Today marks the one year anniversary of this online journal. I have posted 140 pieces of text and nearly 300 pictures. As a photographer, the sharing of images feels natural to me. The writing...well that’s another matter. Sometimes the words for the essays come easily, sometimes, uh, not so much. There are occasions when I’m laboring over words and I feel a kinship with Leah’s Uncle Art.I remember the yarn that, over the years, we have come to call “The Uncle Art Story.”
Part of the lore of Leah’s family, I suspect the story came from Aunt Anne, whose husband Art was an Ohio farmer, a dairyman. This means that Uncle Art not only had the typical farmer worries--whether the field would dry at the right time in the spring so that he could plow; then whether it would rain at the right time after planting so that the crops would grow--but Uncle Art also had to deal with milking. Morning and night the cows had to be tended to. Family legend has it that Uncle Art (and I can picture this happening in a dark Ohio bedroom at 4:30 AM in January when it was ten degrees outside) sat on the side of the bed, trying to find the motivation to pull on his clothes and go out and milk. He sat there and quietly mumbled the words: “Oh shit.”
That Uncle Art would say “shit” isn’t what makes the story memorable to us, but that Aunt Anne would repeat the word... that is funny. (My guess is that in the first telling of this now often-repeated tale, Aunt Anne might well have spelled the “s-word.”)
We remember that Uncle Art was hardworking, cheerful and pleasant. I like to think of people like him when I sit looking at a blank computer screen, when I need gentle encouragement.
Forty-some years ago my dad made the photograph you see above. It’s a picture of my sister, and the transparency that has been passed down to me has taken on the graceful patina of age.
There’s a sweetness to be found in the moments of everyday life. It pleases me that as the years roll by, we have stories and pictures in our families that help us remember.
