{"id":4424,"date":"2013-05-29T23:42:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-29T22:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peakepro.com\/?p=4424"},"modified":"2014-12-06T17:34:28","modified_gmt":"2014-12-06T17:34:28","slug":"learning-the-letters-film-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/archives\/4424-learning-the-letters-film-poem.html","title":{"rendered":"Learning the Letters (Film-Poem)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"max-width: 960px;\">\n<!-- iframe plugin v.4.5 wordpress.org\/plugins\/iframe\/ -->\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/67239318\" width=\"100%\" height=\"540\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Learning the Letters<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 4em;\">Britton, South Dakota, 1939<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;F&#8221; is for future, bright as a lens,<br \/>\nbubbles in the scrubbing basin,<br \/>\nthin as the skin on aunt Agnes&#8217;s hand,<br \/>\nthe breakable surface of a pollywog egg.<br \/>\n<em>It&#8217;s no shame to be poor, but a shame<br \/>\nto be dirty, since soap is cheap<br \/>\nand water is free<\/em>, and hats last a lifetime<br \/>\nfor those who can&#8217;t afford the ribbons and pomade.<br \/>\nOne day you will be gee-whiz gone,<br \/>\njust like &#8220;T&#8221;, like &#8220;that&#8221;, the last<br \/>\nCracker Jack in the box, the last farrier<br \/>\nin a town full of town cars&#8211;the touchdown<br \/>\nyou scored, the gloves, plaques, and blue ribbons<br \/>\nboxed up for safekeeping, which is never quite<br \/>\nsafe enough. Outside, it is bright. It is &#8220;B&#8221;<br \/>\nand you are abuzz at the start of things,<br \/>\nthough you &#8220;H&#8221; and mother says he who &#8220;hesitates&#8221;<br \/>\nis &#8220;L&#8221;, which you were once, at the fair,<br \/>\n&#8220;lost&#8221; in a petrified forest of trousers and skirts,<br \/>\nand will be again job-seeking in Des Moines<br \/>\nor Detroit, the hot, big &#8220;D&#8221; of Dallas, looking<br \/>\nto make a name that will make the town paper.<br \/>\nThere is always a way, when you square up<br \/>\nstraight, &#8220;F&#8221; is for facing the music, the camera,<br \/>\nlooking up eye-to-eye as your portrait<br \/>\ngets taken, showing yes, you were &#8220;S&#8221;<br \/>\nyou were somebody, looking, direct and uncertain<br \/>\ndown the long barrel of whatever is ahead.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Credits<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Children of Britton, South Dakota<br \/>\nFilmed by Ivan Besse in 1938<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/archive.org\/detail\/prelinger\" target=\"_blank\">Courtesy Prelinger Archives<\/a><\/p>\n<p>8mm projector sound courtesy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freesound.org\/people\/nemoDaedalus\" target=\"_blank\">nemoDaedalus<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Music by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.free2create.com\/\">Valerie Kampmeier<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Poem by Robert Peake<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A film-poem by Valerie Kampmeier and Robert Peake, incorporating footage of children in Britton, South Dakota filmed by Ivan Bessie in 1939.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4437,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1268,5,14],"tags":[143,831,248,837,836],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}