In my middle age the United States of America has become much darker, more sinister, racist, renegade Christian Nationalist, and so on. This seemed more clear to me earlier this week when, out on the road around my town, I sat behind not one but two large Dodge Ram pickup trucks decked out in the full package. They both had large flagpoles welded into the beds with an American flag on one side and an alternative American flag with a camouflage “Q” superimposed on the other side. They had confederate flag bumper stickers, Trump campaign stickers, and other bumper stickers with jokes that are much too raunchy to post here. Unfortunately, because I was driving, I wasn’t really in a position to take a picture.
Going through my stash of film negatives, I found myself rewinding back to the 1990’s, a decade in which home to me was the capital city of the United States of America. I always wondered what the statue actually looked like at the top of the dome of the U.S. Capitol. One day deep in winter 1999, when no tourists were around and it was absolutely freezing outside, I broke out a zoom lens and decided to find out. Going just by memory, I took the Metro to the Capitol South station and approached the building by foot from there. I am standing at the crosswalk that leads to the bottom of the steps. After the film was developed I discovered “E Pluribus Unum” at the bottom of the statue.
There were a lot of scratches and spots on this film negative, only some of which I’ve fixed digitally. It’s a fine line between restoring and “over-restoring” photographs. Costco was not a good place to develop your film, though they were cheap. Costco is still around today, and it’s still a site to behold, though they no longer have a film lab. Perhaps that’s for the best – no more film lab, but they still have the best Hebrew National hot dogs you’ll find.
Looking up the Latin, I found that translates to “one from many.” That is a motto that the modern Republican party and right-wing activists in our country simply don’t understand. The United States was not founded as a Christian nation. We are not today a Christian nation. Rather, we are a country where the freedom to be Christian is available to all people. The freedom to be Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Athiest, or any other world religion is available to all people. The government is not in charge of any of them, except for enforcing the idea that we have to coexist and we can’t hurt anybody. In other words, from many, we are one. That’s how America felt to me in the 90’s as a young fellow, and that’s how I would love for it to feel again in the 2020’s as an old fellow. Coexist, don’t hurt anybody, and, of course….
Shoot photos, not each other.
Adventures of a Photo Nerd 