Last night I found myself standing in the middle of a cemetery with my dog’s leash in one hand and a camera in the other. And when I say “night”, I’m talking pitch-black, with only the light of the moon to guide me.

Pagan rituals? Devil worship? Not quite … I was looking for the deceased wife of a favorite blues musician.

No, I’m not weird.

A little context … a few years ago I discovered the music of Blind Boy Fuller, aka Fulton Allen. He recorded a considerable (and fairly important) body of blues music in the 1930’s, and spent most of his adult life in the Durham area. In fact, I found him largely through a historical plaque commemorating some notable local musicians. A photo led to a Wikipedia search, and after listening to some of his music, I immediately started filling up my iPod with his edgy guitar riffs.

The Wikipedia page for Blind Boy Fuller was pretty sad, and I spent some time adding some photos and reorganizing the rather haphazardly collected data. It’s a long way from perfect, but it’ll do for now.

A few weeks ago I was doing some genealogy research at the Durham County Register of Deeds, and decided to look up Fulton Allen’s death certificate. It wasn’t too hard to find, and it clarified a few details (including the cause of death) that were ambiguous in the Wiki entry.

It also showed that he was married.

Fulton died at the young age of 32 (in fact, he was only a few weeks older than I am when he passed away), but it’s possible that his wife could still be alive. And anyone who knows me knows that I’m just the sort of person to dig into the past like that. So off I merrily went to find the Cora Allen, wife of Blind Boy Fuller.

Sadly, the Social Security Death Index turned up two Cora Allen’s from Durham, North Carolina; one died in 1991 and the other died in 2006. I knew that Fulton’s wife had been born in North Carolina, and hoped that a death certificate would give me some sort of positive match.

I found the death certificate for the Cora that died in 2006; she was born in South Carolina, so we could safely rule her out. I couldn’t locate a birth certificate the Cora who died in 1991, but I did find a cemetery listing in Durham for my 1991 Cora.

A quick call to the cemetery office gave me a section and plot number, and I merrily went on my way last night to find her gravestone.

And let me tell you - there’s no worse downer (when you’re looking for a gravestone) than to discover that the grave is unmarked. I experienced this dreaded feeling back in 2002 when I drove to Philadelphia to find my long-lost great-grandmother who died of tuberculosis in 1926; thinking that the only earthly reminder of Cora’s existence is a little cast number plate in the ground brought back the same feelings of indignity.

Blind Boy Fuller’s gravesite is unmarked; in fact, the land that the cemetery was on is now a playground for a daycare. I hate the idea that his gravemarker is lost forever, but there’s some comfort knowing that little kids are traipsing around the graves of countless corpses.

And there’s gotta be a few good blues songs in this story.

I have been a volunteer at RAOGK for a few years now. It’s a fantastic group of volunteers, and there’s a strong sense of community that makes it feel like that old, worn pair of sneakers.

Earlier this week I received a lookup request for a family that had been killed in a car accident in the late 1920’s. Long story short, it turned out that many of the details the requester provided about the family weren’t entirely accurate. This is fairly normal; it just meant I had to spend more time digging.

I never did find much about the family itself, and the scarcest of facts remain: a mother, father and two children from Durham, North Carolina were killed when their car went over a bridge circa 1928. What I did manage to find was a birth certificate for one of the kids and a mention of the mother’s family in the 1910 census.

But that’s not why I’m blogging. What I found interesting is how quickly I’ll adopt someone else’s family as my own. And it happens in a very roundabout way.

The search started with a scan of Durham city newspapers from 1924 through 1931 (since the exact date of the accident wasn’t known, other than being “around” Christmas). These types of searches involve hours at the public library in the microfilm room. Or - more succinctly - hours in a dark room haunched over a 30 year old microfilm projector, with fuzzy images of old newspapers whirring by as fast as my eye can scan them.

It’s inevitable that you’ll stop to read the paper once in a while. The first ad that caught my eye was a motorcycle dealership on North Roxboro Road, and I jotted down the details for my perusal at some later date.

A few things started to become apparent. Any article that involved African-Americans had the word “negro” in the headline. Common lexicography in the 1920’s, I suppose, but it’s one of those cultural details that still rubs me the wrong way.

The next thing I noticed was how many car accidents seemed to happen at this time. The first few pages always seemed to have articles about a car rolling over and killing so-and-so. By the mid 1920’s the automobile was in common circulation (thanks largely to Henry Ford’s ever-present Model T), but the idea of automotive safety (seat belts, crumple zones, etc.) was still embryonic - if conceived at all.

And so it went. Four hours scanning newspapers, with at least an hour of that time reading through things not directly related to my genealogical lookup. But it certainly puts my mind back into a 1920’s way of thinking.

Then it was off to the Register of Deeds. “Vital Records” include birth certificates, marriage certificates and death certificates, and they all reside in a relatively tiny back office in the basement of a large government office building. I presented my ID, signed in on the visitors log and was left in this room with over a hundred years worth of peoples lives.

For many people, the idea of scanning through thousands of birth certificates would seem like Chinese water torture. Not for this deranged soul; I poured over the records with rapt interest, and was amazed at what I was finding. In the so-called “good old days”, people seemed to be giving birth out of wedlock more than they were within marriages. Interracial parents were having kids more often than you would think in the pre-Civil-Rights South, and they were doing it at remarkably young ages (the youngest mother I recall seeing in the birth certificates was 13).

And this isn’t to say that people are inherently bad; I’m just suggesting that the pundits who talk about the “good old days” haven’t spent much time with vital records. What became clear to me is that people were having sex in the early part of the 20th century just as much as they are now.

Marriage certificates are always interesting to read - and unlike birth and death certificates, have the direct involvement of the persons involved. That said, I found marriage certificates the most laborious to look through, since the outcome was inevitable: the couple got married.

Death certificates.  If there was ever something that could entertain me for hours on end, it’s death certificates.  What satisfies the inner-voyeur in each of us more than a snapshot into the final moments of peoples’ lives?

I admit to taking death certificate volumes (bound books containing death certificates for a particular year, sorted by surname) randomly off the shelf and leafing through them like a magazine.  One certificate was for a police chief who was shot in the head twice; the cause of death was rather humorously put as “two bullets in the brain”.  I imagined some poor sod looking up at his wife and declaring, “My god, Martha, I think I have two bullets in my brain.  Would you bring me a few Aspirin?”

Another death certificate was for a 21 year old woman who hanged herself at home.

And let me be clear: there’s nothing amusing about a person hanging herself - especially at such a young age.  The “cause” was listed simply as “depression”.  The person who discovered the victim was her mother.   It took my breath away to imagine a family having to cope with this tremendous tragedy.  And the idea of this little piece of paper making it “official” seemed to add insult to injury.  What mother should ever have to endure the pain of receiving her own daughter’s death certificate?

And so it went.  Cerebral Hemorrhage.  Pneumonia.  Ruptured heart (cause: gunshot wound to the chest).  Tuberculosis.  Pulmonary edema.  Broken neck (cause: overturned automobile).

Two things became clear: people are constantly having sex, and people are constantly dying - with the assistance of things like guns and cars, if not from “natural” causes.

And this family that became my own?  Victories in genealogical research are fleeting things, and the excitement after the discovery of some detail - slight as it may be - is very real.  The birth certificate that I found is nothing extraordinary, but it seemed to make this long-dead family real.  One small flicker of life for corpses long forgotten.

I have never hesitated to profess my love for the City of Durham - in part, because it shares a name with the region of Ontario I grew up in … but mostly because it’s a cool city.

Kevin at Bull City Rising did a fantabulous job of explaining why Durham is great - and taking a few well-deserved shots at some of Durham’s less articulate student journalists.

Nothing profound to write about today … but I did enjoy a beautiful day at Oakwood Cemetery and the Duke University campus.  Here’s some shots for your viewing pleasure.

Wade Edwards - the son of presidential candidate John Edwards - is buried at Oakwood Cemetery.  Regardless of your politics, it is a shame that Wade lost his life at the young age of 16.  The sculpture marking his gravesite is huge; at least ten feet tall.  It wasn’t hard to “get low” and silhouette this shot with the sun behind the adjacent cloud.

Recall my earlier post about Jim Valvano.  I stumbled across his grave - literally - while I was traipsing around Oakwood.  Someone thoughtfully left a Duke basketball parking pass on his grave … and I wanted to subtly work this into the shot.  I think this photo works … what do you think?

I admit - I have a hard time with the military sections of graveyards.  The sun was still low enough in the sky to cast long shadows, and I continued my experiments with silhouettes.  I really like the way the sun shines through the flag here; maybe there’s even some metaphors in this that I won’t explore right this second.

I don’t know Walter Caswell Lewis.  Two things caught my eye about his stone, though.  First is the name “Caswell” - the surname of North Carolina’s first governor.  The other thing was the mention of the purple heart.  I had no idea what this meant, but it sounded cool … and the Wiki page I linked to explains it.  Again - I think the shadow works nicely in this shot. (editor’s note: it was only after I posted this that I realized the name on this stone is spelled CaRswell - definitely not the same as Caswell.  But what the hell - it’s still a nice shot.)

Fallout shelters are another thing I had to lookup.  This must be some sort of creepy reminder of the Cold War, and I’d probably rather it come down.  Honestly, if a nuke falls near here, an old brick building that was built during the Hoover administration will not be the first place I run to.

No photography trip in the triangle would be complete without a few brownies from Duke University.  My first stop was the chapel, where I attempted to do some justice to shot that didn’t work out so well the last time.  This is one of those rare shots where the shadows just “work” - and I can attribute it mostly to luck.

These spires contrast brilliantly against the blue sky.  I don’t recall which building they were on; somewhere, perhaps, between the chapel and the athletic complex.  And it’s these details that make Duke such a wonderful place to photograph.  I can’t imagine that all of these architectural oddities were planned entirely, and I’d like to imagine that some brilliant architects wandered around the university and randomly added these touches as construction took place.

I won’t even attempt to pronounce his last name … but he’s an important coach at Duke.  And this is where students are camped out for basketball tickets that go on sale in March.  Yes, you read correctly - they are camped out now (January 28th) for tickets that go on sale in March.  Insane, or the pinnacle of college foolery?  You be the judge.

Alas, the tired photographer and his faithful companion.

It started about seven years ago when I was involved in a Calgary area camera club.  I normally had infinite patience when I was teaching my “introduction to photography” class … but the young kid pushed me a tad too far.  He had a freshly-minted Nikon F5 - the uber-camera of the day - and scoffed when he saw my Nikon F that was older than him by about two decades.

I let the first few remarks go, but bit hard when he asked if I could afford anything better than that “old clunker”.  My patience worn flat, I told him that the camera had little to do with the quality of the shots, and that a skilled photographer could take better pictures with an old Russian SLR than a novice with an F5.

The problem was: I didn’t have an old Russian camera.  eBay came to my rescue, and in just over a week I was holding a Zenit-E - the John Deere Model D of the camera world.

Using a Zenit-E is a lot like the John Deere, in fact.  Both shake like some sort of agricultural sex toy.  Both have the ergonomics of a pallet of bricks.  And nuclear holocaust wouldn’t be enough to stop them from working.  (or so, I thought)

You can guess what happened in the Zenit-E versus Nikon F5 shoot-off.

Now, before I wax poetic about using the Zenit-E, I’ll let you in on the bad part of this story.  The sad conclusion.

Buoyed by my Canon Demi EE17 excitement this morning, I decided to shoot a roll through the old Zenit.  As I was removing the film from the shoot, the camera tumbled from my fingers and - you guessed it - did the fatal jumping-jack off the pavement.  I heard the sickening mechanical sound that no photographer wants to hear; the uncontrolled snap of a mainspring, the crunch of chromed brass, and  the breaking of glass.

Yes, the Zenit-E is dead.

I put exactly three rolls of film through this camera in the time that I owned it.  Prior to today, the last roll of film that went through it was at Ed Worthy Park in Calgary, back in 2001.  Now, it’s sitting on my desk in fatal repose, waiting for its last great journey to the North Wake Landfill.

We bow our collective heads and mourn the loss of a great old Russian camera, and prepare to enjoy the last photos this great beast took.

First up is an old bell.  The old Pentax screw-mount lens on this Zenit did a pretty good job of close-focusing, and I enjoyed the textures on this old bell.  The light was remarkably flat this afternoon, and I didn’t have to play with any of the levels to get a pleasing contrast.

Next up is the ubiquitous creepy alley shot.  I was interested to see how foolish the light meter would act in this camera, but it did remarkably well, all things considered.  The meter isn’t even coupled to the camera’s aperture; it’s a “match meter” that requires considerable effort and luck.  Matrix metering be damned - I don’t think Russian cameras would have TTL metering for at least a decade or two after this Zenit was made.

Who doesn’t love a bargain?  North Carolina was once the furniture capital of the United States, and it’s not difficult to find these old 1950’s furniture stores.  Sadly, most of the furniture sold here now is made in the far east, and the factories have long since closed.

Textures have long interested me, and I was curious to see  if this would work.  I think it did, even though the saturation is a bit flat.  These odd concrete textures seemed to be popular in 1960’s and 1970’s architecture, and they are fairly abundant in downtown Durham.

A lone maple leaf at Duke University.  And the very last photo taken with the Zenit before its fatal fall.  The metering and depth-of-field really came together in this shot - I’m especially pleased with the pine needle that leads the eye in - that was an unintentional surprise.

The last photo needs no interruption.  Sydney has been a loyal and compassionate friend to me, and enjoyed this afternoon’s outing as much as I did.

Is it any strange coincidence that this Russian camera died 44 years (to the day) after JFK?  Parting thoughts …