threads between thesis

threads between thesis:

the thoughts of leaving and being, the famers' market, sword-fights with clothes hangers, sunshine, birds, walking in my barefeet from church, from class, from about anywhere, air after rain, hugs, the regeneration of toenails, tea and honey, what is happening to the bees?, casa, burritos, stir-fry at 1:30 am, chasing rabbits, hot. muggy. weather.

chocolate and cheese

chocolate and cheese, i don't think they go together.

i like my riches balanced.

tell me if you beg to differ

today

e e cummings XAIPE, 65


i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

god loves glasses, too

last night, i was sitting in the upstairs of donkey coffee working on thesis stuff. most of the conversations had petered off, though a few moms were still going strong, and so too, were my two companions with laptops.

for awhile, i just sat and listened and picked up the conversation of two girls in the room across from me. they were talking about some fantasy series, dragons, magic, and whatnot, and looked like the stereotypes associated with people who play dungeons and dragons on a saturday evening. i kind of smiled and shook my head, but then stopped, feeling a bit bad for silently laughing. i then had this dreadful vision of me standing in front of a classroom teaching someday and there is a young girl in the back of my class, blonde hair with glasses, and i constantly ignore her because i don't want the other kids to think i favor the misfit.

but god does.

yea, as i was sitting there, it occurred to me no matter how hard i try, no matter how much self discipline i have or tactics i learn to deal with misfit children (or my misfit self), i will always fall short of loving those two girls.

but god won't.

he loves both of them,
and you,
and me,
perfectly.

and that's pretty amazing.

slugg-ed

yesterday, when i walked out the door of my apartment, i saw a slug, spotted yellow and brown, on the concrete; dried out from the morning sun, guts smashed out the back - picked at by some marauding bird-

i wanted to pour water on it and say: i know how you feel.

a moment in expectation

this morning i wanted to make my coffee with cream and sugar

as if to give the day a heads up that i wanted it to be

rich

but i waited -

and instead of checking my email

or the Times

or my appearance in the mirror,

i went outside

where

the birds greeted me

the air pricked a chill

and a brown leaf stuck to the back of my heel as i walked along the sidewalk still wet with

the morning's dew

or yesterday's rain.

i (don't) feel like chicken tonight

dear all,

something i want to share from my sustainable agriculture class on the treatment of factory farm chickens:

http://www.chickenindustry.com/cfi/videogallery/

i am usually wary of seemingly anti-meat promotions that "tug on the heartstrings" but the sort of treatment towards chickens documented undercover in this film is inhumane and wrong. for example, the film brings up points that chickens are bred now to grow so fast (45 days) that the organs cannot keep up and the chickens die from congestive heart failure. chickens (and chickens for eggs, cattle, hogs, etc.) should not suffer in this manner; it is disrespectful to their existence and, i feel, not a biblical way to treat our fellow creatures.

however, i must say that i disagree with the end of the film promoting only vegetarian options. i am a vegetarian, but buying processed veggie foods is not really 100% great either, for your health (salt, etc) or the environment (transport, packaging, etc). i still feel at this point that killing an animal for meat is not morally wrong in and of itself, as long as it is done humanely and the animal is raised with respect (whether we should eat meat at all is another discussion).

bottom line from me: be mindful about what you eat and from where it comes. if you are in athens, ohio, we are very fortunate to have a great farmers' market that offers not only locally raised (some certified organic) veggies, but also locally raised (sometimes certified organic) meats and eggs. talk to the farmers selling the products you buy, either veggie or not, and think about this before you put the food on the plate.

if you live where locally raised products are not as readily available, there still might be alternatives. the first would be to cut down on meat consumption in general, and then, since we are talking about chicken here, many more stores are carrying "free range" and/or "organic" eggs and meats. as i learned today, the "free range" label is not regulated and could potentially mean several things, but generally, it suggests that the chickens have about 12 square feet each to roam. The USDA Organic seal is regulated. http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/Consumers/brochure.html

some food for thought.

wasting time?

i don't know what qualifies as wasting time anymore. i just came back from chatting on a porch with some good friends. the two girls, including me, were drinking water. the two guys were drinking beer. all of us were just chatting. so why did the guys classify their actions as "wasting an afternoon"? does the same go for leah and me?

earlier today, i woke up, worried a bit, got ready, went to the farmers' market and did some grocery shopping, put groceries away, helped out with earth day, heard a speaker, and then hung out with friends, oh yea, and there was probably some daydreaming in there.

which of the above constiute wasting time? why do we even have this phrase in our culture, what does it say about what we value?

friday morning threads

yesterady i stopped by the htc commons room here on campus to chat with students about the viriginia tech shootings. there were about five students there, mostly first-years.

some important questions emerged during the course of our 40 minute conversation. How has the press handled this crisis, what is the media's role in giving/not giving the public information about these sort of events? What is the value, role of mental health services in our society? What determines wheather a person will "crack" like this young man did? Will there be a backlash against Southeast Asian community in this country? How will the nature of campus security change after this event? What is our reponsibility as studnets and faculty to report indiviudals with "red flag" behavior? What does an event say about the US? Or does it say anything particular to the US? Why are these 33 students given more coverage than the hundreds of soldiers/civilians killed weekly in Iraq? What does it mean when campus police crews are given SWAT training? Are we always living in a sort of undefined war zone?

But perhaps the most saddening one for me was posed by Dr. St. John: what does the coverage of this event say about the nature of grief in our society?

Is our "moment" of silence really 60 seconds?

Less than 24 hours after the shooting, before many of the victims were buried, the president of VT lead the commencement service. Less than two hours after the news of the shooting broke, as one student mentioned, there was already a debate on the airwaves about the need for gun control. Within an hour of the shooting, CNN had found and purchased cell phone video footage from a VT grad student and posted it on CNN.com.

I believe that a large part of it is that information has become a substitute for emotional outpouring in our society. We, in our-hyperactive need for production of....something.... stick ourselves into a constant feed of informationinformationinformatoninformationinformationinformationinformationinformationinformation to satiate the desire to feel, and most importantly, to feel as a community, with one another.

There are better examples. as I was reflecting on this last night with my housemates, my wonderful friend Margo mentioned that in the Jewish tradition, there is a process to grieving, all of which involve someone being with someone else. The first year of mourning is broken down in five distinct phases:
The time between death and burial
The three days that follow, when the family is given space to grieve privately
Shiva, a weeklong shared mourning with family, friends, and community members
Shloshim (which includes the shiva), a 30-day period after the burial, in which the bereaved person eases back into life
Yahrzeit, the commemoration of the first anniversary of death, at which time the headstone is placed, and things return to normal, relatively speaking

Professor st. John was mentioning a society in crete (i have to check on this) where two days after a tragic event were dedicated for the community to wail, mourn, cry out. There are vigils, like the one ou had.

and, then there are blogs.

sure, our information age brings with it wonderful connecting tools. but it also, i think, puts us at a grave danger of alienating the head from the hearts, so to speak, and ignoring the heart.

running at night

i love running at night. even in the winter. there is something about moving under the cover of darkeness, under the stars that is both mysterious and liberating all at the same time.

there are some places on the bikepath where i have run many, many evenings; most, under the stress of some sort of writing deadline so that the grass literally holds words and phrases for me from these past escapes until i come back to visit them the next time. i guess these are an essay in and of themselves.

my favorite paths are the rougher grassy banks a bit farther from campus. i've also had lots of coversations with god in these places, asking him/her a variety of things, most of them preceeded by shouting or help! or what!!? other sorts of frusterated utterances. but whenever i go back and stop, breath, unplugg my ipod if i have it on, and listen, and yes, look at the stars, i feel that these conversations are not one way. it is good to remember to talk about thanks, to talk about joy, to talk about how something small went right that in the day.

writing all this makes me think about the poet mary oliver. somehow, i've just discovered her through a women and worship class i'm auditing at ou. anyway, she's good to slow yourself down and say thank you. i encouarge everyone to check out her why i wake early collection of poetry.

i'll leave you with one of them:



Bone
1.
Understand, I am always trying to figure outwhat the soul is,and where hidden,and what shape –
and so, last week,when I found on the beachthe ear boneof a pilot whale that may have died
hundreds of years ago, I though tmaybe I was closeto discovering something –for the ear bone
2.
is the portion that lasts longest in any of us, man or whale; shapedlike a squat spoon with a pink scoop where
once, in the lively swimmer’s head,it joined its two sistersin the house of hearing,it was only
two inches long –and thought: the soulmight be like this –so hard, so necessary –
3.
yet almost nothing.Beside methe gray seawas opening and shutting its wave-doors,
unfolding over and overits time-ridiculing roar;I looked but I couldn’t see anythingthrough its dark-knit glare;
yet don’t we all know, the golden sandi s there at the bottom,though our eyes have never seen it,nor can our hands ever catch it
4.
lest we would sift it down into fractions, and facts –certainties –and what the soul is, also
I believe I will never quite know.Though I play at the edges of knowing,truly I know our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,which is the way I walked on ,softly,through the pale-pink morning light.
~ Mary Oliver ~

(Why I Wake Early, 2004)

rainbows and coal

a little story....

uncupping her hand, slowly, as if to keep something alive and jumping (like a toad), in, she waits for the flashes of pink and green and blue and purple to appear magically in the cold black stone as they had in her father’s callused palms just moments ago. seeing nothing but gray, she closes her hand again and squinting her eyes shut, shakes up the stone, thinking maybe the colors are playing a game with her – hiding. this time, she unfolds her fingers quickly and down, as if she were releasing a butterfly, but still, sees only the shiny gray and black of the stone.

worried, she tugs at the right braid of her pigtail and looks over at her father, sitting in a chair and leaning back towards the kitchen window, a bemused look about his face.

“come here, hoot, and let me show you something.” grasping her small forearm gently with his thumb and two fingers, he draws back the blinds and guides her still-open palms to the beam of mid-morning light filtered through the trees in the backyard. tilting her hands ever-so-slightly, she jumps as the reds and blues begin skirt across the surface and looks over at her father.

“the guys call it peacock coal because it looks like the feathers in a peacock’s tail.” yes, she knows the peacock, has read about it in one of her reading assignments: the bird with the funny black comb on his head who stole all the colors from the female. she had told her teacher that she didn’t think that was fair. “some oil or something gets on there and makes it shiny like that. it’s pretty rare.”

she turns the coal around and round in her palm until little sparkles appear on her skin and in the rivulets of sweat, building into faint, jeweled creases.

“thank you, daddy,” she whispers and kisses him on the temple behind his eye before she runs off to her room to place the coal on her shelf of treasures above her bed, between to her three-year-old sugar easter egg from the organist at their church and her t-ball trophy.

several times, even on rainy days, she would pick up the piece of coal, unhinging her palms in prayer trying to find her father’s rainbow in the slant of light from the bent slat of her bedroom blind.

(Back to) Soweto

Well, it's been a long time...

But here is a glimpse of my first trip to Soweto (SOuth WEst TOwnship) in South Africa.

“We can turn left up here,” said Dimpho, pointing towards a gravelish-looking road through a field that seemed either to be under destruction or abandoned construction. “Here?” I ask, uncertainly, looking at the ruts in the mud and smoke blowing across the field and the small group of people standing by. Soweto was not really the place I wanted to have a flat tire. Or spend the night.

“Yes, we can turn right here, yes, you are ok, and stay close to the left side that way we are out of the way, you know, if the bakkies want to come through.”

Dimpho was taking me through Soweto that afternoon, after I met her for the first time that morning about thirty minutes later than I was supposed to meet her because I, in my fear and general driving paranoia, could not find the parking lot for Carlton Center (the highest building in the Central Business District) in the CBD and because I was afraid to look at the road map for more than thirty seconds at the robot and to look, really, for more than thirty seconds for anyone and anywhere. So in my fear and general paranoia, I texted her for the third time, admitting, am lost : (, arranging to meet, instead, at the Market Theater complex: a five minute drive for me at that point and a twenty minute walk for her. And after chatting nervously with the car guard (well, a hozzit?, and molo and a very American attempt to talk about the sunshine) and anxiously kicking my right foot under a table in an outdoor café drinking tonic water, she had come, smiling and breathless and sweat dripping down her brow, and hugged me as if I were her sister, or at least her second cousin on her mother’s side.

Sitting down at a picnic table under a nearly- blooming jacaranda tree, I ordered a glass of mango juice and she, a glass of orange juice. And in the same breath, she began excitedly telling me about the meeting from which she had just come where the man was going to give her a several thousand rand loan towards her current project to build a bed in breakfast in Soweto. Our juices came: thought the cool velvety sweetness, we shared with each other about school, our families, being single, surviving Jozi, and why to keep going. “You know

And with that, I drove with her to Soweto.

Taking in my interest in coal mining, our first stop was in this field with two giant cooling towers, one painted brightly with people and trains, and the other, a giant advertisement for First National Bank. Known as the Orlando Park Towers, the two stacks were cooling towers for the Eskom station, providing electricity for Johannesburg’s white, wealthy northern suburbs. “And can you guess where all the pollution went?” Dimpho starts, angrily, sarcastically, putting her hands in her pants pockets and walking away, as I lock up the car and walk to meet her field by the towers.

Turning 180 degrees, from the towers towards the rows of Soweto settlements, I become slightly nauseated with a sharp smell of rotten eggs, garbage, smoke, and some other unidentifiable noxious odor blowing towards us with the wind. A couple of younger males in trousers and blue shirts walk by the road holding plastic bags; a few more bags are caught in the disturbed dirt behind us; one breaks free and blows up above me with the next trail of wind.

As I catch up to her in the field, Dimpho asks me if I recognize any of the figures painted on the mural, pointing specifically to a female near the top of the tower. I study it for awhile, and guess Miriam Makeba, about the only South African female musician I know besides Brenda Fassie. Dimpho laughs a little and asks how I know Miriam Makeba.

I tell her I have some of her music, and respond, rather defensively, “We isn’t she like, a famous South African musician? I mean, aren’t you supposed to know her? I wanted my iTunes purchases to count for something…

“Yes, yes, you are right. So is that what you think we do here in South Africa, dance around and listen to Miriam Makeba?” She is still laughing as I try to give her a serious response, then eventually corrects me, laughing, by telling me that the woman with the blue headdress is Yvone Chaka Chaka, a native Sowetan. Embarrassingly, I have to ask her to repeat it three times, and then, even though I don’t quite know why, have a good laugh at myself with her.

She points out a few other people, Nelson Mandela, soccer great, Jomo Somo, stopping a few more times quiz me on more of the brightly colored figures (all of which I fail). In addition to famous people, portraits of the yellow train running through Soweto and into the city, music stands, soccer balls, and street scenes fill up the space of the tower.

Looking beyond the right pictorial tower, I ask her what sort of building project is in the works. She grows serious, looks me in the eye, and shakes her head, kicking at a clod of grass, stirring up the dust.

”Yes, yes, about that one. That used to be the power station, you know, and now they want to turn it into another big shopping mall.” Because, you see, for them, that is the sign of progress – for them that is development. But this is not our sort of development, this is Western Development. Does this help my people here? I mean, yes, they say it will create jobs, sure, but what kind of jobs? The kind where you stand all day long and get nothing because they can always replace you with someone else if you want more rand or are sick or something, you see what I’m saying? Is this progress?

Her voice grows more animated. “I mean, sure it is fine to go shopping for whatever, but these are not goods from Johannesburg or even all from South Africa. How is this helping our economy here? Is this really what people want? I mean, we already have the Southgate (shopping mall), and that’s fine, people were excited about that because it will bring development, bring jobs. Do you think this is what people want?

I’m silent for awhile, thinking about the plastic bags in the dirt and the lady who tries to sell me a Sowetan every day as I leave Wits. “No, but maybe that’s only because it’s not what I want. I don’t like to shop too much, but I feel like I can’t say to people they shouldn’t want that.

She nods her head. “Yes, but you see what I mean, this is what people want. They want to spend their money in malls buying clothing that looks like, excuse me, what the girls in America wear. I mean, is this what we fought for, you know? Is this what the kids in June 1976 marched in the streets for…for this? For shopping malls? Is this what all these people on the mural I just told you about wanted? Is this our freedom? Is this helping my people?

“No. It’s apartheid again, keeping us in this Western market system. Why shouldn’t we be selling our own goods to the world, selling something that when you come here, you see something South African, something different that you can’t find anywhere else. My people, we should be offering goods that are unique, something of ourselves.”

I can only nod in agreement with her, offering here and there small bits of my own frustration with my culture of consumerism. But otherwise, I am silent.

“This is why I want to have my bed and breakfast, to have a place where people, local people, can come out and sell their crafts and have decent jobs, to come out and offer something unique, not just –malls.”

For the first time in ten minutes, I notice that she breathes.

Looking back again at the site of the future development, she shakes her head and turns back to face me. “I’m sorry. Maybe you think I am too much? Am I too much? I just think…

“No, not at all, I say quietly,” digging my toe into an exposed patch of red dirt. And we both turn our backs on the power station, the towers, facing full-on the largest black township in South Africa, in the mid-day sun, smoke blowing, and walk, heads down, back towards my car.

This picture belongs in another scene, but whatever. Dimpho is standing with me here in the top of the Regina Mundi Church where a great deal of the planning/meetings (and, unfortunately, shootings) took place during the struggle.

peace

somewhere, in the middle of this week, between researching hezbollah and watching two ROTC guys walk across the street with Jimmy John's sandwiches, it hit me that everyday we are fighting a war. we are a country, fighting a war we initiated - and we have been and will be fighting for a long time.

we are fighting a war, everyday, but usually, when i read the front page of the times, i glaze over the headlines of x number dead in iraq; background. it's just there. expected. inevitable.

one of my wise professors once mentioned in a conversation a year or so ago that we, as a people, as a civilization, as a species, should have evolved, should have advanced beyond war by now.


duh, right?

there is a bumper sticker pasted on the back of a green honda civic that i see most everyday when i walk back to my apartment in the university commons: it has a picture of a broken heart colored as an American flag and reads: "my other half is in Iraq." i assume this is the car of one of the female employees.

for so long it just registered in my head as, well, bumper-sticker patriotism.

but recently, i have felt my heart tear a little bit more as i walk past, and i think of whoever is missing half of her (or his) heart in there a little bit more often.

as a community, as a nation, i think our hearts our broken over the iraq conflict.

but we still have another half. what are we going to do with it?


about a half and hour ago, i looked up peace in the back of my NIV. there are tons of entries for peace (peaceable peaceful peacemakers), peacable (peace), peace-loving, etc.

so i'll end with some bumper-sticker peacemaking:

Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.

- James 3:18

Sweet Home Alabama

I was reminded last week that to be a minority is indeed a state of being. Looking out from the backseat of a baby-blue Chrysler 300M (the rental agency all out of Civics) on route 80 West towards Selma, Alabama, I began to re-enter scenes driving along highways in Jo-Burg where I could feel my existence as a white person. I've not sorted out exactly what this means, but it was startling to me that my perception of control distinctly switched depending on the race of the driver passing me by, and I found myself disappointed when the driver was white because it turned me back into a view of shared assumptions and complacency.

I was in the South (Georgia and Alabama) all of four nights and three and one-half days to get a first-hand look at historic Civil Rights locations, people, and institutions. The invitation came at random towards the end of a long lunch conversation at Casa with Professor Michael Gray, the OU professor of African American and African studies who lead my first trip to South Africa during my sophomore year. So, of course I said, why not, and as I neatly placed my napkin on the table, looked up past the ceiling, shook my head, and grinned. (Requests for understanding sometimes have a funny way of working out)

So here are a few threads and pics from the trip:

I headed with Professor Gray along with bright, activist-minded freshman student Chelsea to Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday, March 1, arriving late in the evening after being delayed several hours because of stormy weather. Bedding down in a hotel right outside the airport, we woke early the next morning to a great sunrise- and news of a bus crash that killed several students from Ohio and tornadoes that had killed several people in the Alabama city of Enterprise. After wondering if our route would be hindered by the traffic backup from the crash, I went downstairs to the lobby to eat my oatmeal and gulp my daily dose of caffeine with Fox News coverage of Anna Nicole Smith blaring the background. Priorities?

We spent early Friday morning at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in downtown Atlanta. The center is well done and here is a particular quote I remember from one of the signs in the King Center display because it caught my attention two years ago right before I left for Cape Town:

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of selfishness. This is the judgment. Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you going to do for others?

Carrying that thought with me, we headed out and strolled down King's old neighborhood, passing the Ebenezer Baptist Church where King's father, and eventually King himself, used to preach.

Then, "because it's all about the food" as Professor Gray says, the serious life question became turnip greens or collard greens? as I determined which three veggies would accompany my cornbread in a serious soul food restaurant named Kenley's. I eventually chose turnip and collard greens along with yellow sqaush - all wonderful and washed down with the best iced-tea I've ever had. I was so glad to feel okay in this restaurant with every inch of free space covered in framed pictures of the owner smiling with various African American national and local celebrities. The owner obviously noted that we were "tourists" and volunteered to take a picture of all three of us together.


After spending the morning in Atlanta, we headed about two and one-half hours south to Birmingham. There, we eased our way around the hoard of Secret Service to walk around Kelly Ingram Park where in 1963, Civil Rights protesters (many children) where hosed, clubbed, and harassed with dogs at the order of "Bull" Conner. The Secret Service was there to keep watch for a group of Congressional Delegates in the area and a press conference held in the park with prominent Civil Rights leader John Lewis.
John Lewis is a member of the House of Representatives and was president of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that played a key role in the end of segregation.

Unfortunately, the amzing Civil Rights Institute was closed because of the delegation, so we left Birmingham after about an hour to drive on toward Montgomery.


Arriving there in early evening, just as the sun was beginning to set, we breezed downtown Montogomery which was bascially vacant, despite the fact that it was Friday evening. We did run into an intriguing group of three historians standing outside the historical Dexter Baptist Church who gave us some interesting snippets of Montogmery's Civil Rights legacy. After that, we stopped and ate at a Mexican restaurant and then met our wonderful host Denise Gabriel. Denise was formerly a faculty member in the theater department at OU and is now a faculty member at the Alabama Shakespearean Festival in Montgomery.











Saturday morning, we woke fairly early and went downtown Montgomery to a black barbershop, possibily my favority experience of the whole trip. The barber used to cut Dr. King's hair while he was in Montgomery. Again, I felt okay being there because we were with Professor Gray, but still aware that Chelsea and I were a bit out of place.

After the barbershop stay, we met Chris, one of Professor Gray's fomer students who is now a district attourney for Alabama'smiddle district, at Walt's diner.

Here is a picture of my breakfast. Grits and toast: serious stuff. As Chris noted, Montgomery is still a segregated city. One thing that I noticed right away in Walt's is the change of pictures hanging on the walls. Instead of Civil Right's leaders, they had old pictures of horses dressed up with ribbons, women in big dresses, and old stately homes. There were few African Americans in the place, though it was just down the way from the Barbershop.

After breakfast, Chris gave us a tour of the courthouse, the Greyhound bus station where the Freedom Riders were beaten, Maya Lin's Civil Right's memorial in front of the Southern Poverty Law Center (where we heard the some of the Congressional Delegation, Rev. Shuttelsworth and John Lewis sing "We Shall Overcome") and some other city landmarks. Professor Gray, Chelasea and I then went to the Rosa Park's Museum downtown.



Alabama is a very poor state in terms of public money to fund schools and state patrol. The public schools, with the exception of the few magnet schools, are terrible- real-estate taxes are very low, compared to Ohio (Chris mentioned that for his suburban $ 200,000+ home, he paid $300 a year in property taxes). Then, Chris estimated that there were probably only thirteen state patrol persons in the WHOLE state.

In the early afternoon, we headed up to Selma for quick experience Bridge Crossing festivities - mainly food, music, and stuff. I picked up my first copy of the Militant, a socialist, pro-labor publication, and ate plain rice since everything else was fried or meat. I did attempt fried eggplant, but once I peeled all the batter off, there really was no eggplant anymore. Oh, soul food....



On the way back to Montgomery, we stopped at a couple of campsites of the Selma-to-Montgomery and Viola Liuzzo's memorial. Liuzzo was a white civil rights activist murdered by the Klu Klux Klan after giving rides home to marchers in the 1965 Selma-to Montgomery march.






Rushing back to Montgomery, Chelsea and I prepared to go to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at 7:00 the Shakespeare Theater while Denise and Professor Gray had dinner. After watching a fair production of Salesman and generally feeling depressed about life and capitalism (wait, are they separate?), Chelsea and I chatted a bit with Denise and Professor Gray. Then, it was an attempt at an early bedtime to rise in time to see Obama speak in Selma Sunday morning.

We left Montgomery the next morning at 5:15, picked up Chris downtown at 5:30, and headed to Selma. Noting plenty of standing room outside Brown Chapel Church, the group went to McDonald's for breakfast. We then stood outside for about three hours to wait for a seat inside.


Let me try to set the scene for this event: Sen. Obama was speaking at Brown Chapel Church while Sen. Hillary Clinton was speaking across the street at the same time. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was also in town - so lots of energy in Selma. However, as Professor Gray constantly reminded us, none of these high profile people, with the exception of Bill Clinton and of course The Rev. Jesse, had been to Selma before this year.



Waiting was long, but also one of the highlights of the trip. This was my first real political rally, so to speak, and I loved the energy and comeraderie that surrounded it. However, my feet nearly froze because I stubbornly decided to wear my Tevas. Something about feeling the energy/historical ground through my feet....? I don't know, but after about 30 minutes, I wasn't feeling anything in my feet. But, true to Southern hospitality and what I think is the general compassion in humanity, a very nice teacher held my hands and piled her cloth bag around my feet in order to keep me warm. We had a good time joking about how slighly crazy I was: all the women around me just kind of laughed and shook their head when they noticed I had on Tevas. Then we talked about the neighborhood and volunteer projects, our families and school. It was a moment that I feel charachterized why we were all there in the first place.


Arriving at the church at 6:50am, we were fairly close to the doors when security finally decided to open them at 10:00. However, it was still a mad push to get inside as we battled people cutting in from the sides, etc. Chelsea and Chris were stubborn and lucky to find a seat inside: Professor Gray and I behaved somewhat and thus were sent to the basement to watch the program on a screen since all the seats for the public had already filled up. I was mad, to say the least.



Anyway, the program was okay and we basement convicts sang hymns softly along with the TV. Before Obama spoke, John Lewis and Bishop Kirkland had already prepped the crowd with some stirring memories and reflections of the past struggle.


Obama's speech was passionate, but precise. Compared to Lewis and others, he was not as charismatic, but as a Yale Law grad, I'm guessing that is not really his style. He opened by connecting himself to the Civil Rights movement, stating that his existence as the son of a white female from Kansas and a Kenyan would not have been possible without Selma (Civil Rights movement in general). Framing the speech in Biblical terms, he addressed the triumphs of the Moses generation, the giants like Lewis who lead the Movement forward, but stressed the important challenges of the present and future generations, the Joshua generation. On this note, I perked up as he spoke about a "poverty of ambition" in a materialistic youth culture, problems of educational achievement being perceived as "being white" by many youth, and problems of "economic discrimination", health care, family, and education. A key point in all of this was taking individual initiative: "not what the government can do for us, but what we can do for ourselves." And then, addressing strained and broken families where children are in poverty and fathers are not acting like fathers, Obama encouraged his listeners to push back the negatives that have been pushed on them in the past: "We must fight the opression in each of us."

Most people then exited after Obama spoke. Unfortunately, I also had to leave, but was able to hear "We Shall Overcome" through the doors while standing in line for the women's restroom. And - I got a close shot of Obama as he exited the building.

After that, we mingled in the hundreds of people outside the church and Professor Gray, Chelsea, and Chris all had some kind of pulled-meat sandwich. Soon after, we headed out where the three stopped at someone's porch grill for some Southern fried fish. Then we went back to the market/food area downtown area so that I could eat some more rice. This time, I think that lady had more compassion for vegetarians in Selma and served me heartier portion. :)



After browsing a few more tables and stands along the way, we hustled over across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to secure a spot from which to view the march. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is a particularly important marker as the site of March 7, 1965, known as "Bloody Sunday" where police brutalized peaceful Civil Rights demonstrators. Now, Civil Rights leaders and this year, Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton formed the front line of the march. We waited there among a hoard of press and camera crews for about an hour before the dignitaries made it across the bridge.


Above: Obama in the white shirt looking towards the American Flag with some Black Power fists raised in the background.





Right: Bill and Hillary are buried in the upper left-hand corner of the picture.


Also to the left out of this picture was a journalist from the AP taking pictures from the top of a step ladder next to the side of the bridge. I am so thankful that he didn't fall in....sheeesh.

About 5:30 ish we drove back to Montogomery, stopping again along the way to take a few more shots. Dropped off Chris downtown and then drove on to Atlanta. Arrived back in Atlanta about 8:40ish and stayed with Nancy, another one of Professor Gray's former students now an attorney with Delta Airlines.
Left Nancy's about 7:45 Monday morning, caught our flight to Columbus, and headed back to Athens.

Searching for Big Muskie

For me, the time after visit home usually feels like being stuck in the cross-eyed stage of a Magic Eye puzzle. Wanting to see something raised above the crazed, loud pattern, I draw myself closer, and then beyond closer, until nose collides with surface, breath drives back into mouth, and eyes somersault against sockets in a desperate attempt to tell my brain exactly how things have changed in this new perspective. But then I still can't see it yet, the hidden transcendence, the coherent form, the purported magic. Directions say to back away (now!) but slowly, while all the time trying to maintain the same sort of focus as being upupclose. And this is what gives me a headache: in the process of drawing away, eyes and brain are battling between two different messages to try to make sense of what I see. Sometimes, after several seconds, it works: a shape rises to provide wonder and form out of chaos. But often, it doesn't, and I have to start over again, maybe many times, in an attempt to try to uncover that something beneath the surface. So it was in this cross-eyed stage leaving my parent's home Sunday afternoon to return to Athens that I found myself taking exit 25 off of 77 south which, as a brown sign had noted a few minutes earlier, was the way to Big Muskie Bucket, the largest coal dragline ever made. Located about an hour south of my hometown, the sign for Big Muskie marks the point at which I am either drawing closer or drawing away: closer in the sense that once again rusty mailboxes, memories of lost jobs, warsh and ya’ll, highwalls, Carhart overalls, pick-up trucks broken down, beaten down, torn down – or proudly taken home with the opportunity of no-down, [payment], zoom me into a blurred UNDERSTANDING that this my home; drawing away in hopes that something from this, my own confused background pattern, will rise above to provide me with a another shape by which to define my identity.

I had learned about the Big Muskie dragline about a year earlier from some class research, though vague rumors of its existence have graced the edges of family dinner conversation and a high school classroom discussion. Since then, the idea to stand by this giant earth-mover in what I imagined to be some tired cattle field has both intrigued and repelled me. Deciding that this particular indifferent Sunday afternoon was as a good a time as any to go up-close, I followed the brown sign pointing right at the bottom of the ramp (which also reassured me that the Noble County Correctional Institute was in the same direction, just in case) and so began.

In cases, such as this once, where I don’t know exactly where or how far it is I am going, landscape is consumed in rapid, undigested chunks to make a guess at distance. A single yard ornament, one of those blue glass balls perched atop a concrete pedestal, is my first clue to where I am. Later, a trailer home to my left parked on the wood line with white and orange plastic porch furniture set off nicely with a banner of plastic American Flags and rusted cars. Yellow railroad bridge with tufts of grass visible from its top. In the bend of steep right turn, Jumper’s Corner invites me as a DEER AND TURKEY WEIGH STATION, with Hot Food! Cold Beer! Lodging! but not, of course, on Sunday. On my right again, a small white shed with a tin roof off to the side of an aging white farmhouse declared the “Mayor’s Office” in snide black spay paint: I knew that I was getting closer.

Reinersville. An almost full sized ceramic cow situated in the middle of six flag poles with the flags all held at a little below half-mast: “Quick Stop”: I stop. Wanting to ask about the flags and cow, and slightly car-sick, I step carefully around gas hoses and oil patches, my heels sinking precariously into the muddy gravel, and prepare to go in. Locked – but the sign says OPEN and the lights are on? Knock again. Peering into the window, I see strings of Bud-Light foam beer holders (with a drawstring for easier carrying) strung down a pole by the counter, plastic worms and fishing tackle, and a rack of some type of cloth covers in various patterns. The air smells strongly of wood smoke and wet dirt. In the whole rack, I notice only two done with the Confederate flag- must be popular. I leave, deciding that the SPARKY’s porta-potty outside is not worth the effort.

After passing though Reinersville, the hills became increasingly steeper and more densely covered in early succession hardwoods- maple, popular, beech- along with large groves of white pine; abandoned farmhouses, silos, and sunken barns added to the conclusion that I am driving over taken land. With each bump up to the top of a hill, I scan over the horizon for the abrasive diagonal of a dragline arm, accompanied by a sudden clear burst of bluegrass music from the D28+5 Sunday afternoon program on NPR. But I see nothing- nothing more than melancholy hills, some wooded, some bald, and many left with scars from mechanical mutilation.

After what seemed to be about thirty-five minutes of windy roads with no map and a mounting headache, the thought crosses my mind that I should really just turn around and go back: I’m not seeing anything. But then, some small signs pop up and catch my interest: Welcome to AEP’s Re-CREATION Land! Forest Loop à Camp Area ^ Miner’s Memorial ^. Sure enough, at the top of the next hill to the right, I notice a cleared space with a couple of pavilions and signs – and then a very large brown-red ark shaped structure. Must be the place, I think, and pull into the parking area by the restrooms, the only car in the parking area.

Getting out, I questioned the wisdom in ignoring my parents’ time-honored routine of church-change-lunch-nap in the interests of gaining a few more minutes for myself when my heels once again began to sink down into the gravel and my pantyhose lost its wind-breaking capacity in about 2.2 seconds. It was now after 2:00 in the afternoon, and, feeling hungry, I ripped open the TO-GO version of the Quaker breakfast classic and walked as daintily as possible towards the hunk of metal. Feeling a bit conspicuous, I hear a diesel truck approach, slow down, and then finally pass, satisfied that I was not up to any harm. Hurriedly, I swallowed the last bite of my bar, sticking the wrapper in my pocket, and continue walking.

NO CAMPING - NO CLIMBING ON ROCKS - NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS AEP. This was it? There was no dragline, no mammoth machine, nothing besides an ugly, rusting discard perched rather awkwardly on a bed of rocks, it’s hulking attachment chains spread around it like a gaudy piece of costume jewelry hung on an elderly woman’s neck, setting off the worst attributes of both. Walking around from side to side, my heel clicks echoing back to me in the interior pit of the bucket, I tried to determine the best angle from which to experience it’s size. And so with this, I stepped inside. The size of a bedroom with high ceilings, Big Muskie’s most important part had been frequented by dozens of those who felt that the best way to leave their mark on this, the former pride of the area, was to inscribe initials, years, and attempts at wit or general crudeness. Four or so signatures in small, white paint, middle-school lettering on each side caught my attention first: Karen Waller (beside Russ and J.P.P forever 2002), Tyler Winkleman, Kevin Waller –n- Heather Winkleman August 17, 2006, Kobe Waller, and Trevor Allen Winkleman. Cousins, most likely, I thought, tracing Kobe’s signature. Pinning my hair back behind my ears against the wind, I imagined a scene similar to ones in my own childhood where all day could be spent scrambling over and around the huge piece of equipment, imagining that is was something bigger and better than it was, and that I too, was better with it.

Stepping out and down the Muskie’s claws, I walked over to the Miner’s Memorial, a plaque of names commemorating those individuals who contributed to the growth of the coal industry in the area. There were several panels of names in which I could see a mirror image of myself, similar to the effect of the names inscribed on the Vietnam Wall. Starting with C, I scrolled down to find a Cook, but none were listed; general workers didn’t make the list. Remembering the child-scrawl in the bucket, I moved on to the Ws, and not surprisingly, found several Winkleman’s listed. I smiled to think how Grandfather, or Uncle, or Dad would react if they knew their children were decorating with poster paint the machine that brought their industry (and the region) one of its greatest measures of respect.

Before I left, I stood for awhile in front of the bucket, taking in the view of all the now “reclaimed” land Big Muskie had stripped in 325 ton bites; in total, more than twice the amount of earth moved for the construction of the Panama Canal. And though there were many trees, and though the air was clear, and though I could hear the rumble of heavy trucks hauling things, hauling something up and down the road behind me, what rose out to me from this was a great sphere of emptiness. And it stayed with me, this image, as I turned with muddied heels to walk back to my car and to leave.