Esther's Senior Yearbook Photo

Artubus, Indiana University, 1923

I've got a couple of photos of Esther, but not many. This is actually quite lovely in an unfussy kind of way. She was, I think, an unfussy kind of woman.

Vessels: Tesserae

Vessels: Tesserae
collage

This is another in the Vessels series. I'm not completely happy with it, but that's how it goes sometimes. The title comes from the central image--the interior of a mosque dome. The tiny tiles that make up the mosaic are called tesserae. A Latin word, it also was used by the Romans to describe small plaques of bone or wood that served as tallies or identification vouchers. A multitude of tiles creating a larger picture; a multitude of people creating a larger society. Each tiny piece is important to the whole, but in becoming part of the whole, the pieces cease exist as individuals. The understanding that there exists an unending conflict between individual identity and society as a whole is at least as ancient as Homer's Akhilles. Yeah, he was a whinging mamma's boy, but he did have a legitimate complaint.

There was a recent-ish discussion in one of my groups about old family photographs. Someone said that, after she was dead and gone, who would care who those people were? It's probably true, and I find that incredibly sad. Maybe that's why I've been so obsessed with getting all the Letters to Esther transcribed. I hate to think that no one cares. I'm not particularly religious. I don't believe in an afterlife. Once we're dead, we're dead. The only way we continue on is in the consciousness of others and in the marks we make on this Earth. If we leave no marks and are unremembered, we truly go back to the dust and ashes from whence we came--just one unremarkable grain of sand among millions of other unremarkable grains of sand.

Asswagons, Network Outages & Letters to Esther

Just kill me now. I didn't want to come to work this ayem. The county roads were icy and, even if I weren't worried about sliding off the road, I would've been worried about random asswagons committing random acts of asswagonry. I was not disappointed. When I turned off HWY 46 onto Arlingting Road (from 4-lane highway to 2-lane road), some jerk decided to try turning left at the same time. I looked up and saw that there was a car to my right. Now, I'm not a brilliant physicist, but I do recall that there is a law stating that two masses cannot occupy the same space at the same time. I braked and let the Mr. Asshat get in front of me. I'm not in a big enough hurry to get to work that I'm willing to get involved in a game of dueling sub-compacts with an uberasshole.

Then, because a 45 minute white knuckle drive wasn't exciting enough, I got to work and the network was down. God clearly hates me. Because the network is down, everyone is milling about and chit-chatting. There isn't really any work we can do, and staring at the ceiling is boring, so that leaves talking. One woman has been on the phone for over an hour, whinging about her family problems. The phone is rightbehindmydesk. I'm stuck eavesdropping on what is turning out to be a very private converstation. I am not amused. I resent having to listen to her tale of woe. And, so much for anyone else who needs to use the phone or any incoming calls. Sheesh! On the bright side, I stayed home yesterday and got a lot done. I thought briefly about going back to bed, but decided I should make the most of my unplanned day off. I did a little arting and scanned and uploaded what I'd done, I worked for awhile on the Dada Book, and I transcribed some more letters.

About those letters. Oh my. When I first started this project, I didn't realize there were so many rough drafts of Esther's replies (so far exclusively to Richard) included in the envelopes. I'm grateful that she was so organized. However, the replies themselves are difficult to read. Because they are rough drafts, there are numerous cross-outs and insertions. The punctuation and spelling are not as careful as they likely would've been in the finished drafts. They were written in pencil on cheap, pulpy tablet paper, often on the backs of school lessons. The pencil has faded and the paper has darkened. The paper is also extremely brittle, so unfolding and refolding it is tricky. All this makes for slow going in the transcription department.

I did a little more digging and came up with an old post to a geneology group from someone looking for information on Esther's brother, Clark Munro. The poster's e-mail address is no longer active, so I can't contact her directly, but I left a reply. Hopefully she'll check back.

The pièce de résistance was finally locating a bundle of letters written after Esther married. I now have her husband's name: Robert H. Cooper. I did some quick Googling and found that he taught at Ball State University. The Cooper Science Building was named for him. I've spent an awful lot of time in that building. It's funny how the threads of different lives become interwoven.

Dr. Cooper was a conservationist. The regional chapter of the Audubon Society was named after him and one of it's most prestigious awards after him and his wife. Ball State University has also named an award in honor of the couple, as well as one of the its field sciences study areas.

Letters to Esther

And now for something completely different…

I started a sister blog today. It isn’t art related and the content isn’t even written by me. It’s a collection of transcribed letters written to a woman named Esther Munro. She was born in Illinois around the turn of the century. When she was a small child, her family moved to Geneva, Indiana. In the 1920s, Esther attended Indiana University, where she received a degree in elementary education.

Esther died in 1997 and her letters were sold at an estate sale. I stumbled across them a couple of years later at a flea market, where the vendor was selling them piece-meal. I thought it was criminal that he was splitting them up, so I asked him what he wanted for the whole lot. I ended up paying $20 for an orange crate crammed with hundreds of letters–her entire life’s worth of correspondence.

I haven’t even read all of the letters yet. Some of the letters are from friends, some from family. Many are from college sweethearts. They all help to paint a picture of the people around Esther. Interestingly, they don’t tell us much about Esther herself. I have an interactive art project in the planning stages that will help remedy that. Esther should have a voice, too, I think. But, for now, I’m working on transcribing these boxes and boxes and boxes of letters. I’m hoping to add a couple more each day, time permitting. I’m also trying to find related information on-line (e.g. the links to the Panama and Pacific Exposition and the PBS special on the 1918 influenza epidemic). If anyone comes across information or websites that they think would be informative, please let me know.