Justice for immigrants

On Sept. 7 and Sept. 8, Marie McC posted photographs of a mural in progress in the Chirilagua (a.k.a. Arlandria) neighborhood in Alexandria. It’s a neighborhood where many immigrants, particularly Hispanic immigrants, live; the mural is rich with symbolism. This detail shows a sheriff holding his hand up to stop a woman (who can’t be seen in this picture) at the border. The baby wearing a diaper/nappy behind him is George Washington, with his nurse, an African American slave. The angry-looking man at the upper right is a judge, pointing the would-be immigrants back to the countries they came from. The sign round his neck refers to House Resolution 4437 “To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to strengthen enforcement of the immigration laws, to enhance border security, and for other purposes,” introduced in December 2005. You’ll find two more detail photos of the mural here.

Tobacco country

Here we are today about 90 minutes south of Washington, D.C., near Richmond, Va. This woman, a volunteer at the Citie of Henricus in Henricus Historical Park, wears period clothing as she harvests tobacco.

Cooling off

The fire engine from the local firehouse is a popular feature with the children attending this annual neighborhood celebration in Arlington, Va.

Artfully Chocolate

If it’s a cool new store, you’ll probably find it in Del Ray. And sure enough, that’s where Artfully Chocolate, an art gallery and chocolatier, opened a couple of weeks ago. The owners are very friendly and knowledgeable, and not just about chocolate—they even gave me lots of helpful advice on reviving an orchid I forgot to water. I wish them every success.

August Theme Day: Self Portrait

Today is Daily Photo theme day and it’s also my 100th post on Picturing Washington, D.C.

The theme is a self-portrait in a favorite place. As a child in England, I collected epitaphs and spent a lot of time, therefore, in cemeteries. I still like visiting cemeteries to read the epitaphs and take photographs, so I suppose you could say that cemeteries, oddly enough, are among my favorite places. So here I am in a local cemetery, photographing myself photographing a gravestone.

Visit the other 26 Daily Photo bloggers participating in August Theme Day: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 – 13 – 14 – 15 – 16 – 17 – 18 – 19 – 20 – 21 – 22 – 23 – 24 – 25 – 26 – 27

Our little rabbit

This memorial to a baby who lived only six weeks can be found in the Ivy Hill Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia. If Mike had lived, he would be 35 now and possibly a father himself. I am sure his parents still think of their “petit lapin,” who in their memories will always be the tiny infant they held in their arms for such a sadly short time.

As a little girl of around eight in England, I began to collect epitaphs—admittedly an odd hobby for a child—and all these years later, I still find them interesting. The very old tombstones in English cemeteries tend to have verses. Some are moralistic, some macabre, and some affecting. But no memorial I’ve ever seen has moved me as much as the simplicity of those three words: “notre petit lapin.”

For another touching grave memorial with something of a mystery attached to it, check out MarieMcC’s Alexandria Daily Photo.

Olive Risley Seward

This 1971 statue, which stands in the front garden of a private house at North Carolina Avenue and 6th Street on Capitol Hill in Washington, is of Olive Risley Seward. The sculptor, John Cavanaugh, wanted to commemorate a member of the family of William H. Seward, secretary of state from 1861 to 1869, and he chose Seward’s daughter Olive. She faces towards Seward Square, named for her father. The story goes that there were no portraits of Olive in existence, so Cavanaugh sculpted a generic Victorian woman. Some years later, a photograph of Olive surfaced, and it turned out that he had, in fact, created a statue that was like her.

The gods of flight

It was about 25 years ago, and I don’t remember why I was waiting in the almost deserted, dimly lit ticket hall at what was then called Washington National Airport.

Spotlights in the ceiling made pools of light on the deep red carpet. A young boy, waiting like me, was jumping from pool to pool, twisting his body, almost dancing. I had a camera with me, so to pass the time, I started to take pictures.

I shot frame after frame, trying to capture the boy’s joyful abandon, as he danced down the ticket hall and back again. Then suddenly he stopped and went down on one knee to tie his shoelace. It was as if he were performing an act of obeisance to the gods of flight. It was unexpected and not what I was trying for; nonetheless, it was the Cartier-Bresson “decisive moment.”

I was shooting Ilford HP5, no tripod, and judging by the grain in the negatives, I pushed the film to 800 ISO (which I think we still called ASA or DIN in those days), knowing the exposure would, even so, be too long for a crisp image. When I made the first print in the darkroom, I was disappointed. The image was, as I’d anticipated, too soft. But returning to it every so often over the years and printing it again, I grew to like its softness and dreamlike quality.

Sometimes the images we find most satisfying are not the images we intended to make.

Playing in the street

Listening to street musicians is one of the pleasures of an evening walk in Old Town Alexandria. Just down the street from a guitar duo was this man playing jazz with his partner on flute. A cellist on the waterfront was playing Saint-Saens’ Le Cygne as I walked by. And a short distance away, was the musician pictured below.

He is playing what he calls a glass harp. It’s more commonly known as a glass armonica (or harmonica). Filling containers to varying degrees with water and banging them with sticks to create a percussion instrument is an ancient technique. Rubbing the rim of a glass with a moistened finger to make a sound was first noted by Galileo Galilei and according to an article on the history of the glass armonica, in 1743, an Irish musician thought to use the technique to make music. Beethoven, Mozart, and others composed for the instrument.

Hear Alisa Nakashian-Holsberg play Bach unaccompanied, on the glass armonica and two more (accompanied) examples by other performers: The Ash Grove (a Celtic melody that my mother used to sing to me in Welsh when I was a little girl) and Greensleeves.

Market Day

I like small farmers’ markets better than the larger, more well-known ones, which are gradually being invaded by sellers of kitschy crafts and designer coffee.

At the Del Ray Farmers’ market, close to where I live, volunteers from the Virginia Master Gardener Association offer free advice on all manner of plant-related issues.