Soldier
Soldier
FOR VETERAN’S DAY…
In the dense, comforting shade of a century-old spreading maple, a section of the row of headstones farthest back in the military veteran’s section, the first stones to be installed during the Civil War, read only:
SOLDIER
1861–1865
A father, brother, husband, son of someone, unknown, but honored by a headstone that tells of his final sacrifice, rests there.
One of the most moving photos I took from the 2010 Memorial Day ceremony at Chartiers Cemetery, but perhaps the most fitting, no name, no rank, no distinguishing remarks, but the most common thread of all, a soldier.
And not just in remembering the Civil War, or even other conflicts following. My ancestors were fighting their own civil wars in Eastern Europe at the time of America’s Civil War, only one in a long line of civil wars that perhaps finalized their decisions to leave the only land they’d known to come to America for freedom and a chance at the dream they’d never see, not even today, in the lands where their families had lived for centuries. A few decades later, they had no qualms about bearing arms and traveling back to those lands to protect the country they had embraced as their home. Centuries of soldiers everywhere who fought for freedom, protected their loved ones, gave their lives, each brought us a step closer. May the day soon come when no one needs to die for freedom.
This photo is one of my most often-shared images from this site and on Pinterest; I am honored.
A Party on Main Street
Main Street on Election Day.
The sun was turning golden in late afternoon when I walked down to my polling place today. Main Street looked lovely, and with this flag perfectly illuminated at the moment I walked toward it I thought what being able to cast a vote means to all of us in every town and city all over this country. We whine, boast, throw mud in each others’ faces, but in the end we have this one basic right that ensures us a say in what happens to us.
I thought of my mother and my older relatives, the children of immigrants who had left one tyranny after another and risked their lives to come here to freedom, that “greatest generation” always so proud to cast their vote, who I used to drive to the polls and be proudly introduced to their friends from grade school who were electoral workers. They left this to me.
People die for this right all over the world, every day.
African-americans in this country died for this right barely 50 years ago.
Women in this country died for this right less than 100 years ago.
Veterans who served under this flag died to ensure this right to us in every conflict from our founding.
Standing there on the sidewalk with my camera pointed at this gently waving flag, waiting for the perfect moment, whatever that would be, I was intensely grateful for the safety of my street, for the people who honked and waved at me seeing what I was doing, for my freedom to creatively express myself without fear of reprisal, and I knew that, pacifist that I am, if any foreign nation came along to try to take that moment away from me I’d be on the front lines risking my life to keep this freedom for all of us.
I’m glad all I need to do is vote.
Woooo-oo-ooo, it’s Howwl-o-weeeen!
Everything comes alive on Halloween!
Beware the walk in the woods tonight, you never know where you might see a face that’s not human!
Tashlich, 2010
Congregation Ahavath Achim in Carnegie, PA, Tashlich
Members of Congregation Ahavath Achim in Carnegie, PA toss bread off the bridge at Tashlich at the Chestnut Street Bridge over Chartiers Creek, as they have for apparently many years on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. I was honored to observe and photograph the event, albeit from afar to make sure I could get the entire shot.
If you look closely you can see little blurred specks of white against the greenery in the background.
For as much as I know about my home town, Carnegie, and as much as I know about my home creek, Chartiers Creek, I never knew they performed this ceremony here in Carnegie, on this bridge over the creek. I know the president of the Shul, Rick D’Loss, and when he sent out the notice about events during the High Holidays at the Shul I noticed this and asked about it. Even though it was the first night of our festival I wanted to photograph it if I would be permitted. Rick welcomed me to do so.
Rick is also a photographer, and while I usually try to get a few photos of our community festival I’m usually pretty busy, so as soon as his holiday events are under control he’ll be photographing our festival, this Saturday afternoon and evening.
You can find many resources to read about Tashlich on the internet, but maybe I’ll see if I can get Rick to write something eventually about the ceremony at our local congregation. You can read about the Carnegie Shul on the site that Rick maintains.
Fireworks Over Water
Fireworks Over the Creek.
I’m on a roll with the fireworks photos. This is over Chartiers Creek in Carnegie, not on July 4 but at the end of our community festival in 2002 or 2003. Chartiers Creek flows right through the middle of town and bridges span it in several places, including these two bridges about 100 yards apart. The fireworks are being set off on the Main Street Bridge, I am on the Mansfield Street Bridge. Of all the fireworks photos I’ve taken, this is my favorite.
Main Street, July 4
Main Street, Carnegie, July 4, 2012
Just another in my series of sun-and-heat-drenched photos of my town done in a sort of vintage look.
The Penny Post Card, not certain of the year.
I always associate Independence Day with small towns and parks and such. Carnegie’s Main Street looks much as it did when I was growing up, and that much like it did when my parents were growing up.
Below is a “penny post card” of Main Street from an unknown year and a slightly different angle, but you’ll recognize the image. See other photos of Main Street, Carnegie.
Fireworks From This Morning
The leeks this morning with raindrops.
My favorite fireworks are the big umbrella-shaped ones that fill the sky with long arching trails of color that end in a starburst of light.
Last night we had quite a bit of natural fireworks for several hours in the form of a much-needed storm with lots of lightning and thunder. This morning the raindrops still sit on the tips of the long rays of the leek flowers, glistening in the morning sun.
Ready for Independence
Red, White and Blue
This little basket of flowers in my front yard is ready for the holiday this evening!
Veterans: A Designed Collage
Liberty Tree Sign Header
I thought I’d share this emblem I designed for Memorial Day.
I designed this art as the header for a series of signs, using two photos I’d taken at my Carnegie’s Memorial Day parades, softening and blending them together and adding the Coolidge quote per the client for this design assignment. The background is a scan of a piece of parchment paper.
Our fire department hangs a huge flag over Main Street for the parade, and I have a great time every year photographing this flag as it hangs or waves in whatever weather we happen to have on the day of the parade; I have used these flag images dozens of times in other designs. The image of the veterans is a group of veterans from our local VFW, one from each of the conflicts represented and from different branches of the military.
You can read about the entire sign installation on my “What’s New?” blog under Liberty Tree Grove Signs for ACT. In addition to the main sign, I designed a series of smaller 14″ x 18″ complementary signs digitally printed on aluminum and mounted at an angle on posts. One was an overall sign explaining what the Liberty Tree Grove signified and why trees were chosen as dedications, and seven marker signs, one for each of the trees.
Memorial Day Parade, a pencil sketch
Memorial Day Parade, pencil, 2008 © B.E. Kazmarski
The good old traditional parade on the good old traditional Main Street, in my home town of Carnegie, PA. I am not a big fan of parades but my mother loved them, so every year until the year before she died I set us up on Main Street regardless of the weather and we cheered along the high school marching bands and local dignitaries and fire companies and reenactors marching in the parade. Going out for an ice cream sundae afterward capped it off.
Each year our community held an art exhibit called “Carnegie Painted” for 2-D art depicting images of Carnegie; this was one of my entries in 2008, sketched from photos I had taken of the parade. Instead of color I decided to render it in pencil, in a style reminiscent of World War II cartoons. Pencil is so expressive, and it really reduces lines down to just what they need to be to get the point across, and this illustration style is almost impressionistic in its quality of line and level of detail.
Also, my father was a veteran of WWII, and my mother graduated high school and began her life during the war years—she considered it “her time”. I always felt as if I’d lived then with all the stories and memories. As my mother was growing older and finding and reading through my father’s service papers I actually came to feel closer to that time. This drawing in this style was a memory of that parade, of my mother, my father and a lot of other things combined. It all connects to a story I’m writing.
I sold the original, but have prints and notecards of it in various sizes. Visit my website to read about this and other pieces in my “My Home Town” series.
I went to the annual pysanky sale at the Sts. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in Carnegie, a huge event where people purchase eggs decorated in traditional East European designs, often using centuries-old tools and techniques. My grandparents helped to develop and build this church. Those pictured are mine, and only one is a traditional natural-egg pysanky while the others are wooden.
Many eggs are real eggs which have had the contents forced out through pinholes top and bottom, others have simply let the contents dry inside. These eggs are colored in much the same way as fabrics are batiked, using wax to draw a section of the design and then dipped in successively darker shades of dye.
Usually white eggs are used. For instance, the section of a design that was to be white would be drawn out in wax lines using a tool called a “kistka”, which is like a tiny metal funnel attached to a handle as long as but a little thinner than a pencil. The narrow end of the kistka is held over a flame, such as a candle, for a few seconds until it’s hot, then the narrow end of the funnel is pressed into a block of wax so it collects in the funnel, preferrably beeswax because it melts and stays soft long enough to work, but hardens quickly enough not to drip. The wax flows out like a fountain pen, and after the design is drawn and the wax is allowed to harden, the egg is dipped in the next lightest color, usually yellow. The areas where the wax was applied remain white. Then the yellow areas of the design are drawn in wax and the egg is dipped in the next color. When the egg is done being designed, it’s dipped in hot water which easily melts the beeswax, and what remains of the wax is gently rubbed onto the surface to protect the design and add a soft shine to the shell.
Other eggs are hand-tooled from wood and painted, still using the traditional designs, as are most of the ones in the photo above. Some appear purely decorative, but each element of the design, even what appear to be just patterns, are symbolic of something. You’ll frequently see wheat, the symbol of plenty from the “breadbasket” of Eastern Europe, in a land where many knew hunger, and flowers, symbolic of new life the world over. On the left-hand egg you see letters which are in Cyrillic script which looks like “Bockpec” but which is actually pronounced “Voskres”. On the other side of the egg is “Xpnctoc” (though the “n” looks backward) or “Christos”; together they are “Christos Voskrese” or “Christ is Risen”.
My grandparents made their own eggs every year, much simpler in design and always white with one color. I learned the traditional pysanky above later, but earlier I learned my grandparents’ technique through my aunt, who continued the tradition of making about a dozen of them each Easter. I remember punching holes in the top and bottom of an eggshell with a straight pin and blowing into one end or the other to force the contents out, usually destroying two or three of a dozen by making holes too large or breaking them while forcing the contents out.
But we’d press the straight pin into the wooden end of a matchstick, light a candle and dip the flat head of the pin in the melting wax, then draw quick lines on the egg, fat at one end, thin at the other. We’d usually create a starburst of a dozen or more lines on both ends, the thin ends pointing to the hole we’d made in each end of the egg, then around the middle we’d have some pattern resembling wheat or simple stylized flowers, always symmetrical, though the designs were nearly impossible to see. We’d let the wax cool and dip the eggs in strong tea or beet juice or simply commercial food coloring and suddenly there would be our design.
All those eggs are gone now, but I think I’ll take some time to make a few this week to add to my collection.
Today 