October 02, 2003

"The fat kid stays in the Picture..."

Over the past thirty years I've accumulated a fairly impressive collection of photographs I've taken showing my thumb and forefinger obscuring some of America's most famous landmarks, so I was surprised to win three and one-half prizes in a photography contest. I think the prize is either a 3 week trip for me and seven friends to Ibiza or a coupon for a free smoothie at a Yogurt Barn in Stapleton, WV, but either way it beats a slap in the belly with a dead Kennedy, or however the saying goes.

The theme of the contest was A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MILLEDGEVILLE with four categories: People, Landscapes, Architecture and Special Events. Each photo had to be accompanied by a 100 word or less description. (I didn't enter Special Events since my photos from "Curtis: the Mickey Rooney Experience" didn't turn out.) I won first prize in Landscapes and Architecture and third in people while an additional photograph taken of me with my camera by another photographer won 2nd in People. Photos are above* (or to the side or some such place- I don't understand these "uploadin' doings so if it posts the pictures upside down on JoshClaybourn.com I wouldn't be terribly surprised).

Anyway, I mention this because honing photography skills was actually one of my goals for the year. Now if I can just lose 60 lbs by Christmas and write a publishable novel (yeah, I know, November) I'll have two of the others achieved. (Other short term goals include being photographed holding/stroking a snake [I have a phobia of them] and muscle tone while long range include running a marathon [or better yet riding in one] and making an A on an exam in an advanced mathematics class- there are others but they involve the establishment of my Benevolent Oligarchy and I'd have to kill you after you read them.)

These are the descriptions:

A Cobb’s Eye View** (first place, Landscape)

Taken on February 28, 2003 from the window of what was once the executive office in the Governor’s Mansion, the trees are robed in mist and crowned by the barely visible tower of the antebellum capitol (now Georgia Military College). The colors create a neo-impressionistic feel while the denuded trees speak of changing seasons and glory in hiatus. Our own era in Milledgeville is represented by the silhouetted paintbrush.

Windows of Abaddon, on February 20, 2003 (first place, Buildings)

taken on the grounds of Central State Hospital***

The window and shield are immediately over the front door of the L.M. Jones Building. Built at a time when the hospital was grossly overpopulated yet still growing, the building supposedly once housed the largest kitchen and the largest indoor pool in the world; Cold War veteran signs state that its Fallout Shelter accommodated 4,500. Now an architectural Ozymandias, its beautiful columns and urns cast shadows on broken glass, cheap liquor bottles, and expended cartridges.

Lady By the Window (third place, People)

The lady in the photograph was standing by a window on the south side of the Governor’s Mansion on February 28, 2003. The light from outside is banned entry and the lady denied illumination as if to evidence that the mansion is not yet ready to receive visitors again.

Fat Boys Rule (second place, People)

On March 21, 2003, the perambulating shades of Rita Haworth and Orson Welles collected tributes of videos for Russell Library. The fellow in the center was presented with an Oscar for “Best T-Shirt Worn by a Construction Worker on a Long Delayed Library in a Liberal Arts College”. The librarian on the left ponders the mystery that was Gilda while her colleague on the right is still wondering why he was chosen to portray Orson Welles when his resemblance to equally dead superstar James Dean is so much stronger.

*The fifth photograph had nothing to do with the contest but it's a photo of me as Orson Welles that I happen to like much better than the one that won. The ego-deflating moment of that exercise, incidentally: my co-worker, K___, propsed several librarians dressing as yesteryear celebs to collect movies that were being donated to the library. When I was the only one game she proposed "I'll be Rita Haworth and you can be Orson Welles." Ooh, thunk I, cool idea... you're going with famous married couples of Hollywood's Golden Age.

K___: Orson Welles and Rita Haworth were a couple? Cool- I had no idea.

Me: So why'd you think I should be Orson?

K___: The resemblance....

The next several days were repeated mea culpas assuring me it wasn't a weight crack, but two morals:

1- if you're a fat librarian with a beard and you have to portray one of Rita Haworth's husbands as part of your job, it will probably be Orson Welles

2- Orson totally screwed John Houseman out of his share of credit for CITIZEN KANE and I'll slap anybody says he didn't

BTW, I have to point out for the sake of ego that yes, I AM padded in those pictures (quite a bit, in fact).

**Howell Cobb (1815-1868) was the archconservative and plutocratic governor of Georgia (later a Confederate general) who pulled a Mary Todd Lincoln "overbudget extravaganza" in renovating the Governor's Mansion. Known as "Cobb the snob" during his own lifetime, he owned more than seven hundred slaves.

***Central State Hospital, previously Milledgeville State Hospital, previously Georgia State Lunatic and Epileptic Hospital, originally Georgia Lunatic Asylum, was founded in 1842 and by the turn-of-the-century was considered the finest home for the mentally ill in the world. Researchers came from all inhabited continents and many nations to study its facilities and programs.
By the mid 20th century, it was considered one of the world's worst asylums, a disgrace to the state, country, and profession. In 1960 the Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Jack Nelson for his exposè on the institution; overcrowding had become incredible (about 16,000 patients in a facility designed to hold half that or less) a 2,000:1 patient:doctor ratio and lobotomies being performed as a matter of course.
Today the population of Central State Hospital is about 900 patients and 400 staff. The ruins look like those of a post-nuclear-apocalyptic university, one of my favorite places in the city.