The Illinois Corn Festival, 23 August 2014

I timed my visit to my hometown to coincide with its annual corn festival and spent four hours there yesterday with my niece Ella.

 One of the two corn shucking tables

A pile of corn awaits shucking

 Ella with corn

Me with corn

A perhaps slightly more flattering photo of Ella, a sweet and spicy sixteen!

The next installment of my home visit photos will be of today's baseball game, in which my nephew Nathan Wallace plays second base &c.

 

i.m. Bernadine Etter, 30 July 1945-29 July 2011

My niece Ella and my mother Bernie, April 2010

Every day since your death I carry the large hollowness around with me and suspect the best part of my life is over. You were Home, and now I linger, adrift, violently uprooted. 

Six months gone

Click to see this picture enlarged and the wonderful expressions on their faces better.

My niece Ella White (formerly Katelyn Etter) with my mother, Bernie.

The shirt's she wearing is one of the ones I kept.

He had no idea what he looked like to others. He wasn't sure what he looked like to himself. He looked like what his mother saw when she looked at him. But his mother had passed on. This raised a question for advanced students. What was left of him for others to see?

Don DeLillo, Point Omega

Happy 13th, Katelyn!

I can't speak to her, so I send my good wishes out into cyberspace: Happy thirteenth birthday, Katelyn Etter, aka Ella White!