HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Click on image to see it larger.

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Tattered and Lost volumes 1 to 8 available at Amazon.

An American Dream is the latest book in my series of vernacular photography books. The American dream of owning a home through vintage vernacular photographs. The focus is on the people who lived within the homes as well as the varied architecture from the late 1800s to the 1960s.

Is it really the END OF DOWNTON ABBEY?

I recently read a report that due to the success of Downton Abbey there was a chance that a spinoff series would be made taking place several decades after Downton ends. Scripts were written, casting was done, and a pilot episode was made. Alas, it was determined that perhaps it was an unwise decision. The mucky-mucks at Lionsgate refused to air the pilot. In fact they asked that it be destroyed. Ahhhh, but one single image exists to prove that it did happen.

I'll let you decide if not going forward was a wise decision.


Click on image to see it larger.

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Tattered and Lost volumes 1 to 7 available at Amazon.

HOME for Christmas

I will be home for Christmas. A year in which two close family members died, and the news of a distant cousin's death came on Thursday.

Since my mother's death Christmas has become a difficult time each year. She passed on December 23rd, forever changing how I celebrate.

This photo drew me in as soon as I saw it because it reminded me of the table setting at my maternal grandparent's home in Pennsylvania, including the bird cages. I look at it and I'm a little girl again, excited to be sitting at the table with everyone.


Click on image to see it larger.

But this table is someone else's memory. The note on the bottom of the photo says a lot:

Christmas 1945 • Bill home from war

There's a lot to think about with this shot, no matter how simple it appears. Was this Bill's family home? Or was it the home he shared with his wife? Did Bill return from the war physically and mentally unscathed?

There are a lot of dinner tables that will be celebrating returned loved ones on Thursday. People broken by war sitting amongst family who now feel like strangers. Awkward conversations with close friends whose lives moved in different directions. Memories of the horrors they've seen and unable or unwilling to share those memories with those who stayed home. Momentary vacant stares, searching for a memory, good or bad, that somehow makes sense of why they are seated at the table.

So here's to the families who must struggle to find Christmas each year because of the cards they were dealt in life. Some of us have to search a little harder to find meaning in the holidays, sometimes time is all we have to work with. And sometimes time is enough.

This is my holiday contribution to Sepia Saturday.

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Click here to visit the Tattered and Lost page at Amazon 

to find the perfect gifts for those hard to buy for friends.

Volume 6 available now!

 Tattered and Lost: The Quiet Art of Reading