Cotton Tale: Century Industry, Century Farm, Century Family

Cotton Tale is an industry, farm, and family documentary headlining the changes in cotton production and agribusiness during the last 60 years.  The narrative vehicle for this documentary is the voice of the "last-one-standing" patriarch of a four generation farm family living in the Four Hole Swamp of low-country South Carolina.  Family members, multi-generational farm hands, and community testify to the  family's farming heritage and deep-seated values of faith, succession, and family pride.  Also prominent in the story is…

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More Joy Welcomed in N.Y. Times Pictures of the Day

The N.Y. Times Pictures of the Day are a dependable source of inspiration for photographers.  They trend with the news which is currently resplendent with grief and pain from locations like the Ukraine, Iraq, and Ferguson, Missouri. The images have become repetitive with bombed out buildings, makeshift coffins carried by wailing families, and of soldiers being beaten or beating. I was particularly proud of my wife who captured this moment during the  baptism of  the son of a close…

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A significant event and image from my life …

My mother was the only patient in the ICU of Haywood County Regional Medical Center on Wednesday evening, May 9, 2012.  The Unit was eerily quiet, absent of the usual beeping cadence of  monitors, and that of my mother's - her monitor and I.V.'s disconnected a few hours before.  The sole light burning was the one over the nurses station which cast a diffuse fluorescent glow through their observation window into her private room.  My mother's  life was slipping away as her still warm…

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A bidding war on a real cotton mom’s wedding dress …

When I was growing up, there was a box that I was never allowed to open.  I knew it to be my mom's wedding dress and that was pretty much that ... until now. My mom passed away in May of 2012, and her instructions to my sister and I in the last days of her life were to "take me home," with home being where she grew up as a child on a cotton farm  in…

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Cotton mom …

Cotton  Mom ... a still from our documentary-in-progress, Cotton Tale .... Cotton Tale is a century family, farm, and industry documentary headlining the changes in cotton production in the last 60 years.  The narrative vehicle for this documentary is the voice of the “last-one-standing” patriarch of a four generation farm family living in the Four Hole Swamp area of low-country South Carolina.  Family members and community will testify to the  family’s farming heritage which is characterized by deep-seated values of…

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A child of Jesus and Clemson University … and on Cameron, S.C.

In the low country of South Carolina, the rivalry between Clemson University and the University of South Carolina is played out daily in people's lives, which may also include the church with it's blessing.  In the small town of Cameron, S.C. there is a very strong sense of family and Christian values. My mother was born in Cameron in 1927 and lived there until 1949 when she married and moved away with my dad to…

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