Week 2 Reading: Afterthoughts

So just a quick note on last week's readings:
In Sternfeld's series, p. 192-198, isn't it strange how there are no people? Particularly in a photograph of a tourist attraction (Mt. Rushmore) and in the middle of a thriving city (D.C.)? I wasn't sure what was making the images so effective in translating the tragedy, but I realize the omission of people feels very eerie. Surely, this was purposeful. Other things that enhance the images eeriness: the darkened windows in the grocery store that look like they're hiding something, the billboard that looks strangely heavenly amid rubble, and the way the bus stops glass reflects only slightly.

"Homeplace," page 210, was the story of a family whose house was blown over by a tornado multiple times and refused to leave. Sanders believes that they stayed because they "had invested so much of their lives in the land... it was a particular place, intimately known, worked on, dreamed over, cherished." I had lunch with a friend who just started law school and he set up a scenario that he was reading about on land-property-or-something-like-that-rights. If someone owns a piece of land, but does absolutely nothing with it for like twenty years, and some people come and squat on the land and build a house and take care of the property for like ten years... who rightfully owns the property? It turns out that laboring over the land (for some amount of time) actually gives you some rights to the property--he hadn't gotten to what those rights would be exactly, but it was interesting to know that the efforts of the "squatters" wouldn't be for nothing.

Week 2 Reading

Once again, here's a recap of my reading highlights.

• Eudora Welty excerpt from "Storekeeper, 1935" on page 161
• "Turn Left or Get Shot" photograph by Kerry J. Marshall on page 171
• Eric Lui's "The Chinatown Idea" on page 172
• Scott R. Sander's "Homeplace" on page 210
• Shawn Macomber's "The Chasm Between Grand and Great" on page 230

This week's gold star goes to Joel Sternfeld's "The Former Bryant's Grocery, Money, Mississippi." This is not the image I conjure up when I recall the tragedy of Emmit Till. If you don't know the history, I implore you to take a minute and read up on it. Although, I had read/learned the time and location of the murder, I obviously never pictured it right. In fact, when I thought about it, very little time was spent thinking about the place; instead, focusing on the events--"Bye, Baby," murder, acquittal. I never correctly imagined how rural it was, how very ordinary. It seems as if the place mattered very little, but in fact, this photograph makes me realize that it mattered so much. Because if Till was home in Chicago and had gone to a local corner store and said those doomed words, the consequences would have been different. Place can make all the difference.

On a different note, the chapter is called "coming to terms with place." I found a lot of the readings discussed what it means to occupy a space and what it means to occupy a place. Apparently, depending on the writer, the better situation can be place or space. But regardless of how they name it, it seems that they all agree that it is worse "to sightsee" (be mindless) and much better to do--canoe on a lake, build a home (again), or replenish the earth--in life. I happen to concur. I guess the "do" part--the work, action, creation, etc.--is what makes a house a home, makes wage into wealth, and makes life memorable.