The photos on this page are from Kepguru.
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The link to this page is:
http://www.thepastwhispers.com/Sense_of_Place.html
A Sense of Place
The photos on this page were taken in the countries that form the western coast of the Adriatic
and Ionian Seas:   Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania and Greece.
The quotes on this page are all from one of my favorite authors, Eudora Welty, talented
writer and storyteller, who had, above all else, a highly developed sense of place.
Place conspires with the artist.  We are surrounded by our own story,
we live and move in it.  It's through place that we put out roots.
I was always smitten by the identity of place wherever I was.
As we discover, we remember.  Remembering, we discover.
People can give pain, can be callous and insensitive, empty
and cruel...but place heals the hurt, soothes the outrage,
fills the vacuum that human beings make.
One place understood helps us understand all places better.
A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.
It is our inward journey that leads us through time - forward
or back, seldom in a straight line, often spiraling - always
moving, always changing.
Integrity can be neither lost nor concealed, nor faked, nor artificially
come by, nor outlived, nor, I believe, in the long run, denied.
Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was one of the most acclaimed writers of the
20th century.  She lived in the house pictured above for almost 80 years
and wrote all of her major works there.  The house is in Jackson, MS and
is on the National Register of Historic Places and was, also, declared a
National Historic Landmark.  It's a museum and is open to the public.
Ms. Welty was, also, a prolific photographer and many books featuring her
photos have been published.  Her pictures offer her unique perspective of
the world and she had both a keen and a compassionate vision rarely
found.  I have several books of her photos, but my favorite is one titled
"Country Churchyards."  I never pass by a rural cemetery without
thinking of this paragraph from Ms. Welty's "The Optimist's Daughter":
"The procession passed between ironwork gates whose kneeling angels
and looping vines shone black as licorice.  The hill was crowded
with winged angels and life-sized effigies of bygone citizens in old-
fashioned dress, standing, as if by count, among the columns and
conifers - like a familiar set of passengers collected on deck of a ship
on which they all knew each other - bona-fide members of a local
excursion, embarked on a voyage that is always returning in dreams."
Don't be like the rest of them, darling.  Be yourself.
I am a writer who came of a sheltered life.  A sheltered life can be
a daring life as well.  For all serious daring starts from within.