Blog Archives
I am a man
The National Civil Rights Museum is a hard place to visit. It’s uncomfortable to be confronted with the racist history of our country. It’s sickening to learn about how many things were denied – institutionally denied – to people of color. It’s embarrassing to have to admit that I’ve lived many, many years without thinking too deeply about what it means. It’s sobering to think about how far we’ve yet to go.
In 1969, the sanitation workers in Memphis were on strike; they carried the “I AM A MAN” signs on the picket lines. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made two trips to Memphis to support the strikers, and one the second trip he was assassinated as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, the same building that now houses the museum.
If you go to Memphis, please go to the museum: you’ll leave a different person than you were before.
National Civil Rights Museum
Memphis, Tennessee
photographed 12.27.2021
Boston Terriers (in Texas)
Yes, I am fully aware that it would take only a handful of online minutes to learn why, exactly, the small town of Floydada, Texas, is home to the Boston Terrier Museum. And usually, that’s the sort of information I’d happily post right here.
But I think I don’t want to know. I think I want to imagine the sort of little granny (whom I totally believe had an underbite) started the place and has cared for it lovingly all these years. I think her name is Pearl, maybe, or Opal, or Mabel. And she generally wears white dresses with a black cardigan sweater draped over her shoulders.
The museum is currently open only by appointment, but the more I think about it, the more I think making an appointment and going back up there would be worth the trip: just thinking about their gift shop makes me feel a little lightheaded.
Floydada, Texas
photographed 11.21.2021
Museum in progress
I first visited this little ghost-town museum in November 2017; I don’t think one thing had changed between then and my return visit a year later. Evidently ghosts are pretty slow at building finish-out.
Shafter, Texas
photographed 12.22.2018
One Day | One Image 