Landing Heron.. awkward beauty---As plain as the web page in front of me are these words in the page header. Awkward beauty? What is that? We all have definitions of beauty. There is a huge range in the world of human emotion and points of view, covering images, events and memories. With a special flower, an entire crowd may agree it is beautiful and lovely to see. Move away from the obviously lovely and the the label beauty is somewhat awkwardly taped on the corner like an afterthought. An image of dead hostas in winter was beautiful to me and when uploaded to a photography website a commentator expressed surprise. Every year she was compelled to rake up the dead and fallen foliage at her home because it was dead and fallen. To the eye of the beholder the label of beauty may be awkwardly affixed with a piece of torn and soiled tape. Possibly she took a moment to look again at her fallen hostas and saw more than an automatic chore of raking up the dead. I suspect hers went quickly and were long gone when I uploaded the photo. That photo resides somewhere on this blog.
The title awkward beauty came to mind when the heron in the header photo was landing in the tree.. The entire maneuver appeared so awkward with long legs at all angles and large wings trying to maintain balance and gain a secure hold in the branches. I thought the bird picked the wrong place to land but it knew better and the end was a different sort of gracefulness well adapted to the heron.
This post will tell tiny stories with photos to illustrate. Cart before the horse or the other way, the stories came and so did the photos. Do enjoy the points of view presented here. Or, consider me mad, mad, mad and someone who if running naked in the street would make more sense…maybe to you. To me, that would be very awkward and anything but beauty. I do have a full length closet mirror. A roll of tape would not fix the label to stay on out of the starting block. Mothers would cover the eyes of young children, like at the zoo. The rest would laugh and cheer it on! Run, Run! Ask them through their laughter, "That sure was funny. Was it beautiful?" ..."NO".
I think you might see a sort of beauty in this post...take a look and find no need to cover any eyes..
The King House..abandoned today but prior to 1956 it was cheerful and home to school teachers on snowbound evenings...so I was told.
The governor of Tennessee was wise when he said, "Go ahead and get it done. Integrate the schools," In 1956 it happened in Clinton, Tennessee, said to be the first school integrated likely anywhere in this country. There was at least one which was integrated earlier but that distinction is not important.
If you don't know what integration was or is, think of black kids not being allowed to attend the city high school and being bused instead to an all black student school in another city. The opposite of integration is segregation, a divide of people "justified" by race or other reason and which generally favors the ruling class. Some folks knew better and others did not give it much thought. Believe it, when the judge said we are moving on this now to get it done in Clinton, ears perked up and people reacted. They say outsiders came in to stir the tempers and subdue supporters of the integration. Were some local folks involved? Of course...someone and the culture was wanting those black kids kept out of the white high school long before the governor spoke in his determined words and local law listened and decided to move on it. Some like a local white Baptist minister knew it was time to move on to better values and acceptance of fellow man. Others along with outside instigators believed big sticks and violence was justified to maintain status quo, leaving things alone and no change tolerated.
The integration problems did happen but that is not the story or the beauty of the King house, shown here much later after more recent owners left it, apparently abandoned and in disrepair.
Up the hill is a school building, an old one. That is where the black kids in town went to school up to when they were old enough for high school. The home owners saw a need for education and for the teachers to be comfortable. Maybe there was more snow back then because I am told when the teachers were snowed in or would be taking a risk driving home and returning to school the next day, they were offered congenial lodging at the old house. Of course, the house was not old back then but a nice home with room for the teachers to spend the evening. My first thought was that nowadays school would have been closed for even the threat of snow. Back then, I reckon it stayed open and the kids walked to school. The now caved porch would be a fine place to sit and visit on a summer evening, too. There is beauty in this old house, more than I first thought.
These photos were taken with an old Minolta point and shoot in 2005. Modern point and shoot cameras with a macro capability will do better. Be certain to keep unedited original files and only edit copies of your digital photos. The moth photos had been edited and the originals were not available. Today I would have done better in processing the photos had the originals been saved properly. I have seen only one moth like this since 2005.