Tuesday, December 19, 2006

i heart learning

So, regular visitors (both of you, ha ha) may notice that I've been messing around with the look of my blog, and that I put this bizarre photograph of some crosses on an apparently man-made hill at that top of the page. (Also, I made it CLICKABLE. I'm really proud of myself, can you tell?) I took that picture a couple years ago when driving to Virginia (from Chicago) for Thanksgiving. I think this was my first real trip to the south. (I KNOW, I KNOW. I grew up in New England. Give me a break.) I had been to Memphis in high school for a flute camp thing, but it was at Rhodes College, and anyone who's ever been to Rhodes would realize that the delicate little flute girls were kept within the iron gates of that campus the whole time. Seriously. There are gates. This is so creepy and bizarre. BUT, I did get to go to Graceland with my dad. That was fun.

Anyway, on this trip to Virginia my companion (ahem, ex-boyfriend) and I drove through a bit of Kentucky, where we kept seeing these small-ish hills with crosses on them on the side of the highway. The one in this picture was definitely the biggest we saw, and it was pretty far away, and I think it was the only one with three crosses instead of just one. I vaguely recall (and I could be making this up) telling my ex's dad about this (he was from Kentucky) and him saying he thought these roadside cross-mound sites were by a particular artist, or maybe a group or something. Now, if I'm going to have a picture of something on top of my blog, I want to know a little something about it. I like the picture, and I liked the roadside crosses, but, not to mince words, I just want to be sure I'm not putting some weird racist or otherwise inappropriate image on my blog and looking like an idiot. I tried some googling, but I know so little about what I'm looking for that this didn't get me very far. I did find this interesting piece on NPR referring to this book... But it doesn't exactly address what I'm looking for. Am I looking for something that's not there? I just want to know the story here. What can I say - I study religion. I'm curious.

Thoughts? Anyone?

3 comments:

ER said...

I don't know anything about an artist/group, but those displays do seem more common down south. Also, in the deeper south, you often see consecutive signs that make phrases and sentences as you're driving past farms. hmmm. good luck sleuthing. (I'm fairly certain there's nothing racist or insidious about the photo--I think it's an artistic-evangelistic call to imagine yourself as one of the condemned men that died next to Jesus)

Becki Sue said...

interesting....

lauren said...

er - good! It didn't seem insidious to me, but I just like to be sure... We have consecutive signs making clever sentences in farms in Oregon, too! I like them.