J. Ross Baughman

Chains link things together: families, gates, animals that may not have stayed together on their own if given a choice each new day. When a chain, once lost in the woods, lies rusting and buried beneath the leaves and worms, neither tested nor put to real work, may forget the hands that once wrapped around it, may disintegrate in time and return to mere minerals. If a chain falls out of the present tense, even if only lost to those who used it, then it will forfeit all the life and plans and intentions that it once had. Only memory and appreciation can save it. Bits of lost and buried chain, when recovered and joined again, can reach full circle. Thanks belong to your eyes for waking up these stories. Until you, they had been forgotten once again.

Libraries are actually filled with mirrors, at least as far as the German author Johann Wolfgang Goethe saw it. When he had Wagner speak to Faust in his classic drama, they both took a moment to reflect on history: “Forgive me! It is a great delight to place oneself in the spirit of the times... and then see how far we have advanced from that.” To which Faust replied: “The past is a sealed book for us. What you call the spirit of the times is really your own spirit in which the times are reflected.”

The first of five volumes on the history of the Swiss Anabaptist family Bachmann that migrated to America beginning in 1739 and took the name Baughman. Their settlement traces through the Virginia counties of Shenandoah and Botetourt in the 18th Century, on through Sevier County, Tennessee during the War of 1812, and into the frontier Ozark range spanning Missouri and Arkansas before statehood. To obtain copies: Shenandoah History Publishers, but inquiries should go to the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society shop, 2215 Millstream Road Lancaster, PA 17602-1499 (717) 393-9745; Contact Jonel Ness via e-mail at shop@lmhs.org

Photography: America’s Closet Our society prides itself on being inclusive. We invite the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free. "Our motto is E pluribus unum. But there are, inevitably, outcasts and outsiders – those we will not tolerate in our company, and those who seek their own society outside the mainstream. Forced underground, many such formal and informal groups lurk on the fringes of our awareness, often the objects of our fear and hostility. In his latest book of photographs, Forbidden Images, a secret portfolio (Cambric Press, $5), J. Ross Baughman examines several of these fringe groups through a series of short photo essays. Each essay provides a special jolt to our sensibilities. Taken together they provide important food for thought. The first essay concerns the most organized of the groups, the Ku Klux Klan. Baughman, a KSU graduate whose work appears regularly in The Lorain Journal and occasionally in this magazine, shows us a group of Ohio and Virginia Klan members as they prepare for an evening meeting in the middle of some forest. If we had not heard of the Klan before, we might almost believe we are witnessing preparations for an office picnic. Small groups of adults and children chat among the trees and parked cars. Lights are strung between poles and a speaker’s stand is decorated with flags and bunting. Of course, there is a matter of the strange costumes and cross covered with gasoline-soaked rags. A man leans casually against the door of his truck, gazing defiantly out of the picture. In his hand is a large switchblade knife – the blade extended and ready. This place belongs to him and his companions. We are the outsiders now. For the time being, theirs is the power. The next essay introduces us to a young man sitting before a dressing table and large mirror. We watch as he carefully applies false eyelashes, eye shadow, mascara, lipstick. He dons earrings, a necklace, a padded bra and shimmery dress. Later he is seen in a tavern being warmly embraced by his friends. He climbs up on the bar and does a striptease which the clientele of this very private club seems to appreciate. There are no women present. In the third essay in the book, Baughman brings us to a carnival sideshow. Here one man pushes long pins through his face; others make their living by displaying their physical deformities. Crowds from the outside world press in close to gape. There is no communication. The final essay portrays the inmates of various mental institutions. These are perhaps the ultimate outcasts, for they are unable even to take comfort from each other. No doubt about it, this is not a book for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. But though it may sound like an overwhelmingly depressing set of images, surprisingly it is not. Baughman has succeeded in keeping solid focus on the underlying humanity of his subjects – and this makes all the difference. W. Eugene Smith has portrayed Klan members as unredeemable monsters. Diane Arbus has portrayed sideshow freaks with a relentless morbidity. But these “living taboos,” as Baughman calls them, are not alien beings invading us from their own strange world. Much of what they are has been brought about by the pressures of the society around them. “Forbidden Images are the secrets that society is trying to keep from itself,” says Baughman. Implied is the painful lesson that our social demons must remain with us until we are willing to bring close scrutiny to the very things we do not wish to see. – Wayne Johnson Staff writer for Cleveland Magazine May 1977

Long before there was a Jerusalem, there was a widespread Church of the Moon, one that studied and praised the rhythm of heaven and of all life. According to ancient Germans who carried the faith, every being was filled with slightly more good than evil. A Lake Beneath the Crescent Moon contemplates such a view of the world. Many folks want to believe that the good and the bad in life are separate, that they can divorce themselves from it all, project the bad elsewhere and demonize it. All of this turns into the most fundamental questions that people might ask, such as "Who makes the awful problems of life? Who is at fault? Should people decide for themselves how to live, or must they be told what to do?"