bread and cupcake crumbs
by nancy hill
today I am thinking about
polka dots
birthday parties
babies that i love
but scarcely know
trajectories
unknown then
a mothers sister’s mother
loved me less than all her other mothers
in decades beyond remembrance
her toddler tentacles of charm
and distributed intelligence
ensnared me no less
caught
between daughters
one of blood and heart
one of heart and law
distance has impoverished
more than our poverty
the distance of heart is quantum
the insurmountable distance of mind
between father and daughter
without motherly intervention
spawned a gulf
where shadows of resentment flash beneath the surface
school and move en masse
amid bread and cupcake crumbs
nov. 27, 11
nfh
More of Dorothea Lange's Images & Subjects
Continuing yesterday’s topic of parallels between the Great Depression and the current Recession, the fragility of families and children in the 99%, both then and now, is troubling. Lange’s photos personalized the migrants who took to the roads looking for labor in the fields of the west after their jobs were either lost to the mechanization of farming or the environmental degradation when whole geographic areas were pushed into ruin with the economic collapse of the late 20s due to unsustainable banking and investment practices.
Lange personalized the purportedly “shiftless” migrants changing the perception of the population about the people who had lost everything. Do the Occupy folks need a similar champion to document and distribute real information behind the families who have representatives occupying the various cities across the U.S. and the world.
Another of Lange’s photos suggests that the fat cats in New York stayed pretty fat during the lean years of the Depression.
Does this site serve the same purpose today as documentary photography did back then?
Photo Similarities Between the Times of the Great Depression & Great Recession
Spent some time today looking at National Archive photos and Wikimedia Commons pics and found these parallel pics.
Dorothea Lange’s photos of the Dust Bowl, Migrants in California, and the general sadness and despair caused by land abuse and economic abuse seem oddly contemporary.
Thanksgivng Hero
The Tucson community is once again abuzz with news of Gabby Giffords. This time it is good news. While you may not agree with Blue Dog support of everything military as Gabby has tended to do in her political career, she does provide inspiration and shows what determination can do if you have medical and family support to complete a supportive components of a healing triangle.
Today she and her husband Mark served Thanksgiving Dinner on base at Davis Monthan AFB here in Tucson today. Local news coverage of the surprise visit is available at KOLD‘s website. It is worth the watch.
A most important element of her recovery had not occurred to me until I read about what she and her husband Mark’s visit could mean to wounded service persons who are also healing as much as they can from the concussive brain injuries that are routine in this last wave of wars they’ve been fighting. I’m still hoping Gabby will become an active representative in the gun safety movement, but whether she does or not, she will be serving and inspiring one of her most vulnerable constituent populations and doing so from the informed perspective of a fellow brain injury survivor.
How she survived is beyond my level of understanding. That she survived is beyond my understanding. How she manages to do the painstaking rehabilitation work she does, let alone be able to find the strength to make constituent visits like this one to DMAFB is totally beyond my poor understanding.
Happy Birthday Grand Daughters!
Sharing something from my amazingly adept at poetic endeavors son-in-law to the Grandbabies on their first birthday, which always and forever happens to be today.
a picture window. Georgia you’re standing on a couch, your hands
pressed to the glass. You are smiling, but your mouth is wide open,
so it’s like you’re both smiling and trying to swallow the landscape. Josie,
you are sitting on the floor staring at Georgia. You, too, have your mouth agape.
It appears you want to swallow your sister.
I have a picture of that summer. There’s a thunderstorm going on outsideHome and Family
Thanksgiving approaches and it is a special one.
Aren’t they all? My daughter graduates from college in a few weeks and moves away. She stayed in the old hometown for college, and so this move away is her first real move away from home. I’ve considered myself in the same category as empty nesters for a couple years, and my daughter considers herself independent, though my wallet disagrees, but I’m very happy I’ve had so much time with her. I never had sisters, my mother and I were never close, so my daughter and I learned a lot from each other. I’m so thankful we have had all this time. She has been so good for me, and I will miss her only being a few minutes away at most.
We moved in here, to our current residence, almost 21 years ago to the day. My daughter was 11 months old then. The house didn’t have A/C, central heating, or anything but a lone palm tree, an undernourished pomegranate tree, and a spindly ornamental orange tree in the front yard. It is pretty lush now. The house has 600 square ft more now than it did then. It now has a roof deck, a flagstone patio, and a sprinkler system. I’ve lived here longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere in my life. This home is the only one my daughter remembers. This house has become home in a sense that rivals my childhood home, a family farm, and the land there to which I still feel a nearly visceral connection.
I am enjoying home and family in a celebration of thanksgiving.