Sunday, June 18, 2017

Remembering my father, James Dickey, in Europe 1954-1955

Hampton Court, and London Zoo, August 1954

On the ferry from Dover to Dunkerque, September 2, 1954 (three days after Chris's 3rd birthday)

Cortina d'Ampezzo hotel balcony, May 1955

Piazzale Michelangelo, Florence, Italy, January 1955

Picnic near Varennes, France, September 1954

Tower of London, August 1954

On the River Cam, Cambridge, August 1954

Cap d'Antibes, October 1954

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Goodbye to Serpents


My father loved zoos, even the tired old cages and their tired old captives at Grant Park in Atlanta. He liked to look into the eyes of the animals in a way that was only possible in places such as these, and he thought somehow that he connected with the wild beasts behind the bars. I witnessed the scene that became the poem "Encounter in the Cage Country," at the London Zoo in 1962, and in the real world there were no dark glasses. The panther just saw my father in the crowd, and fixed on him, and would not take his eyes off of him. But the favorite zoo of all was the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, which has changed very little since we used to go there, even if the old hole in the wall entrance off of Rue Cuvier is now re-built and leads the way to a pleasant little restaurant before you get to the entrance of the ménagerie. This was the scene of many a very happy afternoon in 1954, and again in 1962, where the visits always centered around the vivarium and the snakes there -- and their eyes -- that are the subject of "Goodbye to Serpents." Today, if you sit on the bench where we used to sit outside the vivarium, this is the view. - CD

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Grandmama Maibelle Dickey

From Our Scrapbook

Thanks to Patsy for sending us this obituary of Maibelle Swift Dickey, mother of Maibelle and James and Thomas, from The Atlanta Journal, June 10, 1977