Remote Communication Technologies

Technology makes distance interaction possible in a way not possible a few years ago.

Sunny Nash
Author- Journalist
Editorial Project Manager

Interviewing is especially useful to me as a journalist, oral historian and author, and especially difficult during disasters and pandemics. Covid-19 made me aware that I could continue to produce my work in a virtual world, even with the nation virtually shut down. Since then, I have developed practical methods to teach others in ways of communicating with teams and operating seamlessly. 
However, this is not the case for many who do not have the training and equipment to transition seamlessly to digital existence. Populations do exist that only use technology as consumers, but not as innovators and producers. 
Now that I know I can survive in near isolation and continue my study, work and collaborate, I may be able to help others make the change of mindset. The mindset is the key to conquering obstacles that oppress populations, causing people to think they are incapable of changing themselves and their world. Because people seem permanently connected to each other and to their devices means that becoming innovators is more and more part of human survival. 

In the past, some thought face-to-face meetings and interviews were required to facilitating collaboration. Technology makes live meetings and interviews seem passé or at least nonessential in our remote world. Relying on interviews as  essential to our practice is possible with technology, whereas , face-to-face meetings, in some instances, are optional, if not .  discouraged, avoided and prohibited to save money getting the job done in spite of budgets cuts and demotions.. 

 

My state of professional normalcy has been transformed since the Pandemic altered my habits and everyone else's. However, my productivity is heightened without the hustle-bustle of constant travel. I watch news broadcasts of airport traffic and smile to myself sitting comfortably at home. 

My grandmother, Bigmama, always told me, when there seems to be nothing promising on the horizon, look  again. Unfortunately, there are those who are not tech-savvy and do not see opportunities on the horizon. Check out my book: 

Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s.

David Caruso, Director, 
Center for Oral History,
Science History 
Institute, Philadelphia

I received my Oral History Certification at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia. Instructor and Director of the Institute’s Center for Oral History, David Caruso, emphasized research methodologies, legal forms, technique, meticulous transcription, archival preservation and technology. My training with Professor Caruso sent me thinking. I have always used remote recording in my journalism practice. I started my broadcast career in radio. The conventional telephone was my primary tool. How remote was that?

At Shure Audio Institute, I studied acoustics, amplification, microphonic reduction, sound design and digital audio systems, earning certifications in microphone technology, wireless technology, networking, and information technology (IT) for audio-video professionals. I decided to apply these skills, my radio experience and training toward creating an affordable method to control that invisible enemy of any recording--microphonics, better known as distracting, unwanted noise, undesirable in any production. In fact, I spent decades in soundproof cubicles of recording studios, radio stations and television editing suites, acquiring technical skills in sound design while performing as a studio musician, recording engineer, radio news broadcaster and television producer.

Many of my oral history projects involve senior members of ethnic groups that are underrepresented in oral history archives due to deteriorating race relations in America, which  systematically ignores human qualities. These stories go untold by untrained, ill-equipped storytellers, and lack of access to oral history repositories. So, you see the myth? Even though everyone with a cell phone may think they can be oral historians, are unfamiliar with oral history methodologies of the academic discipline. 

Perfecting audio or other production techniques takes time, training, new skill acquisition and periodic equipment upgrades. There is also the element of change that must be accommodated as technology advances and new pandemics descend. I try to keep up with technology advances and transformations to improve my practice without breaking my bank.

© 2026 Sunny Nash. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Our Stories 

Before we had air conditioning and before outdoor entertaining was fashionable, my mother prepared lavish cold-cut suppers to serve in our backyard. Sometimes, if the budget allowed, she cooked a few vegetables, sausage links or other meats on her barrel grill. She had a ton of grilling recipes from books and magazines that she was always anxious to try out on company. She learned her grilling skills from a host of pit bosses in and out of our family. 

Black Cowboys of Texas 

My mother talked about Saturday Night Suppers at Uncle Tinney's house when she was a young girl living on an isolated farm. 

Uncle Tinney was only one of the black cowboys in our family. The closest one to me was my father, who had been a cowboy since he was born practically. And I do not mean simply dressing up like a rodeo dude. My mother said, "Uncle Tinney was not really a cowboy. He had been a cowhand on a local ranch and learned his style of cooking from real cowboys. Ask my father--a real cowboy--and learn the difference between a cowboy and a cowhand. 

My father was a rancher, who came from a ranching tradition that required him to be more than proficient on horseback and open fire pits on the range. He knew about Saturday Night Suppers, but not those at Uncle Tinney's place. The Saturday Night Suppers my father attended were generally on the range attending the herd when some need arose that needed attention. I always wanted to spend the night out on the range, but my mother said, "No."

Uncle Tinney was married to my grandmother's sister, part Comanche through their father. My great grandfather knew about the old way and taught it to his offspring and in-laws of offspring.I have memories of my great grandfather. He lived his last years with my grandmother's oldest sister, whom I visited during some holidays while my great grandfather was still alive. I developed an interest in his old stories when I was in elementary school before he died. That could be the way Uncle Tinney learned some of his outdoor cooking techniques. My mother said Uncle Tinney dug a hole in the ground behind his house and lit a slow fire in the hole, while real cowboys dug holes and lit fires on the range. I wanted to dig a hole behind our house and light a slow fire, but my mother said, "No."

Then Uncle Tinney placed a whole pig or most of a pig wrapped in corn shucks in the hole and smoked the pig all day Friday. On Saturday just before the supper, he took out the tender meat, falling off the bone. With fresh white bread, his wife, my great aunt, baked in their outdoor oven, Uncle Tinny made sandwiches to sell at the supper. Everybody from miles around, black, white and brown, came to eat, drink Uncle Tinney's home-brewed beer, listen to Cousin Roy play is guitar and sing out of tune, and kick up dust dancing in the side yard.

Ojibwa Woman Cooking
An Ethnographic Biography 
of Paul Peter Buffalo

"My father taught all of us children how to hunt, clean and cook wild meat outdoors," my grandmother said. "That's the old way, the only way when he was a boy. Our people were starving. Wild meat and small game were how we survived because there was no money or store to buy meat. 'And why should you buy meat?' Bigmama's father would ask, 'when you can go out the back door and bag a rabbit or a squirrel, skin it and cook it over an open fire for supper.' So that is what we did," Bigmama said. "Very much in the old way of our prairie ancestors."

Civilization changed greatly during the period between Bigmama's childhood and my own. 

    

Bigmama Didn’t Shop 

At Woolworth’s 

Sunny Nash

Hard Cover

Bigmama Didn't Shop 

at Woolworth's

Amazon Kindle

Bigmama Didn't Shop 

at Woolworth's

Sunny Nash is an author, producer, photographer and leading writer on U.S. race relations. She writes books, blogs, articles and reviews, and produces media and images on U.S. history and contemporary American topics, ranging from Jim Crow laws to social media networking. Sunny Nash is the author of Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press), about life with her part-Comanche grandmother during the Civil Rights Movement.

Sunny Nash’s book is recognized by the Association of American University Presses as essential for understanding U.S. race relations. Nash's book is also listed in the Bibliographic Guide for black studies at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York; and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida. Nash uses her book to write articles and blogs on race relations in America through topics relating to her life--from music, film, early radio and television, entertainment, social media, Internet technology, publishing, journalism, sports, education, employment, the military, fashion, performing arts, literature, women's issues, adolescence and childhood, equal rights, social and political movements--past and present—to today's post-racism.

© 2023 Sunny Nash. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

 www.sunnynash.blogspot.com 

~Thank You~

Labor Day - The End of Ice Cream Summer

My family, like other American families, had a Labor Day tradition when I was growing up. 

Grape Nut Ice Cream by Kristin Taylor

Similar to a recipe my mother used, 
this healthy choice ice cream features
grape juice flavoring. 

My mother used
fresh seasonal fruits to flavor her
homemade vanilla ice cream recipe.

The establishment of Labor Day as a U.S. national holiday and the invention of the ice cream cone make an interesting historical intersection. 

Labor Day predates the American ice cream cone by a decade. 

I've been working on this post for a while now, and thought I should get it out before Labor Day became a distant memory and summer had drifted down into autumn with the falling leaves.

Established in 1894 as a national American holiday commemorating American workers, Labor Day seems to have been hijacked by the general American public as a three-day weekend to party! For some, Labor Day marks the end of wearing white as part of our summer wardrobes for the remainder of the year. 

When I was a little girl, I watched my mother fold all the white items in our wardrobe and pack them away on the Sunday before Labor Day. Why did we have to give up our favorite summer fashions because of a date on the calendar? I din't care what the calendar said, the weather was still hot in September and, besides, I liked my white shorts and shirts, now relegated to gym class. Anticipating the coming Monday, Labor Day, was also the last day of ice cream summer. I confess, Labor Day was not my favorite holiday, except for homemade ice cream.

Green Tea Ice Cream

Vanilla Ice Cream
Chocolate Syrup Topping

I loved my mother's homemade ice cream, flavored with fresh fruit, mint, powdered green tea or chocolate syrup. 

The recipe that produced our end of summer treat wasn't my mother's recipe and she never claimed it as her own. It was a recipe that had been passed down through our family for many generations. My mother simply added her own twists to the summer delight and she liked to serve her homemade ice cream in homemade ice cream cones.

Ice Cream Cone

"I can stretch the ice cream farther serving it in cones," she said. "And cones are cheaper to make than ice cream."

My mother made her own ice cream cones from a recipe she found in a book from a second-hand store that also sold used furniture and other household goods that she sometimes purchased at very discounted prices if they were in good condition, but they, especially, had to be in good taste and in keeping with my mother's exquisite sense of decor and impeccable style. 

Agnes B. Marshall
Inventor of Ice Cream Cone
Published in 1888

Some books my mother collected on various subjects said the ice cream cone was popularized in America at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, making ice cream cones 112 years old today. "Ice cream cones may have become known in America in 1904," my mother said, "But they have been around much longer in the rest of the world."

In 1888, 128 years ago, English author and dessert chef, Agnes Bertha Marshall, published Book of Cookery, containing the ice cream cone recipe my mother mimicked in her own kitchen when I was young. 

The ice cream cone recipe was different from the one Mrs. Shields sold in her 1950s neighborhood confectionery down the street from where we lived. Mrs. Shields bought her cones wholesale off the back of a truck from a traveling salesman. Her ice cream was store-bought, too, which, according to most her the neighbors who bought her goods, were also very over priced. 

Agnes Bertha Marshall was the authority on cold sweet treats, according to my mother. Marshall wrote so many books on the preparation of desserts made from flavored ices, the English author earned the title, Queen of Ices. 

Labor Day, a National Holiday
Celebrating the American Worker

Ice Cream Cones and Labor Day Go Hand-in-Hand

Don't get me wrong, my mother was knowledgeable about and appreciated the real history of Labor Day and many other things in the human experience, on which she did not hesitate educating me. The historical marker for Labor Day, as well as many other historical date markers were common discussions in our house. My mother used the calendar for some of the liveliest history lessons, which she called history stories trying to make me think of these conversations as everyday dinner table banter instead of what the conversations really were--an extension of school!

I guess you could surmise that my mother was a history buff and did her best to turn me into one, too.  Not only was she a history buff, but a science buff, a math buff, an art buff, language buff; you name it! If it had to do with education, the subject made her a buff. She scoured used book store shelves and, yard and estate sales looking for suitable material to use against all of my free time. At the time when I was growing up, public policy prevented us from entering most libraries. Occasionally, a neighbor that worked for the city as a library janitor brought my mother worn library books discarded from shelves due to overuse, wear-and-tear and abuse. 

Repairing a book with a broken spine or torn pages, and erasing pencil marks from margins, my mother complained, "Some people should not be allowed to check out library books because they don't know how to handle them! And they won't let us into the public library!"

I was not allowed to celebrate something unless I had an understanding of what the something was and, sometimes, not even then; as in my grandmother's lesson on Halloween, another story. But I will keep this discussion focused on ice cream cones and Labor Day.

My great grandmother's homemade ice cream recipe marked the end of summer.

Vintage White Mountain
Ice Cream Freezer
Similar the the the 100-plus-year-old 

antique, wooden ice cream freezer

in the possession of my family 

for decades after 

my great-grandmother died.

On Labor Day, my mother made her grandmother's 100-plus-year-old homemade ice cream recipe given to her by her grandmother to use with the 100-plus-year-old antique wooden ice cream freezer, also a gift from her grandmother. I remember the freezer well. It stayed in the family for years, coming first into the possession of my grandmother via her mother, then my mother. 

I remember taking turns with invited neighborhood children cranking the ice cream freezer. My mother usually made vanilla but occasionally mixed in fresh seasonal fruit or berries or mint from our garden or powdered green tea, all of which my mother also used in our teatime rituals. 

I don't know what finally happened to my great grandmother's ice cream freezer, which would be mine by now. I only have a vague memory of the wooden boards coming off. Overuse, I guess. 

Sausage and Veggies on the Grill

Before the arrival of Labor Day, during ice cream summer,  many of our evenings in the backyard included my mother's cookouts, where she invited neighbors to join in the fun.

If neighbors had something to throw on the fire or place on the table, it was welcomed. However, if they didn't have a contribution to the feast, my mother welcomed them empty-handed anyway, dividing up what she already had so that everyone got a little taste of some part of her delicious offering. 

As flatbed trucks drove slowly down neighborhood streets and stopped at various corners letting people off, many of our neighbors and their children my own age were only getting home from their summer jobs toiling from sunup to sundown in blazing sun picking cotton on nearby farms. 

"You can't throw an outdoor ice cream supper and let your neighbors stare from the heat of their yards," my mother said. "If you don't have something to offer them, keep your supper inside your house, no matter how hot is tets in there! Especially on Labor Day!"

    

Bigmama Didn’t Shop 

At Woolworth’s 

Sunny Nash

Hard Cover

Bigmama Didn't Shop 

at Woolworth's

Amazon Kindle

Bigmama Didn't Shop 

at Woolworth's

Author of Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth's, Sunny Nash is recognized as a leading author on U.S. Race Relations.

Sunny Nash's book, which she fondly refers to as "The Bigmama Book," is about life with her part-Comanche grandmother during the Civil Rights Movement. The book is awarded the distinction, Book for Understanding U.S.  Race Relations by the American Association of University Presses; and recommended for Native American Collections by Miami-Dade County Library System. Nash writes a popular blog, Sunny Nash - Race Relations in America, based on period themes from her book.

Robin Fruble of Southern California wrote, "Every white person in America should read this book (Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's)! Sunny Nash writes the story of her childhood without preaching or ranting but she made me realize for the first time just how much skin color changes how one experiences the world. But, if your skin color is brown, it matters a great deal to a great number of people. I needed to learn that. Sunny Nash is a great teacher," Fruble said.

© Copyright 2020. Sunny Nash. All rights reserved.

 

© 2020 Sunny Nash. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

~Thank You~

The Day After Christmas

Sunny Nash
Author-Journalist

The following vignette is from my book: 

Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's

__________________________

The sky was hazy that Friday, December 26, 1958. Hanging low just above the houses, dense, moist gray clouds spawned a fine cold mist that drifted to the ground, freezing everything it touched. Pointed tin rooftops and tall leafless trees glistened in the distance like Colorado postcards. Near the ground, electrical wires sacked under the weight of ice, and the slippery front steps of our house and the porches of our Candy Hill neighbors shimmered under a frosty crust. Still ill with the mumps, I could do nothing but read and look out of the window. The house smelled of peppermint, oranges, turkey, nutmeg, and, of course, cedar; but are small brown Christmas tree had shed nearly all its tiny dried branches, leaving little to hold up the sparkling red balls my mother had so carefully placed upon them. Fear of burning down our house had prompted her to stop the flashing of colorful lights on Christmas night. My grandmother had warned her that she was putting up the tree too early.

Through our living room window, when my grandmother let me out of bed for a few minutes that day, I noticed nothing moving on the street—not a person, not a car, not a dog or cat. I didn’t expect to see a cat out in wretched whether, not the way they tiptoed around lightly in a spring shower, trying to keep their feet from touching the ground and getting wet.

No one I knew personally, except a yellow-slickered trash man who lived around the corner, owned the proper winter clothing to be out that day after Christmas. The winter before, a storm had blown in while I was at school. My woolen overcoat absorbed cold moisture and soaked my sweater underneath. I came down with the flu. The cough hung on until spring.

At times, my clear plastic rain slicker kept out rain but welcomed cold that seemed to chill me to the bone. On East 19^th Street, now East Martin Luther King Street, the students’ main route to Washington Elementary School on East 20^th Street, was so thick and sticky with mud that it pulled off our shoes and sent us home in soggy socks.  During entire winters when I was a child, my toes stayed cold.  I was plagued with sore throat and lost my voice every other week.

Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's

It was my guess act, by this time, our Candy Hill neighbors—after tossing out their shiny gift paper and picking their turkeys clean—were huddled around a pot-bellied wood stove or a kerosene heater or a gas jet burner, trying to keep warm.

I can’t remember what was in the box with my name on it; presents didn’t matter to me that year, and Christmas dinner was a blur along in my bed. I was preoccupied with the loss of my brother. His seventh birthday would have been December 26, had he not died a few months before. Our one-day-late Christmas gift, as my mother always called him fondly, was gone. And my broken heart was not prepared for any festivities or joyous celebration.

My hot breath fogged the window pane. I traced fragile stick figures with my fingertip.  Through my delicate drawings, I saw a lonely road out front.

My Mother & The Thinkers

Fine art appreciation, classical music and reading neutralized the sting of Jim Crow.

Rodin - The Thinker

When I was nine, my mother brought home a book on the French sculptor, François-Auguste-René Rodin (1840-1917). 

My mother loved art, any art--books, literature, paintings, sculpture, music, film, dance, photography, architecture, history, philosophy and intelligent conversation. But I was as confused about her handing this book over to me after she had read it as I was about her making me take ballet and piano lessons, which I am now convinced she insisted upon so that I could notate music to the songs she was writing, another story for another time. 

I remember that on the cover of the book was Rodin's The Thinker, a bronze and marble sculpture, which is now in the Musée Rodin in Paris. "Why do I have to read this book about Rodin?" I asked, mispronouncing his name in my childish innocence and ignorance. 

"Because I said you have to read it," my mother answered. "And because I refuse to raise an ignorant child who can't pronounce Rodin correctly."

"Oh," was all I could muster. "But why do I have to read this?"

"So you will learn to say his name correctly... Rodin," she pronounced it for me again and made me repeat it. "You can't go to college mispronouncing famous names." I knew I did not dare argue with her or just pretend I to read the book because she would quiz me on it like she did everything else. So, I read it.

Rodin Museum in Paris, France

When Rodin was 76 years old, he donated his own works of art and his art collection by other artists to the French government. My mother told me about his donation, which is now in the Rodin Museum.

Rodin Museum: Le Baiser

My mother said people who create, participate in and appreciate art are better thinkers than those who do not. 

"Those interested in literature, music and art can handle conversation," she said. "It has to do with the way their brains work and how they decide to live; maybe because they use their minds in a different way."

Contrary to what I thought before starting the book about Rodin, I did find it interesting. Rodin's early education was not considered good enough to gain him entrance into the elite art academy and still he went on to be a foremost figure in the development of modern sculpture. His piece, The Thinker, became my favorite work of art, representing a superior intellectual quality like my mother's that I wished to possess. 

François-Auguste-René Rodin 

(1840-1917)

How could my mother have known this man, this book and this sculpture would have that impact on me? 

Was she teaching me something about my own intellect, also considered inferior because I was attending a Jim Crow school at the time? 

My mother knew the book about Rodin was not the type of reading material our school library offered. 

She wanted me to know about people and places far away from my Jim Crow world, one of the reasons we traveled to other states where I could see what the rest of the world had to offer me. Starting when I was four years old my mother took me to the movies at the segregated theater downtown. Once the lights went down, I was transported to wherever the movie took me. . We would lose ourselves in the beautiful clothes and exotic locations. 

"Do not be afraid to explore art, film, books and traditions of other cultures," she always said. "That's how you learn." My mother believed in a global education.

While reading the book on Rodin, I learned that he was born in 1840 in Paris, France. That was the same time that, on this side of the Atlantic, slavery in America was still flourishing in the Deep South. Even as the Civil Rights Movement was in progress, it was unlikely that a little black girl would have been able to discover the genius of Rodin or others without someone like my mother to make the suggestion. At my mother's insistence on exposing me to higher concepts, I was reading about Rodin during the civil rights movement. 

There were people whom my mother admired in the world who were not directly associated with the sciences or the arts, but she believed if she could get inside their homes, she would find art hanging on the walls, many shelves of books and the music of the masters playing in the background. 

"Did you know Albert Einstein was also a musician?" My mother asked me.

The Musical Mind of Albert Einstein: 

Great Physicist, Amateur Violinist 

and Devotee of Mozart

"Who is that?" I asked her.

The Spring before I started first grade, Albert Einstein died. My mother was anxious to have me understand not only what the world had lost when this genius died, but also what the world had in him. 

"A genius," she said. 

"What's that?"

"A very smart person," she said.

"Like you?" I asked.

She laughed. "No, much smarter than me. He loved Mozart and used his music to help him develop his theories." 

There she goes again, I thought. I didn't understand what all of that meant. I was only five years old! 

And my mother's intellectual admiration did not stop at theoretical physicists. "I'll bet Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks know who Albert Einstein is," my mother said. Rosa Parks started the Montgomery Bus Boycott at the end of 1955 after I was in first grade. My mother kept up with all that news the same way she had kept up with the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v the Board of Education. She bought magazines and newspapers on her way home from work.

Rosa Parks Booking Photo, Montgomery Bus Boycott

"You can hear culture in people's voices and in the way they use language," my mother said. "Reserved and elegant, those are the thinkers. Thinkers become doers." 

As history has recorded, both Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote books about their lives and experiences during the Civil Rights Movement, documenting those thoughts and the resulting actions.

We had a television in 1955, but there were a couple of problems. In our town, there was only one local station and it was quite conservative and limited broadcasts to those that were none offensive to the majority community. That meant very little to no coverage of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. Secondly, my mother had her doubts that sitting in front of a screen too much was safe for the eyes or the brain. So, she restricted my television viewing to her approved list of programming. 

Rosa Parks & Martin Luther King
(Articles)

My mother received civil rights news through delivery of national black publications to our home on a weekly basis. She required me to read articles and then discuss them with her afterwards. Topics were confusing to me and not always a pleasant experience. I always enjoyed our discussions of art history more, perhaps because, as a child, art history was less intimidating than civil rights. When my mother made me read articles and books she had selected, I read them to be ready for her quizzes.

I read books and articles, and examined art because my mother said a person could not be just a collector of books and art. Art hanging on walls or books on shelves did not pass my mother's sniff test. The person who possessed the books and art had to know something about what was in the books, know about the art or know something about the artist who produce the art. An amateur artist herself, she liked to paint animals, birds and landscapes. My really wanted to me to be interested in art, too.

Brownie Camera

My grandmother bought me a Brownie camera when I was eight in exchange for not bothering her gun again. 

She got really upset when I sneaked the gun out of the house and tried to buy bullets at the corner market. But the storekeeper called my house and told my grandmother what I was up to. I tried to explain that I had a good reason, but no one would listen. 

My grandmother said my punishment was to use the camera to shoot whatever or whoever I needed to shoot, but not without asking them first. "Do not go sneaking around behind people's backs taking pictures of them," she said. "That is a good way to make enemies and to lose your camera privileges." Like I lost my gun privileges, I thought, hoping she wouldn't tell my mother about the gun.

My mother didn't ask why my grandmother bought me the camera, but she restricted my photography even further: Do not photograph people! She felt I would not be sufficiently respectful of their privacy and she was probably right. Although, looking back on it, I wouldn't call what I was doing photography. My photographs were awful. But my mother was delighted that I was interested in photography. "It's a form of fine art," she said. 

I wrote a story, Shooting Without A Gun, in my book, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's, about Bigmama's gun and the camera. Take a look and join my channel.

My mother didn't say much about the incident with me and Bigmama's gun, but I am certain she had all to do with my grandmother giving me that camera.

Ansel Adams
Moon and Half Dome
Yosemite National Park, 1960

My mother was particularly fond of sunsets, water, night skies, old buildings and sand. When I was about 11 years old, my mother bought postcards with Ansel Adams photography, saying I should model my own style of photography on his style, which she thought was magnificent. 

I had no photographic style. "Aim high!" She scolded. "And be sure and pack your camera when we go to the beach next weekend." My mother had a friend in Houston who was from a wealthy mortuary family with property in Galveston and one son my age. During the season, we often met her and her son at their beach cottage for weekends. My mother was always happy when her friend's older son, who was a professional photographer, joined us at the beach and let me tag along while he photographed nature scenes and explained lighting and photo composition. 

The summer of my 15th birthday, Aunt Clara took me to the mountains, where I wasted rolls of film trying to take shots as my mother had instructed, only to find out after the photographs were developed that I was no Ansel Adams, nor was I even close. I was very disappointed when I got home from vacation, and my mother and I reviewed my shots. Then, I realized the photography exercise was for my benefit. She was trying to help me develop an eye. 

I did eventually develop an eye for photography. My images were published in a significant reference book on the history of  photography. 

Reflections in Black:

A History of Black 

Photographers

 1840 to the Present

My photography has been collected by a number of prestigious museums and libraries, published in books, newspapers and magazines, and exhibited around the world with a Smithsonian Exhibition, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present. I credit my mother for my success by insisting that I take all those terrible pictures when I was a kid.

My mother was totally absorbed in art--the art of others in galleries, her own art creations, my crude and amateur photography or pictures in books. And she liked volumes, not just for the quantity, but for the matching binding. 

"Sets of books make you feel like you're in a library," she said. "The feel of art books and the smell of them make me want to paint or get knee-deep in some clay. You can't pretend to love art or know what's in books. Love and knowledge of these subjects come out in conversation, and if you're pretending, you will soon look the fool. Anybody with money can be advised on what art pieces to buy," she said. "The real test is finding a way to surround yourself with art if you are on a tight budget." 

And a tight budget was something my mother knew all about. "But we can't let the lack of money keep us from enjoying the finer things," she said. "People need art in their lives, all people--rich and poor!" 

Converted Bus Bookmobile

When I was a little girl, our town did not allow us to use the segregated public library in the 1950s. Jim Crow laws ordered the public library to offer bookmobile services to neighborhoods. A bookmobile was a converted station wagon, van or bus with rows shelves with books, mostly outdated and tattered. The bookmobile was most active in summer and parked in public parks. 

Back then, until we were allowed to use the library, my mother and I took a Greyhound Bus 100 miles away to Houston to use the Houston Public Library. The trip to Houston was an all day affair, but worth it, even if we didn't qualify for library cards, not because we were not white, but because we were from out of town. We sat among all those art books on the shelves and read until it was time for us to catch our bus back home. My mother used the library, like she used movies, to imagine places we had never been, to see images from faraway places that one day we might see and to teach me to see myself as the Jim Crow south could not. 

From those movies and books, she imagined scenes, learned to paint oil landscapes and restored damaged art she bought in second-hand stores. She collected art, museum, gallery and exhibition books and often dragged me to out-of-town galleries and museums that allowed African Americans to enter if could afford a ticket. Afterwards, she bought greeting cards and program booklets that were not too expensive and she required me to make detailed critiques of shows we had seen.

My mother collected interior design,  architecture and art magazines, too. "Be careful with those," she told me. "They're not cheap." Sketching out plans for home improvement projects was a favorite past-time that my mother loved. Using her architecture and art magazines, and Vogue pattern decorating book, she measured and made multiple drawings before presenting them to my father to see if he could build whatever it was she wanted. Usually, he couldn't or wouldn't produce her final design or, if he did, she wasn't satisfied with the shortcuts he took. So, she went on to construct whatever small project she wanted to create. 

Art, music and literature were my mother's weapons against excuses, which she refused to accept. "Most often," she said, "You get what you give."

Auguste Rodin: 

Master of Sculpture

I searched the Internet and could not find a copy of the Rodin book my mother gave me all those years ago. Perhaps the book is out of print. But I found some other interesting selections devoted to Rodin and others that trace art history from the Renaissance to Rodin and the birth of modern art.

Over the years, my mother's interests and book collections changed and I do not know what happened to the book about Rodin that she made me read. The book was probably not responsible for getting me a college scholarship or even getting me through Texas A&M University's Department of Journalism and Broadcast Communications. But my mother knew Rodin would have an influence on me at a time when I needed it most. 

~30~

Sunny Nash
Author-Journalist

    

Bigmama Didn’t Shop 

At Woolworth’s 

Sunny Nash

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Bigmama Didn't Shop 

at Woolworth's

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Bigmama Didn't Shop 

at Woolworth's

Sunny Nash, former nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, is the author of a nonfiction book about life before and during the Civil Rights Movement with her part-Comanche grandmother, Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s, selected by the American Association of University Presses as a Book for Understanding U.S. Race Relations, and recommended by the Miami-Dade (Florida) Public Library System for Native American Collections.

Sunny Nash is an award winning writer and three-time winner of Arts Council for Long Beach Professional Artist Fellowship Awards: 2003, 2009 and 2014. Her most recent Arts Council for Long Beach award is a 2016 mini-grant for cultural heritage preservation programs, How a Child Build Legacy, designed to encourage young students to prepare archives of their accomplishments and plan for their future achievements.

Sunny Nash earned a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism & Mass Communication, Texas A&M University; Postgraduate Media Studies Certificate, Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communications, Arizona State University; Postgraduate Diploma, Instructional Technology, University of California, San Diego; Constitution Studies, James Madison’s Montpelier Center for the Constitution; and Postgraduate Digital Literacy Certificate, Simmons College Graduate School of Library & Information Science, Boston. Sunny Nash’s international studies include Intellectual Property Law, World Intellectual Property Organization Academy, Geneva, Switzerland; Diplomacy, Culture and Communication, United Nations; Research Methodology, Digital Preservation, Online Archival Information Systems, University of London; and Archival Data Governance, National Archives of Australia, Melbourne. 

© 2020 Sunny Nash. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

 www.sunnynash.blogspot.com 

~Thank You~