LIBERTY

 

I usually consider myself an even-tempered guy, getting through the ups and downs of life pretty smoothly. However, I can’t remember when I last felt as depressed as I have been the last couple of days. No motivation to go out and photograph something so I pulled out this image, taken earlier this year. It’s a iPhone shot using the TinType app.                

STL DPB IN NEW YORK - ELLIS ISLAND

Our street photography group went to Ellis Island yesterday. It is the place where, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, a growing nation hungry for population processed immigrants in New York harbor. We took a hard hat tour of the hospital facilities, where the physically sick and mentally ill were confined until they recovered, died, or were deported back to from whence they came. 

This room is part of the tuberculosis ward, where patients were held in isolation. The image in the mirror could make them cling to hope or fall into despair.            

Artica: Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor

So there was this woman at the entrance to Artica dressed as a shabby Statue of Liberty. She had the torch and the tablet like the real one, some Americana bric-a-brack and a large artist's sketchbook. I asked her what she was doing. She asked people to stop for an interview about their fitness to enter the country. At the end you got a hand stamp that said either Retained (in the US) or Detained (sent to immigration jail, a square of grass marked off with yellow tape). I was retained.

The interview was interesting. Being an old guy, she let me sit in a lawn chair and put the torch in its cup holder rather than stand with my arm in the air. Some of the questions were odd:

Q: What is your heritage?

A: Irish and Polish. Very pale. 

Q: What is the most exotic place you've ever been to?

A: Mt. Everest.

Q: Did you climb it?

A: Oh my god no. The air at base camp was thin enough. I got bad altitude sickness.

Q: Of all the places you've been to, where would you least like to live?

A: Cambodia. Never seen anyplace so poor although I'm sure there are worse.

Q: Coke or Pepsi?

A:  Well, I don't drink soda. But I worked a couple of summers delivering Coca Cola and hated it. My father was in the commercial sugar business and he sold Pepsi all their sweetener back in the day. So Pepsi.

Q: Are you from St. Louis?

A: No.

Q: How did you get here?

A: St. Louis U. was the college farthest away from my father that let me in.

Q: Hammer or nail?

A: Hammer. I don't respect authority very well.

And so on. Turns out she was an actress. She and a colleague were working on a play that includes this concept to be performed in New York, where they live. Some people had problems with the interview, others not. I thought it was fun.     

The Fourth of July

Part of the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty says:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!   

 I don't think we take the words so seriously these days.

Going to try to shoot the NYC fireworks tonight. It's a big deal.

 

Not Any More

Lady Liberty sheds a tear. From the anti-Trump rally.            

City Daily Photo Theme Day: Shelter

Interrupting the balloons for City Daily Photo theme day. This month's topic is shelter.

I posted this picture earlier this year but it's worth another look. It's not from the city I live in now but it's my home town. Good enough. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty says:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door! 

Three of my grandparents, immigrants from Ireland and Poland, sailed by this statue seeking shelter. They found it. May our country continue the tradition.

          

Heartland Monuments

Eye-poppers on the prairie.

My wife's biannual family reunion is held in the parish hall of Immanuel Lutheran Church, way out in the soy and corn fields. Its mailing address is Bremen, Kansas, the town of 50 I alluded to yesterday, but that has to be six or eight miles away. My wife and her siblings went to the parish school, now closed due to dwindling population. There is a museum inside now, more about which soon. The white siding just pops against the boundless summer sky.

The next big town to the north is Beatrice, Nebraska (population 12,400!). The old railway station has been beautifully restored and now used as the county historical museum. A small model of the Statue of Liberty stands in front. There is very little information about it online. It seems to have turned up about 1970 and was made by a sculptor from Los Angeles. Doesn't have quite the same patina as the original.