Little Worlds - Tobacco

Burley tobacco is a labor intensive crop. After the plants are set out by, and hoed three times over a period of weeks, it is left to grow for a period of weeks. But when it reaches head high, and the most profitable main leaves are taking on size and weight, it also produces a sucker leaf, usually between the stalk and each main leaf. It also produces a seed pod at the very top of the plant. Both the suckers and the seed pods have a purpose in nature, but they also serve to deplete the energy going to the main leaves, thus lessening the value of the crop.

In old times, before the advent of chemicals that would kill the suckers and seeds, as well as, the soil itself, farmers painstakingly walked their entire fields removing the suckers and pods by hand. It wasn’t such hard work, but rather long and tedious. While chemicals were available to Dellie in the mid-1970s, she chose to do the suckering the old-fashioned way. It was cleaner and decidedly less expensive, plus, she had the time and loved the work.

When I first met Dellie Norton, she was still growing burley. She was seventy-six years old at the time and could recall growing her first crop of tobacco when she was sixteen. She talked of having some money of her own for the first time in her life and she used it to buy herself some nice dresses and other clothing. At the time, ca. 1915, in a place as small and isolated as Sodom, it was revolutionary for a young woman to make her own money and be able to spend it any way she liked.

A couple of weeks ago I called the Farm Extension office hoping to locate some tobacco growers in the county. I am working on another project and have a need for tobacco leaves. The extension agent couldn’t think of any county farmers that were still growing the crop.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I’m certain we’re better off without it. Yet, it’s also easy for me to be nostalgic about those times. The connection people had with their land. The time spent with neighbors and friends helping them cut, hang, and hand their leaves. The vital economic benefit tobacco brought to the county and the sense that all corners of the community were united in its importance.

I think often of Dellie and wonder how she would navigate our present world. My sense is she would find a way, she would adapt. She wouldn’t be growing tobacco, and she certainly wouldn’t be the only woman making and spending their own money. But she would be doing something revolutionary, it’s who she was.

Little Worlds - Spirituality at the Courthouse in Marshall

I’ve lived in Madison County for nearly fifty years and have long understood the importance of Christianity in the community. One only has to drive around the county and observe the number of churches in every hamlet and hollar to know the significance of church in people’s lives. After land and family, nothing plays a role equal to church and god.

For years after moving here, I would be asked to come to church with local people I met. I never went. When asked, I would respond that I was raised a devout Catholic, a long-time altar boy who pondered becoming a priest. A trip to Rome when I was twenty, and a growing involvement with social issues, moved me away from all organized religion. People seemed to accept that reasoning.

But, while I didn’t attend church, I did often help neighbors with their tobacco and tomatoes. I shared many meals with folks and the stories and laughter that came with the food and fellowship. I drove elderly members of the community to the doctor, to the grocery store and visited them in the hospital. I attended weddings and grieved over lost loved ones.

I think most of us have a need for spirituality in our lives. Spirituality gives us meaning, and hope, and, quite simply, it makes us feel good about who we are.

Spirituality takes many forms and means different things to different people. But I’m also struck by the similarities, at least, in gesture. In my yoga practice, we do a movement called sun salutations, where we open our hands wide, and spread our arms, lifting them and our whole bodies to embrace the light. It reminds me of christians, both black and white, lifting their hands to the heavens, surrendering to god. For some of us, spirituality resides in good works, improving our communities, involvement with our neighbors, making a positive difference in the lives of others. And for some of us, spirituality lives in what is seen as the word of god and what they perceive that word of god is telling them, and the rest of us, to do. And for many of us in our community, spirituality lives in our work, our art, our music, our stories, and seeing the joy and knowledge they bring to people’s lives.

Yesterday’s rally for life at the courthouse didn’t lack for spirituality. There was singing, and preaching, quotes from the bible, much lifting up their arms to the lord, and much talk of the evils in our world, primarily abortion. For me, it was an old-world type of spirituality: paternalistic, narrow, our god is the only god, and scary. It mostly reminded me of theocratic societies in the middle east, or a scene from The Handmaids Tale.

But I don’t doubt people’s sincerity, or their right to believe what they want to believe. But, just as folks at the rally would never adhere to my way of thinking, or doing; I do not believe they have the right to impose their beliefs on me.

Little Worlds - Marshall Portraits by way of Ocean City, Maryland

It’s difficult for me to think about Jamie Paul without smiling and feeling totally appreciative.

Many of you know Jamie as my former assistant who worked with me for five years or more, and as the person who brought my photography practice into the 21st century. When we met I was struggling to figure out the digital darkroom and over time he taught me how to print. Not only how to print, but how to make prints that rival or surpass the quality of my analog prints. He taught me how to better organize my work. He built my website and showed me how to manipulate it. He encouraged me to create a blog site and offered advice about what to put on it. Together, we hung exhibits of my work.

Jamie had a degree in art and literature and he utilized that training to edit my writing, giving me concrete suggestions about language, word choices, and coherency. His extensive background in music helped me understand the flow of words and images.

But for all of his gifts that he passed on to me, it’s his demeanor that stuck with me most. Calm, never ruffled, honest in his criticism, easy to be around. One time in particular sticks in my mind. I was very bent out of shape, railing about slights from people I don’t remember, vowing revenge, caught up in my own lack of confidence. He talked, lectured really, about my need to get beyond my insecurities, not mincing words - at once assuring me of the quality of my work while letting me know that it was my internal demons holding me back. It was hard to hear, especially from someone forty years younger. But he was right.

So, during a recent trip to the Maryland/Delaware coasts, we were able to visit with Jamie, his wife Cara, and Jamie’s dad, Bill. Jamie and Cara had settled in Ocean City, Maryland, where he was raised. Bill had had health problems and they moved there from Massachusetts to help him get his life and business back in order. Seeing them last week, it was clear the move has been successful. He went back to school studying food science and microbiology and is forging a new career in the laboratory.

Seeing Jamie last week, obviously happy in his relationship, enthusiastic in his new career, still the same thoughtful, smart, caring person, made me smile once again and appreciate how fortunate I am to have him in my life.

Thank you, Jamie.

Jamie Paul and Cara Downey, Ocean City, Maryland, 2022.

Little Worlds - Marshall Portraits

My Brother, Mark, with Darcy, PawPaw, 2022

On June 30, 1959, I was eleven and a half years old. I answered the telephone in our kitchen and took a call from Dr. King, my mother’s ob-gyn who told me I now had a little brother. I was ecstatic. After two sisters, I had been hoping, and yes praying (I was a good Catholic boy back then), for a brother.

I talked my mother, and the priest, into letting me be Mark’s Godfather, even though I wasn’t really old enough. Hell, he was a big baby and I was hardly strong enough to hold him during the service.

There are years between my brother and me. It often seems we are of different generation. Our two sisters, and our parents, have all passed so Mark and I are what we have left of immediate family.

The rest of the family worried about my brother when he was growing up. It was the sixties and seventies, lots of temptations, and Mark was interested in all of them. But he found his path. He graduated from the Berklee School of Music in Boston and enjoyed a long career as a much-loved music teacher in Montgomery County Schools in Maryland, where he helped guide a few world-class guitar players.

He married Marisa and they had two daughters, Sammy and Lily.

Mark recently retired from teaching and he and Marisa sold their house in Frederick, Maryland, and bought a place on the Delaware shore on the Delmarva Peninsula. Mark likes to fish. He bought a small boat. I think my one Godfather type action with him was I took him camping and fishing for the first time.

We leave tomorrow for a few days with Mark and Marisa at their new home. We plan to lay on the beach, eat fish and crabs, walk the boardwalk in Ocean City, MD, and generally relax. In a complete reversal of the Godparent roles, Mark will take me fishing on his boat and we’ll hopefully come back with something to eat.

Little Worlds - Bobby Hicks

Yesterday, muggy, hot, too hot to be outside, but I landed inside Bobby Hicks’s house where he was jamming with Sam Parker and Frank Bowman. It was informal, loose, lots of talk, lots of playing. Bobby Hicks is the ten-time Grammy award winning fiddle player who lives about three miles down the road from me. He was one of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys for many years and was the fiddle player on all of Ricky Scaggs’ number one hits. He’s best known as a Bluegrass player, but with Sam and Frank they played a mix of Bluegrass and Swing. That sweet, sweet fiddle and that soft, penetrating voice. I’m a lucky boy.

Summertime

And the living is easy

Fish are jumping

And the cotton is high

Oh, your Daddy’s rich

And your Ma is good-lookin’

So hush, little baby

Don’t you cry

Bobby HIcks.

He suddenly put his bow down and strummed his fiddle. “There she is, Lix Cheney, ” Bobby said. “Now, I’ll tell you. She may be a hard-core Republican, but she’s gonna lock that turkey up.”

One of these mornings

You’re going to rise up singing

Then you’ll spread your wings

And you’ll take to the sky

But ‘til that morning

There’s a’nothing can harm you

With Daddy and Mammy standin’ by

Frank Bowman, Bobby Hicks, Sam Parker, PawPaw, 2022.

Sam, “It has been my great pleasure to call Hicks my friend and to be in the regular presence of one of the founders of the bluegrass genre.”

Little Worlds - Tobacco

Dellie, and most of the tobacco farmers in her community, believed in cultivating and hoeing their tobacco three times. She liked her rows to be clean of weeds. There is a rhythm to hoeing - slow and steady, pulling dirt around the plant, careful not to nick the stalk. It can be meditative, lost in the repetition. Perhaps, if you’re lucky, you’ll find an arrowhead, suddenly visible on the surface, where it’s laid hidden for hundreds of years.

Little Worlds - Goodby Lionel

Lionel’s coffin and grave, Foster Creek, Madison County, NC, 2022.

Lionel Filiss was a complicated man who loved simplicity. He eschewed modernity in most ways and chose to live his life close to the land he loved. He requested a simple coffin, a cardboard box; I’m sure to save his family money, but also as his son Alex said in his eulogy, to speed up the process for his next journey. Magic markers were on hand and everyone left a message on the box. He also loved flowers. His message for those of us who remain is one we all should heed.

Little Worlds - Marshall Portraits - Morgan Diep

Marshall has changed. It is a much different place from when I moved here. And really, it’s all good.

Little Worlds - Lionel Filiss

Lionell Filiss and his daughter, Jemima, Big Pine, 1983.

We lost Lionell Filiss this past week. Lionell had been a mainstay in the county for well over forty years. I would see him at parties, at demonstrations, at music festivals, and most recently at his daughter Jemima’s store, the Laurel River Store, on Highway 25-70 where it turns up the mountain to Hot Springs.

I had the opportunity to interview Lionell, along with his wife Mary, and Jemima when I was documenting the building of I-26, a project that eventually became my book, The New Road. Here are some excerpts from that interview that speak to who Lionell was.

It seemed like people in our situation had a local family that sort of took you under their wing. You became some kind of extended family. The first year we were here we grew tobacco. We had seventy year old people in the fields showing us how to do it., not only showing us, but out doing it. When I first moved here, daily I’d go up to the local store. There’d always be guys hanging out. They’d done some farming work in thee morning, and then they came for a Moon Pie and a drink, and we’d swap lies and tell jokes and stuff. There was a secular sense of community. The cohesiveness may be hard for some people to believe.

The most meaningful thing I could do was to take care of Mother Earth, or at least the portion that I could take care of because anything that I did for money seemed senseless. I think the American Dream is flawed. It was less meaningful. Just the fact that I could work a patch of ground and build up the soil. Anything I did around here was much more meaningful than putting some nylon carpet down in somebody’s house. I did mention to some people the best floor I ever had was a dirt floor. You raked it once a day whether it needed it or not.

Whatever the kids are going to do they’re going to do., but at least they saw this. I thought it was important that they know that, if they had to, they could raise their own food.

Lionell was a good man. A quiet man. Unassuming. A common man. A man you could count on to help. Madison County will miss him.

Lionell at the anti racism rally in Marshall.

Little Worlds - Social Change

Farmer Donald Stokes teaching English as a second language to Haitian migrant farmworkers, Newton Grove, NC 1987.

A few days ago I received a phone call from a young Ph.D student in History at Duke University. Ayanna was Haitian-American from New York and as part of a personal project was researching Haitian migrant farmworkers in eastern North Carolina. She found this image of mine in the archive at the Duke Library where much of my work is housed. We talked at some length about the picture, my work, her studies and research. The call left me heartened.

When I first started making photographs seriously I viewed the medium as a tool for social change. I wanted my pictures to make a difference in the world in the manner of Timothy O’Sullivan, Lewis Hine, and W. Eugene Smith. I wanted to picture the human condition and have those pictures elicit change.

The sheer omnipresence of photographs in this day in time makes that goal near impossible. One rarely sees images like Nick Ut’s Napalm Girl that helped change public opinion about the Viet Nam War and certainly altered that young woman’s life. Or, W. Eugene Smith’s story about Maude Callen, a Black nurse midwife in South Carolina in the 1950s in Life Magazine that helped Callen build the clinic she dreamed of.

I’ve been fortunate as a photographer. My work with non-profits and philanthropic foundations has offered me the opportunity to document the human condition. I worked with the Rural Advancement Fund for a number of years, both on staff and as a freelancer, and one of my jobs was to photograph small struggling family farmers in the two Carolinas. I want to believe some of those pictures made a difference in someone’s life.

Photography is largely about memory. Pictures stimulate our minds and inform us of the textures and gestures of life, the way things were, and how people acted. They remind us of who we were and where we were at that time. Sometimes they cause us to think differently, to open our minds, to educate us about new ways to view the world.

Yet, still, I often wonder how much of a difference a photograph can make.

And then a call from Ayanna, expressing her interest in this picture made thirty-five years earlier, her questions and curiosity, and me understanding the picture has moved her.

And I think, Perhaps this the definition of social change?

Little Worlds - the Mountain Pre-Heat, Part 2

After five full days and nights of hard work - cutting and gathering wood, loading the kilns, stoking the fires, carrying more wood, and weathering hot days and rainy days - the potters were ready to cut loose and relax. That came in the form of the Pottery Olympics, an event new to me and one I would clearly never participate in.

The potters were broken up into four teams that competed against each other in a number of clay-related events. There were judges who scored every event although I later discovered that cheating was expected and bribing the judges was completely okay. The two referees were on hand to keep it from getting totally out of control.

The referees and judges, Joey Sheehan, Michael Manes, Josh Copus, Alex Matisse, Camille Shaffer and Joey’s daughter.

The preparations for the games were elaborate and detailed - costumes, dances, shouting practice. The events themselves were challenging and interesting mainly to the potters - the 5 minute vessel that held the most water; the best piece thrown on a 90 degree wheel; the best 5 minute piece thrown with two people on the wheel (much harder than it sounds; and a couple of other competitions.

But, clearly, the defining and fun-filled event was the team tug of war. It came last. A large sheet of plastic was spread out and coated with many mud buckets full of liquid clay.

At different times during the day, but most especially during the tug of war, Josh would sidle up to me and ask what I thought of it all. I didn’t know how to answer. It clearly wasn’t an old man’s affair and just gawking from the sidelines was exhausting and left me and my camera mud splattered. It seemed silly and almost pretentious.

I’ve thought about it a lot in the two weeks hence and began to understand the mud bowl as part of a piece. I thought back to the beginning, specifically the half-loaded kiln, glowing like a temple, a testament to hands, and clay, and the earth that bore it. And then the extended firing, the purification, and the rebirth of the clay as something totally new to the world.

I began to see the tug of war differently, too. There was something wonderfully primitive about it, a kind of baptism in clay. A cleansing. A complete immersion and joining with the clay. For the potters I suspect it was a deeply spiritual experience, a commitment not only to the clay, but to the earth that bore them.

The Aftermath.

Josh Copus

Little Worlds - the Mountain Pre-Heat

As some of you know, I have been doing pottery under the guidance of Josh Copus for the last six months. My original motivation was to make an urn for my mother-in-law’s, Faye Stilwell, ashes, which I did.

Last week, Josh, in conjunction with WOODFIRENC and Starworks, hosted The Mountain Pre-Heat, a week-long conference and workshop on wood-fired pottery. There were over forty potters in attendance, and everyone brought work to fire in Josh’s three kilns. The participants were young and old, some masters and some beginners, not much farther along than I am, and everyone enthusiastic and working hard.

In my work as a photographer, I have been around a lot of potters, often making images over a period of days, and learning something about their process, and them. But at the pre-heat I was fortunate to experience a community of potters, absorb their energy and knowledge, and make photographs. What I came away thinking about was the unity of the group—the sharing of knowledge, the lack of competition, the hard work of firing three kilns all day and night for four consecutive days, and the fun everyone was having.

What follows are some of the images I made over the course of the workshop. I wasn’t there non-stop so there are many gaps in the coverage of the event. Because of the number of pictures, this will be the first of two blog posts.

Last day of the firing, Lower Brush Creek, 2022.

Pieces for the kilns.

Preparing the pottery and loading the kilns.

Semi-loaded kiln, like a temple for clay, the earth.

Josh and other potters building the firebox on the third kiln, which had never been fired.

Kristin bricking and sealing the kiln door.

Firing, stoking, and side-stocking the kiln to a temperature 2100 degrees.

Joah, winding down, Lower Brush Creek,

Little Worlds - Chan

Chan Gordon, April 22, 2022, Asheville, NC.

Our community and the world at large lost one of its shining lights. Chan Gordon succumbed to ALS last Friday evening after a relatively, and mercifully, short battle with this devastating disease.

I met Chan shortly after moving to the Asheville area in 1973. He and his wife Miegan had opened The Captains Bookshelf, which they owned and operated together for close to fifty years. It quickly became a haven for those of us with a love for books, good conversation, art, and general good will. They had a wonderful collection of photography books, among many topics, and it was easy to stay lost in the store looking at books.

Chan was a generous man who regularly reached out to artists, writers, craftspeople and anyone part of the growing bohemian community in 70s and 80s Asheville. We all remember his infectious smile, his subtle flirtatiousness, his sense of humor, his love of cocktails, his loquacious manner, and, of course, his books. He loved to help people.

I was fortunate to share a longish visit with him in late April. The disease was clearly taking a toll. He had lost a lot of weight and his energy level was dissipating. And this man of words, of language, of story, could barely speak. His speech was ragged and without Miegan acting as interpreter, I would have missed half of what he was saying. But the smile was the same, his laugh. He amazed me with his seeming acceptance of his situation.

When I called to make sure if it was okay to visit, I asked him when would be the best time to come, thinking he would say “in the morning” when he likely had more energy. Not so. “Come at cocktail hour,” he said. “That’s when I’m at my best.”

When I got up to leave, I went over to give him a hug, something we always did when we saw each other. But this time, knowing it could be our last hug, we kissed on the lips, a level of affection we both wanted to keep with us.

Little Worlds - My New Camera

Last week, not long after my brother arrived for a visit, we drove up to Barry and Laura Rubenstein’s farm. The plan was to trade some of Leslie’s healing salve for some plants. Barry and Laura are exceptional farmers and produce a variety of plants and vegetables that they have sold at tailgate markets in Asheville for decades.

As we arrived Barry approached our car and said loudly, “Hope no one is scared of snakes,” as he carried a five foot long black snake. “I’m moving this guy up to the greenhouse because of the mice problem.”

“Barry,” I said. “I just got this new camera and how about if the first picture I make with it is of you with the snake?”

Barry with black snake, Chandler Creek, Madison County, 2022.

Laura Rubenstein, 2022

We hung out. Talked about all manner of things and people. We ate muffins and Sicilian orange cake and drank coffee. We looked at plants, and their pet pigs, and went on a thrill 4-wheeler ride up the mountain to see their fields with beginnings of potatoes, garlic, and tomatoes. It was altogether a delightful time.

Barry and Laura’s upper field, Chandler Creek, 2022.

My brother Mark likes to fish so we spoke with our neighbors, Anna and Marco, about coming over to their pond for a couple of hours one day. Mark caught a couple of small fish that he threw back and both of us tried unsuccessfully to hook a gigantic carp that was roaming the pond. Mostly we visited with Anna and the three young boys in her charge, two of hers and a neighbor. They were all most interested in Mark’s fishing gear while we concerned ourselves with keeping them out of the pond.

And the new camera? I love it, so quick and precise, comfortable in my hand, and the color, lovely.

Mark showing Zeno a fishing lure, Little Pine, 2022.

Anna with Ziggy, Waylon, and Zeno, Little Pine, 2022.

Little Worlds - Choice

On Wednesday, returning home after a long day in Asheville, I saw something I had never seen in Madison County, a pro-choice rally organized by students at Madison High School. I stopped to speak with the students and make photographs.

We are living in perilous times with our democracy being threatened and our rights being trampled. Despite these ongoing dangers, I came away from my short visit with these students filled with a sense of hope and awe. I can only applaud these young people - for their activism, their strength of character, and their courage in standing up to the voices of oppression that want to return our society to an unwanted past. I, and many other people, thank you.

Little Worlds - Tobacco

Not long after Mothers’ Day, when the danger of a late frost had passed, farmers would begin setting out their tobacco plants. Depending on the lay of the land, this job was accomplished by tractor with two or four people riding a tobacco setter, or in this case by hand.

Hand setting had to be done during a wet season when the ground was moist from recent rains. It was a long process, laborious, and hard on your back. At the end of the day your boots carried many pounds of mud. It was not a job for the faint of heart. But as my friend Dellie Norton said to me, “We had to work at it, but the people up here liked to do the work. They was getting some pay out of it where they couldn’t get no pay out of anything else back in them days. It was really good that they could find something to make money from.”

I’ve written about this before, but it has always struck me as the height of irony that America’s leading cause of preventable death provided life for mountain farming communities. When I look at the top photograph it seems that the men aren’t carrying a basket of tobacco plants, but a casket. The metaphor is complete.

McKinley Massey and neighbors planting tobacco, Big Pine, 1982. From Sodom Laurel Album

Little Worlds--Tobacco

When I moved to Madison County in the early 1970s, until the late 1990s when the federal tobacco program was ended, tobacco beds were a frequent sight throughout the county. Famers would have sowed their beds in late February and covered them with plastic sheeting to protect against cold weather. The tires were placed over the beds to keep the plastic from blowing away in the winds of March. It was removed in early May when the last frost usually occurred. By that time the beds would be bursting with plants, ready to be set out in the fields a couple of weeks later.

Little Worlds--Pottery and Me

I want to thank everyone for their kind words of encouragement about my first attempts at making pots.

I’ve come to this endeavor late in life. The immediate catalyst was my mother-in-law’s passing and my desire to honor her with an urn for her ashes made by my own hands from clay from our land.

I’ve long been interested in ceramics. Some years ago, I had the good fortune to do a book on twenty North Carolina potters, The Living Tradition, for the North Carolina Pottery Center in Seagrove and we’re surrounded by many friends and neighbors who are potters. Leslie and I have collected much of their work, which is continually inspiring.

I love having the clay in my hands - molding it, shaping it, arguing with it. It’s akin to gardening, having my hands in the dirt. It’s soothing, relaxing, and tactile in a way that photography and writing cannot begin to duplicate.

I can’t begin to say enough about Josh Copus. He generously and graciously has allowed me to come to his studio and play at my own speed, which is nothing but slow. He is not so much a teacher as a guide — encouraging, suggesting, advising, always positive and enthusiastic about his own work and mine. He guides by example and his intensity and energy are infectious. I couldn’t ask for more.

So, thank you, Josh. You’ve given me more than you know — a new way of seeing, a new voice. And as I look at my very elemental first pieces, I understand it is never too late to try something new and am reminded, once again, that art is what links all of us as human beings.

Josh Copus inspecting the charcoal stoke, Lower Brush Creek, 2022

Little Worlds--Marshall Portraits

Polly Gott at the Madison County Arts Council’s Exhibition of her Watercolors, Marshall, 2022.

Peter and Polly Gott are legends in Madison County and beyond. They moved to the Shelton Laurel community in the early 1960s and began their lives as homesteaders, musicians, log home builders, parents, and revered members of the community. My earliest memory of the Gotts was at Dellie Norton’s house in Sodom. Dellie’s long driveway was lined with about 30 cherry trees and Peter and Polly, along with their two children, Susi and Tim, arrived one Sunday afternoon to pick cherries. But first came visiting. They unloaded instruments from their van and proceeded to offer those of us gathered on Dellie’s porch a concert. Dellie and her sister Berzilla sang ballads.

After a time, they packed their instruments and Peter climbed high into the trees and proceeded to pick buckets of red, yellow and black fruit that he lowered to the ground that Polly and the kids sorted and loaded into the van. For me, relatively new to the community, it was an early lesson on community relationships.

Polly is an artist, a gifted painter. It’s perhaps her first love and her studio high on the mountain overlooking the white rocks of Shelton Laurel is brimming with amazing renderings of the world around her. Leslie and I bought one for our daughter Kate who, living on the west coast, wanted a memory of place. A perfect gift.