I think I might have missed my calling: instead of being an English prof, I should have become a private eye. These days as I stroll the streets of Keene snapping random pictures of house facades and other residential minutia, I feel sneaky and even subversive. Surely there must be something wrong with someone who goes around taking secret shots of ordinary objects and then posting them for all of cyberspace to see. Standing outside a local bank the other day taking pictures of the brickwork surrounding its flagpole, I felt as if black-suited men might approach at any moment: “Excuse me, ma’am, but what do you think you’re doing?” At times, my blog-snooping feels like I’m casing out the joint–many joints, in fact–as if I’m searching the city for its soft hidden underbelly where I might crawl in for some nefarious attack.
What I’m actually doing, of course, is far less exciting. I’m not subversive…I’m merely curious. While I was viewing the current exhibit of restored photos of Keene’s architectural heritage that I’ve previously mentioned , for instance, I was intrigued to note that one local shopping mall used to be a brickmill. I had known that many mills and factories existed along the railroad track that used to run through town, and I’d figured this particular shopping mall used to be some sort of mill, but I didn’t know they made bricks. “Interesting,” I thought as I studied the photo. “Maybe that explains why there are so many brick buildings in town!” Walking home with thoughts of brickmills in my head, I was started to find what apparently are Keene-made bricks surrounding the flagpole at a local bank. Now, why hadn’t I noticed those before?
For good or ill, I’m the sort of person who’s curious about just about everything. I like mundane mysteries of just about any stripe: what sort of flower is that growing in the neighbor’s yard? Where did that newly planted tree come from? What did that abandoned factory manufacture, and how did it come to be abandoned? So when I see a ring of Keene bricks circling a local flagpole, a torrent of questions appears: when were those bricks manufactured? When were they set around this particular flagpole? Are there other places around town where this type of brick are similarly visible? How widely were these bricks distributed, and are there other towns along the old railroad route where Keene bricks might also be found? Suddenly the simple act of stopping at a flagpole and looking down turns into a major potential research project: surely there must be more information about this brickmill in local archives. When did it go out of business? Why did it go out of business? Who worked there, and what did they do after the mill closed? Further afield, would it be possible to track the geographical distribution of Keene bricks by enlisting other curious folks across the country to scavenge their own towns for similar artifacts?
I suspect (or perhaps hope) that other people aren’t like this: I suspect (or at least hope) that other folks simply walk into the local bank, conduct their business, and go home. Other folks, I surmise, walk around town without seeing questions in every tree, house facade, or sidewalk railing: what is that, when was it build, why was it constructed in that precise fashion? Other people, in a word, have lives: they aren’t haunted by mysteries and questions, and they don’t delight in looking for even more mysteries and questions. Other folks–folks who are normal, that is–simply live their lives with no questions asked: their lives are about what’s, not why’s.
I assume that other people aren’t with laden my brand of curiosity because none (or very few) of them act the way I do. I don’t see other folks walking around Keene taking pictures; on that architectural heritage tour, I was the only one taking thorough notes and pictures, somehow miraculously juggling notebook, pen, camera, and a intermittently necessary umbrella. Other people don’t take a pencam to the grocery store or take pictures in the parking lot…or at least if they do, they do it far more discreetly than I.
Although it hasn’t yet happened, I keep expecting for someone to accost me during one of my photo-snapping jaunts. “Hey, you! You with the camera! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” And what the hell, indeed, do I think I’m doing? On that walking tour, one curious man tried a more polite level of interrogation, and my answers left him stumped.
“Are you an architecture student,” he asked.
“No, not hardly,” I chuckled, still scribbling notes.
“Are you a historian?”
“Um, no,” I admitted, holding the handle of my open umbrella in an armpit as I held my notebook and pen in one hand and snapped a photo with the other. “I’m just curious!”
Later in the tour I came clean with this still-mystified gentleman. “I’m a professor…I teach at the college…I specialize in 19th century American literature, so I like to learn about the historical and social contexts of the works I study.” The man nodded, intrigued. “As an Americanist, you see, I need to know a little bit about all sorts of things: American history, art, music, architecture…” And all this is true: in order to understand any literary text, it helps if you understand the cultural context in which that text was created.
What I find most curious, though, is that I feel this need to explain and even justify my own curiosity: why must one be a professor to be fascinated with mundane mysteries of just about any stripe? Why is curiosity the exception rather than the rule? Why aren’t there more people walking about with cameras and notebooks and open eyes: why aren’t there people across the country investigating bricks and their particular manufacture?
Like it or not, we snoops are an odd and rare bunch; our cameras and peering eyes cause others to raise an eyebrow or scratch their head. The fact that I’ve never been angrily accused of “suspicious behavior” depends largely, I’m sure, on the fact that I’m a white woman and thus (presumably) nonthreatening as walk about town with a frisky dog. If my personal particulars were different, though–if I were male, for instance, or black, or if I looked even remotely Middle Eastern–then surely my snoopings would be received differently. Recently Ron Cillizza posted a link to a Village Voice article about a proposed law that would ban photoblogging on New York City subways. In this post-9/11 world, curiosity isn’t merely unusual, it’s presumably dangerous: instead of investigating bricks and building facades, apparently we all should be investigating one another. Am I the only one who finds something a bit curious about that?
Jun 24, 2004 at 10:22 am
Oh no you are certainly not the only one. I am not sure if it has to do with the present time of heightened suspicion after 9/11. Fact is though that I and many others feel that ‘some people’ find us strange and suspicious when we show special interest in ordinary things. “Why is she watching that ordinary brick wall, taking pictures of that house, is she planning an attack, robbery or is she just plain nuts?” is what one can see in certain passenger’s eyes.
I find that very, very sad. As if Wonder is an emotion to be ignored and banned.
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Jun 24, 2004 at 10:45 am
I love the photo of the house within the house. As a lover of paradoxical, chiastic, and oxymornic phrases, I also love images that have those similar obtuse qualities such as showing like objects within objects, or the pictures of mirrors that seem to endlessly repeat the scene in ever-shrinking vignettes. Cool stuff!
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Jun 24, 2004 at 12:16 pm
I feel exactly the same way (you must remember how mortified I was when the bartender caught us taking photos of our dinner that night). And, you should see some of the looks I get when “caught” taking photos of pottys.
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Jun 24, 2004 at 12:29 pm
That picture of the little house “looking out of” the big house window is a little spooky! Makes you wonder what those houses are thinking… 😉
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Jun 24, 2004 at 3:32 pm
That circle of bricks captures me.
Once in New York a friend who was a photographer stopped to take a picture of a barber cutting hair. He saw her and put up his hand to say no. He even turned out the lights in his space. This was years before 9/11 and she is a white woman.
I do think things are worse and I do think that if you were a man of color, or even a woman of color, you would be treated with more suspicion and it is so sad to think that.
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Jun 24, 2004 at 5:14 pm
Hmmmm… sizing up bricks eh! Depending on how paranoid the onlooker, you might be considered suspicious. You know how dangerous bricks can be. They’re considered a WMD… right 🙂
I try to put on my “tourist face” when snapping photographs. And I try not to stay in any one place for too long either. Of course anyone trying to blend in would know to do this, which is why the authorities feel they need ban photographing in the subways. I guess homeland security considers everybody a suspect these days. What a shame.
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Jun 24, 2004 at 8:53 pm
I love good historical mystery. That’s one of my favorite things about the internet. I wonder if this link I found is at all connected to the Keene Bricks in your photo:
http://www.hsccnh.org/mm/mm061.cfm
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Jun 25, 2004 at 9:50 am
“I think I might have missed my calling: instead of being an English prof, I should have become a private eye.”
Can “Murder, She Chanted” be far behind??
Kevin
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Jun 26, 2004 at 7:03 pm
How wonderful to see that there are other curious folks walking the planet! 😉
Anne, I suspect that in my case, people merely think I’m crazy, so they ignore and/or chuckle at what I’m doing. But I’m struck by your comment about Wonder… Children, of course, are naturally full of wonder, yet somehow society & responsibility stomps that out of them. The Conspiracy Against Wonder is what scares me most, I think.
Gary, I’d love to think that there is a *tiny* dollhouse inside the window of that dollhouse inside the window. Wouldn’t that be cool? 😉
Kathleen, I can only imagine the reactions you get to your potty photography! I never pegged you as being a “shy” person, but you were downright bashful about getting “caught” by our bartender. Maybe you need a pencam! 😉
Sylvia, that dollhouse *does* look like it’s been grounded but wants to go outside. Ah, the secret lives that toys must lead…
Tish, I can understand & respect people’s desire not to have *themselves* photographed: it is a privacy issue for many people. And for this reason, I take care not to photograph people, only places. If a stranger tried to take *my* picture without asking, I’d be upset, too.
Ron, I’d guess you must have a pretty practiced “tourist face” by now given all the local photography you do. It’s good to hear, though, that you’ve apparently not had much of a problem.
Shane! Thanks for the excellent link! It’s very possible that these bricks are connected to that mill on Water Street. The mill in the photo I saw was on Emerald Street, so apparently there were at least *two* brickmills in town. And there has to be some sort of connection with the fact that the pond on Keene State’s campus is called “Brickyard Pond.” I guess this *is* a serious research project!
Kevin, I love “murder, she chanted”! It’s perfect! 😉
Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to drop by & comment.
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