Upstate Roadtrip

Last week I went traveling with my co-workers for the express purpose of seeing small, Upstate South Carolina towns during the pretty time of year in the mountains. There wasn't much color in the trees and it didn't feel as much like being in the mountains as I usually do in North Carolina, but sometimes we would get a view and I knew I was definitely on the crest of the Blue Ridge.

Generally, I found small towns in the Upstate to be more prosperous than small towns in the Lowcountry. Here is the pretty B& B we stayed in in Lyman which is on the road between Spartanburg and Greenville. These days it's about the only thing in Lyman, but back in the day, (the early 1900s) it was the home of the owner of the textile mill. 

 The Walnut Lane Inn in Lyman, SC

Textile mills were huge in this part of the state -- as were classic mill villages. Say what you will about "paternalism" but many people worked in otherwise lean times. During the Great Depression no one had money, but the mills gave you "script" you could spend at the company store. It was better than nothing, which was another option of the day..

Here is my theory -- I'm sure those more learned than I can argue, but, from what I've read, it seems that maybe white people in the Upstate were not as dependent on slaves as they were in the Lowcountry prior to the Civil War. They had them, but they worked on farms, not the vast "plantations" more common on the coast. After the War when slavery collapsed,Upstate farmers were able to downsized their operations until they were manageable and pretty soon the railroads starting bringing business to town -- and then those textile mills got going. 

People in the Lowcountry couldn't manage the huge indigo, cotton, and rice operations with just family. They certainly weren't going to go wading out in the swamp and fight the mosquitoes, so they mostly just wrung their hands and despaired. Really, not much helped until air conditioning and tourists came along and if you were inland from the coast, you still aren't in great shape.

So, there you go, a one-minute overview of South Carolina, past and present.

Here is one more odd little happening on our trip. We met this Blue and Gold Macaw by the name of Co-Pilot at a restaurant in Landrum where we were having lunch on the patio. Apparently everyone in Landrum knows him and he goes out to eat frequently. He had just returned from a vacation to Dollywood (definitely fall under the category of "You can't make this stuff up.")

When Co-Pilot realized we were friendly, he moved right in on us. Below, Kerri's daughter Katie is standing beside her mom with her arms crossed while Co-Pilot checks out our leftovers. Katie's chair was Co-Pilot's quickest path between his own table and ours. She decided she wasn't going to stand between a parrot and the potato chips.

 It's good to be home. The next thing we're looking forward to is Mom's visit next week.

Personal Grounds

A friend and I went downtown today and saw Personal Grounds, an exhibit at the City Gallery by Susan Lenz, a fiber artist who lives in Columbia. I was much more intrigued with the ideas in the exhibit than I was in the art process, although, this woman is definitely very creative, talented and prolific. She must stitch  in her sleep!

Personal Grounds was a series of nearly 100 portraits -- photographs transferred to muslin with hand embroidery, embellishments, and stitched text -- each representing a decision that person made.

To be confronted with such a large number of individuals who made one choice or another somehow honors the integrity in making a clear choice. Sometimes one person's decision was the exact opposite of the decision represented by the portrait right beside it (Atheist - Born Again Christian, Refused to Put My Father in a Nursing Home - Placed My Father in a Nursing Home). The whole exhibit brought awareness and personalized the huge number of the big and small decisions we make all the time.

Here is one of the first portraits and choices that grabbed me. . .

I've always had this thing about "Voting as a Feminist Issue." Now here's this woman with very little time or energy left in her life, and she chooses to spend some of each casting her vote, having her say, influencing the future. Wow.

This one is called Illegal Immigrant. Susan's notes said all the portraits were taken from photographs, obviously, of real people. This man is shielding his face because it would be dangerous for him to be recognized. As an American, I can't even imagine that going to another country and living there illegally would offer me more opportunities than staying here. Wow.

Many of the decision points illustrated were related to health issues. . .  mastectomy rather than chemotherapy, pursuing aggressive treatment, opting to end treatment, a man going public with his battle with breast cancer   I like this one, called Warrior, about choosing to do everything possible to stay healthy after a battle with cancer. Look at how complicated life gets for a Survivor Warrior:

Other big areas of decision included choices about family -- to marry, to have children, to marry when one really wants children and the other really doesn't, to adopt, to give a child up for adoption, to search for a birth parent. . .  Other decisions didn't seem as big -- one woman choose not to have a television, someone else chose not to own a car. Lots of choices related to personal appearance -- hair dying, head shaving, losing weight, a drag queen. . . here's a woman who chose tattoos. . .

All that body art is done with machine stitching.


There were several about ways people chose to do good in the world. A volunteer who gave 3 1/2 hours a week to a museum for something like 34 years, a woman who visits and writes letters to prisoners, a very moving one about a child who declared, after noticing her mother's driver's license, that she too, wanted to be an organ donor. She was killed in a car accident when she was 11, and her organs saved the lives of seven other people. Fittingly, this one was called The Gift of Life and the portrait included everyone in her family.

I like the representation of the blood donor with the little red sequins mounting up the frame.

There was more. In the middle of the gallery, all these sheer panels hung from the ceiling with questions stitched on them -- all the little questions that run through your mind all day every day. . . should I wear the dress or the pants suit for my court appearance?, send a letter or an e-mail?, let me daughter go the party when I haven't met the parents?, decaf or regular?, Mac or PC?, how can I say this tactfully? This list is endless -- there were about 30 panels, two stories high, each with probably 25 questions. . . See what I mean? When does this woman sleep?!

I'm glad I got downtown to see this one.