The Young Photographer

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Ansel-Head

Ansel Head has always liked pictures. Appreciating them required little intellect or psychic energy which befits his non-superior traits. Perhaps his interest came from having seen early on what have become iconic images: The sailor kissing a nurse in Time Square on V-J day, the Black accordion player with tears in his eyes as FDR’s body was passing, humbled Japanese officials lined up in front of MacArthur on the USS Missouri, or the blank stare of the wife of an Alabama sharecropper in front of her wooden shanty. Continue reading →

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Aunt Charlotte

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Ansel-Head

Ansel Head thought he might have to give a eulogy at the passing of his favorite Aunt. He composed one knowing his mother would also be present. Fortunately for those attending the service in Lake Forest, IL, they were not forced to suffer through it. But since these two ladies were an integral part of Head’s education and what he retained from it, the reader will now be offered the opportunity to review it. In Ansel Head’s own words:

 “The younger sister of my father and the mother of my best friend has died and we are saddened by it. Continue reading →

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Smiling

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Ansel-Head

Ansel Head’s father always smiled and spoke to people, even strangers. He used to tell his non-superior son that being cordial was a great joy in life because people always smile back and make the day brighter. It was an easy task to perform when growing up in the South; everybody acknowledged each other with a nod and smile. To fail to do so would raise antennas and create suspicion.

At Washington & Lee, gentlemen were required to speak to each other as they passed; Continue reading →

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Why The Generals

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Ansel-Head

Towards the end of his McCallie years, Ansel Head knew he had learned all that the authorities could put in front of him. Along the way, there had been small glimmers of a practical education which had seeped through the lock-downed religious walls surrounding the cadets, but the brief glimpses were woefully inadequate for educating the would be leaders of the opening salvo of the baby boomer onslaught entering colleges.

Attending college was a given. Continue reading →

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Pepper Place Market

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Ansel-Head

The people who grow things for eating are a fascinating lot, not in an Ivy League intellectual sense but in a down to earth common sense. Ever since Ansel Head’s introduction to these folks while working as a fruit tester in his grandfather’s produce department (his “Best Job Ever”), he has thought them worthy of study.

On several occasions, Head had tilled his own garden in the hope of emulating the planters’ feats. “How hard could it be?” he had asked himself. As far as he knew, none of those bringing produce to the Hill Grocery warehouse had attended Yale or even applied. Continue reading →

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Sloss Furnace Wedding

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Ansel-Head

Making Pig Iron Ingots

One afternoon, Ansel Head found himself with nothing to do in Birmingham. This was not uncommon for him. He had left Birmingham many years earlier because his education there was exhausted either from lack of useful content or from his having grown weary of what was being taught. In any case, there he was back in Birmingham on a late summer afternoon with nothing to do.

He thought to himself, “Maybe my camera could teach me something.”  So off he went with it in search of that something.

Continue reading →

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Emory University Hospital.

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Ansel-Head

Ansel Head and his sister took their mother to Emory University Hospital for some heart work; it was necessary because the heart surgeon in Birmingham who did these things had died of a heart attack a few weeks prior. 

The hospital is located on the university campus in Atlanta. Ansel immediately sensed there was much education going on around him, education which could not help but benefit him if he could only figure out what that education was. For two days, he observed everything. He learned nothing.  His trusty camera did, though, catch glimpses of those who knew where the education was being dispensed and appeared to be benefiting from it.

He posted his pictures in his Photo Gallery.

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The Faces of Washington

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Ansel-Head

For Ansel Head, Washington, DC was an education unto itself made more pleasant by the people who live and visit the place. He posted some pictures in his Photo Gallery.

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New Photo Galleries.

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Ansel-Head

Ansel Head posted two new photo galleries in the “Head’s Photo Gallery” page – one from the Farmers’ Market and the other from the Botanical Gardens, both in Birmingham.

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Miss Ward’s School

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Ansel-Head

Miss Ward's School (Photo provided by her niece)

Ansel Head’s father’s friend, Mr. Marks, used to say that everybody had gone to school but no one had been “in” school until they had attended Miss Ward’s. Attending all four years of her elementary academy had made Head a lifetime member of the in-crowd.

Miss Ward was elderly even during Mr. Marks’s attendance. Nevertheless, during Head’s tenure, she retained her formidable force and was in much demand. Dullards needed not to have applied no matter what their parent’s social standing.

The small school room was in the rear parlor of her Victorian house on a corner lot across the street from Ramsey High School. There were four rows of six traditional, well worn wooden school desks; the tops were hinged allowing access to the storage bins for books and papers; in the upper right corner, round holes with blue stained edges had once held ink jars, but Miss Ward had dispensed with this hazardous curriculum many years earlier. Continue reading →

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