For M.A.A. and A.A.L.
The girl slips her hand into his
Imagining the words she will speak
In his own language
Papi, quiero pizza
Without sensing the words on his mind
Deportación, migra, que será de la reforma, m'ija?
Or even
"Illegal alien".
They walk the narrow sidewalks,
And from behind there is nothing alien
About the way her body hugs his.
She has the same gait,
Legs short and lagging in city traffic.
The soft down on her back is his,
And they raise the same thick wealth of eyebrows
At the line of cars.
Father's Day in a New York minute.
They continue past shops and greet,
Although the only Spanish she speaks is whispered at bed,
Among kicked-off covers in the lone room they share,
Her sticky little face molded into his arm.
Or upon leaving her school in the afternoon
Amidst a flurry of mothers pecking at their clothes
And herding children along while
He waits to take her hand,
His work uniform still pressed from the morning
And his black hair shining.
Still she listens to the señoras and understands
As if she were the one they were talking to.
She has no idea
That one day soon
She might need to use this language to ask
Her family
Why her father had to leave.
-Sarah L.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Got food? Thank a farmworker...
Day 1 at the farm:
When I was living back in Maine, I knew I wanted to come to the South to farm. I also knew that I was going to be involved with migrant workers in a variety of different jobs.
Once while facilitating a weekly support group for homeless Latino men, the group chose the topic of the meanings of agricultural labor in their lives. One of my elderly Mexican clients described in detail the loss he felt at not being physically able to farm, because "farming is like having money in the bank". Being able to grow food and feed your family is the greatest security a person can have.
Once while facilitating a weekly support group for homeless Latino men, the group chose the topic of the meanings of agricultural labor in their lives. One of my elderly Mexican clients described in detail the loss he felt at not being physically able to farm, because "farming is like having money in the bank". Being able to grow food and feed your family is the greatest security a person can have.
Thinking about how to design this part of my trip, I was clear that I didn't want to play at being an immigrant farmworker so that I could experience something. Being a farmworker and an immigrant so often means being exploited or earning too little; doing solidarity work doesn't mean studying people or in any way excepting that behavior. Moreover, I'm committed to organic farming. I'd been working to create a local food co-op in Maine and learning more about our agricultural economy. And farmwork means a lot to me at this age, touching earth to get clarity, feeling connected to my own mother, who did all kinds of migrant labor, educating myself to perhaps work once again with permaculture and farming in Maine. And yes, to be in solidarity with farmworkers.
I found Harry LeBlanc and the Beausol Farm through a friend of a friend in Durham. I called Harry just after his chosen apprentice failed to show up. At the time, I thought there would be no way I could do it : I would need to bike 60 miles daily on sketchy roads to get there. I pondered this out loud one day with my friend Tennessee, who immediately suggested I take her car. Well, I'm not afraid of much in this world, but driving a stick is right up there with death. However, I really wanted to farm. So I relearned how to drive in rush hour on the 15-501 and it all worked out.
I spend my first day weeding in the swiss chard and other beds. It looks like the farm had been needing another person for awhile. Over lunch, the other worker, Jessica, and Harry's wife called me an "angel". What I had put out there, my desire to farm, had led me to Beausol just in time. I feel blessed to once again be creating something living with my hands.
Farmworkers in North Carolina: nearly 5 out of 10 farmworker households in NC cannot afford enough food for their families.
Farmworkers in North Carolina: nearly 5 out of 10 farmworker households in NC cannot afford enough food for their families.
Day 2: Heat in the flower bed
What images come to mind when we think of planting flowers? I imagine my mother, down on her hands and knees with her soft hands in the moist dirt, digging amidst squirming worms, sifting out the weeds with her trowel.
This land I'm working was not made for this garden, I think on my first day. The earth is dry, crumbling orange and red rocks and dirt. We are in a bit of a drought and both the soil and I are thirsty and hardened. I pick my hoe up over my head and swing it down to till....I reach rock and the hit reverberates into my elbows. I think of the arm muscles to be acquired in this task...that is, until midday when the sun is overhead and I think about how I've actually been standing in one place all day. Today is also different than yesterday because I am working alone and feel resentful at having to work in the same hot spot until the afternoon. I try to put good thoughts into the ground as i shovel and rake and hoe and till these plot to no avail; I have no use for planting flowers right now. I mean it's April for the love of God! As much as I love this labor of recreating the land, I look longingly over at the vegetable beds and yearn for their succulent greenery. I want to plant myself in their moister wanderings and be an artist of legumes, sculpting their rows. This land is not for my imagination.
This land is your land, this land is my land...from Native families to enslaved farmhands. It is quite amazing to find myself in a place that is such a compilation of my southern studies. Farmer Harry moved to this state from Lousiana, where he was raised to farm an even hotter, humid land. He moved to North Carolina to attend school and subsequently, to practice as a scientist until he found himself drawn back into farming and supporting a large family. With the death of his first wife, he stayed home to raise their daughter and farming became a full time occupation for Harry. No he works out in the heat until dusk, wearing a long sleeve linen shirt and jeans.
But long before Harry, this land produced other stories of grief and struggle, resistance and change. Harry showed me how he has found arrowheads, while tilling the soil. Based on his knowledge of Native Americans in the Carolinas, he claims that there could have been Cherokees on this land. At some point, the land was colonized and converted to a cotton farm. We do not speak of what we are sure is true...if this land was big enough , it was probably run on slave labor. Before Harry bought the land it was a tobacco farm, so it had been converted yet again for crops that would ultimately do damage to the land that would take years to repair. Now the land is still being converted into soil that has been finally been certified organic.
Tomatoes and peppers grow well now in this southern soil. We grow greensd such as spinach, but for some it is too hot to produce a good crop and the leaves wither and yellow in the heat. I am amazed to find we will be planting okra, and that the asparagus is already up in April. And my favorite...southern spring onions are sweet and ready to barbecue. There are also herbs, artichoke, broccoli, potatoes (some varieties from Maine), a small mushroom farm in the back woods, bushes of berries and grapes and kiwi, and out in the far field- a beehive. Everything is growing and harvesting has begun while the soil in Maine is probably still unfreezing. 600 tomato plants sit in the greenhouse waiting. Many of these plants have been raised from organic seed that was produced in Maine (Fedco, Seeds of Change). Again, my worlds collide as I think of friends who able hands are sorting those seeds.
In time, I will learn what can be planted here. But today, I am sweating in the flower bed and striking rock, trying to remember that flowers bring the bees to pollinate it all.
Farmworkers in North Carolina: Agricultural work has been ranked number three of the most dangerous occupations in the US. In NC, heat stress, dehydration, falls, and pesticides are frequent health hazards.
Day 3: A day for planting flowers
Today all of the flower seedlings that have been raised in the greenhouse need to be planted in their beds by 2:00 is the afternoon. This is to be my introduction to work on a biodynamic , organic farm.
Never again when I buy products that say biodynamic on the label, or eat at my brother's fancy raw food and often biodynamic restaurant in NYC, will I take it for granted that this food is hard work! Biodynamic farming means that all planting and harvesting is organized and conceptualized by the cosmos. That is, the position of the moon and the Earth dictates when we can plant certain groups of plants. There are flower days, fruit days, root days, etc. And for some reason I don't understand, flowers always seem to have to be planted by 2:00 in the afternoon. Humph.
The day starts out easy enough. We water all the thirsty seedlings, weed a little in the greens, and start to plant the flowers in the far beds while Harry does other projects. Then, as the heat begins to climb and it turns around 11:00 am, Harry and his wife get progressively more nervous about getting all these seedlings into the ground. The seedlings are a bit overgrown and if they are not planted today, they will have to be planted next week, which would definitely stunt their growth. About around 12:00 it is announced that we will not have lunch until 2:00 when all the planting is done. Around 1:00 my back hurts and we are almost throwing seedlings into their holes, trying to get everything planted. I feel the hot breath of my co-workers stream into my sweat-drenched face as we cover the same ground in a race to get it all done. I think that if I didn't have my new friend Jessica laughing and sweating with me, I wouldn't want to be doing this at all. My body becomes a sweat-oiled machine out in the dry, red field where there is no green, no oxygen. I am a human conveyer belt, dumping seedlings into holes, patting and moving on. I have no love for them now. They are on their own. At the end of the day I go home, and fall asleep on Tennessee's couch, dehydrated and aching.
Farmworkers in North Carolina: NC has the highest production of sweet potatoes in the nation. However, farmworkers in NC earn 35 cents a bucket. They have to pick and haul 125 buckets to make $50. Sweet potatoes are heavy!
Today all of the flower seedlings that have been raised in the greenhouse need to be planted in their beds by 2:00 is the afternoon. This is to be my introduction to work on a biodynamic , organic farm.
Never again when I buy products that say biodynamic on the label, or eat at my brother's fancy raw food and often biodynamic restaurant in NYC, will I take it for granted that this food is hard work! Biodynamic farming means that all planting and harvesting is organized and conceptualized by the cosmos. That is, the position of the moon and the Earth dictates when we can plant certain groups of plants. There are flower days, fruit days, root days, etc. And for some reason I don't understand, flowers always seem to have to be planted by 2:00 in the afternoon. Humph.
The day starts out easy enough. We water all the thirsty seedlings, weed a little in the greens, and start to plant the flowers in the far beds while Harry does other projects. Then, as the heat begins to climb and it turns around 11:00 am, Harry and his wife get progressively more nervous about getting all these seedlings into the ground. The seedlings are a bit overgrown and if they are not planted today, they will have to be planted next week, which would definitely stunt their growth. About around 12:00 it is announced that we will not have lunch until 2:00 when all the planting is done. Around 1:00 my back hurts and we are almost throwing seedlings into their holes, trying to get everything planted. I feel the hot breath of my co-workers stream into my sweat-drenched face as we cover the same ground in a race to get it all done. I think that if I didn't have my new friend Jessica laughing and sweating with me, I wouldn't want to be doing this at all. My body becomes a sweat-oiled machine out in the dry, red field where there is no green, no oxygen. I am a human conveyer belt, dumping seedlings into holes, patting and moving on. I have no love for them now. They are on their own. At the end of the day I go home, and fall asleep on Tennessee's couch, dehydrated and aching.
Farmworkers in North Carolina: NC has the highest production of sweet potatoes in the nation. However, farmworkers in NC earn 35 cents a bucket. They have to pick and haul 125 buckets to make $50. Sweet potatoes are heavy!
Day 4: Labor pains
I return to the farm the next day, after having tossed and turned all night on the futon couch. I have woken several times with sharp pain in my lower back. I can't believe I can get up in this southern heat with this pain in my back and work again. Today is a fruit day and we spend most of it planting peppers in rows. Thankfully, we have all day to plant them and we take frequent breaks. What makes it bearable is that I have Jessica to converse with and that I keep shifting my body to compensate for all the aches and pains. We all agree that we do not want another day like yesterday, and this day has a much nicer pace.
The pepper seedlings look good, although the ground they go into is hot and crumbly and in the middle of a drought. By the afternoon, their leaves wilt, even after watering them immediately. There are sweet peppers and hot peppers. Harry said he always plants a different variety of spicy pepper. I think about the four pepper plants I planted at my garden in Maine last summer. They blossomed in the breeze but the bugs immediately ate their stalks.
Being at the farm makes me look at motherhood differently. On a drive back from Beausol, I was pondering the implications of leaving my community at a time when many women my age are settling into families or homes of their own. I left home with much grief that this would not be my path, that I should be thrust out into the world on my own again to re-hatch myself into yet another environment. It was close to Mother's Day and I had just told my grandmother I regretted not being able to give her any great grandbabies. But had I not just given life to an acre of green goodness? Weren't they my miracle? When I feel like the cycle of life is passing me by I need only to stick my hands into the dirt and nurture the life I am creating. This cycle of life that my own momma began when she worked with her hands on someone else's land, when she got down onto her hands and knees and envisioned her own garden, when she talked softly to her child and taught me to love the green growing by the ocean's side. These are her grandchildren I tend. For now they are what I birth.
Farmworkers in NC: Although labor laws for farmwork require children to be 12 years old at least, all ages can be found in the fields. By the way, they earn 35 cents a bucket to pick peppers.
I return to the farm the next day, after having tossed and turned all night on the futon couch. I have woken several times with sharp pain in my lower back. I can't believe I can get up in this southern heat with this pain in my back and work again. Today is a fruit day and we spend most of it planting peppers in rows. Thankfully, we have all day to plant them and we take frequent breaks. What makes it bearable is that I have Jessica to converse with and that I keep shifting my body to compensate for all the aches and pains. We all agree that we do not want another day like yesterday, and this day has a much nicer pace.
The pepper seedlings look good, although the ground they go into is hot and crumbly and in the middle of a drought. By the afternoon, their leaves wilt, even after watering them immediately. There are sweet peppers and hot peppers. Harry said he always plants a different variety of spicy pepper. I think about the four pepper plants I planted at my garden in Maine last summer. They blossomed in the breeze but the bugs immediately ate their stalks.
Being at the farm makes me look at motherhood differently. On a drive back from Beausol, I was pondering the implications of leaving my community at a time when many women my age are settling into families or homes of their own. I left home with much grief that this would not be my path, that I should be thrust out into the world on my own again to re-hatch myself into yet another environment. It was close to Mother's Day and I had just told my grandmother I regretted not being able to give her any great grandbabies. But had I not just given life to an acre of green goodness? Weren't they my miracle? When I feel like the cycle of life is passing me by I need only to stick my hands into the dirt and nurture the life I am creating. This cycle of life that my own momma began when she worked with her hands on someone else's land, when she got down onto her hands and knees and envisioned her own garden, when she talked softly to her child and taught me to love the green growing by the ocean's side. These are her grandchildren I tend. For now they are what I birth.
Farmworkers in NC: Although labor laws for farmwork require children to be 12 years old at least, all ages can be found in the fields. By the way, they earn 35 cents a bucket to pick peppers.
Day 5: A day for planting 600 tomato plants
I arrive early to the farm because the cosmos have predetermined that today we will plant all of the over 600 tomato plants that sit withering in the greenhouse. It's news to me that tomatoes are actually native to this area, and NC makes a huge profit annually from the tomato, which has a pretty long season.
Because it's native to this land, the chance for blight on the crops is even more significant and we spend the first part of the morning preparing the plants for the ground by suckering them, or taking the small leaves off the bottom so they get fewer problems from the ground up.
I am amazed to hear the names of the varieties that come from this area. My favorite is the Mortgage Lifters, aptly named by a NC native that used to go around selling radiators out of his truck. He developed this tomato and was able to pay off his mortgage in one year. So goes the legend.
We plant row after row of sungolds, heirlooms, tomatillos. Jessica and I raise concerns about setting up the drip tapes because these beauties will be thirsty. But there are so many to plant! We just keep going, stopping at the end to mulch them with hay and water as much as we can. Jess, a former dairy farmer, shows me how to really handle the hay. We pray for rain. It is beautiful to plant tomatoes in their native land. Their smell tickles my nose, which is sunburned and sneezy from the hay.
I arrive early to the farm because the cosmos have predetermined that today we will plant all of the over 600 tomato plants that sit withering in the greenhouse. It's news to me that tomatoes are actually native to this area, and NC makes a huge profit annually from the tomato, which has a pretty long season.
Because it's native to this land, the chance for blight on the crops is even more significant and we spend the first part of the morning preparing the plants for the ground by suckering them, or taking the small leaves off the bottom so they get fewer problems from the ground up.
I am amazed to hear the names of the varieties that come from this area. My favorite is the Mortgage Lifters, aptly named by a NC native that used to go around selling radiators out of his truck. He developed this tomato and was able to pay off his mortgage in one year. So goes the legend.
We plant row after row of sungolds, heirlooms, tomatillos. Jessica and I raise concerns about setting up the drip tapes because these beauties will be thirsty. But there are so many to plant! We just keep going, stopping at the end to mulch them with hay and water as much as we can. Jess, a former dairy farmer, shows me how to really handle the hay. We pray for rain. It is beautiful to plant tomatoes in their native land. Their smell tickles my nose, which is sunburned and sneezy from the hay.
Farmworkers in NC: Come to the state from other migrant jobs further south for the tomato harvest.
Day 6: An interpreter on the farm
Harry informed me when I started at the farm that Chatham County, NC where Beausol is located is the only place in the whole country where there is actually an increase in organic farms and farmers rather than a decrease, because of the financial and technical support farmers can get. In North Carolina or Carolina del Norte, the number of migrant farmworkers has nearly doubled, in large part due to NAFTA. They often live in such horrible conditions. How can farming be about survival if so many people are still enslaved?
I just learned that I will be able to go out iinto the fields and do outreach with migrant farmworkers later this month.It pains me to move on from the farm because I feel this work keeping me alive, but I am interested in further learning to support other people who learned to love the same land.
The purpose of my finding this farm is even clearer to me now. I am not surprised to learn the painters that have been hired to paint the new farmhouse are Guatemalan. We freely converse about life on the farm and fall into a daily rhythym of laughter and friendship. We are both interested in how I am breaking the stereotype as a woman alone laboring in a field that so many Latin American men work in this state. Our jokes about the amount of work I take on alone give recognition to the struggles of this type of work. Farmer Harry, on the other hand, is challenged by their language and calls me from the fields ro interpret daily. I am happy in this role and realize as I talk with the guys about worker's rights that this is my true calling, the field in which I work most often.
Farmworkers in NC: As in other US states, more women are coming to work here. However, nearly 80% of farmworkers nationwidde are male and most are younger than 31.
Day 7: The hive.
Farmer Harry and I are on our own today. He announces to me early that he is tired from the day before and that dictates the rest of our day: constant water breaks, stories of his life and farming. We lay drip tape in all the beds and mulch and cover the eggplant crops before the bugs get to them. Today was a root day and we were to plant parsnip but I think we are both glad to not be bending down in the heat.
Harry decides to mulch part of the crops with wood chips, which we are not sure will work but it is always good to try alternatives. So I get to dig my hands into the cool, damp wood and discover Bess beetles, who hiss loudly and squirm as I pick them out to investigate their smooth black bodies. Beetles are among my favorite insects and I am in awe of how loud these creatures can talk when they want something.
Our day includes a trip to the hive. Farmer Harry is proud of his new investment. We stand for half an hour far enough out of the sisters' path to watch them fly out of and return to the hive. The work seems endless, I think as I feel my own body bend from the week's labors. He tells me they can fly out for up to more than three miles and still find their way back home, by sight. I think of my own home, where my mother uses bees to sting our friend with MS, the sisters sacrificing their own lives to help her feel parts of her body. I think about how I might be able to recognize my own home when this journey is complete.
Harry has told me how sensitive the process of moving a hive can be. If you are not careful in how you do this, then the bees may not find their way back and the queen and drones will die. You can either move the hive gradually, or across the field where the bees may still be able to find it. I think about my immigrant friends coming to this country to work. How it costs them so much learning and strife to change their home. How much they yearn to fly back home.
When the work is done and Harry says, "we have punished ourselves enough", I drive back to find my temporary hive waiting, with its promise of dogs and neighborhood kids and the man named TJ sitting as usual, on his white porch with the green trim.
Farmworkers: 7 out of 10 of farmworkers on the East Coast live in crowded conditions. This contributes to poor health conditions.
Day 8:
Today is a root day again, which means that we could plant the parsnips, but the only roots on the schedule today are the ones we see as we pull up the weeds. Because we have had to plant and plant on certain days, we now have to go back and clean up our messes before they go to seed. The heat creeps up into the 90s and the field is all dry red dirt in our noses.
Weeding is my favorite activity. I think about how I have gone about the process of choosing what in my life is sacred to me, and what needs to be pulled out. Sometimes I think these thoughts with pain because I truly have loved some of the weeds. Some of the weeds on Harry's farm yield beautiful flowers, crimson and clover and other weeds I haven't worked with. Some of the weeds in my life have been beautiful at the time, but their shade isn't so healthy for my growth. Jess reminds me that sometimes the darkest moments bring the greatest blessings.
Farmworkers in NC: Farmworkers suffer from the highest rate of toxic chemical injuries than any workers in the country.
Day 9: May Day
We spend the morning harvesting spinach for the CSA shares. The spinach is small and yellowing; this is a cold-weather crop and struggles in the south. Each tiny plant must be pulled out at the roots and its dead leaves pulled. What has survived is brittle and chewed by beetles. But farming is about counting your blessings and your losses and moving on.
The afternoon brings more mulching with hay, because the plants are so thirsty and wilting and the hay helps to contain the moisture. It pains us to see what we have planted struggling in this recordbreaking heat. I pull big weeds so they can get even more of what they need. When I am weeding alone I can meditate.
It is May Day and I am grateful to leave this heat early (92 degrees) for a rally in Raleigh. What impresses me most about this rally is that everyone is given time to speak their positive messages. One person on the platform points to a picture of slavery and proclaims that Latinos will not be treated like slave laborers because of the color of their skin, evoking images of the south and north under the seige of racism. A rock band plays a theme song. Students read what they have written, one by one, their voices cracking. Like these small heads of spinach I pick, everyone is counted.
Farmworkers in NC: 94% of migrant farmworkers in NC are native Spanish speakers.
Day 10: Picking the shares
Today is spent organizing the shares for the CSA customers. There are fifty shares in all. It is the first harvest, and Harry is worried that the lettuce is too small, and that he doesn't have enough to give his customers. I remind him that as a customer of a CSA, you buy into the uncertainty. Lovers of organic food take risks on short crops and bruised fruit. I spend the morning with a knife in my pocket, cutting heads of red leaf and romaine lettuce. I quickly learn to be careful of black widow spiders, who draw elaborate webs at the base of the red leaf. Their bright red dots give them away as they scamper through the bed. I am amazed by their beauty and saddened because Farmer Harry says we need to kill them when we find them.
These customers are lucky enough to receive flowers with their shares. As I thin out the beautiful bachelor buttons, popping the heads off wilted plants as if they were dandelion weeds, I reflect on the fact that I have always been taught to take care of the dying while caring for the living. This I have learned from my mother, who now tends to hospice clients, and from my own experience of sitting by the bed of a loved one and gently letting them rest.
Farmworkers in NC: almost 6 out of ten farmworks live apart from immediate family members.
Day 11: Will it rain?
These dry conditions are wilting everything I have planted! My rainbow chard is losing its will to live! It is so hard to see something so delicately planted need to drink so badly.
Day 13: It rained but I still missed the planting of the okra
Harry informed me when I started at the farm that Chatham County, NC where Beausol is located is the only place in the whole country where there is actually an increase in organic farms and farmers rather than a decrease, because of the financial and technical support farmers can get. In North Carolina or Carolina del Norte, the number of migrant farmworkers has nearly doubled, in large part due to NAFTA. They often live in such horrible conditions. How can farming be about survival if so many people are still enslaved?
I just learned that I will be able to go out iinto the fields and do outreach with migrant farmworkers later this month.It pains me to move on from the farm because I feel this work keeping me alive, but I am interested in further learning to support other people who learned to love the same land.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Sunday, April 29, 2007
When a woman sings the blues....
How does North Carolina taste to me y'all?
Mmm..sweet tea and it's refined sugar-coated goodness,
double chocolate milkshakes,
my tongue buzzing from the Junebugs in the porchlight,
coleslaw and yams and the sweet,
thick waft of cigar in a club downtown.
Heat.
The salt off the back of my wrist as I swipe sweat off my upper brow.
Buttery grits and collard greens and smoky rain near the train station.
Spring onions and barbecue and the
faintest vibration of a slide guitar on a Saturday night.
It all tastes like the blues to me.
Slowhand Charlie and Captain Luke
Men of the blues
Mmm..sweet tea and it's refined sugar-coated goodness,
double chocolate milkshakes,
my tongue buzzing from the Junebugs in the porchlight,
coleslaw and yams and the sweet,
thick waft of cigar in a club downtown.
Heat.
The salt off the back of my wrist as I swipe sweat off my upper brow.
Buttery grits and collard greens and smoky rain near the train station.
Spring onions and barbecue and the
faintest vibration of a slide guitar on a Saturday night.
It all tastes like the blues to me.
Cool John Ferguson
Because the nature of my trip thus far has been really organic and fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, I have stumbled into some pretty great scenes. I had many reasons for coming to North Carolina, including the blues, but somehow I had forgotten just what an impact the Piedmont blues and musicians from this area have had on my life. And here I am, right in the middle of it all.
North Carolina is made up of three zones: the mountains, the Piedmont, and the coast. The Piedmont is the flatter area before you hit the coast and, like Appalachia, it has it's own culture and music. It is home to the Piedmont blues, and thanks to Music Maker in Durham, a relief organization for little-known blues musicians escaping poverty, a white girl from Maine was introduced to the sounds and strains of great guitarists such as Etta Baker.
I can't predict the future, but I can say that 29 years of age was hopefully the worst it's ever gonna get. I was in such a dark cycle of events that my sadness preceded me. I would walk into a room, and people would arrange their words. On the outside, I looked like a wreck. But really, I was just emerging and one way I measured this was through the music I learned to play. The blues could handle my intensity. Because playing the blues is about recognizing the power, the joy in sadness. Sadness and joy. Birth and death. Part of the same circle. What slapped me down into despair also gave me muscles to get up. Whose knows this better than a blues musician.
So I was a little starstruck when I got to hang out with greats such as Cool John Ferguson, Captain Luke, and others. I sang with a buddy of mine, Dr. Charlie Thompson, to a song he wrote for an event at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke. And because I got to sing, it earned me a better rep to be able to sit next to Captain Luke and hear his stories.
Slowhand Charlie and Captain Luke
The majority of the blues musicians that Music Maker features are older than seventy. And this is something I also love about the blues...I could be in my nineties sitting on my porch all day long and playing my electric guitar.
Men of the blues
Captain Luke is 87, a chain smoker, and has a voice that drops into the crowd like blackstrap molasses. You feel just like you're in his living room and all of a sudden he starts singing. Like being with your grandfather who just happens to be a big rock star.
Two fans
In Durham, North Carolina, I can just pop down the road to a place called the All People's Grill, a mom and pop dive serving up soul food until late on rickety tables. And almost as if it were just a legend, some nights they may be closed and completely abandoned while others, you may be just in time to hear Cool John bust one out for all of us.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Towards a new Freedom Summer: Exploring race, class and media in North Carolina's civil rights movement
What a wave (literally, in some places) of intense energy passing through the East. Last month I watched reports of my home state in the throes of a Northeaster and heard stories of cars being sucked into the ocean in an environment I truly love and miss. In North Carolina we have all felt the surf of humanity at its worst: violence at Virginia Tech, the murder of an important and much loved activist in Mexico. It's always hard to be away from home while the people you love are in the middle of a bad storm, unless you are also in the middle of one.
Every time I walk into town I see the above image. It is a relic that speaks to the legacy of labor and power in Durham, North Carolina. The old tobacco warehouse was once the financial backbone of a downtown now rebuilding, a small city shaking off a bad rep and evoking an era when it was great.
I longed to come to North Carolina ever since I began to work with Mexican clients who spoke of going back to "Norte" to visit family and friends or to look for work. So many people discover North Carolina along the route to the true "Norte", back to Maine and Massachusetts. If you ask immigrants in this state why they decided to come to North Carolina, many will answer that they have an uncle, a brother, or other family settled here. This is unique from Maine, where many people settle knowing no one, forging connections in factory warehouses, immigrant-owed businesses or the local shelter.
Despite the fact that North Carolina was labeled the fastest growing Latino state in the country, communities here are facing extreme and devisive anti-immigration legislation. My first week I read in the local newspaper in Spanish that among others, there are really strong proposals to obligate employers to comply with ICE's database on "illegal"immigration, which we know is not accurate and often ends up incriminating all kinds of innocent people. I also woke up one morning and realized I was living in a death penalty state, which wouldn't come us a surprise unless you knew what it was like to live in a state all your life where that sort of news feels so far away.
Moreover, a turn in the local homeless shelter, the Urban Ministries of Durham, provided more disturbing news about the city where I am staying in general. I had no idea as I walked through it's sleepy center that there was any sort of trouble with crime, but the counselors there assured me, almost for shock value, that Durham has a state-wide reputation for violence and gangs. This occurs for two reasons. First, Durham lies in the middle of I-85, and is a convenient stopping ground between the north and south for the introduction of heroin; secondly, people come back from northern cities, such as New York, in hopes of returning to their roots in the south, bringing drugs and crime with them. I spoke with one woman who had come back who fit this description and who told me she wasn't able to receive any support up North. Although staff consider the shelter block to be a neutral zone, the staff at UMD pointed to a surrounding four block radius where gang activity occurs. At the shelter they hold the opinion that such gang violence originally began in mostly black gangs, until immigrants such as Latinos were targeted. Now the violence is also perpetuated by Latinos. They pointed to the surrounding area and proceeded to try to convince me that I could never really be safe on its streets.
My first week was very much about comtemplating my own safety in that sense of Durham's image, which is largely propagated by the local media. If I felt so happy and welcomed as I walked into town, what made others feel the need to warn me? Would I too be picked off at random by gang thugs? Or as I had also been told, would the color of my skin make me invisible to that type of violence? I read an article in the local rag that gave credit for the negative stereotypes to the media in the Triangle area, which includes Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. It described how violence in Durham has been emphasized over other events. Let us not forget that this was also a place scarred by the news of the Duke lacrosse scandal. Hmm...could racism play a role here? Durham downtown was once a great bastion of strength in the black economy in the south. If I was willing to talk about violence and race, I was in the right place. It seemed I would learn more here than learning how and where to walk down the street.
So why come to this place to find the good fight? I was asked this question my very first week when I visited a class at Duke University all about immigrants rights and labor in the South. Tennessee, the friend who is currently hosting me, works at the Center for Documentary Studies. I shared with a group of undergrads that I was asking myself the same question: what can I learn about solutions is this wild southern state?
Initially, I was interested in the connection between a new population of worker's advocates and its legacy of civil rights work. It was in Greensboro, North Carolina where four black students sat down at a "whites only" lunch counter and didn't budge. Thus began student civil disobedience. Durham itself is known for having been one the first and most prominent black financial districts in the south; Black Wall Street is one of its historical sites. And I have literally become addicted to my morning black radio show, listeners calling in to discuss race as often as Whitney Houston's new divorce. North Carolina has a history of power, pride and struggle that I need to hear more about.
I am interested in how race intersects with labor issues in the South. On my route (read as "root") through the US thus far I have been really focused on trauma and human rights, delving only marginally into labor issues in Providence. I began by speaking to academics in the ivory tower of the North, then becoming more politically active as I worked my way down south. In this state, the worker's rights movement is leading the struggle for a just immigration policy.
North Carolina is a right-to-work state. It also has the lowest rate of unionism in the country. There are a couple of theories about this: one, that the violence stemming from the civil rights movement dissuaded more potential squirmishes resulting from pickets; also, solidarity didn't occur because of the isolationism in rural communities that caused people to feel dissasociated from each other. There's a great interview I heard on NPR down here about a book just published on female unionizers in North Carolina. Most notable was Ella Mae Wiggins, singer/songwriter for the movement, who worked in the Turpentine Mill in Loray Mills and joined the union after her four children died because she couldn't stay home to care for them. The author suggests that the stories are few and far between, with fear for being turned in still a huge reality for some.
North Carolina's economy had been based on agriculture, textiles, and the furniture market. We know how free trade works. With the institution of NAFTA in the 1990's, these jobs that were primarily held by African-Americans and low-income folks left the state, let's say they went to Mexico. Then folks in those towns employed by the same companies had wages so low, they could not survive. So they moved to North Carolina, creating a population of workers earning low wages and without the ability to vote on any of this.
North Carolina is the largest contracter of migrant workers in the country. There are maybe 95-100 Latino organizations in the state. As the state economy has moved away from manufacturing and agriculture, there are many existing low-paying jobs that only Latinos will do. The whole political and economic reality of the south creates rivalry and conflict between African-Americans and immigrants as they compete for low-wage jobs. Alliances are formed when you have collective conciousness about labor and organizing.
On May 1st, many of us congregated in the courtyard in front of the state capital in Raleigh. A large portion of the population were wearing bright yellow shirts that read, Justice for Smithfield, union organizers at the largest pork packing plant in the state. A team of young people organizing stood at the pulpit and each one made a speech. One teenager pointed to a bronze plaque on a monument behind him, depicting something like the fall of slavery in the south and cried in Spanish, "we will not be slaves because of the color of our skin!"
The idea that agricultural work has "always been about slavery" (i.e. no rights, low income, etc) is what my new friend Tony in SAF (Student Action for Farmworkers) is trying to change. SAF traces its history back to the 1970s, and was started by African-Americans laborers in the rural south. Today SAF also does a lot of work with immigrants and hopes to continue to build a black/brown alliance.
I talked further about ally-building in the state during an inspiring informational interview with Marisol and Tony of El Pueblo, Inc. El Pueblo is involved in political advocacy, public health and safety, and gang prevention for Latinos in North Carolina. They are based in Raleigh. Marisol is coordinator of the legislative campaign. With her deep stare and elegant poise she reminded me of a comic-book Latina superhero. She is one of the best spoken individuals I've met here.
Marisol stated that El Pueblo's campaign focuses on educating the state of North Carolina that we have a broken immigration system. The 2000 census that measured a period of ten years, gave information that led to the proclamation that North Carolina was the current "newly emerging Latino state". According to Marisol, this information fueled the fear that led directly to the anti-immigrant legislation. Because this is a primarily non-voting community, such legislation is hard to squash and voting registration campaigns similiar to the one I wrote about in Providence are extremely important.
When Latinos across the country started to feel more empowered to speak out in last year's wave of marches, folks in NC initially jumped on board. Now they are more afraid, and have been dropping out of the rallies. One reason is that this year door to door raids increased. Nearly 18 years after the census began, Marisol wonders about Latino youth turning 18 and voting in the next elections: will they perceive voting as power?
How does violence and race play into our current lunch counter leanings? As workers nationwide are discriminated against by the color of their skin and delegitimized by the term "illegal", we are reminded in the south of a time when Black people and communities were treated similarly. Marisol talked about the possibility of these peaceful movements shifting as people become more and more marginalized. The original Civil Right's Movement didn't have the same parameters with citizenship and voting rights, but they also weren't always peaceful. People were volunteering to "step up to the violence", which is a shift we too might experience someday soon. El Pueblo hears a denial of racism over and over again when politicians hide behind the phrase "this is about the law". Duke lacrosse scandal, case in point.
In North Carolina, as in other states, they make immigrant's lives more and more illegal so they can't survive here, and will eventually deport themselves, or disappear. Marisol labelled this nasty political tool the theory of attrition, and said that it is being shared between states. First they create a law making it illegal to get driver's licences. Then they make it impossible for landlords to have immigrants as tenants without reporting them. Finally, they lobby for measures that make it obligatory to report people seeking the police or medical care. The idea is that in six years, people will stop coming. Sounds like cancer running through a family, right? She said this could happen in Maine (it's already started).
I'm only a political lobbyist out of need. I really want to support people doing social work. How does the clinical work I do with Latinos directly relate to all this? Well, if you limit public safety and health for a whole group of people, the the safety and well-being of the whole state is in jeopardy.
Tony, from El Pueblo works in the Public Safety part of El Pueblo leading a campaign to educate Spanish speakers about the dangers and legal consequences of drunk driving, the biggest social problem involving Latinos in the state. It's about education and equality of the law. If you have no legal rights and you are young and angry, why would you want to respect the law? Except for Latinos, getting caught even once may mean deportation. And experience tells us that crminalizing this behavior, such as deportins an offender, doesn't necessarily mean they won't come back and re-offend.
We conversed about what we both know from our respective communities about people and addiction. If you are isolated from your community and feel alone and have that tendency, you are more likely to drink. The number one response I would get from my clients says as much: I was lonely and starting thinking about what happened in...fill in the blank. Tony confirmed that this also a result of young people leaving home, testing boundaries.
AGAPE is a gang prevention program that works with youth. They said that every week more and more Latinos are arrested for criminal activity. Although anti-immigrant groups want us to think they begin this violence, Latino youth joining gangs is a direct result of downward mobility. There is discrimination and exclusion in public schools that makes immigrant youth feel unwelcome and less likely to join activities. (I am using "Latino" and "immigrant" interchangibly because our conversation was about Latinos, but concerns all immigrants) One of two dangers can happen: they either quit school or are successfully recruited by gangs that provide fraternity and security. The media further fuels their alienation with it's assumption of dangerous Latino youth. AGAPE works with youth to create clubs.
As you can see, I am really intrigued by life and work in this state. Labor continues to be the revolutionary buzzword. And folks are doing some amazing work to organize around labor rights. Up to this point I have studied and learned from these great conversations. But I knew that I was coming to the south to literally get my hands dirty, to insert myself into this workforce. I felt that in order to appreciate what it might be like I needed to be connected to the people and the land in this state and in my own homeland. I needed to farm.
Every time I walk into town I see the above image. It is a relic that speaks to the legacy of labor and power in Durham, North Carolina. The old tobacco warehouse was once the financial backbone of a downtown now rebuilding, a small city shaking off a bad rep and evoking an era when it was great.
I longed to come to North Carolina ever since I began to work with Mexican clients who spoke of going back to "Norte" to visit family and friends or to look for work. So many people discover North Carolina along the route to the true "Norte", back to Maine and Massachusetts. If you ask immigrants in this state why they decided to come to North Carolina, many will answer that they have an uncle, a brother, or other family settled here. This is unique from Maine, where many people settle knowing no one, forging connections in factory warehouses, immigrant-owed businesses or the local shelter.
Despite the fact that North Carolina was labeled the fastest growing Latino state in the country, communities here are facing extreme and devisive anti-immigration legislation. My first week I read in the local newspaper in Spanish that among others, there are really strong proposals to obligate employers to comply with ICE's database on "illegal"immigration, which we know is not accurate and often ends up incriminating all kinds of innocent people. I also woke up one morning and realized I was living in a death penalty state, which wouldn't come us a surprise unless you knew what it was like to live in a state all your life where that sort of news feels so far away.
Moreover, a turn in the local homeless shelter, the Urban Ministries of Durham, provided more disturbing news about the city where I am staying in general. I had no idea as I walked through it's sleepy center that there was any sort of trouble with crime, but the counselors there assured me, almost for shock value, that Durham has a state-wide reputation for violence and gangs. This occurs for two reasons. First, Durham lies in the middle of I-85, and is a convenient stopping ground between the north and south for the introduction of heroin; secondly, people come back from northern cities, such as New York, in hopes of returning to their roots in the south, bringing drugs and crime with them. I spoke with one woman who had come back who fit this description and who told me she wasn't able to receive any support up North. Although staff consider the shelter block to be a neutral zone, the staff at UMD pointed to a surrounding four block radius where gang activity occurs. At the shelter they hold the opinion that such gang violence originally began in mostly black gangs, until immigrants such as Latinos were targeted. Now the violence is also perpetuated by Latinos. They pointed to the surrounding area and proceeded to try to convince me that I could never really be safe on its streets.
My first week was very much about comtemplating my own safety in that sense of Durham's image, which is largely propagated by the local media. If I felt so happy and welcomed as I walked into town, what made others feel the need to warn me? Would I too be picked off at random by gang thugs? Or as I had also been told, would the color of my skin make me invisible to that type of violence? I read an article in the local rag that gave credit for the negative stereotypes to the media in the Triangle area, which includes Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. It described how violence in Durham has been emphasized over other events. Let us not forget that this was also a place scarred by the news of the Duke lacrosse scandal. Hmm...could racism play a role here? Durham downtown was once a great bastion of strength in the black economy in the south. If I was willing to talk about violence and race, I was in the right place. It seemed I would learn more here than learning how and where to walk down the street.
So why come to this place to find the good fight? I was asked this question my very first week when I visited a class at Duke University all about immigrants rights and labor in the South. Tennessee, the friend who is currently hosting me, works at the Center for Documentary Studies. I shared with a group of undergrads that I was asking myself the same question: what can I learn about solutions is this wild southern state?
Initially, I was interested in the connection between a new population of worker's advocates and its legacy of civil rights work. It was in Greensboro, North Carolina where four black students sat down at a "whites only" lunch counter and didn't budge. Thus began student civil disobedience. Durham itself is known for having been one the first and most prominent black financial districts in the south; Black Wall Street is one of its historical sites. And I have literally become addicted to my morning black radio show, listeners calling in to discuss race as often as Whitney Houston's new divorce. North Carolina has a history of power, pride and struggle that I need to hear more about.
I am interested in how race intersects with labor issues in the South. On my route (read as "root") through the US thus far I have been really focused on trauma and human rights, delving only marginally into labor issues in Providence. I began by speaking to academics in the ivory tower of the North, then becoming more politically active as I worked my way down south. In this state, the worker's rights movement is leading the struggle for a just immigration policy.
North Carolina is a right-to-work state. It also has the lowest rate of unionism in the country. There are a couple of theories about this: one, that the violence stemming from the civil rights movement dissuaded more potential squirmishes resulting from pickets; also, solidarity didn't occur because of the isolationism in rural communities that caused people to feel dissasociated from each other. There's a great interview I heard on NPR down here about a book just published on female unionizers in North Carolina. Most notable was Ella Mae Wiggins, singer/songwriter for the movement, who worked in the Turpentine Mill in Loray Mills and joined the union after her four children died because she couldn't stay home to care for them. The author suggests that the stories are few and far between, with fear for being turned in still a huge reality for some.
North Carolina's economy had been based on agriculture, textiles, and the furniture market. We know how free trade works. With the institution of NAFTA in the 1990's, these jobs that were primarily held by African-Americans and low-income folks left the state, let's say they went to Mexico. Then folks in those towns employed by the same companies had wages so low, they could not survive. So they moved to North Carolina, creating a population of workers earning low wages and without the ability to vote on any of this.
North Carolina is the largest contracter of migrant workers in the country. There are maybe 95-100 Latino organizations in the state. As the state economy has moved away from manufacturing and agriculture, there are many existing low-paying jobs that only Latinos will do. The whole political and economic reality of the south creates rivalry and conflict between African-Americans and immigrants as they compete for low-wage jobs. Alliances are formed when you have collective conciousness about labor and organizing.
On May 1st, many of us congregated in the courtyard in front of the state capital in Raleigh. A large portion of the population were wearing bright yellow shirts that read, Justice for Smithfield, union organizers at the largest pork packing plant in the state. A team of young people organizing stood at the pulpit and each one made a speech. One teenager pointed to a bronze plaque on a monument behind him, depicting something like the fall of slavery in the south and cried in Spanish, "we will not be slaves because of the color of our skin!"
The idea that agricultural work has "always been about slavery" (i.e. no rights, low income, etc) is what my new friend Tony in SAF (Student Action for Farmworkers) is trying to change. SAF traces its history back to the 1970s, and was started by African-Americans laborers in the rural south. Today SAF also does a lot of work with immigrants and hopes to continue to build a black/brown alliance.
I talked further about ally-building in the state during an inspiring informational interview with Marisol and Tony of El Pueblo, Inc. El Pueblo is involved in political advocacy, public health and safety, and gang prevention for Latinos in North Carolina. They are based in Raleigh. Marisol is coordinator of the legislative campaign. With her deep stare and elegant poise she reminded me of a comic-book Latina superhero. She is one of the best spoken individuals I've met here.
Marisol stated that El Pueblo's campaign focuses on educating the state of North Carolina that we have a broken immigration system. The 2000 census that measured a period of ten years, gave information that led to the proclamation that North Carolina was the current "newly emerging Latino state". According to Marisol, this information fueled the fear that led directly to the anti-immigrant legislation. Because this is a primarily non-voting community, such legislation is hard to squash and voting registration campaigns similiar to the one I wrote about in Providence are extremely important.
When Latinos across the country started to feel more empowered to speak out in last year's wave of marches, folks in NC initially jumped on board. Now they are more afraid, and have been dropping out of the rallies. One reason is that this year door to door raids increased. Nearly 18 years after the census began, Marisol wonders about Latino youth turning 18 and voting in the next elections: will they perceive voting as power?
How does violence and race play into our current lunch counter leanings? As workers nationwide are discriminated against by the color of their skin and delegitimized by the term "illegal", we are reminded in the south of a time when Black people and communities were treated similarly. Marisol talked about the possibility of these peaceful movements shifting as people become more and more marginalized. The original Civil Right's Movement didn't have the same parameters with citizenship and voting rights, but they also weren't always peaceful. People were volunteering to "step up to the violence", which is a shift we too might experience someday soon. El Pueblo hears a denial of racism over and over again when politicians hide behind the phrase "this is about the law". Duke lacrosse scandal, case in point.
In North Carolina, as in other states, they make immigrant's lives more and more illegal so they can't survive here, and will eventually deport themselves, or disappear. Marisol labelled this nasty political tool the theory of attrition, and said that it is being shared between states. First they create a law making it illegal to get driver's licences. Then they make it impossible for landlords to have immigrants as tenants without reporting them. Finally, they lobby for measures that make it obligatory to report people seeking the police or medical care. The idea is that in six years, people will stop coming. Sounds like cancer running through a family, right? She said this could happen in Maine (it's already started).
I'm only a political lobbyist out of need. I really want to support people doing social work. How does the clinical work I do with Latinos directly relate to all this? Well, if you limit public safety and health for a whole group of people, the the safety and well-being of the whole state is in jeopardy.
Tony, from El Pueblo works in the Public Safety part of El Pueblo leading a campaign to educate Spanish speakers about the dangers and legal consequences of drunk driving, the biggest social problem involving Latinos in the state. It's about education and equality of the law. If you have no legal rights and you are young and angry, why would you want to respect the law? Except for Latinos, getting caught even once may mean deportation. And experience tells us that crminalizing this behavior, such as deportins an offender, doesn't necessarily mean they won't come back and re-offend.
We conversed about what we both know from our respective communities about people and addiction. If you are isolated from your community and feel alone and have that tendency, you are more likely to drink. The number one response I would get from my clients says as much: I was lonely and starting thinking about what happened in...fill in the blank. Tony confirmed that this also a result of young people leaving home, testing boundaries.
AGAPE is a gang prevention program that works with youth. They said that every week more and more Latinos are arrested for criminal activity. Although anti-immigrant groups want us to think they begin this violence, Latino youth joining gangs is a direct result of downward mobility. There is discrimination and exclusion in public schools that makes immigrant youth feel unwelcome and less likely to join activities. (I am using "Latino" and "immigrant" interchangibly because our conversation was about Latinos, but concerns all immigrants) One of two dangers can happen: they either quit school or are successfully recruited by gangs that provide fraternity and security. The media further fuels their alienation with it's assumption of dangerous Latino youth. AGAPE works with youth to create clubs.
As you can see, I am really intrigued by life and work in this state. Labor continues to be the revolutionary buzzword. And folks are doing some amazing work to organize around labor rights. Up to this point I have studied and learned from these great conversations. But I knew that I was coming to the south to literally get my hands dirty, to insert myself into this workforce. I felt that in order to appreciate what it might be like I needed to be connected to the people and the land in this state and in my own homeland. I needed to farm.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Recreating Thirty
Thirty sure is something, huh? Like a human collage, we go forth, collecting the pieces and finding where they fit.
We frantically begin the process of recycling the rest.
They put God on a billboard: tales of travel in Appalachia
I.
My father is a lifer in Maine. Born, raised, and still doing it. He spent the formative years of his life in Rockland, Maine, climbing in the nearby Cambden Hills to get a glimpse of the ships in the harbor and outrunning the taunts of vacationing city girls on rocky beaches. Surviving a brief stint in the South after being drafted out of college, he returned home to Maine to settle in the cool Penobscot Bay again. So it should come as no surprise that I was born with salt water in my blood. In fact, during my life in landlocked Bolivia, I would often comb the city streets expecting to find a hidden port at the end of some cobbled street. Once I climbed the highest mountain around and when I sensed sea salt in the arrid wind around me, knew it was time to go home.
During a recent phone conversation with my father, he assured me that the only way he could ever settle outside of a land without ocean would be to live in the mountains. I completely agree. All the Buddhist devotees and native guides in the mountains would concur: we are just spiritually in touch when we reach higher ground.
I took off from Washington, D.C. right before Passover, which is almost fitting, because I was seeking refuge, but not so much because Western Virginia is staunchly Christian. I had so many romanticized visions of what this trip would be like.....me, roughing it camping in the mountains, cuddled up in my little tent by a fire of my own making, living out my love affair with the mountains. Who needs other human beings, not me! Life partner, what's that? I laugh in the face of convention, just give me my woods!
My first lesson of travel into the United South was about understanding how the bus schedule works. You may think you can judge how long it takes to get to a certain location on a southern bound Greyhound bus by more or less how long it would take in a car. But you'd be missing the point. Thanks to southern hospitality, you can add fifteen minutes a stop for bathroom breaks, ten to recheck all tickets, five so everyone can finish their cigarettes, and another five to tell the guy with the overalls that no, he cannot bring his beer on the bus. And the people from places like New York are looking around at each other and checking the time on their cellphones.
Of course I loved it. A woman at the last stop summed it up when she said, "The hardest thing about taking the bus is havin' to say goodbye to good friends at the end." I talked politics with a roadie from Nashville, business with a tradesman from Cairo, Egypt, and divorce with just about everyone. I heard so much unsolicited advice I could have filled this blog with it. But I also got to make the trip into Appalachia with some really great human beings. There was this one woman, skinny as a rail and with really sharp features, hair pulled tight into a phony tail and white as bone. She had this daughter that sat near her, who looked just like her, only without the lines of struggle across her face. And I kept listening to her life accented, thinking about the little town she was going home to, scoffing at all the men trying to catch her eye. I loved her laughter , and thought about all the stories we probably have in common and the struggles that maybe we don't share but we could.
You don't usually ride this bus all the way West unless you can't afford another way. There was one man on the bus headed to Tucson (my current final destination). He struggled audibly for a breath and asked at every stop if this was the right bus to be on. Despite the tendency I have during long periods alone to serenade myself with everything I'm doing wrong with my life, I am glad I chose this route, because this is about the people I have come to be with. This is the journey I want to share. The people I serve mostly travel this way.
Western Virginia takes my breath away. It is immediately a land for postcards. Appalachia is all about little farms with red roofed barns and water wheels, vinyards and rusty trucks. Folks talking over fences at their neighbors and little country stores just over the next hill. The dogwood and azalea trees arabesque across the landscape, daintily pointing a finger towards the mountains.
My first stop was Charlottesville. I determined back in DC that I would need to first make it to mountain country before I set down an exact route through the mountains. I searched the internet, trying to determine how to make this trek through Appalachia, but finally I just decided I needed to arrive and talk to real folks about what people do. So I found a hostel in Charlottesville, Virginia called the Alexander House and hopped on the bus.
Charlottesville is cuddled up right inside of the Shenandoah Valley, towards the Northwest part of the state. It's vinyard country and it sure is purdy. The hostel where I stayed has this little white fence surrounding it, and is run entirely by this woman named Mare. I loved walking out of my hostel on a muggy evening and watching the full moon light up the hills. Sure made me get out my guitar.
Just across from my hostel is a Mom and Pop-type car rental. For $25, I had myself a great set of wheels. It didn't even matter that I returned the car late that evening; we just called up the owner on her cell and worked it out.
I took my car high up into the mountains in the Shenandoah, immediately engulfed by bright green land and a sense of my own strength. I ended up climbing Old Rag Mountain in Madison, a five hour circuit. The mountains in this part of the country are similiar to the mountains near Maine, except the dirt is so much redder, and the flowering dogwood trees climb up with you. There are other such surprises in the middle of this wood, chives and pink trees, and, I've heard, poisonous snakes and billy goats.
I went up the mountains for perspective, knowing inner peace brings presence to my work. Climbing is an important part of the journey; there are many decisions to be made. Do I drink the water from the stream? How do I keep my body strong over the next ridge? What is the next step I make? I thought a lot about the risks I take as a woman alone, the risks we all take in loving someone.
Descending once again into the valley, I had one goal: checking out the vinyards. I drove my car up and down these winding red roads past little yellow houses and musty dark brown cows in pastures, their big cow eyes taking in the sudden distraction. I would follow all the signs would grapes on them, nearly falling off the road, only to get to a closed fence or lose the path. You promised me grapes! I thought. But it was no use; all the vinyards were pretty deserted.
So I stopped into one of the country stores for an iced tea and some chatter. I had been thinking about how incredibly beautiful the farms I had passed were, and desiring to spend some lazy afternoons on their porch swings, under a quilt made by hand and a faithful little dog. So I walked up in my hiking boots to a couple of men sitting at a shabby little picnic table and asked what it's like to be a farmer in this part of the world. "It's hard", one guy answered, ajusting his thick yellow overall straps further onto his shoulders. He explained that everyone in these parts raises cattle for meat, and that most of the actual food produced goes toward their feed. It's hard to make any money and you have to be ready to work hard. I shared some stories of what we produce in Maine and put that dream to rest. Thank you, sir. Welc'm.
Leaving Charlottesville, I hopped on another sluggish bus and headed to the tiny town of Marion, planning to climb Mt. Rogers, the highest mountain in Virginia. It was 9:00 pm when my achey body descended the stairs into an abandoned parking lot and a Greyhound station the size of someone's living room. I waited for a couple of minutes and when I was convinced no cars or buses were ever coming, I called a taxi. The kid driving the cab couldn't have been more than twenty, and i'm pretty sure he has a hunting rifle in the back trunk. He got out of the car and I noticed his fatigues and the big wad of tobacco in his cheek. "I'm in the army too, you know," he bragged. Great. I feel so much better.
Marion is up in the mountains and chilly. I had done all my organizing of this trip amid the bus squallor, with my cell phone and trusty atlas in hand. I reserved a rental car and motel room so I had a way to start out. Then I planned to camp close to Mt. Rogers. Despite the chill in the air, I was ready.
I stayed in one of those motels that remind of a place that they shoot up in the movies, where the kicking in the doors would not be too difficult. There was a can of skoal under one of the beds and a cigarette burned hole in the bathroom curtain. Still, I love the luxury of being able to stretch out on starchy white sheets and watch junky TV until late all by myself. Whenever I've missed a flight somewhere I enjoy indulging.
I awoke with those pre-hiking, pre-coffee jitters I get when I just need to be on the road. My rental car would be a whole hour late. Oh well, I'll just watch this cop show and sleep a little. Well, my car turned out to be two hours late (and i was looking at at least a seven hour hike). Finally, I was picked up and transported to the car rental facility to wait for the car I was supposed to drive. I was escorted into the office by two sweet older gentlemen who physically resembled an old pair of comedians. The car I had reserved was there except that they didn't tell me on the phone that I would need a credit card to pick it up and the guy ten years younger than me who probably took this job because it was the only one around wouldn't cut me any slack. After several attempts to work something out, I ended up taking the lesson in stride and boarding a bus for Asheville, North Carolina. I really wanted to climb that mountain, but learning how to be okay with the message that things just aren't working is also an important skill I need to learn on this trip. Sometimes the message is bigger than stubborn me.
So I went winding my way through Virginia, Tennessee and finally into North Carolina, feeling the pressure of the hard bus seats on my hiking joints, smelling the stale smoky breath of my travelling companions. We descended into parts of Appalachia that can only be honored by silence, their living still-lifes of mining and farming work lending a glimpse at that hardship folks here live. I was enthralled by the beauty and drawn in by its meaning. I am left with the words of James Agee, from his book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, who struggled with documenting this culture: "Every fury on earth has been absorbed in time, as art, or as religion, or as authority in one form or another. The deadliest blow the enemy of the human soul can strike is to do fury honor."
My father is a lifer in Maine. Born, raised, and still doing it. He spent the formative years of his life in Rockland, Maine, climbing in the nearby Cambden Hills to get a glimpse of the ships in the harbor and outrunning the taunts of vacationing city girls on rocky beaches. Surviving a brief stint in the South after being drafted out of college, he returned home to Maine to settle in the cool Penobscot Bay again. So it should come as no surprise that I was born with salt water in my blood. In fact, during my life in landlocked Bolivia, I would often comb the city streets expecting to find a hidden port at the end of some cobbled street. Once I climbed the highest mountain around and when I sensed sea salt in the arrid wind around me, knew it was time to go home.
During a recent phone conversation with my father, he assured me that the only way he could ever settle outside of a land without ocean would be to live in the mountains. I completely agree. All the Buddhist devotees and native guides in the mountains would concur: we are just spiritually in touch when we reach higher ground.
I took off from Washington, D.C. right before Passover, which is almost fitting, because I was seeking refuge, but not so much because Western Virginia is staunchly Christian. I had so many romanticized visions of what this trip would be like.....me, roughing it camping in the mountains, cuddled up in my little tent by a fire of my own making, living out my love affair with the mountains. Who needs other human beings, not me! Life partner, what's that? I laugh in the face of convention, just give me my woods!
My first lesson of travel into the United South was about understanding how the bus schedule works. You may think you can judge how long it takes to get to a certain location on a southern bound Greyhound bus by more or less how long it would take in a car. But you'd be missing the point. Thanks to southern hospitality, you can add fifteen minutes a stop for bathroom breaks, ten to recheck all tickets, five so everyone can finish their cigarettes, and another five to tell the guy with the overalls that no, he cannot bring his beer on the bus. And the people from places like New York are looking around at each other and checking the time on their cellphones.
Of course I loved it. A woman at the last stop summed it up when she said, "The hardest thing about taking the bus is havin' to say goodbye to good friends at the end." I talked politics with a roadie from Nashville, business with a tradesman from Cairo, Egypt, and divorce with just about everyone. I heard so much unsolicited advice I could have filled this blog with it. But I also got to make the trip into Appalachia with some really great human beings. There was this one woman, skinny as a rail and with really sharp features, hair pulled tight into a phony tail and white as bone. She had this daughter that sat near her, who looked just like her, only without the lines of struggle across her face. And I kept listening to her life accented, thinking about the little town she was going home to, scoffing at all the men trying to catch her eye. I loved her laughter , and thought about all the stories we probably have in common and the struggles that maybe we don't share but we could.
You don't usually ride this bus all the way West unless you can't afford another way. There was one man on the bus headed to Tucson (my current final destination). He struggled audibly for a breath and asked at every stop if this was the right bus to be on. Despite the tendency I have during long periods alone to serenade myself with everything I'm doing wrong with my life, I am glad I chose this route, because this is about the people I have come to be with. This is the journey I want to share. The people I serve mostly travel this way.
Western Virginia takes my breath away. It is immediately a land for postcards. Appalachia is all about little farms with red roofed barns and water wheels, vinyards and rusty trucks. Folks talking over fences at their neighbors and little country stores just over the next hill. The dogwood and azalea trees arabesque across the landscape, daintily pointing a finger towards the mountains.
My first stop was Charlottesville. I determined back in DC that I would need to first make it to mountain country before I set down an exact route through the mountains. I searched the internet, trying to determine how to make this trek through Appalachia, but finally I just decided I needed to arrive and talk to real folks about what people do. So I found a hostel in Charlottesville, Virginia called the Alexander House and hopped on the bus.
Charlottesville is cuddled up right inside of the Shenandoah Valley, towards the Northwest part of the state. It's vinyard country and it sure is purdy. The hostel where I stayed has this little white fence surrounding it, and is run entirely by this woman named Mare. I loved walking out of my hostel on a muggy evening and watching the full moon light up the hills. Sure made me get out my guitar.
Just across from my hostel is a Mom and Pop-type car rental. For $25, I had myself a great set of wheels. It didn't even matter that I returned the car late that evening; we just called up the owner on her cell and worked it out.
I took my car high up into the mountains in the Shenandoah, immediately engulfed by bright green land and a sense of my own strength. I ended up climbing Old Rag Mountain in Madison, a five hour circuit. The mountains in this part of the country are similiar to the mountains near Maine, except the dirt is so much redder, and the flowering dogwood trees climb up with you. There are other such surprises in the middle of this wood, chives and pink trees, and, I've heard, poisonous snakes and billy goats.
I went up the mountains for perspective, knowing inner peace brings presence to my work. Climbing is an important part of the journey; there are many decisions to be made. Do I drink the water from the stream? How do I keep my body strong over the next ridge? What is the next step I make? I thought a lot about the risks I take as a woman alone, the risks we all take in loving someone.
Descending once again into the valley, I had one goal: checking out the vinyards. I drove my car up and down these winding red roads past little yellow houses and musty dark brown cows in pastures, their big cow eyes taking in the sudden distraction. I would follow all the signs would grapes on them, nearly falling off the road, only to get to a closed fence or lose the path. You promised me grapes! I thought. But it was no use; all the vinyards were pretty deserted.
So I stopped into one of the country stores for an iced tea and some chatter. I had been thinking about how incredibly beautiful the farms I had passed were, and desiring to spend some lazy afternoons on their porch swings, under a quilt made by hand and a faithful little dog. So I walked up in my hiking boots to a couple of men sitting at a shabby little picnic table and asked what it's like to be a farmer in this part of the world. "It's hard", one guy answered, ajusting his thick yellow overall straps further onto his shoulders. He explained that everyone in these parts raises cattle for meat, and that most of the actual food produced goes toward their feed. It's hard to make any money and you have to be ready to work hard. I shared some stories of what we produce in Maine and put that dream to rest. Thank you, sir. Welc'm.
Leaving Charlottesville, I hopped on another sluggish bus and headed to the tiny town of Marion, planning to climb Mt. Rogers, the highest mountain in Virginia. It was 9:00 pm when my achey body descended the stairs into an abandoned parking lot and a Greyhound station the size of someone's living room. I waited for a couple of minutes and when I was convinced no cars or buses were ever coming, I called a taxi. The kid driving the cab couldn't have been more than twenty, and i'm pretty sure he has a hunting rifle in the back trunk. He got out of the car and I noticed his fatigues and the big wad of tobacco in his cheek. "I'm in the army too, you know," he bragged. Great. I feel so much better.
Marion is up in the mountains and chilly. I had done all my organizing of this trip amid the bus squallor, with my cell phone and trusty atlas in hand. I reserved a rental car and motel room so I had a way to start out. Then I planned to camp close to Mt. Rogers. Despite the chill in the air, I was ready.
I stayed in one of those motels that remind of a place that they shoot up in the movies, where the kicking in the doors would not be too difficult. There was a can of skoal under one of the beds and a cigarette burned hole in the bathroom curtain. Still, I love the luxury of being able to stretch out on starchy white sheets and watch junky TV until late all by myself. Whenever I've missed a flight somewhere I enjoy indulging.
I awoke with those pre-hiking, pre-coffee jitters I get when I just need to be on the road. My rental car would be a whole hour late. Oh well, I'll just watch this cop show and sleep a little. Well, my car turned out to be two hours late (and i was looking at at least a seven hour hike). Finally, I was picked up and transported to the car rental facility to wait for the car I was supposed to drive. I was escorted into the office by two sweet older gentlemen who physically resembled an old pair of comedians. The car I had reserved was there except that they didn't tell me on the phone that I would need a credit card to pick it up and the guy ten years younger than me who probably took this job because it was the only one around wouldn't cut me any slack. After several attempts to work something out, I ended up taking the lesson in stride and boarding a bus for Asheville, North Carolina. I really wanted to climb that mountain, but learning how to be okay with the message that things just aren't working is also an important skill I need to learn on this trip. Sometimes the message is bigger than stubborn me.
So I went winding my way through Virginia, Tennessee and finally into North Carolina, feeling the pressure of the hard bus seats on my hiking joints, smelling the stale smoky breath of my travelling companions. We descended into parts of Appalachia that can only be honored by silence, their living still-lifes of mining and farming work lending a glimpse at that hardship folks here live. I was enthralled by the beauty and drawn in by its meaning. I am left with the words of James Agee, from his book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, who struggled with documenting this culture: "Every fury on earth has been absorbed in time, as art, or as religion, or as authority in one form or another. The deadliest blow the enemy of the human soul can strike is to do fury honor."
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