the very bottom of the local shelter scale.<br />
<br />
The road to Eagle Lake passed through the lowest part of the low-lying Delta, bordered by farm fields that go under water during river rises almost every year, along with a few houses elevated on stilts and a labyrinth of bayous and swamps studded with moss-draped cypress trees. Posted at the entrance to every side road were signs warning, “You are entering a flood-prone area.” My grandparents once lived here, in a camp house with no telephone, drawing their water from a rain barrel. It was a lifestyle choice for them; they were attracted to isolation. Before Highway 465 was built, the area was accessible only by a circuitous gravel road that crossed the Yazoo River on a ferry, after which the road turned to dirt, of a variety known as gumbo, which is incredibly malleable and sticky when wet. When the water rose as a result of runoff up north, you could only reach their house by boat. <br />
<br />
My grandparents found an affinity with the river rats, as outsiders called the commercial fishermen who lived in houseboats beached on the riverbank -- the first step toward living on land. My grandparents’ favorite neighbors were a family called the Boozers, who generally kept to themselves but were open to the free currents in a way that more settled people in the area were not. They spent a lot of time roaming the woods and watercourses by boat, on horseback, or in my grandfather’s old Willys Jeep, until the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers condemned the land for a new levee and a floodgate across Steele Bayou. Today the Corps has plans for a huge pumping plant designed to lift the floodwaters out of what is actually, officially known as the Backwater Area. When people dream of making their area a somewhat drier backwater, there is not much to go on. Still, certain types are clearly quite happy there, in the margins of American life, such as a man I once knew named Jimmy Vickers, who ran the last local ferry and had served 12 years in prison (typically the first opportunity for parole from a life sentence). Vickers sometimes took jobs diving in the Mississippi River to inspect ruptured pipelines or sunken towboats, using a modified motorcycle helmet with a foam rubber gasket around his neck to keep the water out, and a 50-foot hose for breathing, which was inserted through a hole in the helmet and connected to an air compressor manned by his 12-year-old son in a johnboat above. These modifications kept Vickers alive on the bottom of an absurdly powerful, deep and muddy river. He and his family lived in a beached houseboat, too, and although I suspect he was clean, he was fiercely protective of his tribe, no matter where they stood with the rest of society and, in particular, the law. This, I was given to believe, was a solid covenant among the river people. Vickers and his family were tolerant of everything except unnecessary meddling, and generous with what they had, and I always knew that if somehow my life turned south, and I got into big trouble and needed to escape, I could find refuge in their little warped houseboat in the mud, no questions asked. From the outside this might look like indifference, but it was far from it.<br />
<br />
Farther west along the highway is Eagle Lake, an old, wide bend of the Mississippi River that was cut off more than a century ago by a change in course, which is today lined mostly with camp houses and, of course, trailers. Its architectural centerpiece is a three-story antebellum mansion known as Buena Vista Plantation, or, locally, as “the old Conway place,” whose builder survives in local lore for once hosting a grand ball for his slaves, during which he allowed the women to don the cast-off finery of his wife, who chose to be out of town that weekend. Another maverick of Eagle Lake was Larry Crowe, a shadowy businessman who in the eighties wanted to build a horse-racing track on Australia Island, but who, owing to a confluence of legal and financial logjams, went down before he could transform the place into a world-class resort. Also getting star billing, for what it's worth, are various Civil War generals, a few Civil Rights heroes, a scattering of blues musicians, some millionaire hunters and, more recently, one washed-up former surfer dude turned international action star who drinks too much and reportedly bums smokes at the local bar. <br />
<br />
As we neared Eagle Lake we saw two guys in gangsta wear pouring gas into the tank of a decrepit Mercury Marquis beside a cotton gin. We rolled to a stop, exchanged the wussup nod, and I asked if they’d ever heard of Jan-Michael Vincent. They shook their heads. “He’s supposed to live here,” I said. “He used to be a movie star.” They laughed, then suggested we ask at the gin.<br />
<br />
At the gin, two men were preparing to weld something and the machinery was loud, so I first asked an elderly couple loading gin residue – a popular garden composting material – into the back of a pickup with a sign advertising “Fresh Greens Home Grown.” They had no clues, so I approached a toothless man who looked like he was in charge of the welding, who turned out to be very helpful and knowledgeable, and gave us explicit directions. “There’s some kinda black sports car,” he said. “I don’t know what kind.” We followed his directions and there it was, the house overlooking the lake, with the locally famous Mustang parked beside it. It was a vast improvement over the trailer on Bell Bottom Road, though it needed some work, and overall there was a feeling of inertia, atrophy and neglect. A struggling rose bush determinedly bloomed out front, hinting of better times. The rail was missing from the tall stair to the front porch and the treads were littered with fallen leaves. A wooden pier extended into the lake, which shimmered under blue skies. A small boat knifed past, against a backdrop of bare, stark white cypresses that had been shitted to death by hordes of roosting cormorants. The steps to the rear deck, facing the lake, appeared to be the primary approach.<br />
<br />
Getting to Vincent's house had proved remarkably, almost disappointingly easy, and although we were about to show up at another stranger’s house uninvited, there was no way Neil was going to wait in the truck this time. I found myself wishing I knew more about Vincent’s movies, and wondering if I was really there for the reasons I claimed – to glean the details of the complex human experiment that was Vincent’s life, or merely to gnaw on some once-famous bones. But it was too late to turn back now. As we walked across the deck, past a bowl piled with discarded pork ribs and an Elvis novelty tag leaning against the wall, a dog commenced barking inside. We stopped before a single French door, beside which hung a wind chime bidding “welcome.” I knocked. A moment later the door opened and a middle-aged woman stood eyeing us doubtfully. Then she stepped onto the deck, leaving the door open behind her. “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “I’m looking for Jan-Michael Vincent.” There was an awkward pause. An old black dog sniffed my feet, wagging its tail. <br />
<br />
Then the woman asked, “How did you find us?” Harper was right. You could tell she had been pretty once. <br />
<br />
“I just kept asking people,” I said, and offered a slightly convoluted explanation – I was a journalist who happened to live in the area, I’d heard Jan-Michael Vincent was living here, I was wondering how that came about, etc. It all sounded kind of lame now. I might as well have said, “I’m on a scavenger hunt.” But she seemed OK with it. She looked a little tired, a little world weary, but she offered her hand and said, “I’m Anna.” She wore an iridescent blue sweatshirt and some kind of blue synthetic pants, which weren’t outrageous at all. “Who do you write for?” she asked. I named a few publications. “Tabloids?” she asked. I said no, and could not tell from her expression if she was relieved, disappointed or incredulous. No doubt she and Vincent had had their share of trouble from the tabloids, but it was also possible that they had considered selling their story. Anyway, she said, “It’s not a good time right now. My<br />
husband just got out of the hospital with a broken hip. I’m just getting him up.”<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “I don’t want to bother you. This all started when I saw him on an old episode of ‘Gunsmoke.’” <br />
<br />
For the first time, she smiled. “I know that episode,” she said. “If you give me your card I’ll have him call. He just got out of the hospital three days ago.” Then she added, politely but finally, “He can’t talk to you right now. We don’t really give interviews. We had some trouble in Vicksburg a while back. We try to keep to ourselves.”<br />
<br />
“What kind of trouble?” Neil asked, way too eagerly.<br />
<br />
“I don’t want to get into it,” she said. “If you give me your card, I’ll have him call.”<br />
<br />
I handed her a card and as she looked it over, stole a glance through the door. I saw a guitar leaning against the couch. I felt a little ashamed for prying, and wondered if Vincent was listening, or if he was prostrate on a bed somewhere in the recesses of the house, out of it. “I appreciate it,” I said. That was it. We turned and left.<br />
<br />
As we drove away, I recalled that one of the men back at the barbeque joint said people in the area did not really see Vincent as an actor, that for them, he was just a guy down on his luck, the sort of guy who, as it turned out, was too young to have a broken hip but had one just the same. From all appearances, the locals were only vaguely curious about him, and we were starting to see why. “We probably came within 30 feet of him,” Neil said, not so much disappointed that we didn’t get to hear Vincent’s story in his own words, as he was crestfallen that we had to stop asking people about him. So we decided not to. I don’t know what I intended to ask Vincent anyway. What I mostly wanted to know was how he ended up in Eagle Lake. I did have a few questions about “Gunsmoke”, such as what, exactly, was up with James Arness and Amanda Blake, who played Marshal Dillon and Miss Kitty, the owner of Dodge City’s Long Branch Saloon. One of the curious things about so many ostensibly wholesome, family-oriented shows from the sixties is that they so often veered into alternative terrain without anyone seeming to notice. On “Gunsmoke”, it is no secret that Matt and Miss Kitty are having sex while maintaining their independence from each other, which to a pubescent boy seemed ideal. I was hoping to ask Vincent if they ever talked about that, and if he kept up with Arness or Blake, and whether she called him when his life started falling apart and perhaps lectured him, saying something like, “Remember what I said to Travis Colter…” I know, it was a TV show. Vincent’s life is real. There have been broken bones. There has been blood, and alcohol. It was none of my business. Yet he was interesting, and he had wandered into my zone. I wanted to know the stages of the plot, and how the characters interacted over time. <br />
<br />
A few miles down the road we came upon a bar, so I pulled in. I had no doubt that Vincent frequented the place, that it was the place he reportedly bummed smokes, and I figured someone inside might be able to fill us in. Before entering I took a moment to scratch down some notes in the truck, and I noticed a man who looked to be the proprietor eyeing us. When we entered the bar he followed us inside. He was evidently not pleased to see us. The bar was big and charmless, populated only by the sullen proprietor and an old man in Coke-bottle glasses who appeared to be mesmerized by a football game on the suspended TV. I knew immediately that neither would have anything to say to us about Vincent or anything else, but felt I had to ask for something, so I blurted out, “We just came from Jan-Michael Vincent’s house and I have their house number so I can send them something, but I don’t know the rest of the address.” This was true; Neil had suggested that I send Vincent a copy of a book of my grandmother’s photographs of the area, to try to break the ice. The proprietor glared at me, looking even more pugnacious than before, then reluctantly gave me the information. As we strolled back into the sunlight, I pictured Vincent propped on one of those barstools, beside some other saggy-eyed guy, perhaps with his own story to tell. <br />
<br />
Vincent’s life isn’t a movie – not yet, but it’s been on public view for a long time, and I have read more than once that his roles often reflected his lifestyle choices. He seemed particularly attracted to rebellious characters, which he portrayed to full effect in movies such as White Line Fever (a rebel trucker battling corruption) and Baby Blue Marine (a soldier who is dishonorably discharged from the military). As the Internet Movie Data Base points out, he seems to have been equally comfortable playing men on either side of the law. <br />
<br />
The first notable turn in his life had been fortuitous. Vincent, who was born in Denver in 1944, was reportedly finishing a stint in the California National Guard when he caught the eye of a talent scout. His first acting job was a bit part in a 1967 movie; afterward his career took off. In the seventies he starred or appeared in 12 films and 18 made-for-TV movies and shows, including “Gunsmoke” and a film that many consider his finest work, Big Wednesday, in which he plays an aging surfer grappling with the erosive forces of time. In the eighties he appeared in 12 movies, many of them action flicks, and six TV shows, including “Airwolf” and the mini-series “The Winds of War”. He continued to get work in the nineties, and in fact made more movies than ever – 21 between 1990 and 1999, but the parts were getting smaller, his acting was growing increasingly uneven, his drinking was causing trouble on the sets, and many of the films went straight to video. Today, according to the Internet Movie Data Base, “ongoing health issues and personal problems seem to preclude his return to the screen.” <br />
<br />
There is no question that Vincent was a talented actor, but his success clearly had something to do with his square-jawed, all-American face and his taut physique, both of which suffered from increasing abuse. Now he appeared to be playing the anti-hero for good, marooned in Warren County, Mississippi with a broken hip, borderline destitute, almost unrecognizable, and dependent upon Anna for everything, including fending off random journalists and their friends. Perhaps it was just as well that he didn’t have to deal with us. <br />
<br />
As Neil and I speculated about whether the conversation would have been productive, whether he would call, and whether we would eventually meet, we came upon a little store named Eagle Lake Candle Company, with a food vending stand out front called Hotdogs Plus. Maybe it was the name of the hotdog stand, but we could not resist asking about Jan-Michael Vincent again. A sign on the door to the candle shop announced, “Barber On Call,” and inside, a diminutive woman invited us to browse her wares. “I’m actually looking for Jan-Michael Vincent,” I said, feeling a little guilty, because now, I wasn’t really. <br />
<br />
“Hmm,” she said, thinking. “Why don’t you look over our candles while I check the book?” I feigned interest as she leafed through the pages of the slender local phone book. The scent of the candles was overwhelming, like a potpourri of oversanitized gas station bathrooms. “I see a couple of Vinsons,” she said, “but…” <br />
<br />
“That’s OK,” I said, and shrugged. Just then a gold El Camino pulled up outside, crunching gravel, and a man with a thick mane of curly orange hair got out. “He might know,” the woman said. “That’s his hotdog place.” Before we could get out of range she added, “We make all our candles. We can custom-make anything. We got special ones for Christmas. We got the barber chair and a tanning bed. I also make quilts.” I felt obliged to inquire about the candle-making, and she said, “We order wax out of Alabama. It’s soy wax -- totally, 100 percent child safe. They may drink it and it might give ’em diarrhea, but that’s it. The wicks are cotton, from the Delta.” I nodded as I sidled over to Hotdogs Plus. <br />
<br />
The hotdog man said sure, he knew where Jan-Michael Vincent lived. “He’s a nice guy,” he said. “Been here about a year.” He described the house, gave us the directions we already knew, said, “Just look for a little Mustang convertible.” <br />
<br />
As Neil pointed out while we were driving away, Vincent’s whereabouts were well known. “I mean, if he really didn’t want to be found, he could use a different name,” he said. “It’s not like people would recognize him now, if he looks like he’s 90 and weighs 100 pounds.” Then, when we passed a game warden, Neil said, “Want to talk to him?” but at the moment, I didn’t. I was thinking this would be a sad story indeed if it weren’t for Anna. <br />
<br />
So far the consensus was that Anna was always with him. “You never see one without the other,” was the common refrain. From all appearances, Vincent had little to offer her now. His looks and, apparently, his money were gone. He was in bad health. Yet she stood by him. “Obviously a lot went wrong,” Neil said. “You could see it as a sad story for sure, but he’s got a place on a lake, with a pier, and a good woman beside him. It could be a lot worse.” Then: “Who do you want to ask next?” I suggested we return to the barbeque store and report our findings, as John Harper had asked. <br />
<br />
The barbeque place was now crowded with lunch customers, and Harper was nowhere to be found. Davis was happy to hear that we located Vincent, sorry to hear about the hip, but had little time to talk amid the noonday rush. Instead, a woman behind the counter, whom I had not noticed the first time around, listened to our brief conversation, then leaned over, resting her elbows on the counter, and said, “Her ex-husband’s name is Lester Birdsong.” Actually that's not the name she gave us, but since we never ended up talking with the man and have no proof of his existence, much less of his involvement in the Vincent saga, we will call him Lester Birdsong. <br />
<br />
“Whose ex-husband?” I asked. <br />
<br />
“Anna’s,” she said. <br />
<br />
I introduced myself. Her name was Brenda Welch. When I mentioned how nice Anna was, she said, “She’s always very nice.” Then she asked, “Is her hair dark?” I shook my head.<br />
<br />
“It’s actually sort of blondish,” Neil offered. <br />
<br />
Welch looked surprised. “Lester is from Redwood,” she said. “He moved off to California where he ran a restaurant. I believe it was in Los Angeles. He’s got a barbeque shack by the post office in Redwood now. He’s real nice. He’d talk to you. His barbeque place is on Highway 3, where the road is shut off. All three of ’em came together. Lester married this lady, Anna, in California somewhere, and Jan-Michael used to come in his restaurant, and they all became friends, and then she left him and went with Jan-Michael. Lester has a son by this lady. So when he come back to Redwood, they came, too.”<br />
<br />
“And they’re still friends?” Neil asked, surprised. <br />
<br />
She nodded. “He’s just real quiet,” she said of Vincent. “But his wife is steady talking. They been here, maybe eight years?” She said she thought Birdsong lived off Bell Bottom Road. So naturally, we headed back. We were now as interested in Birdsong as we were in Vincent, which raised the question: Just how far into voyeurism had we strayed? When I mentioned this, Neil said, “But Lester’s a part of the story.” Neil also pointed to a telephone repairman working on a line by the road, and said, “Maybe we should ask him if he knows Jan-Michael. Or we could ask him if he knows where we could find Lester.” I decided to pass on the phone guy, but we did stop at the post office in Redwood, a short distance from Birdsong’s garishly painted barbeque shack, which, according to the portable sign out front, was scheduled to open soon. The door and windows of the post office were wide open, and behind the counter, amid the wanted posters, was a display of teddy bears, commemorative stamps and seasonal items for sale. No one seemed to be around, but when I called out, the temporary walls of a grayish cubicle trembled. Apparently I had startled someone.<br />
<br />
A woman emerged from the cubicle and asked what I needed. I said I was looking for Lester Birdsong, and asked if that was his barbeque shack down the way. She stiffened. “As an employee of the post office, I’m not allowed to give out addresses,” she proclaimed, somewhat indignantly. How is it that the officious air of the U.S. Postal Service permeates down to the lowest possible level? I asked if she could at least tell me whether that was his barbeque shack. She stared at me, said, “It’s scheduled to open soon.”<br />
<br />
I asked for a phone book, hoping to find Birdsong’s address, and Neil said, “If we went to Ballground, would we be getting warm?” She glared at him, as if we were subjecting her to a surprise audit. “Have you heard of Jan-Michael Vincent?” he asked.<br />
<br />
“We’re kind of quiet,” she said. I was unsure what she meant, and when I asked, she said, “We’re kind of protective.” I could tell: Despite her pretense that she did not know anything, she actually did not know anything, and in fact, she now said as much. “All I know is that’s Highway 61 and that’s Highway 3,” she said. “That’s all I know. I’m not from here. I’m from Onward.”<br />
<br />
“Like that’s another planet,” I said, then laughed, to make sure she didn’t get even more defensive. Onward was about 10 miles down the road.<br />
<br />
As we made our way back to Bell Bottom Road, Neil said he had a feeling that Birdsong was the trailer-lord whose house, the one with the empty dog collar, sat at the middle of the compound. “I bet he rents out those trailers,” he said. If this was true, it meant that Birdsong had rented out the worst trailer in the hollow to the fallen stud who had allegedly stolen his wife. <br />
<br />
It made sense to return to the double wide with the sunken fountain, where the women in the Big Dog shirts live. “We’re back,” I said as I navigated the stepping stones to the door. This time, only the mother was home. “We found him,” I said, “and we were told that he followed Lester Birdsong to Redwood. Now we’re looking for Lester.”<br />
<br />
She leaned against the door jam, surprisingly patient with this exercise, and seemingly more inclined to talk than before. “He did live here,” she said. “She stayed with him all the time. If you ever saw one, you saw the other. She never left him alone, and he hardly ever came out of that trailer. Half the time he don’t know where he is. They didn’t even have a car when they lived here. A guy who works with my husband is a big fan, and when he found out he lived behind us, he said, ‘I bet he lives in a big mansion,’ and we said, ‘Unh unh.’”<br />
<br />
I asked how they got around without a car. “He called a cab from Vicksburg!” she said. “No telling how much that cost.” What about the horses, I asked, and she said, “There were no horses.” She mentioned Vincent’s outdated website, which once linked to an email address. “People can ask him questions, and somebody asked him once if he lived in Redwood, and he gave some smart response and never did really answer. Most of the stuff on it’s old,” she said. As she talked, a shirtless teenager on a four-wheeler, with a younger boy on the seat behind him, circled the surrounding terrain. Occasionally, they set off fireworks. “Lester lives in that house,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder in the direction of the wooden house. “He drives a white pickup. He pulls a little trailer behind it. He’d probably talk to you.”<br />
<br />
“OK, we’ll try there,” I said. “But first, I have to ask what you made that fountain out of.”<br />
<br />
She smiled. “It was the tank they baptize people in at the church. They got a new one and they were gonna throw it away, so I asked if I could have it, and we buried it in the ground. It’s deep.” <br />
<br />
“I bet it is,” I said, now recognizing the steps leading down into its murky depths.<br />
<br />
I felt a little more comfortable approaching Birdsong’s house this time. At least I could say I’d been to Jan-Michael’s. Also, I had convinced myself that there was no attack dog lurking beneath the steps. The truck was still there, along with the unhinged little trailer, but the blinds remained closed, and when I rang the bell, no one answered. <br />
<br />
“I bet he works at night,” Neil said. “I think we have to come back. So many people know about what happened. Someone’s been talking. Maybe it was Lester.”<br />
<br />
But for now we had run out of options, so we reluctantly headed back into the hills, past trees glowing gold and red in the autumn sun. I thought of something Brenda Welch said, back at the store: “People here know who he is, but so what if he’s had some bad times? There’s a bunch of us up in here that’s had bad times. He’s a just a human being, like the rest of us.” I thought that maybe, under the circumstances, Vincent was now right where he needed to be. But who am I to say? I just googled the guy, and asked around.<br />
<br />
We never went back to Birdsong’s house, and Vincent, not surprisingly, never called. Two years passed before I noticed a brief in the Vicksburg paper, under the headline, “Former Actor Treated After Wreck on 465.” It said only this: “A Vicksburg man was treated and released following a single-car accident Sunday on Mississippi 465. Jan-Michael Vincent, a former actor for whom officers declined to release a Vicksburg address, was taken to River Region Medical Center after he lost control of his vehicle.”<br />
<br />
That was it. Jan-Michael Vincent was still deconstructing his own life, and people still felt the need to more or less protect his privacy, though he hardly needed it now.<br />
<br />
From Lost magazineAlan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-5714448040381490352011-09-01T07:27:00.000-07:002017-11-09T16:18:36.843-08:00The Valley of the Moon's Bridge to Nowhere<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m05BYGWTfb4/Tl-Vagi-2WI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/ZlyuRmF1iMc/s1600/File9562.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="272" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m05BYGWTfb4/Tl-Vagi-2WI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/ZlyuRmF1iMc/s400/File9562.jpg" /></a></div><br />
During a recent outing in Claiborne County, Miss., my friend Chad and I took a side trip to a scenic rural area known as the Valley of the Moon. I’m not sure of the origin of the poetic name, other than that it alludes to a local plantation. A Google search shed no light on the subject, though it did turn up a place by the same name in California. <br />
<br />
Claiborne County’s Valley of the Moon is a broad, gently undulating section of farmland northeast of Port Gibson along the Natchez Trace Parkway, where the landscape slowly descends from low hills to cypress brakes along Bayou Pierre. The valley is bisected by a minor road that leads, on the opposite side of the bayou, to the extinct village of Willows, aka Willow Springs. <br />
<br />
This seldom-traveled route used to cross the bayou on an old iron bridge, which we found was no longer there, having been replaced a few years back by a nondescript concrete crossing. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5ScQr0zBcJY/TmDXutN6kOI/AAAAAAAAAc4/MxRWcY2Z1mc/s1600/File9562.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="136" width="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5ScQr0zBcJY/TmDXutN6kOI/AAAAAAAAAc4/MxRWcY2Z1mc/s200/File9562.jpg" /></a></div><br />
We were sorry to see that, as both of us appreciate visual throwbacks to previous eras, and tend to be averse to anything that further homogenizes the landscape. <br />
<br />
Also disappointing: The bucolic and historic old trace road that led from the bridge to Willows was in the process of being bulldozed <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-naj1UZoDy-4/Tl-WYGE8XTI/AAAAAAAAAcg/MTiqzbFwkBk/s1600/showimg.php.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="135" width="192" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-naj1UZoDy-4/Tl-WYGE8XTI/AAAAAAAAAcg/MTiqzbFwkBk/s320/showimg.php.jpeg" /></a></div>and its canopy of overhanging trees pushed into windrows as part of a major widening project. It was odd to see such a big project being built in the middle of nowhere. For someone who’s done a good bit of investigative research, it was, well… curious. <br />
<br />
Government waste is obviously a big topic today, and it’s not surprising to find evidence that it extends beyond what’s popularly cited in conservative bombast -- that it sometimes encompasses projects, such as roads and bridges, that service local governments and contractors as much as, or even more than, local job markets. As often as not, local governments undertake such projects with state and federal subsidies, using dubious cost-to-benefit ratios, heedless of how they will be maintained later on. In some cases spending public money to build infrastructure makes perfect sense. In others, as is arguably the case with the Valley of the Moon bridge and what’s known as the Willows Road, it seems misguided, or worse.<br />
<br />
Crossing the anonymous concrete bridge, I imagined that many people were glad to see the old bridge across Bayou Pierre replaced. Progress. The old bridge was narrow -- one lane wide, though that hardly seems an insurmountable problem considering the route handled only about 40 vehicles per day, according to a website that surveys historic bridges. The odds that two vehicles would meet on the bridge were slim. Viewed from the vantage point of an outsider, the “solution” – spending millions of dollars to accommodate those 40 vehicles, seems to be more of a problem, and not only because it resulted in the destruction of a quaint old bridge. Notably, the routes that connect with Willows Road at each end were not being widened, so what you had was a strangely isolated "improvement."<br />
<br />
It's possible the old bridge was structurally deficient, beyond some bureaucratic designation aimed at justifying the expense of building a new one, but I didn't come across any evidence of that. On the contrary, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History observed in what was otherwise, ultimately, a meaningless historical review, that the bridge was “well-maintained, unaltered, and in very good condition.” Given the lack of true accountability for government expenditures, I've observed that projects of questionable economic value often proceed apace, with an elected official, contractor or large landowner acting as the driving force. Along the way, it’s not unusual for historically significant infrastructure to be sacrificed, such as happened to a row of 19th century storefronts in downtown Jackson, Miss., razed in the 1980s by the city’s redevelopment authority for a parking garage that was never built, or to the pretty little bridge across Bayou Pierre, which was both scenic and historic. <br />
<br />
Remarkably, there are rarely repercussions for government agencies that undertake such dubious and destructive projects. A few people shake their heads, perhaps someone writes a letter to the editor, but the government and its contractors afterward move on to the next grazing ground. In the case of the Valley of the Moon bridge and once-lovely Willows Road, the result is, essentially, nothing. Here: You have this note.<br />
<br />
<i>"Major connector." In the map below, Willows Road runs southeast from near the center (marked as Willows) to the crossing at Bayou Pierre.</i> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7jOX3pylfXI/TmBbSKFL5oI/AAAAAAAAAcw/LFjkdi_7H4E/s1600/Claiborne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="286" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7jOX3pylfXI/TmBbSKFL5oI/AAAAAAAAAcw/LFjkdi_7H4E/s400/Claiborne.jpg" /></a></div><br />
On the day that Chad and I crossed the new bridge we came upon a “Road Closed” sign, which (typically for us) we disregarded. We drove around the barricades and navigated the construction zone, where we were surprised to find crews working on a Saturday. We also noted that someone had set aside the more valuable logs of uprooted cedar trees that had previously shaded the road, of which there were many, for what would certainly prove to be a lucrative trip to a sawmill. One could only hope that the county had actually sold those saw logs to help offset the cost of construction, though that seems unlikely. Chad would later learn that the old iron bridge itself, as well as part of a similar structure upstream in the vicinity of Carlisle, Miss., had likewise been hauled off – also, no doubt, earning someone a hefty sum, considering the current high value of metal salvage. Again, who knows if the county’s taxpayers shared in the profits of the salvage. If I had to guess, I’d say the sale was considered part of the cost of disposing of the bridge. It would have been nice if they'd at least left the old bridge as a monument to the past, though I'm sure the argument would be that it would've been a liability.<br />
<br />
It was disheartening to see so much beauty destroyed for what seemed no good reason, and the more I thought about it the more I wondered how, precisely, it had happened. Once I got home I set about googling, and found that the new bridge had been built at a cost of approximately $3.5 million and that the road widening project would cost another $1 million or so, which meant that the total cost of the work would be $4.5 million, for a three-mile-long route that, again, carries about 40 vehicles per day. Unless you’re among a handful of local residents with very specific travel plans, the road basically goes from nowhere to nowhere. The cost figures for the bridge, by the way, came from the website of one of the contractors, WGK of Clinton, Miss., which in 2006 received an industry award for its design of the new crossing. <br />
<br />
Remarkably, I found that the old Valley of the Moon bridge was still listed in the National Register of Historic Places, a program designed to protect such properties from federally funded destruction, even though it no longer exists.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nV46E0TyqKE/TmDZMkHLpaI/AAAAAAAAAdA/aHRLd2r4xNM/s1600/File9561.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="269" width="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nV46E0TyqKE/TmDZMkHLpaI/AAAAAAAAAdA/aHRLd2r4xNM/s400/File9561.jpg" /></a></div><br />
When I later contacted the state Department of Archives and History, which administers the National Register program for the National Park Service, I was told that, considering that the bridge had been destroyed, the agency might consider writing a letter to the Mississippi Department of Transportation to express their dismay. My thought, upon hearing this, was, oh, well.<br />
<br />
While it is true that the damage is already done, the question begs to be asked: What would the failure to seek some sort of redress say about the National Register program? I was told that local and state governments often consider state-funded projects exempt from National Register guidelines, because the funding does not come directly from the federal government, although that is debatable. The Department of Archives and History has done a lot to preserve historic landmarks in the state, but in fact has a checkered history when it comes to enforcing the National Register guidelines, having been called to task by the Federal Highway Administration for attempting to use federal funds to take down a designated National Landmark house on a Civil War battlefield near Edwards, Miss., after which it (Archives) was compelled to rebuild the structure, known as the Coker House. <br />
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From my communications with Archives and History (which provided the black and white photos posted here), it was not even clear whether the Valley of the Moon bridge was still there at the time it was listed, though it had been under consideration for years. But say the destruction predated the listing by a matter of a few months; how could the county not know that the bridge was historic, and eligible for protected status? Clearly, the need to spend money had overwhelmed the need to preserve a piece of history. Archives and History learned about the bridge demolition in October 2005, eight months after the new bridge opened. Richard Cawthon, who retired as the agency’s chief architectural historian a few months later, responded to the news by dictating a memo to his own files, as follows: <br />
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“On Thursday, 27 October 2005, I received a call from Kenneth Ross of Claiborne County, who said he had gone in search of the bridge that we had placed on the National Register as the Valley of the Moon Bridge, but he couldn't find it. He was in the area, calling on his cellular phone, so I talked him through the directions to it according to the maps in our files, and he said that the bridge at that location had been taken down and replaced about a year ago. It was locally referred to as the ‘Willows Creek Bridge,’ and was not recognized as being the same bridge during the National Register nomination process. He will send me photos of the pilings that are all that remain of the old bridge, so I can match them to our photos. It would appear, however, that the bridge is gone and should be removed from the National Register.” For the record, the bridge remains on the list, and it spanned Bayou Pierre, not Willows Creek.<br />
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It’s all water under the bridge, now, I suppose, yet it’s hard to get past the fact that there, in the remote Valley of the Moon, a series of curious events had unfolded, almost totally off the radar. A huge sum of money had been expended for a road and bridge of questionable economic value, which had resulted in the destruction of a federally protected historic site. And it had happened without any repercussions. <br />
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As readers of these posts know, I am a strong believer in historic preservation, but I am also a journalist and investigative researcher, and for all those reasons the destruction of the Valley of the Moon bridge and Willows Road piqued my interest. If I were employed full-time by a large publication, or even if I were working a story on kickstarter.com rather than being an unaffiliated, freelance writer, I could perhaps devote the time necessary to fill in all the blanks in the story, though I’m not sure many large publications would see the significance of this particular outcropping of government waste, which, in fact, is part of the problem. Sadly, as the print media collapses, there are fewer and fewer public watchdogs to monitor the potential for abuse of the public trust – a role the print media once embraced, almost solely, and which its successors in the blogosphere and corporate media franchising have shown little interest in evenly documenting. Despite the pervasiveness of the Internet, what happens in out-of-the-way places like the Valley of the Moon is in many ways less widely known than it was before, and government officials are no doubt aware of that. Still, what I managed to find out about the Valley of the Moon bridge through personal observation, websites, email exchanges and phone calls (not all of which were returned) proved revealing. <br />
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According to the records at the Department of Archives and History, the one-lane, wooden-decked bridge was built in the late 1920s and listed in the National Register in 2005. It was the site of a locally famous Civil War skirmish that, in much the same way the bridge replacement project serves as a microcosm of a bigger issue involving government spending, was one component of a much larger battleground -- the pivotal Vicksburg Campaign. Willows Road, which is mentioned in the state Scenic Byways Program, until recently remained much as it was at the time Union and Confederate troops fought over it. Today, notably, there is only one residence along it, a cluster of trailers belonging to a seasonal hunting camp. <br />
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The 1920s Valley of the Moon bridge was not the first to be sabotaged, as it turned out. According to a Union Army dispatch dated May 23, 1863, the Confederate Army, which had been routed by Gen. U.S. Grant’s troops during the Battle of Port Gibson, had attempted to burn the wartime bridge during their retreat, but the Union troops had extinguished the blaze “by considerable effort” and were able to repair and use it to continue their pursuit. “The rebels,” the dispatch continued, “commenced disputing our passage soon after we crossed the bayou,” and managed to slow the progress of the Union troops as they, themselves, sought refuge in Vicksburg. Among the casualties resulting from the bridge contest were one Union soldier killed and “two or three wounded,” and at least two hundred Confederates captured as prisoners. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TbmdsFDKIKM/TmDZYeVmA3I/AAAAAAAAAdI/TrePJpd6yvk/s1600/images-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="171" width="295" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TbmdsFDKIKM/TmDZYeVmA3I/AAAAAAAAAdI/TrePJpd6yvk/s400/images-1.jpeg" /></a></div><br />
A suspension bridge spanned the bayou during the war. I’m not sure what type of bridge existed during the six decades between the war and the 1920s, but the later bridge was documented by the Department of Archives and History before its destruction at the hands of the Claiborne County Board of Supervisors and its contractors. <br />
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Beyond the question of the economic justification for the project, it is natural to wonder how a National Register property (or even one that was eligible for listing) could be destroyed by a government agency using state and, likely, federal funds, without the knowledge of anyone who cared. I say “likely” because so much of what is considered state funding has its origins in federal allocations. It is also natural to wonder who the ultimate beneficiaries of the taxpayer funds were, and who, for example, owns the adjacent land, which might directly benefit from a bigger road and bridge. What were the connections between those contractors and elected officials? <br />
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Claiborne County Board of Supervisors president Charles Short was quoted in a news release about the WGK engineering award saying the project’s purpose was to provide “a major connecting point” for employees and suppliers of the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station. That seems something of a stretch, considering the nuclear plant is comparatively distant and is already served by four-lane U.S. 61 and numerous other local roads. Shorts also observed that residents “now enjoy a safer, more streamlined bridge… Not only is traffic flow improved but thanks to the overall design, the problems with flooding and erosion associated with the original bridge have been eliminated.”<br />
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All of which may be true; it’s hard to say. The newspaper in Port Gibson seems not to have covered the story, or at least has not published anything about it that can be found on the Internet, nor did the Jackson newspaper, The Clarion-Ledger. When I called the office of the Claiborne County Engineer, seeking more information, I found that he wasn’t a public official, nor did he live and work in Claiborne County. He was Jeffery Knight, a principal in WGK (he’s the K), the firm that had been awarded the project to design the $3.5 million bridge. As they say in Disneyworld, it’s a small world, after all. <br />
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The woman who answered the phone at WGK sent me to Knight’s voicemail, and I left a message explaining that I was trying to find out what had become of the old Valley of the Moon bridge. Perhaps not surprisingly, he did not return my call. I followed up once more, and asked the woman who answered the phone if I had, in fact, reached the Claiborne County Engineer’s office, to which she responded, “That would be Jeffery Knight, but he’s not in.” When I pressed her for information about WGK’s relationship with the county engineer’s office, she replied that WGK was both an engineering firm and Claiborne County’s engineering firm. I later found, on the WGK website, that Knight is also the county engineer for neighboring Jefferson County. Perhaps contracting out the job of county engineer makes sense to a cash-strapped local government, and is perfectly legal. But is it really logical to hire, as a government advisor on the building of roads and bridges, a firm that will design those roads and bridges, for millions of dollars? <br />
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On its company website, WGK noted that it had designed the bridges and approaches in the Valley of the Moon “to meet the design criteria of MDOT [the Mississippi Department of Transportation] and Federal Highway Administration,” and that the project had been completed a year ahead of schedule. Whether the project’s fast-track status related to concerns about the potential for controversy over the destruction of the old bridge is unknown; the old bridge isn’t even mentioned on the website, though it should have been part of the project’s environmental assessment, which WGK undertook. My plan is to request the complete documentation of the project from MDOT, which I will detail in a future note. <br />
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Early completion was one reason cited in the June 29, 2006, news release concerning the American Council of Engineering Companies of Mississippi’s presentation of “the Honors Award to Williford, Gearhart & Knight Inc. [WGK] for outstanding engineering projects in the State of Mississippi.” WGK published a photo of the new bridge (included earlier in this note) on its website; among the other contractors were Key Constructors LLC of Madison, Miss., and Dirtworks, Inc., of Vicksburg, Miss. WGK, according to the release, completed its design work in December 2004 and the new bridge opened in February 2005. The company was clearly proud of the work. <br />
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By this point in my research, almost anything concerning the Valley of the Moon was of interest to me, so I decided to find out who all the principal characters were. Who owned sprawling Valley of the Moon Plantation, for example? I don’t mean to imply that the landowners had any specific role in the project, or directly benefited from it, but this is a story about public money passing through the Valley of the Moon, so it seemed worth finding out. What I found is that Valley of the Moon Farms is jointly owned by William N. Cassell, Moon Planting Company, and James E. Cassell of Port Gibson. There is also a private, one-strip airport in the vicinity that goes by the same name, owned by Valley Aviation Inc., of Port Gibson, which appears to be used primarily by cropdusters.<br />
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According to the website of the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group, Valley of the Moon Farms has been “a top recipient” of federal farm subsidies – a staggering $2.75 million between 1995 and 2010. The funds, distributed by USDA, included conservation easements, disaster payments and crop subsidies for cotton, corn, wheat, sorghum and oats. EWG noted that in 2007, when Valley of the Moon Farms received about $500,000 in federal payments, the average adjusted income for people living in its zip code was $22,000. It would be interesting to compare USDA subsidies and government road and bridge funds allotted to Claiborne County with the total annual investment in, say, school lunch programs and other oft-reviled “entitlements.” But who, really, has the time to piece all that together? Considering how much I’ve invested in researching the destruction, six years ago, of a little-known bridge in a rural area of southwest Mississippi, you might think that I do, but I don’t.<br />
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Again, it’s possible that many local residents -- wealthy, poor and in between -- were only too happy to see the old bridge and narrow tunnel of a road replaced by a more efficient, modern route. It’s also likely that everyone in the U.S. would like to be the beneficiary of millions of dollars in government contracts or government subsidies. But at issue, really, is who decides how such money will be spent, based on what criteria, and who will be there to bring the hammer down should the process goes awry.<br />
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As part of my continuing, sporadic research, I reviewed the political campaign contributions of elected officials that were available online, because that’s one of the best ways to uncover meaningful links. All I found – and I should point out that my review was not exhaustive – was that Key LLC has given Central District Highway Commissioner Dick Hall a total of $3,000 since 2009. Hall, like the state’s other two highway commissioners, routinely accepts contributions from people who benefit from state highway contracts, for what it’s worth.<br />
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A full review of the contributions to every elected official involved wasn’t really within the scope of my research. To review the contributions to the Claiborne County Board of Supervisors, for example, requires requesting the documents in person at the courthouse in Port Gibson. Perhaps, out of continuing curiosity, I’ll do that, next time I pass that way. But, as potentially telling as such documents can be, it’s highly possible that there is nothing untoward about those relationships, and that the project was just one of many that are concocted to spend available money in the name of economic development, which doesn’t exactly qualify as front page news. What we know is that a lovely old bridge and a scenic tunnel of a road beneath a canopy of venerable trees came down, and a bunch of money got spread around. It happened in the Valley of the Moon, but in the end, it’s just the way the world goes round.<br />
Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-18555157551999230122011-08-29T09:13:00.000-07:002011-08-29T09:54:49.268-07:00Lost art of Katrina<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jC4h1nFw1d0/TlvA8nJpOJI/AAAAAAAAAcI/YELXr6pkQxQ/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="223" width="226" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jC4h1nFw1d0/TlvA8nJpOJI/AAAAAAAAAcI/YELXr6pkQxQ/s400/images.jpeg" /></a></div><i>This article originally ran in the Aug. 29, 2006, edition of Lost Magazine (www.lostmag.com)</i><br />
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Katrina’s Art: The Lost Art of the Gulf Coast, One Year Later<br />
By Alan Huffman<br />
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“As paintings go, it was not that good, really,” Madeleine McMullan recalls in a voice still gilded by pre-war Austria after 60 years in the United States. “I don’t even know who painted it. It wasn’t considered valuable — in fact, my father hated it.” McMullan is talking about a portrait of her mother that was painted in Vienna in 1920, smuggled out of the country when the family fled the Nazis on the eve of World War II, and lost on the surge of Hurricane Katrina last year. <br />
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The last time McMullan saw the portrait, it was hanging above her prized Louis XVI settee in the hallway of her family's summer home in Pass Christian, Mississippi. It was a centerpiece of the house, which was built in 1845 with tall windows and broad galleries to catch the breezes and a sweeping view of the Gulf of Mexico. The moment she hung it there, in an alcove, McMullan knew she had found the perfect spot, or so it seemed.<br />
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Done in oils in a style known as decote, the portrait was among precious few mementos of her family's peripatetic saga, which unfolded across four turbulent years as Europe disintegrated, and culminated in their arrival in Baltimore in 1940. On a bright autumn day in Lake Forest, Illinois, where McMullan and her husband Jim live for most of the year, she recalls her family shuttering their three-story manse on Vienna's Hofzeile Strasse, preparing to flee. It was a defining moment in her own history of loss and survival.<br />
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As they were preparing to leave, everyone knew the importance of concealing valuables from the Nazis, she says. Already her grandmother had taken the family silver to Geneva on repeated train trips, hidden in her handbag a few pieces at a time. Someone — McMullan doesn't remember who — removed the portrait from its frame and folded it before the family fled, first to Switzerland, next to France, then to England, and finally to the U.S. The grand old house in Vienna, with all their remaining possessions, including a large collection of art, was bombed to rubble during the war. <br />
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McMullan inherited the portrait, which still bore the crease marks from the folding, after her father’s death, and she took it to the summer home in Pass Christian. After trying it in several rooms, “I finally found that perfect spot in the alcove, and there I put my mother,” she says. <br />
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Though the house was among a handful to survive Katrina along Pass Christian’s East Scenic Drive, it was gutted by 145-mph winds and a 30-foot tidal surge, which carried away two-thirds of its contents, ripped out some floors, exploded walls and battered the arching live oaks on the lawn. With so much loss all around, with bodies being pulled from the wreckage up and down the war zone that the Gulf Coast had become, and with neighboring New Orleans descending into chaos, McMullan realized that her family was comparatively fortunate. Her mother’s portrait was a footnote to the worst natural disaster, the worst historic preservation disaster, and — as is only now becoming apparent — arguably the worst single loss of cultural artifacts and art in U.S. history. In New Orleans there was unimaginable ruin; in Pass Christian and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, there was obliteration. Still, her mother’s portrait was something that had seemed destined to survive, and now it was gone and no one knew where it went.<br />
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Across Mississippi’s coastal counties, more than 65,000 homes were destroyed by the storm, and on the beach facing the Mississippi Sound, a residential esplanade running intermittently for perhaps 50 miles was reduced to flotsam and jetsam in a matter of hours, the wreckage interrupted here and there by the husks of the few ravaged structures that survived. Amid the bewildering enumeration of lost lives, it took a while for most people to recognize what else was gone: The feeling of permanence that had set the Mississippi Coast apart from typical beachfront communities of stilted houses and fake stucco condos. <br />
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Hundreds of historic buildings were destroyed — buildings that had survived countless hurricanes, some for as long as two centuries — and many, including the McMullans’ house, discharged upon the wind and surge extensive collections of art. Countless collections, such as one that vanished from a home across the bay, which reputedly included works by Rembrandt and Picasso, were irreplaceable. Because the Gulf Coast was also a mecca for artists, the loss of such private collections was exacerbated by the destruction of artists' studios, museums, galleries and public buildings in which local art was on display. “We’ve lost art on a grand scale,” is how Biloxi attorney and art collector Patrick Bergin describes the cataclysm. Bergin, who rode out the storm with his family in their home on the Back Bay of Biloxi, recalls frantically moving as much of his art as possible upstairs as the rising water swept through the ground floor, but says much of the collection was lost anyway. “And it’s heartbreaking,” he says, “to think of everything in those 100-plus-year-old houses on the beach — all the antiques, heirlooms, art, sculpture — washed out into the Gulf or buried under debris.”<br />
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Even as the losses are being reckoned, random pieces of art have been found among the sodden drifts of clothing, building timbers, broken china cabinets, blinded TV sets and rank refrigerators. In one odd coincidence, an Ocean Springs, Mississippi, woman found a water-damaged watercolor, of a marsh scene, in a marsh. Such finds have provided a source of both inspiration and bewilderment, leaving artists and collectors to wonder: Where, exactly, did it all go? For many, including Long Beach, Mississippi, collector David Lord, this is anything but an idle exercise. Lord lost a personal art collection whose value he estimates at more than $7 million, and he has no idea where it went or whether he will see any of the pieces again. <br />
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Today, a year after the storm, as the Gulf Coast echoes with the din of backhoes and dump trucks hauling away the last of an estimated 40 million cubic yards of debris, “gone” is not a satisfactory — nor, in many cases, an accurate — explanation, which makes it hard for collectors and artists to find closure or to envision what the future might, or should, hold. With so many places to search, with so much inscrutable evidence constantly assaulting the eye, “I do lie awake at night wondering,” McMullan says. Might her mother's portrait one day be recovered, or, barring that, might she learn how it met its end?<br />
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The possibilities, of course, are endless. McMullan’s portrait might lie buried in the muck and sand of the offshore waters, or it could be hanging in a treetop with the drapery and clothes that flutter like tattered prayer flags across the coast. It could have washed up on a beach in Texas, or Yucatan, or it could be buried with all the other unseen treasures in the scores of landfills that were hastily permitted in inland counties after the storm. It could, conceivably, eventually show up on eBay. The storm surge of Katrina was the largest ever recorded in North America and swept as far as ten miles inland, leaving a swath of destruction 150 miles wide. Beyond reckoning the losses, finding out precisely what happened has become a preoccupation for those seeking to salvage evidence of the shattered past. <br />
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The surge of Katrina was not, as might be imagined, simply a giant tidal wave that struck the beach, then carried the resulting wreckage out to sea. Instead it mounted steadily, bounding higher until it overtook the sea wall that lines much of the beach, advancing further with each crashing wave to slosh across streets and highways before roaring in a whitewater torrent over embankments, into buildings, back out, and in again. The tide reached the third floor of some structures, crowned by breaking, wind-driven waves, the force of which grew exponentially when coupled with the increasing weight of the water. Foundations were undermined, walls yielded to the stress, and rafts of wreckage, vehicles and boats collected and acted as battering rams. Once the eye passed, the water began to fall and the flow reversed, but not uniformly, because the winds had shifted and the obstacles had moved. Debris was scattered everywhere. <br />
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Not surprisingly, locating art was not a high priority for most people in the immediate aftermath of the storm. Faced with recovering bodies and finding food, water, and shelter, “People were overwhelmed,” says Gwen Impson, who heads the Hancock County artists' association known as The Arts. “People were dealing with life and death issues. But slowly it began to sink in, and people began to go through the piles of debris.”<br />
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There is still no official estimate of the total value of the artwork that was lost, and there may never be. Because so many collections were uninsured, often the only documentation was contained in the personal records of their owners, and sometimes those records, too, have vanished. Some of the artwork was never photographed. Jim Lamantia, a retired architect who is now an art collector, dealer, and part-time appraiser, says he lost the majority of his own collection, though his gallery in New Orleans was spared. “Monetarily, my loss was significant,” he says. None of his art, including his inventory in the gallery, was insured. “I can’t afford the sort of insurance I’d have to have,” he says.<br />
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Lamantia, who lives in Pass Christian and New York City, says he retrieved some of his paintings from debris piles, shipped a few to New York for restoration, and is creating collages from the remnants of his 18th century Piranesi paper prints. He says he is skeptical of some of the losses claimed by other collectors, but is not surprised that people would evacuate without their art. “The extent of Katrina was unimaginable,” he says. “We boarded up and comfortably left.” In some cases the only evidence of the value of the lost art is in surviving examples. Prior to the storm, Lord says he donated one painting from his collection, a watercolor of a Central Park scene by Maurice Pendergrass that appraised at $980,000, to the New Orleans Museum of Art. The museum’s director, John Bullard, confirms the donation.<br />
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“It’s a beautiful piece,” Bullard says, adding that although the museum did not participate in the appraisal, “$900,000 is certainly not out of line for a major Pendergrass painting.” (The museum's collection survived.) <br />
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Blake Vonder Haar, whose New Orleans art restoration studio has traditionally drawn clients from the Gulf Coast, says her business has been deluged with artwork that was soaked with saltwater, caked with mud, ripped, faded, or disintegrating. “We’ve taken 4,000 pieces of damaged art since Katrina, but very few are from the Gulf Coast — I can count them on one hand — because most of them are just gone,” she says. Among the rare survivors, which she is currently restoring, is the oversized “Portrait of Jan de Groot” by artist Jerry Farnsworth, whose work also hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum in New York. The painting, which features de Groot with an owl on his shoulder, was pulled from a debris pile blocking a Biloxi street.<br />
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The incentive such finds gives to the continuing search is undercut by the preponderance of debris, the bewildering array of places to look, and the lack of an official clearinghouse for lost art, which makes it difficult to reunite found pieces with their owners. Most of the happy endings have come about by happenstance, and through word-of- mouth. As the storm retreats into history, the chances of finding more are rapidly dimming, yet many are reluctant to give up the search. <br />
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In addition to the portrait, the McMullans lost 700 volumes of books, photos taken during the Depression by author Eudora Welty, a set of original Audubon prints, and a letter from author William Faulkner describing his visit to the home. “I picture those bookcases falling over, and then the floors going, and all that water rushing under the house, and the books just fell into the hole and were carried away,” McMullan says. “That’s the only way I can visualize it.” Not long ago, she adds, “A woman called me and said she thought she'd found my portrait. It had washed up on the edge of the bay, in Bay St. Louis. But she described it to me and the color of the hair was different — it was black and my mother’s was reddish-blonde. The tilt of the head was different. I didn’t even get the woman's name. It gets to the point that this whole thing is so painful you want to erase it. But you can’t.”<br />
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On a balmy, late spring day the narrow streets of old-town Bay St. Louis are bustling with the trucks of carpenters, plumbers, electricians, roofers, and painters. Like every other city on the Gulf Coast, Bay St. Louis, some 50 miles east of New Orleans, is recovering incrementally from the hurricane. Progress is measured by the degree to which signs of destruction are removed, like so many negatives reaching toward a positive conclusion. A church steeple still blocks the sidewalk on Main Street, but it has been repositioned, upright. A field of debris that once stretched to the horizon along the beach is slowly being whittled down. The National Guard staging area is gone, as are most of the relief workers. In the hollowed-out downtown, the clatter of nail guns mingles with the drone of a road grader on the scoured beach, where the driftwood is interspersed with antique windows, bits of architectural molding, a computer hard drive, toys. Shimmering like a mirage on the placid bay, a barge-mounted pile driver floats beside the topless piers of the old U.S.-90 bridge, which was washed out by the storm. <br />
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In what was once the South Beach historic district, amid the muddy, overturned cars and the mountains of architectural and household debris, Charles Gray’s immaculate silver Rolls Royce sits parked beside his tiny FEMA travel trailer. Gray’s domain is basically a clean slab, with large ferns in urns positioned at the front corners, carved from the ruined streetscape. Gray’s home, in a former warehouse that was undergoing restoration, was leveled by the storm, as were most of its neighbors. The back wall was the first to collapse, and fell inward, he says; the other three walls collapsed outward after the interior filled. Gray knows this because a family across the street — a man, woman, and two children — saw it happen as they struggled to save themselves. The family, he says, “was floating, trying to get to my roof, and when they got to within two or three hundred feet of it, my building collapsed, too.” The mother drowned, a fact that gives sobering context to Gray’s own material loss. “I’m 72, and I would only have used those things for ten more years or so, anyway,” he says, sounding only partly convinced.<br />
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Most significant among Gray's losses, he says, were two Picassos and a painting reputedly done by Leonardo da Vinci, called “Boy with a Violin.” Also washed from the house was a self-portrait etching attributed to Rembrandt that, remarkably, Gray managed to recover from a debris pile a block away, a month after the storm. The etching is now at an art conservator, he says. Gray’s collection was also uninsured, and his explanation for the lack of coverage is that his provider refused him on the grounds that his building was only partially complete. The point is now largely moot because few insurance companies have honored hurricane policies, claiming the losses were the result of a flood, and many of the buildings lacked flood insurance because they were elevated atop comparatively high ground, outside the designated flood zones. <br />
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The contents of Gray’s collection were known to many in the local arts community, but the lack of insurance makes it impossible to verify his or many other losses, or to affix values. “Only one of the Picassos had been certified — a line drawing of a male nude with a strange little Queen Victoria-looking woman gawking at him,” he says. The reputed da Vinci, by his account, was once the subject of a controversy after an art critic suggested that it might actually be attributed to Rafael. After that, Gray says, it was removed from the Royal Academy of Art in London, and he bought it at an auction in the 1950s; in fact, there are very few known paintings attributed to da Vinci — Gray might just as easily say that he had a second rendition of “The Last Supper,” but that it is now sadly gone.<br />
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Gray has not come up entirely empty handed, as many have. In addition to the Rembrandt, he has found parts of his two crystal chandeliers, more than 1,000 of his 3,000 miniature figurines, several damaged museum-quality lacquered boxes from the former Soviet Union, “and a complete eight-piece setting of Chateau Chantilly china, which I found as recently as the day before yesterday, while I was digging in two or three inches of mud in my back yard.”<br />
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He says he hunted every day for three months. “My 1921 Chickering parlor grand piano, which is irreplaceable, I found a block away, upside down,” he says. “I’ve gone and sat on the carcass of that piano and cried a hundred times. It gets to the point where I was actually happier not to find the carcasses of things. Otherwise you can still hope they're alive. It's like that line from Tennessee Williams: ‘Ruined finery is all I have.’”<br />
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In addition to private collectors, many local artists were hard hit, in some cases losing their life's work, their supplies, their studios, and their homes. Lori Gordon, a painter and mixed-media artist, lost her Clermont Harbor home and studio along with more than 800 pieces of her own art spanning a 40-year career, including her portrait of her late father. Most of her last year's work survived in galleries that either did not flood or flooded to depths below the level at which her pieces were hanging. By far the biggest surprise, she says, was finding an intact stained glass window that had been given to her by an artist friend, which had been mounted in the front door of her house. Though the structure and the door were nowhere to be found, she found the stained glass on the ground, unbroken. Thus began the next phase of Gordon's career — incorporating detritus from the storm into her mixed-media art. Gordon's designs now include "pieces of the storm," as she describes them — lost figurines, antique plates, stamped tin, clocks, dolls, carved angels, masks, Mardi Gras beads, watermarked sheet music and anything else that catches her eye amid the ruins. Searching the debris, she says, "fulfilled an emotional need. That broken plate takes on a significance way out of proportion." During her first month of searching she found four of her paintings, damaged but still whole, as well as a few pencil drawings. "The vast majority of what I found were bits and pieces of paintings and bits and pieces of furniture, and as time went on and I was finding less and less of our own things, I started talking to friends and neighbors who invited me to go through their lots and see what I could find. Yesterday I found two more pieces of a friend's African art collection. I know she'll want those back." Only once has someone recognized a personal possession in Gordon's nascent, post-Katrina mixed-media work. In that case, "I had incorporated a fragment of a broken chair back, and she walked in, looked at it, pointed at it and said, 'That's it, that's it — I need that piece of my chair!' She needed it for a pattern to replace what she had lost, so I took it apart and gave it to her." <br />
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Another artist, Bay St. Louis potter and painter Ruth Thompson, recalls roaming the wreckage of her neighborhood after the storm “feeling like I was in the middle of a Salvador Dali painting — it was surreal. And I noticed that after the storm, when I started painting again, my style had changed dramatically.” To illustrate, she pulls out examples of her work, pre- and post-Katrina. Before, her style was impressionistic: A typical scene was a serene garden reminiscent of a Monet. Since the storm, she has painted bold, abstract studies, often of demons and birds with gaping mouths. <br />
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Hundreds of other artists have experienced similar losses. The Gulf Coast Art Association, founded in 1926, with 80 active artists, was hosting an exhibit in the Gulfport library when Katrina hit, and none of the art has been found, says member Shirley Sweeney. Another member had paintings hanging in the visitor’s center of the Gulf Islands National Seashore in Ocean Springs, all of which were lost. The Singing River Art Association, based in Pascagoula, also had works hanging in the Gulf Islands visitor's center, a few of which were later found on the beach, and in Biloxi’s J. L. Scott Marine Center, all of which were lost. Some artwork belonging to another Singing River member was returned after being uncovered in the debris along four blocks of Pascagoula's Market Street. The consensus is that much of the lost art certainly washed out to sea, but, says Impson, “We'll never know how much washed out. There are people still unaccounted for. There’ll be mysteries, always, after the hurricane.”<br />
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Yet because the surge was so powerful, an unusually large amount of debris was snagged by obstacles further inland, and so, observes Mary Anderson Pickard, daughter of renowned Ocean Springs artist Walter Anderson, “Every time you try to make a generalization about where things were going, it gets contradicted.” Almost all of her father's work, which was the subject of an exhibit at the Smithsonian in 2003, was lost or damaged by the storm. Still, volunteer searchers recently found several paintings done by Pickard's uncle, Mac Anderson, across the Ocean Springs harbor, a mile northwest of the Shearwater Pottery compound where the family of artists lived and worked before the storm. Other items, meanwhile, have been found in opposite directions. “We found a good many things buried in muddy sand, and I think we’ll probably continue to find things,” Pickard says. “Last week we had chicken bones turning up on the Gulfport beach again, from the trucks that were parked at the pier when the storm hit, going to Russia or somewhere. Things are washing in. When we have a storm, or a very high tide, more things will wash back in.”<br />
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In addition to art that was never seen amid the piles of debris, some works were actually discarded as waste in the bewilderment and confusion after the storm, Bergin says. In Gulfport's Whitney Bank building, where his office was located, the lobby contained several pieces of high-quality abstract art, and most of what did not wash out on the surge was later hauled away, he says. “I dream about those pieces, being able to find them in the area where they take all the debris, being able to pull them out and do something with them. I imagine the debris sites are just inundated with so many works buried.” <br />
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Among those who searched the debris for art, photographs, or anything of value to its former owners was Gulfport attorney and art collector Tom Teel. “All that’s left of my office is some old tabby steps,” he says, referring to the mixture of ground oyster shells and cement that was once a common building material on the coast. “And we’d find all these pictures, all gnarled and wet, and we didn’t know who they belonged to, so we’d stick them there on the steps, and every few days I’d go by and some of them would be gone, as people found them, so we’d add a few more.” Teel, who lost an eclectic collection of art ranging from 19th century oil paintings to an original photograph of Martin Luther King Jr., expects other pieces to turn up over time, though not necessarily in salvageable condition. “Tons of things will be found by shrimpers,” he says. “Already I know one shrimper found some World War I relics, including a bugle that had washed out and came up in his net.”<br />
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The closest disposal site to Pass Christian is the Firetower Landfill, just north of I-10, which was among 50 or so emergency burn pits, disposal sites and transfer stations set up after the storm. “We have seen some art come in,” says Herman Kitchens, who works for Advanced Disposal, the operator of the landfill. “But none of it’s worth salvaging. It’s mostly wet stuff and broken frames. After all the machinery handling, it’s torn to bits. I haven’t seen anything you’d want to keep — it’s mostly things without much value, like you'd see (hanging) in a nursing home.” In the months immediately after the storm, Kitchens says, “You did see a lot of people going through the debris piles. And I know a guy who hauls in here who was a shrimper, and he said he brought up some artifacts in his net that came from Beauvoir (Jefferson Davis’s last home, in Biloxi). But we go flounder-gigging just about every night, and about all we've seen is all the Wal-Mart stuff that’s washed up against the jetty.”<br />
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On this particular day a steady stream of dump trucks comes and goes along the rutted gravel road to the former dirt mine, which has been transformed into a mass of pulverized debris perhaps 50 feet high and several hundred yards long. At one end is the so-called “vegetative debris” — mostly trees and brush. Beside that sprawls a mound of tires, beyond which is the sorting area, where other types of refuse, including construction and demolition materials, are shunted to the main landfill, where any art would have likely ended up. It is hard to imagine finding anything recoverable in the waste, which was battered by wind and waves and steeped in salty, bacteria- and mold-laden piles before being bulldozed, loaded into trucks, dumped at the landfill, then compacted and covered with compost. Still, people look.<br />
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During the height of the cleanup, as many as 240 dump trucks per day unloaded at the Firetower site, which now contains about 700,000 cubic yards of debris. (By comparison, about ten million cubic yards were removed from the World Trade Center site). “Everyone just wants to get the stuff out of the way as quickly as possible,” says Billy Warden, who heads the solid waste permitting division of the state Department of Environmental Quality, adding that during the collecting and sorting of debris, “We had spotters looking for (chemical) drums, electronics, tires. It was all a jumbled mess, as you can imagine. The tidal surge just rolled all this stuff together. It was everything that would be in your house — clothes, cell phones, photo albums. I never heard of anyone finding any art.”<br />
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Even among those in a position to recognize art at the debris sites, knowledge is typically rudimentary and of only passing interest. When asked about the prospects for finding lost artwork, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employee suggests talking with “someone at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum” — an apparent reference to the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum, under construction in Ocean Springs to house the pottery of local master George Ohr, otherwise known as “the Mad Potter of Biloxi.” Ohr-O'Keefe Museum director Marjie Gowdy laughs when she hears of the mistake. “It happens all the time,” she says. Yet the museum, an affiliate of the Smithsonian, had already begun to make a name for itself before its Frank Gehry-designed facility was finished. The museum now has the bittersweet distinction of owning the most valuable collection of art on the Gulf Coast that remains intact. The campus itself is another story; gone is the Pleasant Reed House, built by a freed slave, which was being converted to an African American museum, as well as antebellum Tullis-Toledano Manor, considered by many to have been the best example of Gulf Coast vernacular architecture, which was flattened by an unmoored casino barge. Also damaged was the African American Art wing of the museum, though the graceful live oaks around which Gehry designed the complex survived. Ohr is widely regarded as a pottery genius, known for his pinched, folded, and twisted clay designs that were both eccentric and refined. A single piece has sold for as much as $84,000. His unconventional style reportedly attracted Gehry — most famous for the Guggenheim art museum in Bilbao, Spain, to design the project. Ohr’s pottery came through the storm unscathed on the second floor of the Biloxi library, but “deteriorating security,” as Gowdy puts it, prompted its relocation to the Mobile Museum of Art a week later, where it stayed for one year. It is now in an undisclosed vault north of the Gulf Coast. <br />
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Deteriorating security — otherwise known as looting – may have been a factor in the loss of artwork elsewhere, observes Lord, who evacuated with 60 pieces from his own collection but says that of the 200 he left behind, 17 survived on the second floor and were believed to have been stolen later, including works by Jose Orozco, George Luks, and Mark Rothko. “Those 17 were assessed at $2.6 million,” he says. While he did have insurance, Lord says it was not nearly enough to cover his loss. He leafs through a long list of the missing pieces, which include 19th century American landscapes by artists Ralph Blakelock, George Bickerstaff, and Edward Willard Deming as well as modern art by Joseph Meert, Max Weber, and Man Ray. Others say that in the rarefied atmosphere of the cleanup, finders of lost art no doubt occasionally turned into keepers, whether by design or by default. <br />
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In the weeks after the hurricane, the entire Gulf Coast was cordoned off and permits were required of anyone seeking to travel to the beachfront. Nowhere was visitor scrutiny more rigorous than in Pass Christian, which was a wealthy enclave of waterfront mansions that claimed the oldest yacht club in the South. Though devastated by the storm, Pass Christian retains more of its lavish residences than any other city on the coast, and those that survived were blown open by the storm, often with valuable furnishings and still hanging artwork visible through gaping holes in the facades. The Pass Christian beachfront is now a scene of architectural triage, with several of the surviving mansions undergoing restoration or being painstakingly returned to their foundations by house movers, and others being demolished or rebuilt from the ground up. At the McMullans’ house, blown-out windows and doors and a large hole in the front wall are now patched with plywood, awaiting a construction crew.<br />
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McMullan says that she initially hesitated about repairing the house, but decided to proceed after realizing it was now the oldest structure in town, after the previous titleholder was destroyed by the surge. Today, the lawn is mostly clear of debris, the live oaks are sprouting new growth, and the jasmine is blooming. The sounds of nail guns reverberate from the gutted house next door, while in the other direction, a backhoe groans. McMullan’s initial uncertainty stemmed in part from the pain of loss, she says. “Some of those things — the Audubon prints, the Welty photos, you can still get them. But it’s just too painful to think of hanging anything on those walls right now.” Others express fear that the empty spaces of the Gulf Coast will be filled by garish casinos, condos, and commercial strips. There is also the question of why anyone would invest so much — including priceless collections of art — in what has proved to be an untenable hurricane zone. As if acknowledging the obvious, the logo of the Corps of Engineers’ recovery program features the agency's symbol — a castle, but in this case built of sand.<br />
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Lori Gordon laughs when asked why so much valuable art was placed in harm's way, and why so many people are rushing to do it again. “It has to do with this little thing called home,” she says. “No matter what’s staring you in the face, when you get emotionally attached to a place, when you get emotionally attached to things, it defies logic. The people who aren’t emotionally attached — they’re already gone.” Gordon says she has no choice but to move inland herself, in one part due to the wildly escalating cost of hurricane insurance (in some cases, by as much as 400 percent) and the planned construction of high-rise condos in her neighborhood. “That hurts more than the storm,” she says. “Katrina took my house, but circumstances are now robbing me of my home.” <br />
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McMullan’s daughter, Margaret, says she always felt trepidation about leaving valuable possessions in the family’s beachfront home, even though the house had survived innumerable hurricanes during its 160 years. “I was always the one closing up before a hurricane, and I’d be thinking, what are we going to do if all this stuff goes? I had a friend visiting once from Los Angeles, and we were walking through the library, where the Eudora Welty photos were, and she said, ‘Why are you keeping these in here? It’s the worst place, with the salt air.’ And my father said, ‘So what? This is where I want to enjoy them.’ My parents, they just want to be amongst that stuff.” She agrees with her mother’s assessment of the monetary value of her grandmother’s portrait. “It’s not a great painting. It’s overly pretty — she looked like one of those Gibson Girls. I always thought the artist should have given her more substance, but the funny thing is, even though my mother got it framed and restored in New Orleans, you could still see those crease marks where it was folded, and that was what I really liked about it. To me, that was its substance.” The same could now be said of the watermarks and muddy stains on much of the art recovered after Katrina, though Pickard, for one, says the scars are too fresh to see it that way now. <br />
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Notably, many of the surviving collections, both public and private, are expected to return to their beachfront venues once the necessary restorations are complete. Before Katrina, Vonder Haar’s studio had restored 168 pieces of artwork from Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis’s home, which was built in 1852 and elevated about eight feet above the ground on Biloxi's beachfront boulevard. The last of the artwork was returned to the house two months before Katrina, and much of it was subsequently soaked or ripped by debris, including portraits of Davis and of his daughter, the latter of which Vonder Haar says took 200 hours to restore the first time around. The three most valuable of the damaged paintings are being restored, again, at Delaware's Winterthur Museum, and will eventually be returned to the house.<br />
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The Ohr-O’Keefe Museum, which had been scheduled to open in June, is now expected to open in 2008 at the same location. All the necessary protective measures — including reinforcing the walls of the lower level — will be put into place to ensure that the collection is safe, and FEMA has ruled that the building does not have to be further elevated, Gowdy says. “I’ve thought about it a lot, and it does seem risky,” Gowdy says of the extensive collections of art and artists’ studios on the Gulf Coast. “But when it’s beautiful here, it’s so beautiful, and you want to be by the water. People just get enchanted by the Gulf Coast lifestyle. That’s why the artists are going to come back.” She says the art community has also been bolstered by emergency funding from groups such as the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Ford Foundation, and government agencies including the Mississippi Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.<br />
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Bergin predicts that collecting will resume in earnest once some semblance of normalcy returns. “It’s like I told my wife when we were sifting through the debris: You work all your life to collect, you go to the auctions, you make day trips to galleries in New Orleans and meet artists, you preserve and restore, yet in one fell swoop all that effort is washed away.” Yet soon after the storm, Bergin says he began decorating the RV his family moved into with reclaimed artworks, including paintings by Alexander Calder and Peter Max. “It’s our fix to surround ourselves with what we’ve salvaged,” he says. “It’s an addiction. After the storm, rather than go for food and the file cabinets, what the hell do I do? I go for the artwork. It’s total nonsense. We were without food for nearly three days because of that. We should have been saving food.” The days of searching are now something of a blur, he says. “In the beginning we were all feeling hurt and shocked, and I threw out some things, and I wish I had it to do over again. It was so hurtful to see things that were no longer what they used to be. I wanted to be removed from reality, did not want to salvage or save. The pieces seemed somehow less valuable, and at first you don’t want anything that will remind you of this horrific event. But the further along we go, it’s like a death, where years later you can deal with it. And I realize that what’s left — it's all even more valuable now.”<br />
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In the old days, before August 29, 2005, the Anderson family's Shearwater complex in Ocean Springs was an enclave of weathered wooden buildings set amid towering oaks, magnolias, and pines, overlooking the water. Several of the Andersons were or are painters, sculptors, or potters, and many lived and worked in the 28-acre compound, which was anchored by a house built in the 1830s. The most famous among them was Walter Anderson, who produced vivid paintings, murals, and journals recording natural scenes along the Gulf Coast. For many, the damage and destruction of his work represents the most tragic loss of art as a result of Katrina.<br />
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Pickard, Anderson’s daughter, stands before the surviving potters’ sheds, which were wrecked by the surge but are being meticulously, lovingly, and somewhat feverishly reconstructed by her son Jason Stebly, using boards and beams retrieved from collapsed buildings or from the nearby marsh, and new lumber milled from old-growth pines felled by the hurricane. “He won’t quit,” Pickard says of her son. “It’s his raison d'etre. He quit his job to do this.”<br />
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Pickard, whose soft, open smile occasionally fades as she fights back tears, normally exudes a palpable sense of purpose that now seems on the verge of wavering. She says of her son’s heroic efforts, “I think: Why is he doing this, giving up his whole life, trying to rebuild something that’s gone?” <br />
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Stebly is a tall, strong, concentrated man. His skin already brown from the late-spring sun, he is soaked with sweat down to his khaki shorts and running shoes. “Aren’t these boards beautiful?” he asks, gesturing toward the wide planks in the floor of the main potters’ building, which he rescued from a wrecked building nearby. His carpentry is solid, and is a work of art itself. Stepping outside for a smoke, he picks up a few pottery shards and says, “Here’s what I found today.” The pottery was illustrated by his grandfather, he says. Then his eyes roam up the artfully twisted trunk of a tree that appears to embrace the trunk of another beside it, smiles, says, “Black gum,” as if entering a note in a log.<br />
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There has been a great deal of cataloging at Shearwater during the last nine months, both on paper and in the minds of the Anderson family. “There were treasures in every building,” Pickard says as she strolls past the empty foundations. “The buildings themselves were art. They were sacred spaces. I lie awake at night trying to reconstruct how it happened, how it was all here and then it was gone. I don’t want to know, but I’m driven to know. What happens is, if you find something like a doll my father made for me from a cypress knee, it’s magnified and made more precious and sanctified. I’ve never been a ‘thing’ person who attaches to dishes or silver, but I had so many treasures that I will never get back again. And I’m coming to realize that those things are an illusion.” <br />
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Among the structural casualties were most of the Anderson family homes as well as the Shearwater Pottery showroom, which contained works by family members and others who visited during the decades since the artists' colony was founded in 1928. The losses also include collections of museum-quality ceramics and pottery as well as a portrait of Pickard’s great grandmother by painter Cecelia Beau. Walter Anderson’s studio cottage survived the storm, though it was washed from its foundation, and has since been moved back. Anderson's most famous murals, which once adorned the interior of the cottage, had been moved to the local museum that bears his name years ago, and survived.<br />
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Perhaps most traumatic, not only for the Andersons but also for the art world, was the flooding of the vault in which the majority of Walter Anderson's watercolors were archived. Though designed to be wind- and waterproof and elevated three feet above the height of the surge of Hurricane Camille, in 1969 (the benchmark storm prior to Katrina), the vault was breached by debris that smashed the double-sealed steel doors. Today it has the feel of a dank, pilfered mausoleum, and the dented doors look as if they were burst open by a SWAT team. Many of the paintings bled onto their separating papers, which created shadows of their images on the blank page — art that was essentially created by the storm, at the expense of the originals. <br />
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The primary motivation behind Anderson’s art, based on his journals, was his desire to understand and exalt nature — to “realize” it, in his words, and toward that aim he frequently rowed alone to Horn Island, a low-lying barrier island a dozen or so miles offshore, to paint for weeks at a time. He saw art everywhere there, and sculpted “The Swimmer,” one of the featured pieces at the Smithsonian exhibit, from a tree felled by the 1947 hurricane. In 1965, the year he died, Anderson rowed to Horn Island to experience Hurricane Betsy, alone and unprotected. <br />
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“My father always saw his art as ephemeral, though he had his box of favorites,” Pickard says as she stands beneath wind-stripped trees that now sport clumps of verdant, exaggerated re-growth. “He had an intense admiration for the power of storms. He was awed by them and wanted to be in them. He saw them as a catalyst for change. I’m trying hard to get to that place, to see that it’s going to push us all into being different people. I’m sure he would have known about global warming, and my own feeling is that this has been an indication that this part of the coast is no longer to be occupied. I don't think we’re meant to stay on it now. Each time I go out I feel like I'm going out on land that’s already been taken. The earth is trying to cool itself. Yet it’s human nature: We scurry back.”<br />
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Over the years, some of Anderson’s paintings have been sold — usually examples of subjects of which there were many iterations, but for the most part his life work had remained in one place. The family created block prints of some of his works to make them available to the general public, and more than 300 silk screens were recovered and are temporarily stored in a tent at the center of the compound. But Pickard’s brother John Anderson, who acts as the curator of the family’s collection, estimates that more than 80 percent of his father’s work was damaged, and 300 of his best paintings were destroyed. “We’re talking about paintings that have been published in books — icons of his work,” <br />
he says. Some were buried in the muck at the bottom of the vault, while others floated away. <br />
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Many of those that survived are now housed at Mississippi State University, awaiting restoration, which Anderson says “will take years and cost millions of dollars” — money that the family does not have, because the collection was not insured. “In the past, people have told us we should take Daddy’s art to New York, that we could get rich, but that was not the objective,” Anderson says. “We kept the art here to keep it in close proximity to the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, and people came to us, which is part of the miracle.” He says he has given a lot of thought to how his father would have reacted to the loss. “He’d probably say we’re focusing on preserving too much,” he says, and offers as evidence an episode that took place at Oldfields Plantation, which belonged to his mother’s family, and where his parents lived for a time. At some point, he says, his mother’s father “needed some money, so he cut a large section of old growth timber, this very beautiful forest, and Daddy cried. Then the next year it received sunlight where it hadn’t been before, and flowers sprang up in incredible profusion, and he painted a mural of that rebirth called ‘The Cutover.’ It was about the endless circle of destruction and creation, about the resurrection. But what Daddy did — he wasn't really just painting birds and fish, he was painting a moment in time, a quintessential moment in time, and if one of them is lost, it can’t ever be recovered.”<br />
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In the days after the storm, the family searched feverishly for lost art, Pickard says. “We recovered at least three paintings, and lots of people tried, but it was very hot and dangerous. We hunted very intently for two months and after that I got sick of it; then after it got cool I did it again. I think there are probably still things there to be found, but a lot of what I found was just empty frames.” Among the found works was a mural called “The Saints,” which Walter Anderson painted on boards, and which originally hung in his first studio, built by the water in 1930. <br />
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“On the wall of his studio he painted Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as well as St. George and the dragon and the princess,” Pickard says. Though the studio was destroyed by Hurricane Camille, its foundation was incorporated into a patio of Pickard's home, also now gone. After Camille, she says, “We found the boards all over the Shearwater acres and across the harbor. When I built my house, they were mine, so I put them back as close as I could to the place where they’d been, where the studio had been. When Katrina came, again the boards were taken and again we found them, all but one. About three were in the same place in that marsh behind where the showroom used to be. My feeling is they were meant to stay on the property. Jason made it one of his priorities when he was going through the debris to find those boards, and one day he was really tired and he closed his eyes and said please let me find one, and he felt someone looking at him and he turned around and saw half of a saint’s face.” The mural, short one board, now leans against a wall at the home of another of Anderson’s daughters, Leif. Though the boards are weathered, the gilded faces of the saints shimmer like stylized images from a pre-Raphaelite painting.<br />
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Pickard is visibly proud of her father’s mural, but the look in her eyes reflects her assessment that things of value are an illusion, that they cannot be depended upon. She is chastened by the cumulative losses, and is as dubious about the future as her son is driven to rebuild the past. Back at the potters’ sheds, she finds Stebly hard at work, as always. The sheds are becoming works of quiet, functional beauty, as he prepares them for the creativity of others. Stebly works all day, every day, Pickard says, then falls asleep, exhausted, in a bed set beneath a tarp by the water. “Why is he doing it?” she asks. “I just keep thinking: It’s all going to be gone.” <br />
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The question could be asked of many people across the Gulf Coast, and, for that matter, anywhere: Why does anyone create or preserve, knowing that nothing ultimately lasts? Over the phone, John Anderson mulls the question. Then, in a voice so soft that it is sometimes difficult to hear, he says, “The truth is, Jason seems to have found himself. He has found an identity after the storm. He's found what matters to him.” <br />
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<br />
<i>Note: About a month later, I wrote the following, as a sort of postscript, which ran in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger:</i><br />
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In September 1965, as Hurricane Betsy was bearing down on the Gulf Coast, Walter Anderson set out in a rowboat from his home in Ocean Springs for Horn Island, 12 miles offshore. <br />
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Anderson was a painter, sculptor and potter from a family of gifted and eccentric artists, and was so enthralled with nature, especially storms, that he wanted to experience Betsy’s raw power unprotected and alone.<br />
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The storm hit that night, and when the surge began to wash over the island, Anderson picked a tree to tie himself to in case the waves engulfed him, then moved his camp to a high dune and crawled beneath his overturned skiff. He survived the storm, but his family had no way of knowing it. Apparently oblivious to their concerns, Anderson explored the island for days after, concluding in his journal, “Change — it is magical.”<br />
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He died two months later in New Orleans, of lung cancer at 62.<br />
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The natural world of the Mississippi coast, in all its fecundity, beauty and occasional violence, was Anderson's lifelong milieu. His belief that the highest art is created in union with nature provides the context for an exhibit at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, Jewels of the Sea: Walter Anderson's Aquatica, through May. <br />
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The exhibit showcases 80 works, many of which were damaged by the surge of Hurricane Katrina. Included are two remarkable watercolors of seashells, a species known as apple murex snails. One, Anderson painted. The other was actually forged by the storm. <br />
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The watercolors are among an as-yet uncatalogued collection of damaged artworks and reverse images imprinted on their separating papers when they were inundated by the surge — so-called ghost or shadow images. They illustrate both the cataclysm of the hurricane and the strangely fitting way it breathed new life into the late artist's work. <br />
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An estimated 80 percent of Anderson's artwork in his family's large collection was damaged by Katrina, and as many as 300 of his best paintings were destroyed. But, noted his grandson, Jason Stebly, “I think he would have been jazzed by the fact that the storm destroyed some of his work while creating new works. He would have loved that.” <br />
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Most of Anderson’s work went unseen until after his death, when the doors were opened to his private cottage at the family's Shearwater Pottery compound in Ocean Springs. The cache of artwork eventually received wide acclaim, and Anderson became something of a cultural icon. Nine books, including his journals in 1973 and a recent biography, explore his life and art. <br />
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The Smithsonian staged a major exhibition of his work in 2003, using as a centerpiece a wood sculpture named “The Swimmer,” which Anderson carved from a tree downed by a 1947 hurricane. <br />
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Anderson saw his paintings more as process than product, as a vehicle for “realizing” nature, in his words. The paintings were more or less seen as byproducts of the moments of realization, and often expendable ones at that: Anderson typically painted on typewriter paper using impermanent pigments, and was known to use his drawings and paintings to light fires in his hearth. <br />
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The Anderson family chose to keep the majority of the collection at the Shearwater compound, a fateful decision when Katrina struck. Though the artwork was housed in a concrete vault elevated three feet above the surge of Camille, Katrina's unprecedented 30-foot surge breached the double-sealed steel doors and flooded the building. <br />
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After months of feverishly working to salvage and conserve the remaining works, his son, John Anderson, conceded that his father “would probably feel we're focusing too much on preservation.” <br />
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In fact, it is Walter Anderson's view that art is ephemeral and that its highest forms are created in tandem with nature which makes the ghost images so compelling.<br />
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During the desperate recovery effort, family members and volunteers found that many of Anderson's paintings had been torn to bits or had simply floated away, while others had been saturated but remained intact. Hundreds of watercolors and ink drawings had bled onto their separating papers, creating the reverse imprints, or ghost images. <br />
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No one fully recognized, amid the wreckage, that the ghost prints were valuable. Instead they were viewed as residue of waste — stains left by the storm. Hundreds were simply thrown away.<br />
“We were peeling the acid free papers away and setting them aside, and setting the originals on sheets on the floor to dry... We had no idea they were important. It was just a pile of wet paper,” John Anderson said. <br />
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At some point the family began gathering the remaining imprints, and stuck them in a box. Only later, he said, did anyone realize that the creation of the ghost prints represented “something truly powerful, and it was totally about the storm.” <br />
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After a long day of digging through the muck, John Anderson said he awoke in the night and felt compelled to return to the sodden art. <br />
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Because there was no electricity, he donned a headlamp and began sorting through folders of soggy paintings, “And there was this painting, just glowing, full of powerful energy— perhaps more than it had before,” he recalled. “The colors were more vibrant than before. They looked like they'd just been painted... This same process, which was extremely destructive to so many of the paintings, had actually intensified these.” <br />
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All of the paintings in the folder focused on sea life, and when Anderson mentioned this to museum director Libby Hartfield, “She said, 'We've got to do an exhibit.'” <br />
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Recognizing beauty amid the ruins of the coast even now is an awkward enterprise, because there is a feeling that to do so is somehow to betray what was lost. <br />
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John Anderson remains circumspect about the beauty of the ghost prints, which were created at the expense of the originals. He estimates that less perhaps as few as 50 of the shadow imprints remain, and of those, some are poor replications and do not qualify as art. <br />
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Surprisingly, the colors of the original paintings on display, including of the murex snails, remain vibrant, and the watermarks and mud stains do not compromise their integrity. <br />
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The ghost print of the snails, which hangs beneath the original, is more pastel, abstract and minimalist, and is crisscrossed by folds indicating that at some point it was wadded up as waste, before someone had second thoughts and flattened it out it again. <br />
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Each of the paintings tells its own story, embellished with its own overlays, illustrating both the original moment captured by the artist and the moments created during and after the storm. <br />
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The museum exhibit focuses less on the tragedy than on the transcendence of art and nature, and the damage to the collection is explained almost in passing. <br />
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In November 2005, the museum hosted an auction of artwork in which a few ghost images were sold, along with works donated by other area artists, to raise money for conserving and restoring the damaged Anderson paintings. That’s expected to cost millions, and the collection was not insured.<br />
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During a recent talk at the museum, Mary Anderson Pickard observed that her father once capsized while boating to Horn Island in rough seas, and lost a clipboard of watercolors. <br />
Remarkably, the clipboard, with paintings still attached, was found long afterward by a boat captain near Ship Island and returned to the family. “It had been floating around in the open sea for who knows how long,” Pickard said, “and I was reminded of the look of those paintings when I saw the ghost prints after Katrina.” <br />
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Hartfield said the ghost prints can be seen as “an extension of his art, coming from nature. It’s the storm creating for him. <br />
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“What I hoped the exhibit would do — what I hope the visitor will take away, is to make us look at nature the way Anderson did, in a fresh way.”<br />
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Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-18724966660228825082011-08-29T07:06:00.000-07:002011-08-29T07:37:40.035-07:00Six years ago today<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DlLsl36QKdo/TlueGWKiYnI/AAAAAAAAAb4/Up_jiuaZA4c/s1600/BSL%2BMurphy%2527s%2Byard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="263" width="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DlLsl36QKdo/TlueGWKiYnI/AAAAAAAAAb4/Up_jiuaZA4c/s400/BSL%2BMurphy%2527s%2Byard.jpg" /></a></div><i>I wrote this article, about the aftermath of Katrina, the full force of which struck Bay St. Louis, Miss., on Aug. 29, 2005, for the Sept. 25, 2005, Atlanta-Journal-Constitution. The actions of people like Tricia Bliler bear remembering. </i><br />
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BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- Tricia Bliler was wandering the ruins of her hometown, searching for a dry place to sleep after the squalls of Katrina, when she and a group of friends came upon the darkened gym of the Second Street Elementary School.<br />
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Like everyone she knew, Bliler, a waitress at the Good Life restaurant, had been forced into the open by the winds and storm surge of the hurricane, which flooded or blew away nearly every building in town. At this point the gym, though filled with stinky mud, beckoned. So her group cleaned out one corner to bed down for the night, then cooked what food they could scrounge on a reclaimed grill outside.<br />
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That is how it started.<br />
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"We were out there cooking, and people we knew would walk by and see us and I'd say, 'Come eat while it's good, we've got plenty,'" Bliler recalled recently, during a millisecond break in her work at what was officially known as an unauthorized shelter at the Second Street school. Bliler, a diminutive, focused, straightforward woman, soon found herself with far more than she had bargained for, although not more than she could handle. "People started bringing frozen things that were going to spoil, and we'd cook it on the grill, and from there it was like the fishes and the loaves; the food and the people just kept coming," she said. <br />
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Although something clearly went wrong with the official response to Katrina, it is not as if the storm's victims simply sat on their heels and waited. There was too much to do, and inevitably, someone rushed in to fill the void. In Bay St. Louis, one of the hardest-hit communities in the hurricane's path, no one was destined to do more than Bliler.<br />
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Within a week of the hurricane's passage Bliler and friends were cooking 300 meals a day on a single wood-burning stove, and the school had become a clearinghouse of information and goods donated to the storm's local victims.<br />
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Bliler began seeking aid from various relief organizations, but basically got nowhere. Undeterred, she found cots for the homeless and even began taking in patients evacuated from area hospitals. She adopted stray pets whose owners had vanished. She stockpiled and distributed clothes, medicine and other staples, gave whatever guidance she could to families looking for help in getting their kids back in school, somewhere, and in general offered every kind of aid and comfort she could muster. Finally, representatives from relief organizations including the Red Cross, FEMA and the National Guard began trickling in. Like almost everyone else, they initially just asked questions. But by now Bliler wasn't interested in questions; she wanted answers.<br />
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Ten days post-Katrina, the shelter's frenzied volunteers were scrambling to unload truckloads of donated items, tend to the evacuees and cook and serve meals, and Bliler had little time to talk about any of this. When Red Cross worker Liz Goodburn, hovering nearby with a notepad, asked how many meals Bliler was serving and said she might be able to supply a mobile kitchen if the shelter fell within her jurisdiction, Bliler said, "I've got three cooks. Talk to Andy. He's the one with the less stress." Then she was on to something else.<br />
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Behind her, stacked in the school cafeteria, were cases of Germ-X disinfectant soap, diapers, bottled water and canned food, all free for the taking. The day was suffocatingly hot and humid, inside and out, there was no power, and everyone was soaked with sweat.<br />
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A volunteer spoke to Bliler and she immediately sat down at her police radio and sent out a call for an ambulance. "I've got a diabetic who hasn't had insulin since the hurricane and he needs to go to the hospital," she said into the mouthpiece. There was no response. She repeated the request. Still no reply.<br />
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Then she looked up at the group standing nearby: A sunburnt National Guardsman, two Red Cross workers, a uniformed FEMA representative and a journalist. "Does anybody have a vehicle?" she asked. "We've got to get this guy to the hospital."<br />
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No response.<br />
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"I need a vehicle to take this guy to the hospital," she repeated.<br />
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Finally there was nothing to do but volunteer, "I've got a vehicle."<br />
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"Will you take him?" Bliler asked, and a minute later Mike McGee and I were off to a MASH unit on the hospital grounds, following directions from the guardsman. As one volunteer later said, "All you have to do is watch Tricia for five minutes, and if she asks you to do something, by God you do it."<br />
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Speeding through the ravaged town, bumping across countless downed power lines, with overturned cars intermingled with boats in the median and houses straddling the bent rails of railroad tracks, it was hard to imagine a clearer window into the problem of the notoriously slow response to Katrina. No doubt everyone had their hands full, it was easy to feel overwhelmed by the breadth and intensity of the need, and representatives of bureaucratically controlled agencies certainly needed clearance before undertaking what, on paper, might seem like a risky endeavor -- transporting a sick or injured person to a hospital. Yet everyone -- everyone -- was there, and who was really in charge?<br />
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Tricia Bliler, waitress.<br />
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Away from the strip malls on U.S. 90 and two garish dockside casinos, the heart of Bay St. Louis was a small, quiet village of narrow streets and alleys lined with arching live oak trees and Victorian mansions interspersed with cottages and stores.<br />
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Founded in 1818 and ruled variously by France, Spain, Great Britain, the Confederacy and the United States, the town developed a reputation for being racially and economically integrated, much like New Orleans, 50 miles to the west, and surprisingly open and tolerant given Mississippi's conflicted history.<br />
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Before Katrina, the beachfront historic district was home to art galleries, cafes and antique shops that managed to stop just short of being precious. More than 100 buildings were on the National Register of Historic Places. South of downtown, the beach was lined with multimillion-dollar estates and antebellum mansions overlooking the Mississippi Sound. It was, said resident Kevin Webster, "like a hip Mayberry."<br />
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"Not too long ago I was walking my dog through town and it just hit me: I am so lucky to live in this place," said Estus Kea, who was at that moment digging out a thick coating of muddy sludge from his 1880 shotgun house. "I realized, it's my great good fortune to be here, just walking my dog through this wonderful town, with these beautiful trees, these great old houses, and all these people who have so much joy in life. Now, it's gone."<br />
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Throughout that day people stopped by Kea's house to offer help. One family invited him and a friend to lunch, and to barbequed brisket and jambalaya for dinner. A policewoman stopped to ask whether the dog in Kea's yard belonged to him. When he answered that the owners were nowhere in evidence, the officer suggested that they might be dead. She later returned with a large bag of dog food.<br />
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A plumber stopped to check Kea's water meter after being told there was no water in the house. As he scooped soupy water from the meter box Kea asked about the man's house and he replied, "It was wiped clean. The yard was wiped clean. I don't have nothin' to clean up." A carload of strangers stopped to ask if anyone wanted anything to eat or drink. "We've got red beans and rice," the girl in the front seat said.<br />
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Despite the tragedy --- or perhaps because of it --- there was a beguiling sense of camaraderie in the days after the hurricane. "Every night on this street we have a neighborhood party," said one resident, Sandra Bagley. "We take that Hawaiian Punch the National Guard gives out at the Sav-A-Center and mix it with vodka and call it the Katrina."<br />
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But there was also work to be done. Back at the Second Street school, Tricia Bliler was grappling with an onslaught of new evacuees, enlisting the aid of guardsmen from Pensacola, Fla., and others to restore electricity to the entire school, and working with a church group from Oxford, Miss., to install a mobile water purification system.<br />
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Across town, Alorna and Richard Kay were probing the ruins of their house by the railroad tracks, searching for a cabinet containing important papers and worrying about their son, who had assumed a role not unlike Bliler's in his own community, the Desire neighborhood in New Orleans.<br />
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The Kays are from New Orleans, and it was there that they chose to ride out the hurricane, in their son's apartment. He spent the first days of the flood evacuating people in his canoe, and they soon found themselves helping victims, many of them elderly people who chose to stay or who could not leave. "He's not coming out," Alorna Kay said of her son. She and her husband only returned to Bay St. Louis after nine days to check on their house, she said.<br />
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Kay said the kind of support networks that had coalesced in Bay St. Louis had also formed within the neighborhoods of New Orleans. Such de facto communities came together in the Bywater and Desire neighborhoods, in the French Quarter, in the Garden District, even within the hell of the Superdome, where groups actually formed defensive enclaves --- circles of chairs with men ringing the outer perimeter to stand guard.<br />
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"There were pockets all over town," she said. "People are just trying to cope."<br />
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"It's unfortunate because of the circumstances," she said, "but something like this, in the end it draws people together, and you see who you can depend on."<br />
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Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-56916336748754274972011-08-23T14:29:00.000-07:002011-08-23T15:49:47.424-07:00Wildlife and the flood<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VVz5bMkQ5CY/TlQbiVh7rkI/AAAAAAAAAbY/1Z_gYKZupUQ/s1600/armadillos%2B08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VVz5bMkQ5CY/TlQbiVh7rkI/AAAAAAAAAbY/1Z_gYKZupUQ/s320/armadillos%2B08.jpg" /></a></div>Of all the possible responses to finding yourself trapped on a shrinking patch of dry ground during a flood, burying your head in the dirt seems the most ill-advised. Yet that is what Paul Hartfield, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, observed a pack of armadillos doing as the Mississippi River flooded the lowlands north of Vicksburg last spring. <br />
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“It was like the height of denial,” Hartfield said of the four armadillos’ behavior, which he observed while exploring the floodwaters by boat with his wife Libby, director of the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, and Mississippi River guide John Ruskey. The armored rodents had dug a group hole, buried their heads, then clumsily attempted to cover the rest of their bodies with sticks and leaves.<br />
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Aside from being successful pioneers (they invaded the southern U.S. from South America), armadillos aren’t known for their intelligence. In fact, based on empirical road-kill evidence, it would be easy to conclude that they’re born dead on the side of the road. But their response to the threat of drowning seemed, well… downright stupid. <br />
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Armadillos are in fact able swimmers, capable of dog-paddling great distances, swimming for up to five minutes underwater, and even walking on the submerged bottoms of streams and ponds. Their behavior that day last spring seems to indicate that despite being able to do such things, sometimes they would just as soon not. <br />
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Though armadillos often bury their heads in response to a threat, it’s usually a defensive posture, not part of a long-term flood-survival plan. Hartfield said he expects the armadillos changed that plan once water began to fill their hole, that they were merely holding out until the last, and that, given their ability to swim, perhaps it wasn’t as dumb as it seemed. <br />
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Hartfield’s story raises an interesting question about wildlife during this year’s historic Mississippi River flood: How did they survive the inundation of millions of acres of land, from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico, in many cases for months at a time?<br />
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Deciding whether to stay or go was on the minds of pretty much every animal in the Mississippi’s floodplain this spring, and unlike human residents, who made a run on every available U-Haul, farm trailer and hill-country storage building, wild animals had only their own legs, wings, fins or… wiggly muscles… to get them out of harm’s way. Making the wrong choice could mean death. <br />
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Seasonal fluctuations of water levels have been a part of life along the Mississippi River for millennia. Most of the region’s wildlife are hardwired to recognize the cues that the water is rising and move to higher ground, or, if necessary, swim or climb onto driftwood or into trees. Their responses to a major flood, such as occurred this year, are not unlike those of animals that have evolved within the context of wildfires in the American West, who typically graze as they move, unexcitedly, ahead of the advancing flames. That’s not to say animals don’t suffer, or, in some cases, die. <br />
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As Ruskey observed in his blog about a canoe trip he took from Memphis to Vicksburg at the height of the flood, the number of human evacuees along the river paled in comparison with the millions of wild animals that were either swept away or driven from its islands, sandbars and adjacent forests and fields. Still, Ruskey reported seeing only one dead deer during his entire trip.<br />
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As the flood retreats into history, biologists, hunters, fishermen and others have begun to assess how wildlife populations fared and how their habitats will be changed. Floods are integral to the ecosystems of the Mississippi River lowlands, but the 2011 event was unusually large in some areas, and a non-event in others, primarily as a result of manmade alterations that concentrate flows outside the protective levees. In many cases, those levees were the potential line of demarcation between life and death.<br />
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Ruskey, who operates a canoe guide service in Helena, Ark. and Clarksdale, Miss., noted that during his trip the flooded forests between the protective levees seemed eerily empty aside from an occasional, raucous flock of birds, and he predicted it will be “many seasons” before wildlife demographics return to normal. Along the way, Ruskey saw that one dead deer; another swimming in the surging river; a few snakes in trees; a black squirrel leaping through the forest canopy; and an armadillo, a raccoon and a wild boar that had taken refuge together on a small section of dry ground. Among the other species displaced by the flood were bear, fox, bobcats, coyotes, rabbits, opossums, raccoons, mink, bobcats, moles, beaver, wild turkey, turtles, frogs and skinks. <br />
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Given the general lack of wildlife that Ruskey and others observed in the flood zone, one might assume that there were widespread wildlife deaths, and that the ecological balance of the floodplain was significantly disrupted. Neither was likely the case, according to Hartfield, a recognized expert on the Mississippi River. He said that while some old, weak or very young animals no doubt died, most climbed into trees or onto driftwood, or walked, flew, slithered or swam to whatever higher ground they could find. The majority, he said, will eventually return to their home turf. <br />
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It comes as something of a surprise to learn that deer, with their spindly legs and small hooves, are actually remarkably strong swimmers, and can swim for miles, even in strong currents. Still, even they must eventually reach a resting spot, which posed a challenge during a flood that in some areas spread 30 miles wide. <br />
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For other species, such as wild turkeys, the challenge was to find a place to nest, because the flood coincided with their reproductive season. For still others, such as slow-moving, ground-dwelling moles, voles and earthworms, escape wasn’t really an option.<br />
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The danger of animals being forced into the open was primarily about human contact – encountering poachers, vehicles, dogs or manmade obstacles. Wild animals tend to become strangely tolerant of each other during floods, with mortal enemies sometimes congregating together, without controversy, of necessity. <br />
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As reports circulated about alligators basking on levees alongside animals that might otherwise have been their prey, I was reminded of something my grandparents told me about floods at their home along Steele Bayou, in the lower Mississippi Delta. The area was accessible only by boat during “high water,” as they referred to the seasonal inundations -- what we now routinely call a “flood.” A flood, in my grandparents’ view, was an unexpected, disastrous event, such as had occurred in 1927. This year’s event would have qualified as a flood, too, but most did not. In that sense, their vantage point was closer to that of the area’s wildlife than to typical contemporary human residents. When the water rose, a person either found a place to ride it out or migrated to higher ground. The biggest problem for my grandparents was the attractiveness of the doorsteps at their elevated house to rattlesnakes and water moccasins. When high water came, my grandparents entertained themselves by taking boat rides to various Indian mounds on which animals with conflicted histories had taken refuge, and where the consensus seemed to be: We’re in this together; let’s not have any trouble on the mound.<br />
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Such scenes were repeated during this year’s flood. For the most part, high ground meant the bluffs that abut the river in Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez and Baton Rouge; the levees that in places run along both sides of the river; and scattered Indian mounds. In some cases the only refuge wasn’t ground at all: During the height of the flood, deer and other animals were frequently seen marooned on the roofs and porches of homes. In places such as tiny Rodney, Miss., which is unprotected by levees, the dispersal of wildlife added an unexpected edge to the flood, as alligators were seen swimming along submerged streets. <br />
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Hartfield said the flood likely dispersed a great many animals, and may have fragmented the small surviving populations of bear, though they are also accustomed to swimming and climbing trees. <br />
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As for the impact of the flood on lowland habitats, some riverbanks, sandbars and farm fields were scoured by the currents, and some trees were uprooted. But in most cases the flood will be a boon to wildlife because it will rejuvenate habitat and introduce new food sources. Some animals will feast on the occasional carcass or on sluggish fish trapped in shallow, diminishing pools. <br />
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“The floodplain is fertilized, and blooms following a flood,” Hartfield said. “Food is abundant, and wildlife populations rebound and prosper. Oxbow lakes are replenished, and fishing should actually improve.” He added that it is also worth remembering that floods are the reason those areas remain comparatively wild.<br />
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Photo courtesy John Ruskey<br />
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Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2354191410702269876.post-22030096464363713172011-08-23T08:08:00.000-07:002011-08-23T12:26:48.395-07:00Good night, Irene<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qro2_z4ApD0/TlPCmRriitI/AAAAAAAAAbQ/ujqOqEkF-c8/s1600/51c6382ae90da012f60e6a7067005900.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="267" width="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qro2_z4ApD0/TlPCmRriitI/AAAAAAAAAbQ/ujqOqEkF-c8/s400/51c6382ae90da012f60e6a7067005900.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<b>This just in! Hurricane Irene is trending on Twitter!</b><br />
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That was the notable nut graph (as journalists used to call it) of a news story today on the approach of the “monstrous” Irene to the U.S. mainland. The nut graph, for those of you who weren’t around when newspapers were primary news sources, is the paragraph – usually about the third or fourth, but sometimes much farther down – that essentially tells you why you’re reading the story. <br />
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There can be more than one nut graph, and in this case the notation about Irene's Twitter trending was actually pretty far down. But when you got to it, you knew: Beyond the actual possibility of a multibillion dollar natural disaster, complete with loss of life, what mattered was that people thought it mattered, and so, tweeted. <br />
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Look for the nut graph next time you’re scanning a news item. Be forewarned that today it sometimes gets left out altogether, so you don’t even know that the reason you should care about some random board vote is that the board had previously voted to award a contract to a child molester who had contributed to the board president’s campaign, etc. Sometimes, as was the case with Irene, the actual nut graph is more or less buried.<br />
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Why, you might ask, would you need a reporter to tell you why you're reading a story? Because otherwise the board vote might seem inconsequential, and you would not be inclined to read on. With most any news item, after you get past the lead paragraph, which is designed to get your attention, and a couple of follow-up paragraphs, which kind of make the lead make sense (the beginnings of the who, what, where, when and why), you will, presumably, wonder: Why should I read further? Why do I care to know more? At which point the reporter answers the question: Here is why. And the reason you need to know about hurricane Irene’s approach is not so much because it poses a physical threat, though there is that (Be frightened! Tweet about it!) but precisely because it’s trending. That's where we are now.<br />
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Awareness of reader (or viewer) interest is at the heart journalism, but the notion – and its practical applications – have been perverted over time, so that it’s now like some weird hybrid of voyeurism and autoeroticism. For this, I find it convenient to blame the 24-hour cable news cycle. Short on actual news to fill the hours, cable news producers began to find new ways of framing the story, and of fabricating the significance thereof. Soon “what you think” became enough to carry a story. And from there it was just a hop, skip and a jump to “what we think” being enough to carry a story. That’s how you end up with the news covering the news. Who knows better how to find its own g-spot, after all? And you get to watch!<br />
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Hence, today’s article, in which hurricane Irene is validated by “trending on Twitter.” Not to get all Andy Rooney about it, because immediate access to news, via Twitter or any other mechanism, is pretty amazing, and at times can be extremely useful. The question is, what messages are we receiving and sending out? If we have an opportunity to tell the world about something, is it going to be that our cat is sick (Facebook), or that we're interested in tweeting about what you're tweeting about (Yahoo! News rotator)?<br />
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Sadly, the revealing nut graph about Irene's twits wasn’t found on a news item carried by the self-absorbed and shameless Fox News network, or the juvenile Yahoo! News, but on venerable old AP, which is apparently trying to seem cool when it’s way too old for those pants, and anyway the pants suuck, duude. <br />
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This sort of needy come-on, this “Hey, have we met? I just heard this really interesting story!” is basic to journalism. It's what gave the world those newsboys in knee socks on the corner shouting “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” But when how you perceive the story becomes an important component – perhaps the most important part -- of the actual story, it not only corrupts the news process, it trivializes everything. When you care about something because you are perceived to care, and because you perceive that others perceive that others care, and when that is the nut graph... well, that’s a trend worth noting. <br />
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Alan Huffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14973861788678190084noreply@blogger.com0