A Valentine for America

Yesterday, I sent an email to a number of my friends. I'm reposting it here in the hopes that maybe more people will read it and join me. I'm amending my initial thought this idea should be implemented solely offline. Social media is too powerful of a connector and vehicle to be ignored in this day and age. We've got real work to do.

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Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and I’ve been wondering about what present you send the person who has everything? What do you send a person who is perpetually consumed by numbers (confirmed and false) and takes time out of his busy schedule to watch news coverage of his own inauguration and promptly loses his mind when he realizes it might not have been as grand as he imagined? What do you send a person with skin thinner than onion paper?

You send him a message.

I’ve learned over the years that people who feed off attention, combust when people stop giving it to them. I’m asking you to join me in a massive unfollowing and social media blackout of Donald Trump on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram on February 14, 2017. Let’s send him a message in proportion to his feelings of inadequacy toward the election results, by reducing his online presence, refusing to mention him in our own tweets and posts, and generally enjoying a day free of discussing him in any venue. Hell, we might even take that time to do some of the person-to-person organizing we desperately need to do in our country.

He likes to argue that there are nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records. He likes to say he’ll deport all 3 million of them. He’s repeatedly claimed there were 3 million illegal votes cast by undocumented immigrants in the election that cost him the popular vote. He’s very concerned with popularity. If I were a betting man, I’d say his net worth is closer to $3 million than the billions he claims…so let’s reduce his online following by 3 million individuals and let his name go dark on our screens at least for one day.

If we are to have any success in stopping the harm this man is causing, we must starve him of attention. If he wants march toward silencing us, we must to prove to him that at any time we can ignore him.

I stupidly started following him on Twitter during the election and have yet to unfollow him. It’s not hard, I just haven’t done it. When I look at Twitter and go on Facebook, I’m bombarded by his scowl, his arrogance, and the fruits of his destruction. We’re fanning the flames. We’re giving him what he wants. He is fueled by the sound and sight of his own name.

If you’re up for trying something like this, help me by forwarding this email to anyone you know who might be active on social media (even if that’s not you) or who has a wide reaching network. There are about 200 people on this email. If each of you forwards this to your networks we can reach a critical mass in a very short time.

When you forward this to your networks, help us all keep tabs on how many recipients we have by completing this brief, anonymous questionnaire. Lastly, if you do want to post on social media about this campaign, I’d ask you to only post: #SilentValentine. If people ask you about it, then send them the email. 

Happy (almost) Valentine’s Day.

p.s Why just social media? I have no illusions that the print and television media are willing to serve the public good unless the public good pays their bills. Their relationship with Trump is one of mutual benefit and has been since his campaign began. I would love for there to be a total media blackout of Donald Trump for an entire day, but I have no reason to believe that mass media outlets would be willing to take the financial hit it would cause them. Social media, on the other hand gains it power and presence through us and our participation as individuals.

If you think you know any print or television media professionals, who might be willing to participate in such a blackout either individually or through their outlets, please forward this to them and copy me (brett.h.harris@gmail.com).

p.p.s Starving Donald Trump of attention does not equate with a call for silence about the policies and executive actions he is putting forth. In fact, the opposite is true. We must exhaust every option of stopping his ideas from becoming law. Do not stop writing and calling your representatives and senators. Do not stop highlighting the facts he and his followers fail to acknowledge. This is simply a call to exploit his need for public consumption of his presence.

Family Values: An Open Letter to My Son

Son,

I need to tell you something and you’re probably not going to like what I have to say when I finally get it all out. The lucky thing for me is you’re too young to comprehend what happened this week, so even if I tried to do this face to face, we’d end up talking about dinosaurs or trains or Dinosaur Train. To be honest, any of those conversations would be better than some others I have had this week.

Seven days ago, your mother and I set out to plan for our future with you and any potential siblings of yours in mind. As we drove back home from Virginia, we borrowed your dry erase board and laid out our family’s values. We arrived at five: Integrity. People. Generosity. Optimism. Curiosity. By the time you’re old enough to read this, you’ll probably roll your eyes and scoff at the importance we place on knowing our values and living our values every day. You’ll undoubtedly have witnessed us fail at upholding these values – I know you did this afternoon after you got in trouble for kicking your grandfather. Our failures aside, these are our family’s values and we have committed to use them as guides for ourselves, for you, and for the way we encounter others around us.

There must have been a reason we had this conversation when we did, for the day after we talked about values a bunch of adults around us came to the conclusion that the next person to lead our country would be a man who we’ve found to embody the antithesis of our family’s values. I once heard someone remark that if you find yourself praying for strength or mercy or peace you just might be confronted with situations which require you to be strong, merciful, or peaceful. This seems to be one of those times. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

It has not been easy to find words to discuss what has transpired in our country this week. There has been no lack of speculation about why he won and how she lost and what will happen next. There have been questions posed about our electoral system and how someone can earn more votes than someone else and still lose the decision and how can so many people see the world so drastically different from one another.

There is good news. There’s a lot of bad news, but there is some good news. The good news for you is you were born into a family of privilege who’ve succeeded financially, gotten great educations, acquired and sold property, paid down debts, and rarely if ever struggled to find work. The good news for you is you are privileged like we are and are therefore have a greater potential of being insulated from the ramifications of this man’s proposed policies.

Here’s the bad news:

What’s true for you and me and your mother isn’t true for everyone. The system and society in which we live is set up to advantage us from our birth. This is unacceptable. We have friends for whom such privilege does not exist. The playing field isn’t level and it won’t be until babies who look different from one another come into the world with the same chance to succeed. You started out further up the hill simply because of who we are and what we look like. 

Because we value people in our family, we cannot sit idly by and allow this system to prevail any longer. We will work to level the playing field.

This is where the news will get harder for you in the short run.

Because we value integrity and people and generosity, we are committed to leveling the playing field for everyone even if it comes at your expense. Will we strip you of opportunity or fail to provide you what you need to succeed? Never. Will we work to rebuild the world in ways that make it so that your darker skinned friends get the same benefit of the doubt when they are listening to loud music in a parking lot or playing in a park as you do? We must. Will we work to see to it that no matter whom someone loves, they have the opportunity to love them and care for them in all the ways we are able to love and care one another? We must. Will we do whatever it takes to protect our friends whom the powers that be deem unworthy of support or disposable or dangerous because of their heritage or beliefs? We must.

Because we value curiosity, we cannot assume our thoughts and opinions are always right. Just as there are countless people in our midst who are fearful for the future, there are countless people who have spent the week rejoicing. We do not understand where they are coming from, but if we are true to our values, then we must be curious and attempt to understand the source of their joy and the pain which has been relieved. This will result in a lot of hard conversations, hours of listening, and likely a great deal of consternation. To tell you the truth, this will be hard for us and it will be hard on you because we won't always have answers to give you.

Your mother and I can’t live into the values we have agreed upon unless we do these things. If we do these things, it means we will be working to build a world that is less advantageous for you. We can’t be people of integrity if we don’t these things. We can't genuinely value people. We can't be generous or curious if we don't try. You’ll have to learn to live with this fact. It’s my wish that you’ll understand.

We want you to have every opportunity that is available to you. We’ll teach you the value of hard work, discipline, and determination. We’ll teach you these things because in the world we’ve committed to rebuilding, you’ll need them more than we have.

There is, however, more good news for you and for all of us. We value optimism. We are hopeful for a brighter future. We are hopeful that through making the playing field level for everyone, it will actually make everyone's life better even if there's pain in the short term for you. We believe that the arc of the universe bends toward justice, and we’re aware that we might still be ascending that arc and, therefore, are unable to see the final destination.

You also need to understand the source of our hope. Our hope is not bound up in one person. It is not grounded in one another. Our hope is in the truth of the love Jesus teaches. By the time you’ll understand this you’ll probably also tire of having heard me talk about Will Campbell. Deal with it. Brother Will tells us that we often confuse what we wish for with what we hope in. We wish for a better world. We wish for equity. We wish for peace and an end to pain. Our hope, however, is in the Lord.

In these days where understanding is hard to find, we must cling to this sense of hope. We must not put our hope in the wrong place. We must keep striving for things we wish to happen for as another wise man once said, “You can hitch your wagon to the stars, but you can't haul corn or hay in it if its wheels aren't on the ground.” 

We must keep ourselves grounded in the reality facing our friends and neighbors. We must keep ourselves in tune with the pain and anguish and genuine fear they have endured. We must find ways to heal the pain, quench the anguish, and eliminate the fear. We must search for common ground so that the joy that covers only some one day covers us all. If our society has any chance to accomplish these tasks, we much do our part. We must start with our family and move to our neighborhood and then to our schools and on to our town, our county, our state, our nation.

We must start and we must not lose sight of our hope.

I love you,

Daddy

An Arc is not a Straight Line

You’ve no doubt heard the notion that the arc of history bends toward justice, whether it be from Martin Luther King, Jr. who proclaimed the ideal throughout his public ministry or Theodore Parker, the abolitionist who first coined the idea in 19^th Century. The idea here is that no matter where we find ourselves and regardless of the situation in which are placed, our trajectory is one that leads us toward ultimate reconciliation and understanding of one another. The beauty in the phrasing is not in its sweeping distillation of our human story, but in the geometry and physics of its imagery: an arc.

An arc is not a straight line. It has two endpoints and, therefore, can be traced from beginning to end. While its beginning and end may lie at the same longitude or latitude, to follow the arc’s course requires moving into other elevations with different coordinates. No amount of methodical plodding in one direction will lead to the end. To trace an arc requires a compass. To figure its length requires calculation and some knowledge of the mathematical constant π. A simple mark of the ruler cannot offer the length or shape of the arc.

An arc may be a portion of a circle, but it must not be confused with the circle itself. In a circle there is no beginning and end. To draw a circle is to start at one point and return home. The purpose of a circle is to be complete, to make beginning and end indistinguishable from one another, to fully enclose. An arc, however, remains open and ensures that beginning and end remain distinct from one another. Following an arc’s path will not take one back to the starting point. It will end up in an entirely different location.

It is also not a winding path. Winding paths, like the courses of rivers, flow wherever the path is easiest. Some paths require switchbacks to make their route palatable while others take travelers far off course in order to avoid obstacles. An arc does not go anywhere it pleases. It goes where the constants that define it lead, regardless of any impediments or inconveniences.

It is fascinating to me, then, that Parker and King use the imagery of the arc. There seems to be a conscious choice in this imagery – one that rings true decades after their introducing the idea to us. If we believe that this point in time that we find ourselves in one within the trajectory of an arc bent toward justice, then there are several things that we can affirm:

1) There must be a constant which guides our path. Our grasp of that constant helps us determine the trajectory of our path and our propensity to ignore that constant fools us into thinking we’re in travelling upon something that is not an arc – a straight line, perhaps.

2) Where we started will not be where we end up. We cannot look backwards to find out where me might end up. Tracing where we’ve been will only leads to where we’ve been before. It will not take us toward our new destination. We can, however, look back to see where we’ve been and use that information to guide us on our way, but in order to do so, again, we must have some understanding of the constant in our midst.

3) We are, and will continue to be, unable to avoid the obstacles in our path. The constant that guides our trajectory will takes us directly through whatever is in front of us no matter our efforts to stray. We may want believe we’re on a winding path that will help us avoid the conflicts in our way, but if we’re truly on an arc we must face them directly.

At any point on the arc, if we are to stop and look straight ahead, we will not see the end. We may see a great deal as we look out, but what we gaze upon now is not the end. If we turn around and look straight behind us, we also cannot see the beginning. If we do not remember where we were, when we look back we can see only the things that are tangential to our path.

From this vantage point on the arc, the view may be bleak. We can feel separated from where we’ve been and the journey we made thus far. It can feel as though we’ve made no progress. The view may also be uncertain. We may be able to hear around the bend, but we may not be able to make out the sounds. From where we are the sounds may seem terrifying only later to learn that those sounds were the sounds of band welcoming us with open arms. They may also be a siren’s song calling us away from our destination.

We are where we are supposed to be. The obstacles in our midst must be dealt with in order to move forward. They may make us feel uncomfortable. They may make us feel disoriented, longing for a previous life. They may seem like ones we’ve already faced and should have dealt with by now, but they are not. They are new and they are the result of our having come further down the arc. Knowledge and experience can make us feel uncomfortable. They can force us to reconsider what we thought we understood to be true. They can also prepare us for the obstacles that lie ahead in the arc of our lives.

Are we where we want to be? No. Do we see the obstacles in front us that block our path toward this destination? Yes. They are standing right in front of us. We may long to go back down the path to a time which we now know and understand in hindsight because it feels safe, but going backward will not help us reach our destination. Neither does going full circle. Both will take us far away from justice, the ultimate end of this arc of our story.

Mayonnaise, Steeples, and Umbrellas

The experiences that make up our lives make us who we are. Children who are abused are more likely to grow up to be abusers themselves. Those who are raised in a faith tradition tend to adhere to that tradition throughout their lives or, at least, gravitate back toward it later in life if they left it in early adulthood. Republicans beget Republicans. Democrats beget Democrats. Cubs fans spawn Cubs fans who spawn Cubs fans - no streaks or curses can stop it. Some families swear by Hellman’s mayonnaise while others will shun you if you use any spread other than Duke’s. It’s who we are. I’m not surprised when my son parrots the words I use - good and bad alike. The environments in which we are raised are, in many ways, ones we seek to emulate as we grow up, either consciously or subconsciously.
    Why, then, are we surprised when our elected leaders - many of whom were reared in (and often now are lay leaders in) religious institutions that perpetuate sexism, bigotry, division, and (perhaps worst) ambivalence toward social issues - draft and pass legislation that upholds the tenets of the institutions that formed their faith?
    If you’re looking for answers to why our elected leaders find value in certain bills and not in others or why issues of substance often seem secondary to issues of convenience, you need to look no further than, to borrow a phrase from Will Campbell, the steeples on many street corners in towns big and small across our country. If you want to blame someone for HB2 in North Carolina or HB1523 in Mississippi, blame the institutions that that reared the people we’ve elected to serve us in our capitols. Blame the institutions that nominate and elect these same people to serve as their deacons, elders, and committee chairs. You could blame the churches that reared many in the Georgia Legislature too, but Governor Nathan Deal gave witness to another fact about American Christianity: money matters more than anything. Even personal conviction.
    I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are men and women of the cloth. For the most part they are wonderful people. Many are better, more caring, more devout people than I can claim to be myself. They may take umbrage with my shoveling blame at their institutions’ doorsteps. That’s fine. We’re entitled to our opinions and I’ve been wrong before. I’ll be the first to admit it. I am not blaming them individually for HB2, HB1523, or any other hateful pieces of legislation. I blame the Church for failing to live out its calling and, therefore, for creating environments that nurture the mindsets necessary to believe that such legislation is somehow consistent with the teachings of Jesus.
    A lot of faith leaders have come out to condemn the latest pieces of “religious freedom” legislation. This is good news. My question, however, is: Where were these voices when the people who drafted these bills were learning about the teachings of Jesus, the prophets, the formation of the early church? What were we preaching about as these people grew up in our congregations? How were we responding (or not) to their questions in Sunday school classes or bible studies? As someone who has taught innumerable Sunday school classes preached dozens of sermons in small churches, I have to say it wears on my conscience that I probably allowed some people in these churches to get by without asking hard questions or to feel validated in their more naive interpretations of scripture because I was afraid to question them.
    So then, the question for me turns to why. Why was I afraid? Why are we afraid to stand up when we first hear the rumblings of insensitivity or intolerance in those who claim the good news of Jesus Christ? Why do we remain silent when they keep coming up? I was sitting in a meeting the other day when someone reminded us that the way we ask questions matters because people’s first inclination is to be nice, not to be honest. We would rather not hurt someone feelings than tell them the truth. All I could say in response was a muffled, “Jesus,” because it was so accurate and timely.
    I think we’re also afraid for the same reasons Governor Deal was afraid: our wallets. It goes without saying, but institutions require management. Movements do not. Some refer to the beginnings of the Church as the Jesus Movement, but as the Church grew and gained prestige and power it moved from a movement into an institution. This large institution has split and split and split over two millennia becoming many large and small institutions that have all required management. Management begets maintenance. When you have to manage and maintain, there is inherently less energy or capacity to move. Inertia sets in and transforms a movement into an institution.
    When niceness mixes with maintaining a system or structure, the result is neutrality. To put it another way, that’s how we develop the status quo. We do only what we have to do to keep things where they are. Nothing more, nothing less. When we become neutral, we fool ourselves into believing we can be for something without be against anything. Myles Horton reminds us, ”You have to take sides and know why you're taking sides. There can be no such thing as neutrality.  It's a code word for the existing system,” (We Make the Road by Walking). If there’s one thing Jesus was against, it was the existing system.
    The American Church is really good at being neutral. Sure, some Protestant denominations have taken strides in recent years to get off the fence on issues regarding sexual identity and orientation, but these strides have come after years of silent neutrality not unlike that which led Dr. King to write a letter from a jail cell to white moderate ministers and their approach to the civil rights movement. The Church has tried too long to be for the causes of those seeking to be seen and heard while not being against those who seek to silence and ignore the same people. Why this is, I don’t know. The optimist in me tries to convince me that the hope is for a unified church while the cynic in me reminds me the people who pay the bills and the salaries often have the deepest pockets. Somewhere I remember someone say that no one can serve two masters. I wish I could remember who it was.
    The thing, is the cynic keeps winning. A former teacher of mine once told me that the greatest failure of the Church is its inability to educate its members in age appropriate ways. I thought he was right for a long time. I’ve recently come to believe that its greatest failure is trying to be all things to all people at all times. In trying to accommodate everyone under the guise of an open door policy, the Church has tried to be for a lot of issues without being against much at all.
     Look at the slogs its taken for some Protestant denominations to fully accept and embrace the LGBT community, and to be honest none of them really have. Once proud of their connectional nature, many have opted for local decision making instead so that churches don’t feel forced to do something that would make them feel uncomfortable or, God forbid, drive certain deep pockets away to another church where comfort can be found. We want to be a big umbrella where all voices are welcome, they say. Well, that’s not really consistent with the gospel either and if you’re under an umbrella, chances are you’re against getting wet, so you’ve already made a choice. It just so happens to be a choice that remains harmful and inconsistent with the teaching of Jesus.
    Being for and not against is a logical impossibility that laid the groundwork for the logical fallacies that make up the latest round of hateful legislation in our country. Our legislators want to hide behind the veil of sincerely held religious beliefs, so if you want to lay blame, lay it at the foot of the steeples where the sincerely held religious beliefs were developed. That’s where those beliefs are nurtured. That’s where they’ve verbally or silently been upheld. Until they aren’t nurtured anymore, until the Church starts being for the love and grace it waxes so eloquently about, we can all expect more of the same from the people whom we elected and the Church will continue to be a place for gathering instead of transformation.

what's for dinner?

first off, happy thanksgiving to everyone. at least everyone reading this who's of the american persuasion. should you be from suriname or bosnia-herzegovina, i hope you've enjoyed celebrating your countries on this, your day of independence. and to those from moquegua, peru, i bid a happy anniversary to your city.

i learned something else this week that has nothing to do with holidays. i live in one of 803 food deserts in the united states. i can't think of a better fact to learn during the week of thanksgiving when all that's on many of our minds is, well, food.

so what exactly is a food desert, you ask?

a food desert, according to lois morton and troy blanchard, is a county or parish (don't want to leave the louisianans out) in which more than 50% of the residents live 10 or more miles from a full-service grocery store. you may not have believed me when i said that we live god knows where, but here is scientific proof. the closest full-service grocery store to me is 21.9 miles away.

within those 21.9 miles are the following "food" outlets:

- bennie's food mart and chinese/fast food take out
it sometimes results in barbecue chicken lo mein, but the egg rolls are out of this world.

- the webb diner
ms. vera cooks up delicious breakfasts and lunches six days a week.

- the bayou bend country club
morgan freeman's a member, the fried chicken's good, but alas i am not a member.

- three gas stations with plate lunch options
probably delicious, but i've seen too much horrible gas station cuisine to dive in.

- the lunchbox
think all your favorite fried foods, served with your favorite sides, and sweet tea.

- dollar general
good for dried goods, notebook paper, and the occasional gag gift, but not a lot else.

there you have it. the culinary options of west tallahatchie and east coahoma counties outside my kitchen.

sure i can get great egg rolls, grits, fried chicken, and catfish whenever i want - provided that whenever i want takes place between 7am and 6pm - but there are only so many combinations you can make from those ingredients before you end up 37 pounds the wider and in much need of those things called vitamins that often show up in vegetables. plus, who wants to live like man v. food everyday?

learning about the sheer absence of full-service grocery store is one thing when you're just living it. sure, it's been a hassle to make the 40+ mile round trip to go to the store, but it's what everyone around us does. you just learn to plan ahead...or at least you try.

but seeing it on a map is entirely different.

the dark areas are the food deserts. whenever i look at a map i always try to find me. sometimes i'm pleasantly surprised like when i looked at the electoral map of 2008 and saw that my county in north carolina went for barack obama and helped carry the state. other times, a stark realization hits like when i saw this map. but then i said to myself, "hey, at least i don't live in south dakota."

i find it interesting that the predominance of these deserts occur in the breadbox of our wonderful country, those midwestern states known for their fields of grain, corn, and other staple crops. that seems to be the definition of irony. it's like the quip that people who build big houses don't live in them. well, people who grow great amounts of country's food supply can't get an apple with out burning up a couple gallons of gas either.

we've all heard about this push for local food. it's healthier. it's better for the local economy. yada yada yada. it seems like it's going to be necessary for folks in rural america. some folks are already on the boat (or should i say farm). there are csa's and co-ops popping up all over the place. hell, my uncle in brooklyn even has a garden in the alley behind his apartment. if he can grow tomatoes, potatoes, and other staples in an alley in a city 12 million strong, i think we can figure out how to do it reliably across rural america.

many already have, but i also know that there are a great many who live in rural areas, especially the mississippi delta and appalachia, who haven't and need to do because while they may be overweight and on the short track to diabetes and other health problems, they're also malnourished.

i can't forget the kids i saw on tv last summer who, when asked to name certain vegetables, might as well have been blurting out their favorite justin bieber songs. they had no clue. they didn't even know that french fries came from potatoes. we've come a long way to a place where we think food comes from a store and not from the ground or from an animal that actually lived somewhere before we ate it in nugget form.

there are many reasons for this shift, but i'm firmly on the local food bandwagon now. with the local groceries that used to dot small communities around our country being driven out of business by larger conglomerate stores and more people moving to urban areas, those who remain in rural america will continue to have the quality of their food dictated by elements outside their control.

i'm not exactly sure where this is headed for me personally, but i'll keep you posted on life on the bandwagon as long as i'm on it. and i'll stay on it if for no other reason than i'd rather pick a small bunch of tomatoes out of my backyard than drive forty miles to buy them from walmart.

photos from here, here, and here.

animal hijinx

it's been about two weeks since i heard what was indeed the most disconcerting noise i've ever heard come from the mouth of a living creature. i was sitting at my kitchen table a few days before halloween working when, from what sounded like it was just outside the window of the pantry, there came a scream that sounded like a cat running over an electric fence line while a bear clubbed it with a salmon it had just caught out of the river; the animal was simultaneously fearful and befuddled.

when i got up to see what i expected to be carnage in my backyard, there was nothing. no trace of anything. no animal limping away in pain. no other animal enjoying its place in the food chain. no phone calls for me to make to my neighbors about how their precious little mittens or tess or fill in your favorite southern author's name here was in my yard motionless of no fault of my own, but rather something resembling manbearpig.

now i know what you're thinking. you're thinking, "dude/broseph/sir/beardy, no animal makes that noise you described so eloquently and then vanishes without a trace in a manner of seconds. you, dude/broseph/sir/beardy are a liar."

well sir or madam, you haven't seen many horror movies, have you? this was textbook thriller cinema minus the fact that i didn't run into the attic or take an impromptu shower in the middle of the day or go looking for the 1/2 bear, 1/2 man, 1/2 pig that certainly just ate a cat in my backyard. yes, aside from my brilliance, this was halloween 13 quality horror: noise. fear. silence. return to normalcy. continued fear. continued silence. extended fear.

(okay maybe there was a little less fear on my end. maybe, but i'd like sasha mitchell of kickboxer 4 fame to play me in the movie version given his acting chops and ability to bring a series to a screeching halt.)

this, however, was not the last strange encounter with rural fauna that i've had since then. a couple of days later, biz and i took an early morning walk through town. there are about three ways to walk through town, and luckily enough for us we chose the path littered with dogs, many of whom were homeless or at least appeared so and in dire need of attention.

at one point, i counted 14 dogs on all sides of us, some ferocious 7 pound dogs with more bark than bite, some dumb chocolate labs who don't understand anything but their need to retrieve something even if they already have it, and one overfed basset hound bringing up the rear.

if you've ever been surrounded by 14 dogs, it's not exactly easy to move quickly. if you've ever been surrounded by 14 dogs with an combined iq of 14, it's nearly impossible to move. and if you live out in the boonies like us, then you know that at least half of them are strays. they just wander wherever, so they might as well follow you. oh, and they probably have a cocktail of diseases streaming through their veins. the joy of rural life.

as we walked i could only think of two things: 1) how i wished i'd had a stick of some sort to shew them away and 2) will ferrell and john c. reilly's psa in talladega nights about the packs of wild dogs that were taking over america's cities and how it had only taken them four years, but they had started to take over rural america as well.

not to be outdone by stray dogs and disappearing, cat-eating predators, though are the chickens. that's right i said it. chickens. our neighbors have chickens. they had four until sometime friday when that lovely pudgy basset hound and his west highland terrier friends broke into their coop and snatched two of them away, leaving me to transfer the other two to another coop while the neighbors were out of town.*

let's be clear about one thing. chickens are wily. in the midst of the transfer one decided she didn't really want to move so she just flew out into the yard and ran around, wings tucked in, head bobbing away, making me look almost as graceful as the llama at right as i chased her into and out of the bramble, the coop, and the yard.

i kept running over the joke my dad used to play on me about catching birds in my head as i panted across my neighbor's yard. he said all you have to do is get really close and pour a little salt on their tail. while that's an absurd task, after about ten minutes of chasing that wonderful, beautiful member of creation in and around the yard, i began to wonder if wouldn't be such a bad idea. about that time it ran into the hole and got trapped, so i guess we'll never know.sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

animals of all kinds are on the brink of absolute freedom out here, and sometimes when they walk that line between freedom and the domestic life, they add a little flavor to life even if it's not always the one i'm craving.
__________

*after much consideration and moderately scientific research, i have a working hypothesis that the pudgy basset hound and the terriers fashioned themselves into a sort of three headed trojan horse that struck both fear and wonder into the cat outside my pantry just before halloween causing the scream heard 'round my kitchen. i also think such a plan would work well the theatrical stylings of sasha mitchell, allowing him to be both kickboxing "stud" and lovable idiot cody all while searching for this mythical beast.

photos from here, here and here.

what do you think?

got your own thoughts on rural life?

certain aspects of it you'd like me to explore?

people you'd like me to interview?

i want to write what you'll want to read, so leave me a comment, shoot me an email, or drop me a line on facebook.

but please, no pokes. they hurt and they are confusing. unless you're poking the queen. then they are hilarious. and while i may be a jack of anywhere from a few to some trades and master of a handful, i am also not a figurtive head of state and thus am ineligible for hilarity-induced poking.

proceed with your thoughts and enjoy the stories and somewhat aimless wanderings of life in god knows where.

america's pastime

if you've spent any time watching sports in the last fifteen years, then you know one thing is certain. baseball is no longer america's pastime. i guess people got tired of watching wwe stars jack homers instead of actual baseball players. sure it's been around longer than basketball and football, and there are few things more american than going to the ballpark on a summer afternoon, enjoying a hot dog and some peanuts, but now football is king.

despite the love/hate relationship between the press and brett favre and the unending saga that is the impropriety of heisman trophy winners/candidates, football reigns supreme across america - from the plains of kansas where they still play 8-on-8 to the deep south where football fans are just soccer hooligans with a different accent and from texas's friday night lights to the little schools all over the map who just want to play the game. sure maryland's got it's crabcakes and lacrosse (sorry carson elrod) and southern california digs the beach volleyball (see what i did there?), but they can't hold a candle to the overwhelming hold football has on america... especially small town america.

how can you not love a sport where something like this takes place:



contrary to the overwhelming similarity of most towns in america these days, every town doesn't have a walmart or a target or even an institution of higher learning. we don't all live in city x, but what every town in america (and if not town, county or parish) does have is a high school. and that high school serves as the locus point for much of life in rural communities. as i've said before most rural communities are made of folks whose families have been there literally since they first walked up a decided to stake their claim there. there's a deep investment in the community and all it offers.

furthermore, the alliance for excellent education says that rural high school graduates are half as likely to complete a post-secondary degree than others. so while college grads will hoot and holler for their team on saturdays, those who ended their schooling a little earlier turn their attention to fall friday nights.

on those friday nights across america, stadiums are filled with parents supporting their kids, younger children dreaming of one day being the one to catch the pass that wins the big game, and a lot of teenagers texting one another while they pretend to watch the game they paid 5 bucks to see. the wins and losses are tallied and often used as a barometer for the health and well-being of the community. apparently to some, the success of a group of 15-18 year olds playing a game can be a determining factor in how one community perceives itself. that's almost as crazy as thinking that a group of 435 adults of various persuasions can have lucid discussions and make policy decisions.

and from saturday to thursday the highlights are recounted not just from the last game, but from games years ago when something similar happened (only better and in spite of more difficult circumstances).

there are also lots of uncle rico's out there claiming that they'd have won state if their coach had just played them, and blaming him that they're now selling tupperware and breast enhancements instead of playing in the nfl.

despite the exaggerated expectations put on high school football and the overblown inferences of success or failure, high school football really is a beautiful thing when seen in person. a few weeks ago we went to a local school's homecoming game. unbelievable.

there was a sea of people in the stands and around the field. the stands were packed with parents, alumni, children, students, everybody. it's safe to assume that the entire county was in attendance for at least part of the game. there was an alumni dance team, an alumni band, and enough stories going around about how "back in my day..." to fill a book. the lights on the field were just powerful enough so the kids could play at night, but dim enough to give the view that vhs feel, nostalgic and a little out of focus. it was truly a community event like nothing i've seen before.

i also heard that another school in the area, if their team won the state title, school would be canceled for a couple of days. really? i thought those privileges were left for the men of troy, free shoes u, and the u itself. i guess not.

elizabeth hates football, but there's something about high school football - knowing the kids who play on the team, in the band, or on the cheerleading and dance teams, having relationships with them, and wanting them to succeed - that gets her. it's that sense of community, that sense that we know each other and see each other around that appeals to her, i think, and i have to agree.

do i wish this was the case? do i wish sports were the common rallying point for small communities? despite my love of sports, no. and there are some who agree with this notion and are doing something to shift the rallying point to something a little more constructive. i sincerely hope they can.

for now, all i know is that you can walk into just about any small, rural town in america, ask about the high school football team(s), have a conversation that goes on for hours, and perhaps even leave with a few new friends. maybe one day the conversation will revolve around something else, but until then rural communities will continue to talk about sweeps, options, and the occasional flea flicker executed by a group of teenagers. it's true wherever you go.

photos and video from here, here, and here.

two steps forward, one step back

let's get one thing straight. no one has ever said to
me, "hey, you know who always seem to be on the cutting edge of technology? you."

i was easily one of the last five people i know to get a cell phone (and that includes a slew of folks at least a decade younger than me), we didn't have internet access at my parents' house until i was in high school, and while my friends milked their parents for the newest video game craze every christmas during our childhood, mine could not be milked, so i saved some of my spending money from an eighth grade trip and some allowance and bought my own nintendo 64 only to promptly sell it to a friend's younger brother about a year later.

i even prefer to write with a pen and paper, though i fully realize that were i to write this blog with pen and paper it would a) not be a blog, b) take an immense amount of postage and stationery to deliver to you, the readers, and c) give you one less thing to read during your "breaks" from work. for all my slowness (you may read: unwillingness) to incorporate technology into my life, it is clear that certain changes are inevitable, even beneficial to life in the twenty-first century.

it is also clear that the more rural parts of our world have yet to incorporate the totality of twenty-first century technology. in some cases this happens willingly and in others it stems from being ignored by those of the urban persuasion.

where it happens willingly, it is surprisingly refreshing.

there's a man here in town who swears by his blackberry, a worn out and warped pocket notebook that holds all his contacts, upcoming meetings, and notes in a space smaller, cheaper, and a lot less radioactive than its electronic namesake.

the best source of local information remains the local paper, still available only in print form and only delivered weekly. that's right, one paper per week. on the brightside it's better than the deal my parents have in the mountains of north carolina. their paper prints monday, wednesday, and friday, but gets delivered tuesday, thursday, and friday. logic abounds.

people even use phonebooks, and not as paperweights or props for feats of strength. they actually use them to find numbers, because a lot of people in rural america still have something called a "land line."

whatever that is.

maybe the most endearing, though somewhat financially confusing, case of the willing indifference to technological advances is the use of the postal service for in-town correspondence. while no one this side of scrooge can complain about getting something in the mail that is not a bill, credit card application, or catalogue, it is mildly troubling to think someone went to the trouble to stamp a number of envelopes, hand them to the postmistress, and have her walk twelve feet to put them in everyone's post office box. at nearly 3 2/3 cents per foot, it doesn't seem like a great deal, but somehow it actually is.

however, where the failure to embrace technology happens out of omission, it's depressing at best.

the most recent episode of radio lab, reminded me that for the last two years, we've been living in unprecedented territory: more than half of all people in the world live in cities and not in rural communities. we now live in a decidedly urban world. instead of living in a world dominated by the minority who live in cities, we now live in a world dominated by a majority who call the "metro-area" home. while this is not news to anyone, it does pose some interesting questions. especially ones about how we get our news.

jon stewart said it well at the rally to restore sanity and/or fear when he remarked that the news media are based in cities across the nation and that they reflect back to americans a world that is not always true to every viewer's life experience. it's almost as if we live in one world all day and, if it turns out that we don't actually live at cnn, fox, or msnbc, we see a different one on the television when we come home.

in smaller cities and larger towns this might not necessarily be the case since the chances of having a reputable local news channel is greater, but out in the middle of nowhere where most folks rely on satellite tv which provides them with roughly 8 bravos, 9 discovery channels, 10 qvcs, and perhaps even a channel looping images of a partridge in a pear tree, local programming is virtually non-existent or inaccessible. (when it is accessible it's reminiscent of that attempt your high school made at doing the news: grainy, slightly entertaining, and less than informative.) so, the world that comes through the wire is in fact not reflective of the life lived by those of us in middle-of-nowhere america.

furthermore, great efforts like the one laptop per child program, led by nicholas negroponte, try to connect every child in the world living in a rural place with a laptop computer so that they can get up to speed with their more privileged, urban peers. every child, that is, except poor, undereducated ones in rural america. apparently, they aren't in need of catching up to those with more opportunities, especially those in their own country.

so while, it's refreshing to know that out here some folks still carry a pen and a notebook around, and prefer a face-to-face meeting to an email chain on a smartphone, it's only refreshing when we have the choice to remain several steps behind everyone else. there's little refreshing about being left several steps behind or kept out of the discussion entirely.

we all know what happens when we get left behind. we start listening for the loudest familiar noise, and when we hear it, we start following. and not because it's telling us the truth, but simply because its noise and it could lead us somewhere, despite the fact that while "somewhere" might be the nearest town, it might also be a campsite full of crazies smoking peyote and getting ready to drink some kool-aid under the spell of the snuggie.



photos from here, boone, and here.

if i do what, i'll go where?

one day in art class as a seventh or eighth grader, i was busy not being good a painting a landscape when a girl of the southern baptist persuasion stopped by the table i was sharing with my friend of the hindu persuasion to share the good news with us. really she just wanted to share the good news with him - she knew i was probably okay, despite my presbyterian upbringing, since our parents were friends.

calmly and coolly, she shared that if he refused to accept jesus christ as his personal lord and savior, he would go straight to hell. without another word, she left to grab some more paint or another brush. she was, in her mind, a true messenger of the truth of christianity.

she was, in my mind, an idiot.

that day i started wondering why she, and others like her, were so sure about what happens after we die. it doesn't take long to figure it out. all you have to do is drive by rural churches like the one she attended and read their marquees. the "jokes" they put up there, tell a good portion of the story and explain why things seem so black and white in rural american religion even though life in rural america is an ever changing shade of gray.

i had the recent joy of driving through the appalachian mountains in southwestern virginia and northwestern north carolina on a trip to visit my parents and my grandfather. the town where my parents live is about 90 minutes in any direction from an interstate, so much of the drive was on two-lane highways that followed the curves of the mountains and spilled into the small towns that dot the region. a rough guess on my part is that there are as many churches in these towns as there are families who inhabit them, and thus a lot of drive time reading material.

(as a volunteer firefighter, i disagree stoney fork.)

"forbidden fruit makes lots of jams," said the first sign i saw. just down the road another church gave these instructions/warnings: "pray, believe, receive. pray, doubt, do without." not to be outdone, sometime later i drove past another wondering "is your prayer life well done or rare?"

seeing these reminded me of three others i had seen before moving from north carolina. the church my high school girlfriend attended at one point asked passers the question over on the left.

damn. tell me how you really feel next time. that shed a lot of light on the time she called me on a sunday and asked me what i was up to, and when i told her i'd just finished mowing the yard, she got silent in disbelief that i had worked on a sunday.

the next one, kindled hatred towards wizardry, saying "there's only one potter and his name isn't harry." i guess they're right, but harry seems like a decent name for god. i can trust a guy named harry, and with a name like that, he's probably good with his hands.

(this must be the remix no one ever heard.)

the all time best, however, came when i drove down to see my college roommate one break. just off the exit to his house, there was a church whose sign read, and i kid you not, "turn or burn." can't knock 'em for b.s. that's just straight to the point.

and that's when it hit me. these signs are an attempt to boil down the completely unexplainable questions of life into something we can use. for so long, i'd thought they were legitimate attempts to welcome people or encourage others to come visit. maybe they did that, too, but there is no part of me that is willing to believe that is the main purpose. rural churches aren't generally looking to expand. they're looking to survive.

like i said, life is a shade of gray in rural america. for those that farm, there's the constant worry about how good the harvest will be. for those in more touristy places, there's always the dependence upon visitors and enough snow for the skiiers, enough sun for the tanners, and enough color for the leaf lookers. so much is out of the hands of those who live in rural america, especially those whose livelihood depends upon the land.

and when you're livelihood is up in the air, the last thing you want is for your soul to join it. so while i may never agree that it's turn or burn or that doubt leads to loss, i can at least understand the roots of these pithy little statements and just laugh to myself. i'll even enjoy the humor in some of them because i know my dad would double over in genuine laughter at some of them, though they're no funnier than michael scott's email forwards.

but i'll never get why a trip to the paint shelf seemed like a great opportunity for a sermon.

dudes do things dudes do

there are lots of elements at work in transitioning from living in a city of millions to town of several hundred. there's the size adjustment, the time it takes to get somewhere to eat or drink adjustment, and the actually getting to know and like your neighbors adjustment (both of which we have done) to name a few. but there's one i'd forgotten about.

more so than anywhere else, i think men in rural places live into masculine stereotypes. i'd even argue that they set the curve. i mean, who sets that curve better than this guy? no one.

for those that know me, i'm not exactly the most macho dude. sure i love sports, meat and (thanks to elizabeth and terry at the woodshop) i'm developing a woodworking habit, but after that my macho quotient takes a serious dive, at least comparatively to my perception of men in rural america. here's an assessment:

- i think i've shot one gun in my entire life. hunting is the sport of choice out here.
- i don't exactly have a demonstrative personality nor do i think only wives should submit to their husbands.
- i learned how to drive a stick not because it was macho, but because it saves gas, or so i was told.
- oh, and i can operate a washing machine and an iron with relative ease.

however, in addition to my love of sports and meat and my aspirations to be norm from the new yankee workshop, i do have one other thing going for me. i own a truck.

trucks are masculinity shaped in metal and put on wheels. as you might imagine, that's not the reason i got mine, but i'll embrace it. i got mine so i could move my stuff easily. emphasis on my.
so it came as a big surprise to me that as we were driving home the other day, i told elizabeth how glad i was to have a truck. there have been roughly zero days in the last few years that i have been glad to have a truck.

you see, i made a firm decision about a year ago, that i would only offer my moving services to others in the most dire of situations after a friend asked for some help and proceeded to show up late and completely unprepared for the impending rain. it was somewhere between lifting his desk, complete with his snot storage area, and having a tarp tossed to me to cover his belongings while he got inside another car and left, that i told myself i would never do this out of the sheer goodness of my heart ever again. i consider myself a giving a person, but i have to draw a line somewhere. i only wish I had done so before picking up a handful of dried boogers.

but here in the land of stereotypical masculinity, i am thankful that i have a truck because even though i work with my hands, there's a keyboard at the end of them, not a backhoe. it's easy to remain on the outside in rural america if you've just moved in (or out depending how you look at it). there's a culture in a rural america that emphasizes one's history in the community, but that's a different topic for a different time. owning a truck just might be my first correct answer on my insider's application.

so i drive proudly to the fire station in my beat-up, little truck and know that at least i'm not that guy writes for a living and drives a miata. i enjoy the first part, but if the second were true, i'd walk around town knowing that, in the spirit of stereotypical masculinity, they'd be thinking there's a little something off about that new guy, isn't there?

on the other hand, it might be a fun experiment...in time.

dog the bounty hunter from here, truck by boone.

rural image of the day...

god knows what you'll hear here...

in addition to god's ability to know exactly where it is that we are in relation to the rest of humanity despite the difficulties many atlases and mobile gps apps have in doing likewise, it turns out the old bearded and muscular man in the sky also knows what we will hear on a daily basis as we go about our life in the middle of nowhere.

okay, maybe not. but i've certainly heard a lot of things that you don't really hear everyday in other parts of the world. and i'm not talking about the way things are said; we've been over that already. i'm talking about the actual stories that you hear.

take, for instance, my conversation with the fine gentlemen at a local tire store. i walked in to get some new tires for my truck and walked into a conversation i couldn't have made up. this place we live is dominated by farmers and apparently farmers have amazing stories.

while i can't do this one justice here just imagine me, or yourself, it really doesn't matter, standing across from a farmer relating a story to myself and the mechanic about a cow that received two barium enemas that were supposed to cure its ailments, but resulted in it spewing some pasty white liquid all over a trailer just as it was being taken out to be appraised for sale. in a fitting end to the tale, the judge who saw this rather disconcerting event take place simply began yelling, "bloat! bloat! bloat!" and the cow sold for half its worth.

oh, did i mention i heard this story twice? someone came in as the farmer was yelling "bloat!" and clearly wondered what the hell was going on, so we were all blessed with the enemas again. thankfully only in story form.

not to be outdone, this story came only hours before i attended my first volunteer fire department meeting. epic. while most of what happens at these meetings cannot be shared for both insurance and decency's sakes i can share that it was generally what you might imagine happens when you combine fifteen men from 26 to 65, equal parts business and pit-stops, one spittoon, and several folks tapping the rockies. perhaps the only thing i can share is that when i told everyone that i was a writer by trade, one fine young gentleman asked if i wrote porn. i don't. i promise.

well i guess i can share one more, even though i didn't technically hear it that night. as we were sitting around doing our voluntary fire work, someone made a comment about one man's tank. that's right. tank. not, hey jim how's that jeep treating you? or i heard you got a new shotgun, bob...apparently one of my neighbors owns a tank. in case you're wondering, the answer is yes. he does fancy himself a vigilante at times. i remembered reading a story about some guy in mississippi who chased a man charged with robbery through a cornfield in a tank, and going through one of those seth myers/amy poehler really!?! skits in my head. what never crossed my mind is that i would one day be able to see his house from my front porch. it's funny how things work out, isn't it?

on a more serious note, when you live out here in the land of corn fields sometimes driven with tanks, you'll also hear things like, "i had a very faulkner experience today." no one in dallas walks around thinking that. on the other hand maybe they feel like patrick duffy every now and then. what my neighbor, the guy who shared his faulkner like experience with me of sitting with a man who doesn't fit in the culture around here which is different from the culture elsewhere where he also feels uneasy, was getting at was that out here just about anything is possible. and if it's possible, someone will probably share whatever happened with you and what they tell you will either make you laugh, cry, or do both for very different reasons. and you can't even begin to make up these stories in your mind. they're so much better when they're true.

images from here and here

going once, going twice...

"well, my family has a house up in the mountains on a lake, and we go up there in the summers, and there's this cute little general store that we go to, and there's this guy who works there who wears overalls and no shirt and he has very few teeth."

this eloquent, run-on response was given in a college english class that i took in response to the professor wondering about our perceptions of people from the mountains as we prepared to study charles frazier's cold mountain. once she finished waxing so poetically, i figured i'd just sit this discussion out and hear what my colleagues had to offer about where i grew up.

i learned a lot. people from the mountains are dumber, less attractive, and more likely to both own a gun and fire it at will. their sense of fashion is vastly outdated and they are more likely to fall in love with a person across the room if the room is in their own home. i also learned that owning a second home somewhere does not make you a local expert on anything except tax codes and that it's difficult to agree with someone's assessment of anything when they choose to pose for playboy's girls of the acc spread. ok, i already knew that last thing was true.

after sitting through this painful display of amateur anthropology, i began to look at where i grew up a little differently. months before that discussion i was chomping at the bit to get out of that little mountain town and all the backwards people i couldn't take anymore. i thought i was surrounded by a lot of dumb, gun-toting, tooth challenged people who didn't see what the world had to offer them if they'd just step off that mountain for a little while. but to hear some other people make those comments stirred up some familial ties i didn't know i had. it was like they were all my little brothers and sisters and while it was perfectly ok for me to mock them, under no circumstances could anyone else do the same.

i even started watching my favorite documentary differently. in high school some friends of mine convinced me and several other guys that we needed to see this movie called hands on a hard body. contrary to popular opinion it is in fact not a porn flick. it follows about a dozen folks in a small town in texas as they vie for a new pick-up truck. when i was fifteen, it was comedic genius. the misplaced references to highlander, the super jesus-y lady who thought god told her to sell her truck before the contest because she was going to win this one, the former marine with a literal shag carpet chest. gold. all of it.

but then i watched it after this discussion of mountain people (sounds like a show on tlc) and got really sad. they weren't acting or trying to be funny. they wanted that truck so they could use the rest of their income to oh, i don't know, feed their families or pay their rent. they joined the marines because there weren't really other options for them. they needed that truck and they were willing to stand up with one hand on it for close to a week just to get it.*

i couldn't get this film out of my head the other night when we went to a local auction. i tend to think of auctions as events where furniture and personal effects are sold at decent to astronomical prices. at least i tended to until the other night. when the first items up for bid were boxes of fudge rounds and other little debbie treats, i had to withhold my laughter. but then people started bidding on them. all of them. they were gone in about a minute.

and that's when i started wondering if this was how the auction usually went, if it was a sign of the economic times, or if it was just a chance for friends to have a yard sale in auction format and we just happened to show up. once the woman in front of me started asking serious questions about the quality of a small teal bell and the "flavor" of the incense, i realized we were at a serious affair.

there was a caller, his bedazzled partner who took down all the purchase information, and two rather unique individuals hawking the various wares of the show. one man in his hawaiian shirt, vietnam vet hat complete with head lamp and the personality of benny hill; the other could be described accurately by my friends in english class.

while the wares didn't always seem auction worthy to us and at times it felt like watching whose line is it anyway as the vet and his buddy ran through their jokes about everything they picked up, one thing became obvious. if it didn't serve an immediate purpose (nourishment, replacement or repair, etc.) it didn't get bought. that is, except for the ladder golf set we took home. we also bought a t square, so i can start building some stuff around the house that we later learned is made from some cancer causing chemical. awesome.

this was a purely utilitarian auction. what can i get for the least amount of money that will do my family the most good? apple jacks > teal bells. my father-in-law would've found a lot of partners in crime here.

maybe folks from the mountains, rural america even, are the way those geniuses in my class described them. stereotypes do come from somewhere, but i think there's something more behind it. life's a little slower and even a little more practical for those that live there. that doesn't mean it's an idyllic existence by any stretch of the imagination. i can't imagine that a place where you're willing to take off for a week to stand next to a truck that you may or may not win or go to an auction every week to buy foodstuffs is completely pleasant all the time.

all i'm saying is that day-to-day operations take precedence over the frills and extras life has to offer. sometimes that order make things hilarious, sometimes it makes them sad, but it's always real and just as entertaining as living anywhere else.

*note: the jesus-y lady is still hilarious and always will be and the the film is still comedic genius in my opinion.

photos by boone and joey joey joseph

rural grammar, part ii: pronunciation

i think everyone has an embarassing story about mispronouncing a word in front of a bunch of know-it-alls at one point or another in their life. in my family there are tales about fat-i-gue and ep-i-tome.

in eighth grade i was given the the word diphthong in a late round of the annual spelling bee. being the confident speller i was and having heard mrs. avant (pronounced as southern as possible with emphasis clearly on the first syllable) clearly say dip thong, i thought to myself, "nailed it," even before the office was a glint in ricky gervais's eye. "dipthong. d-i-p-t-h-o-n-g. dipthong," i said confidently. no need for it to be used in a sentence or to wonder about its language of origin.

i started to give myself a pat on the back and make my way to the final group when i heard mrs. a-vant apologetically tell me that i was wrong and would continue my streak of never winning anything academically, athletically, or socially. well, i told myself the last part. she just told me to have a seat.

if she'd wanted me to spell diph-thong, why didn't she just say so? i spelled what she said, and since when is the h in ph silent? we don't talk on the pone or get lit listening to pish! oh that's right, it's not silent, mrs. ay-vant, eighth grade english teacher. and yes, i will take the title you stole from me even if vince young won't take the heisman he got jobbed out of.

thank you gary larson for summing up my pain.

here's the thing. i'm not sure she knew what a diphthong was, and i sure didn't. (i thought it was the kind of garment will ferrell thought that olive garden waitress was wearing in old school.) but if i had corrected her and said, "actually mrs. av-aunt, you pronounce both h's in the word," two things would have happened. first she would have told me what a pretentious little brat i was and then she would have given me some lecture about how it actually is dip-thong and who was i to question her on pronunciation. she would have been right on both accounts.

when it comes to pronunciation, beauty and everything else is in the eye of the beholder, especially in rural america. towns and counties across this fine country of ours are pronounced in ways foreign even to the foreigners for whom they are named.





that's ball-i-ver county to you, my friend. no
offense simon, but your revolutionary success in south america won't get you very far here.








i think pronunciation is part local accent and part our quest to incorporate all languages into english. for example:

el dor-ay-do, kansas...
think if they'd just translated it. welcome to the golden one, kansas. who wouldn't want to
go there?

buena (byoo-na) vista, virginia...
lovely view, incomprehensible pronunciation.

kosciusko (ka-zee-es-ko), mississippi...
sorry george washington's polish engineer friend, thaddeus ko-shoos-ko, but can you blame
us? the colonies weren't exactly teeming with poles back then.

we rural americans even tinker with the pronunciation of english words. i mean, why wouldn't we? there's a small town in north carolina where the thing to do on a friday night is cruise through downtown. when you look at the town's name on paper, there are four distinct syllables. when you pronounce like everyone who lives there does, there are two: rutherfordton becomes ruv-ton. don't ask me how. it just does. you can ask any sixteen year old you see on main street on a friday night provided he or she is willing to interrupt the cruise.

then there are places like belzoni, mississippi. named for italian explorer giovanni belzoni. unlike other places, locals and anyone seeking to elude ridicule says bel-zo-na. this makes no sense. english is my first language and i took 12 credits of italian in college and in neither language does an i make an uh sound.

there are also places like, oh, the state of arkansas. arkansas is a french pronunciation of a native american word that we americans decided sounded alright with us, so we kept it.

none of these, however, top what some small folks are willing to do to ensure that you spell their town's name correctly. i give you exhibit a: lurand, missisippi. exhibit b, guin, alabama, to follow after my next trip through the yellowhammer state.















there's another town i recently drove through called durant, and while there's no sign to tell me how to pronounce it, i now know it doesn't sound anything like the way nba stud kevin durant pronounces his name. i applaud these towns for their willingness to help folks like me, the son of a speech pathologist, to avoid making the embarassing mistake of mispronouncing their town's name and bringing shame upon myself and my family.

before you hop on the train and start railing on these places and these people for the "incorrectness" of their pronunciation, think about those news reporters that friend you have who just decided after spanish class one day to start trilling all his r's or that friend who took french and subsequently thought jimmy buffett was a boob for mispronouncing and misspelling his own name and that formula one needed to choose between grand priks and grahn pree and quit splitting the difference.

once you remember how annoying they were, you'll realize shakespeare was right when he talked about the rose. the v in "bolivar" might not sound like a b here, but the honoring of ol' simon is still there, so who really cares? sure things might be accented differently and syllables might be muddled together, but it gives a little character to the places we call home and is a welcome reprieve from the other places that continue to look like you could be anywhere. chances are ruvton, durant, and buena vista have something you can't find in a target, a starbucks, or a pep boys.

photos by boone, cartoon by gary larson found here