Stock Photos

Give me your tired, your poor! Your huddled masses bent at playing slots!

Of course that is not the way it goes.

Yet it seems that the “august group” that makes the decisions for the United States Postal Service on images to use on stamps has selected a stock photo from in front of the Las Vegas New York, New York casino as the image for a new “first class forever” stamp. The wrong “Auguste” if you will.

The stamp portrays a close-up of the face of Lady Liberty, the Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi creation which was a gift from France. As you may recall, the gesture was originally to commemorate our country’s first centennial and the close ties between the United States and France. Remember, there was a time before “Freedom Fries” when a major French officer, Lafayette, held a post in George Washington’s army. Senator Kyl?

I would have thought that with the trust that I had in our National Park Rangers, that there was surely someone responsible for photographing our important monuments. But it seems not. When a new stamp is needed, we merely go to a service like Getty or Corbis and find one that works. This time the “lady” in Vegas!!! A smaller version made of fiberglass coated Styrofoam – none of which was around when Bartholdi began to fashion his creation – standing on the corner of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard not on an island that symbolized the “gateway to democracy” to thousands of refugees escaping a more restricted society.

There are so many metaphors for life here that you get dizzy from the prospects.

But I want to be a bit mundane.

I want to think about “stock photos.”

For most of my life, I remember a photo that was always prominently displayed on the desk in our den. It was a photo of my father’s mother and his youngest sister; an amateur snapshot – made sometime in the late 40s or early 50s on the lawn in front of their home in Mobile, Alabama. It was a house I recalled from visits there and one in which I resided for a period of several months when my parents were desperate to find some relief for my younger sister’s battle with asthma. I recall the house as a place filled with lots of women and then my father and me.

My paternal grandparents had a bitter divorce. I have a copy of the court proceedings. It was not pretty. But we are southerners and we don’t talk about it.

My grandfather, it seemed was a bit of a rover. But we don’t talk about that either. In his reformed state he sang bass in the First Baptist Church choir. That took another turn, but we will talk about that at another time. We need to stay focused on things we are not talking about at this time. If I introduce Napoleon and Picasso at this point, Gertrude Stein would be proud.

Things we are not talking about at this time:

My grandfather, in later years, became a staunch moralist to the point that he dis-inherited two of his children who had been involved in divorces. He never seemed to be bothered about his daughter Frances and her eight marriages. But here again, it was never discussed.

Recently I received a series of photographs of my father’s family all made on the lawn outside the famous house in Mobile.

Wait!

In one, standing among his children is the old man, himself! My grandfather.

I reasoned that it must have been made at a family gathering sometime following the death of my grandmother.

But hold on!

There is that same pair of lawn chairs and the marble bird bath situated between them just like in the photo that was forever in our den.

Boy, those chairs weathered well. Someone kept the birdbath cleaned.

Hmmm, the tree in the background, only a small sapling recently planted, has the same number of branches and leaves.

In another photo of my father, there is my grandmother. Is that the same dress that she was wearing in the den photo?

Now, Evie was a Shotts – the Shotts from Clarke County. These were very proud people. Talbot, her sister was so proud that she insisted that khaki was pronounced with the “ah” as in father and not the “ah” as in attic. You work it out. Grandma Burt was a woman of taste and fashion, not like the “other” woman that her husband subsequently married – the same one mentioned in the bitter divorce that we don’t talk about.

As I looked at the series of photos, my deductive reasoning began to set it. It was a bit slow, but finally began to click.

Lawn chairs the same. Bird bath the same. Young sapling the same. Grandma’s dress the same. Aunt Nita’s dress could have been different, but she was a fashionista and changed often, even in the course of a Sunday afternoon.

These photos were taken on the same day which means that George and Evie of the famous divorce that we don’t talk about were at the same place at the same time – her home in Mobile. This was no accidental encounter at a family gathering at some neutral location. This involved Papa Burt, as we called the old guy, placing an automobile on Highway 45 and driving south to Mobile.

This shattered a lot of ideas – stuff we don’t talk about.

Sadly, my questions could not be answered by my mom and dad since they are both deceased. My sister is younger than I, so she had no memory.

I couldn’t let it go. George and Evie together in Mobile.

My father’s younger sister – the one in the photo in the den – is still alive. I last saw her at my father’s funeral some 15 years ago. My flood of questions outweighed my embarrassment over my inattention, so I decided to phone her.

“Aunt Nita, this is Joe. I have a question.”

We talked for over two hours. It was fantastic. She was sharp and witty and remembered that my grandfather – and the second wife and the step-daughter – made frequent visits to see the first. She sensed that my Grandmother never ceased in her love for him despite the bitter divorce that we don’t talk about.

This was a total reversal of things as I had always imagined them to be. I knew we were a civil group of people, but I thought that was just the façade of a southern family. We might actually be more accepting than I realized – it’s just something we never talked about.

A truth learned from a photo.

The other lady in another photo - the tall French one on Liberty Island in the New York harbor- has been usurped by a younger version, a but more plastic; much like Grandma Burt was with the new wife. The replacement was not discussed. But upon examination by a stamp collector, the sleight was uncovered.

The USPS has declared they purchased their history from Getty Images and really like this version better.

I suppose that the selection of the Las Vegas Liberty instead of the real one is more appropriate since our GOP-dominated legislature has no real interest in the “tired and huddled masses.”

Give me your corporate types;

your lobby and your moneyed influence.

I cast my vote to insure your support of me.

"Step around that soul there – they are just too poor to matter to anyone."

Sadly, nobody seems to want to talk about it.

His Finest Hour

Henry Bamford Parkes in his book, “The American Experience,” observes that our nation accomplished its existence not through the recognition of the reality of things but rather through a “state of the mind.” His argument was that had the early settlers given in to the harshness of their state of being they would have given up the struggle to be. Instead, they continued to toil for the evolution of this country because of their vision, ‘their state of the mind.”

Recently, while waiting to discuss a potential real estate matter with my banker in Alabama, I sat outside the office able to hear the conversation taking place inside. The door was open so I was not eavesdropping. The gentleman who was there to discuss the purchase of a vehicle – a man of over 50, I would guess – had moved his remarks from the financing of the new wheels to a recent trip he had made to Washington, DC. My ears perked up when I heard him mention that “this was the finest and greatest thing I have ever done.”

I was expecting him to speak of seeing the monuments to the development of our nation and to the great people who had been instrumental in this endeavor. I thought perhaps he might mention the awe of viewing the copy of the Declaration of Independence. Instead, he clarified the moment with the explanation that he had attended the Tea Party March in September 2009.

His finest moment.

I wanted to rush out and find something more profound for this man’s finest hour, but then remembered my sister’s constant mantra: “not everyone thinks like you.”

I also remembered the late Norman Lear.

You will recall that Lear created “Archie Bunker” (the idea borrowed from a British sitcom) to poke at the sensibility of the American mind by presenting a character so “out there” as to remind us all of our narrowness and bigotry. However, instead of being rebuked, there was a groundswell of folks who held Archie as “just like me.” They loved this man because he shared their same vision. As late as 2008, the Archie Bunker label was being used to describe a block of voters in the elections in that year.

Our country loves the anti-intellectual. We love our “folksy” types.

I recall a great cartoon, which portrayed both George Bush and John Kerry appearing before the crowd at a Nascar racing event. Bush remarked something to the order of “how y’all doing?” John Kerry said “Greetings, race car aficionados!” Well, you know the results of that election.

In the early 1960s, Richard Hofstadter wrote “Anti-intellectualism in American Life.” It was written after the defeat of Adlai Stevenson, a man who refused to “dumb-down” his discourse for a more popular appeal. In truth, there were other factors at play in the elections of that period. But Hofstadter’s look at three aspects of our culture: religion, commerce, and democracy to understand the role of distrust of intellectualism at play has great validity.

The conservative movement, most especially the “tea partiers” play on the fears and distrusts of intellectual thought. The current administration is portrayed as thinking about the process but doing nothing. I personally would rather have a reasoned Nobel Laureate in the cabinet working through a problem than a good old boy from down home reacting from unreasoned emotion. Unreasoned approaches have landed us in quite a mess.

Sarah, you know, the one from Wasilla who coined the healthcare “death panels”, recently spoke before the Tea Party Convention at Opry Land. In assailing the current administration, she asked, "How's that hope-y, change-y stuff workin' out for you?" This while encouraging the audience to revolt! (Isn’t that change?) She even took a jab at the President’s use of a teleprompter. Yet, she was caught checking “crib notes” written on her hand to stay on track.

“Sarah Palin writes notes on her hand just like I do when I go to the Piggly-Wiggly.” People identify with this. Will “Cliffsnotes” become our finest hour?

Palin’s track was attack. She offered no ideas. Where are the solutions? Where is the vision? We are becoming a nation of fear and negative thought and I am frankly worried.

And the attacks? They are like a limbo pole: “how low can you go?” Consider this:

Some in the media recently characterized President Obama as “elitist” for wanting a “spicy, Dijon mustard” (made by Kraft in Illinois) on his hamburger. Were these the same people who insisted that certain staples on the burger plate be referred to as “Freedom Fries?” No, that was conservative members of our congress trying to one-up a reasoned approach by France to the idiocy of the Iraq War. French toast soon followed.

For the record, an earlier, well-respected, highly intelligent President, Thomas Jefferson, first referred to potatoes cooked “in the French manner.”

So where is the real America?

The statue in the New York harbor, a gift from France to commemorate the first centennial of our country, was created by Auguste Bartholi and called “Liberty Enlightening the World.” It is not merely Liberty “lighting” the world, but “enlightening” which bears the responsibility to furnish knowledge and insight. It is not about “me and mine” but about “ours.”

Shall we take the position of liberty as a protector or Liberty an enabler? In our finest hours, it has always been the latter.

Will our sense of “enlightenment” be only a “state of the mind” while fear and selfishness become our reality?

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses …”