I originally thought that perhaps the blue bottle trees were a prank or some symbol for a secret organization (I may have read a few too many Dan Brown novels). The next sighting dispelled both of those theories. A tall bottle tree with its “trunk” painted bright yellow appeared in the nicely manicured lawn of a house in Princeton. A little bit of research (read: googling) lead to this:
The bottle tree reflects an ancient African tradition that can be traced as far back as ninth century Congo where natives hung hand-blown glass on huts and trees to ward off evil. The tradition continued in Africa and eventually became a part of Southern African-American folklore. In the early American South, trees, typically cedar because its branches point toward the heavens, were stripped of foliage and decorated with colorful glass bottles.
According to African legend, the bottles attract evil spirits, which are drawn to the bursts of sunlit color. The spirits then become trapped inside the bottles, their voices heard moaning as the wind passes by. Though the legend that the bottles trap evil spirits is widely accepted, some believe that the bottles hold the spirits of their ancestors, while others contend that the bottle tree grants wishes.
Why this southern legend has made its way to New Jersey and who planted the trees along two roadways are mysteries I still have to solve, but it’s nice to know that the pretty trees are a part of a long-standing tradition. I might “plant” one of my own.
Two weeks later, I discovered another blue bottle tree along the tow path several miles away from the first. This tree was taller and had more bottles dangling from its iron branches. Like the other bottle tree, this one straddled the road in an overgrown area. It couldn’t be a coincidence. There had to be some sort of meaning to the pretty blue bottles. It took the third appearance for me to finally start doing a bit of research into the mysterious trees.
As I drove along the tree shaded road by my new house six years ago, I saw a curious looking pole with a dozen or so bright blue bottle dangling off of nails drilled into it. I thought it was pretty, but strange. It had been pounded into the ground on an overgrown stretch of the road and didn’t seem to be a part of anyone’s property. I came home and asked a few of my neighbors about the curious bottle tree, but although everyone had seen it, no one knew why it was there. I continued to pass it every day while running errands, but just wrote it off as a curiosity until I saw the second bottle tree a few months later.
I was raised Catholic and my husband is Jewish so we try to make an effort to make sure that we expose our son to both traditions. Dustin and his dad were in China this year over Hanukkah and rather than missing lighting the candles and saying the prayer (I know Hebrew like he knows the rosary), we used Skype to bridge the planet and light the candles together.
I can tell from this picture than Dustin is looking up trying to remember all of the Hebrew properly.
There are times when I take technology for granted and then there are times when I’m awestruck at how far we’ve come in such a short period of time. It really wasn’t that long ago that I was playing with the card punch machines at my dad’s work. Crazy.
Many hoped to bring those friendships of the past into the future. “I decided to attend because I had recently reconnected with some of my former classmates and developed a curiosity of what it might be like to see and spend time with them again,” Sandra said.
Robyn and I with another friend in 1987. Totally. Awesome
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Cliff C. looked back at those years and had a very different response. “I slept with everyone that I wanted to then,” the Washington D.C. photographer said. “What’s the point of a rehash now?” Jokes about ex-girlfriends aside, my former classmates also wanted to update their personal biographies, which is part of the stress of attending a reunion. Beckford said she felt awkward at first because she never married. I was worried how being a stay-at-home mom and college undergrad would stack up to my friends and former rivals who became lawyers and engineers...
But mostly I worried about the size of my butt...
I would like to meet the person Zen enough not to worry about their appearance before a high school reunion, because most of us noticed the changes. It happens. We’re almost 40. But whatever anxieties we walked in with seemed to have disappeared by the time the buffet line formed as the adult versions of the class of 1987 began to relax and reminisce. Unlike the ten-year reunion where the high school cliques kept us divided into social sectors, this time around most of us ventured out and talked to people outside of those tight social circles.
John, Robyn, Cliff K (i.e. different Cliff from above)., Me, Janelle
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“At 10 yrs out most people are still trying to impress each other with how they’ve changed,” Ross said. The need to impress people wasn’t particularly important ten years later. “Most of the attitudes were like ‘I’m here and this is who I am like it or not’,” she said..
The reunion was a weekend filled with old memories mixing with new for the hundred of us who attended. Every person I spoke to said they would be back for the 25-year and while some of the non-attendees said they had no interest in ever joining in, most would consider a future reunion. Beckford understands why. “It’s just too interesting! It’s an experiment you’re a part of - a living time capsule.” .Thankfully, we get to leave the legwarmers in the ground.
“I don’t really feel a connection to most of the people I went to high school with anymore,” he said. Jason and I are still really good friends, but has no interest in going back to the way things were. “I don’t like the idea of falling back into that hierarchy we all shared in high school,” he said.
“The Group”, as we used to call ourselves, at John and Janelle’s wedding in 1988
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Robyn B., another friend who made the transition from high school buddy to life long friend, sees it differently. A reunion isn’t just a time to talk about bon fires and Budweiser, it’s a time “to talk to people who knew me before I was fully formed,” she said. “People I know now only know me as an adult compared to people who knew me back then,” she said.
Stan, Me, Jason and Robyn in 2006
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We are able to reconnect with our teenaged selves by seeing the 38-year-old through the eyes of people who knew us when we were younger, or as John M. put it, “I’m getting older but I really don’t feel that old.” John works as a Nuclear Power Operator in Miami, which is mind boggling because my enduring image of him from 20 years ago involves doing donuts on an abandoned golf range while blaring “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right to Party”. No matter how philosophical we may get about them, reunions are also about those bon fires and Budweisers..
Few things can inspire heart palpitations in the average adult as easily as a festive envelope bearing the words, “high school reunion”. Every decade or so, we receive these invitations and either open them with anxious excitement or toss them in the shredder with the hope that their destruction will push the old war wounds back into oblivion.
The Graduating Class of Miami Southridge Senior High Class of 1987
If only it were that easy.
A high school reunion doesn’t just dredge up memories for those who attend, it affects everyone who looks at the calendar and realizes the number of years since graduation is divisible by five. I poured over the list of the graduates of the Miami Southridge Senior High Class of 1987 last spring knowing most of them were about to get to have a walk down memory lane whether they wanted it or not.
High school may only make up a small fraction of our lives, but those are watershed years few of us can forget. “My high school experience was full of very big highs and very big lows,” said Sandra R., a special needs teacher living outside of Orlando. Sandra graduated with me and 650 other alumni and she sums up the feelings many of us had about the three years we spent together. “I can recall many great times spent with good friends, but also some very lonely times where I felt like nothing could go right for me and everything seemed to be very depressing.”
Me, Lisa K, Heather K., Janelle M. and AJ D. in 2007
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Robyn B., Janelle M, on far left. Heather K. and me on far right in early 1988
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Even those who manage to get out of high school unscathed, the years that follow aren’t always ones they want to brag about. It seems to be a universal truth that everyone feels anxious as reunion time approaches, so I couldn’t help wondering what motivates some people to bridge continents to attend while some who live only 15 minutes away don’t even reply to the invitation.
Markus Hartel has a photoblog dedicated to life in New York City. The blog, Urban Views, highlights small glimpses into the daily hum that is the City. I love the way he catches those moments we’ve all seen walking around any big urban center. Hartel doesn’t stage his photos in anyway, which not only lends authenticity to his subject matter, but also leaves the view with a feeling of “oh, I have so been there”.
Could anyone possibly look at this photo and not burst out into full grin? It’s not just that this man looks like he just fell out of an Iggy Pop show at CBGBs in 1977 to take the pooches for a stroll. It’s that he’s walking two little pocket pets that you just know are named “Lady Barkington” and “Sir Snuggledoodle”.
Awwwww yeah…. Here we have a man cruising down the street in what has to be the best ensemble in the history of mankind, which is fabulous enough, but the toddler pointing at him makes this such a wonderful moment. He’s chattering away on his cell phone bringing his awesome to the streets of the big city when a two year old reacts exactly the way a two year old should act when confronted with a pepto pimp. The subject is about to react, but we’ll never know if the preschool protagonist will be met with scorn or a big grin. I suspect the latter.
I learned from my husband, who worked in NYC for many years in the electronics industry, many of New York’s electronics vendors are hassidic jews. It’s such an interesting visual dichotomy seeing men looking very 18th century programming their iPhones, PDAs, digital cameras, etc. This image just screams “New York” to me.
I love when the camera nerds come out because we all know “nerdy” loves company. Gizmodo had a post this month about Canon’s legendary 1200mm lens that induced camera store flashbacks for me. They launched this lens while I was working at a camera store in Miami back in 1993 (think “High Fidelity” with f-stops) and I remember seeing the brochures for it. The post about it on Gizmodo was cool enough, but I love the comments under the thread. One of my favorites:
“Sweet Zombie Jesus on a Bicycle Built for Three. I Wiki’d this lens, and according to the article, it can accept a teleconverter. My goal would be to add so much distance between the focal plane and shutter that I’d end up with a <.1 degree FOV. That would be incredible."
It’s like when my friend John and I got into obscure record shops and some recognizes his Arcadia tattoo and we get into a discussion on the merits of the uber-rare El Diablo 7″.
