restingmotion

Three Things Thursday

1.  It is a cool, gray, drizzly day here in Knoxville, although there was a brief bit of sunshine.  It would be a perfect day for working in the flower beds except that the drainage work is finally being done in the back of my yard after a long series of frustrating delays.  Once again there are heavy machines and men in boots mucking about and digging things up.  Admittedly I've let that section of the flower bed go to weed.  It was a hot summer after all, and I knew the area would have to be dug up, so it hardly seemed worth the sweat and effort,  knowing that any fruits of my labors would be destroyed. I've been waiting for this job since June and I am happy that the digging and hardscapes are finally complete (fingers crossed).

 

2.  Last night's concert at the Knoxville Museum of Art was stunning in its beauty.  Our fabulous young concertmaster, Gabriel Lefkowitz performed Brahms' First Violin Sonata in G Major, bringing the  soothing lyricism of the piece to life, his violin singing with a gentle effusiveness, as if all the cares of the world could be washed away in the music.  The second half of the program, Schubert's "Trout" Quintet, was also beautifully performed and it was an experience altogether different from the one at the square room a week ago, even though two of the musicians were the same.  This time the music had its own life, the individual musicians indistinguishable, as if there were a profound conversation going on between them, the music melding to become something with its own life and presence, where as the previous week's concert I had felt like I was hearing three distinct musicians playing the same piece.  It was as if a couple of people were talking about the same thing and drawing the same conclusions, but although they were "hearing" each other, they weren't really listening, the experience was not transformative.  Last night's performance was something else all together, five musicians coming together to create something greater than themselves. If you are in Knoxville and you have a chance to go to tonight's performance, go.

 

3.  I am reading Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend.  Actually I've gotten a kind of slow start, not because I don't love the novel, I do but because I started it on my kindle and now I've moved to a paperback copy and have found myself needing to step back, and retrace my steps.  I don't believe I had fully realized how different my experience of reading is, and how different my perceptions and reactions, between reading on the kindle, versus reading an actual book.  This has made me step back and pause somewhat.  I knew that I liked certain kinds of books better on one or the other, and that if I loved a book on the kindle, I might buy a physical copy as well, and end up rereading it as it always seemed different on paper.  But only now am I beginning to understand the repercussions, and appreciate how the difference affects my thoughts and relationship to the material being read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now for Something Pretty...

When I was sorting through photographs recently I discovered a small cache of pictures from my trip to New York with Liana last February. Included were some snaps from the Vigée Le Brun exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum.   Since I had recently written about a different visit to an art museum, and a different kind of painting, it seems like we are due for a bit of an antidote.   Even though that trip was over 7 months ago, I thought I would share the photos I took here now.

 

I had forgotten that the Vigée Le Brun exhibit was in New York.  We had gone to the Met to see something else (which I will write about later), but once I saw the banner I remembered that Frances had a wonderful post about Le Brun, here, and I was eager to see the exhibit. But by this time, we were quite tired (or at least I was quite tired) and I was not as intrepid as Frances.  There was no listening to museum tours, no thoughtful analysis, just a meandering look and a pause.  If you are looking for a more informed post, follow the link above.

The photo above is of the most formal portrait that I photographed.  It is a commission for the marquise de Rougé, and she is shown with her two sons and her dear friend, the marquise de Pezay. It is an exception to the artist's oeuvre, and yet, even in this formal composition, it captures everything I love about Le Brun's portraits.  Notice the warmth of the composition, the love and affection in the faces, and the fact that they are painted with a warm and understanding eye.  The composition is classical in form, and yet the subjects are anything but.  Here is maternal affection, friendship, loyalty, love for and by children, captured seemingly simply, but in reality not such a simple task, in a portrait that hits all the right notes for a commissioned work, and yet moves beyond them in its very humanity.

Then let us move from the formal to the personal.  This very intimate portrait is of the artist's daughter, Julie Le Brun.  Its very nature is both personal and introspective. And yet, in its simplicity there are layers of meaning. We see the child in profile; she sees herself (as do we) in not quite full frontal, perhaps three-quarter, profile.  In this view we see both the child as she is and the child as she perceives herself to be, while simultaneously seeing the innocence of childhood, of the child as we wish her to be, and the same time that preternatural wisdom of childhood, an aspect of childhood that does not always make us comfortable, reminding us that children are perhaps aware of something which we have forgotten (and are eager enough to sooth over and deny).  It is always hard, in a portrait, be it a painting, or in a more modern sense, a photograph, to capture the multifaceted nature that each of us possesses, and yet Vigée Le Brun shows us something of that here,  of the self, internal and external, visible and invisible, and how they are both interrelated and reflected in our lives.

A later picture of the same daughter, as if startled by an unseen or unanticipated visitor. The portrait was modelled on Santerre's portrait of Susanna at her bath, and it was a familiar subject that was to some extent popular and increasingly secularized in the eighteenth century.  Notice that this portrait is considerably less innocent than some earlier versions, where, although the voyeurs were far from innocent, Susanna herself is often portrayed with a lack of awareness.  This Susanna is aware that she is being watched,  and Le Brun perfectly captures that sense of being on the cusp of adulthood, of that almost liminal state where a child is both still child and yet adult, in fact actually neither.  We must also remember that a girl of 12 or 13 was considered a woman and could be married, even though we find that shocking today.  It is a painting of great tenderness, yes, and of both maternal affection for, and awareness of,  the child that was and the woman that will be.

And lastly there is this portrait of a small boy with a gun.  Boys are not as common in Vigée Le Brun's paintings, and as I recall the identity of the boy has not been established.  This painting has haunted my thoughts (yes it is true, even though I had forgotten that I had taken the photograph).  It is the boys eyes that have stayed with me, soulful childish eyes, and the reminder as seen in the gun, that the world intrudes. The utter humanity, affection, and love is evident, as it is evident in all of her paintings, and although I find the painting unsettling I do not know that the subject would have been considered unsettling at the time.   And yet....

 

Contrast the boy with the girl above.  Look at the sheer affection with which each is portrayed.  Here is humanity in all its glory and all its weaknesses, captured with compassion and love and yes, an intentional, albeit subtle, subversion of form and expectation  that continues to enlighten and confound the viewer even today.

 

 

 

A Walk Through Market Square

The best laid plans go oft awry....

Instead of a post, here are some photos from my morning walk through the farmer's market:

A breakfast taco of eggs and avocado

eaten sitting on a bench facing this arch,

 

late summer bounty,

the meeting of old and new (and football season),

and autumn abundance.

Returning to my car, I was entranced by the juxtaposition of color, texture, and form in the meeting of these buildings.

 

Have a lovely weekend.

A Concert

What is music?  Don't worry, I'm not going to define it now.  In fact I'm probably simply gong to leave that question open and ask more questions still.  More exactly I suppose, what is the experience of music?

 

I don't have an answer, none of us do, truthfully, although we can and do experience music, and I suspect that the experience changes constantly.  There are no two performances that are alike, no two experiences that are alike, even if one is sitting at home in one's favorite chair listening to one's favorite recording.  Each time we come to the music, we bring something different with us.  The experience is always more than ourselves, more than the musicians, more even the air in the room, but all of these things combine for form an experience that, at its best is a kind of relationship with something both greater than and deeply essential to ourselves.

 

Wednesday I went to a small chamber concert downtown.  The hall was small, lunch was served and the audience was seated at tables around the stage.  The atmosphere was friendly and somewhat intimate.  I realized how much I missed this kind of small venue, the sense of being a part of the music that it entails.  And the concert was lovely.  The first piece, Beethoven's String Trio No. 3 in G major was lovely and performed with skill.

 

And yet there was a point where I distanced myself somewhat, where I was enjoying the music, but where I was also standing back from myself, watching the musicians.  They are all excellent, and the piece was well played, but what I missed at that moment was that sense of relationship that carries into the music when you hear it performed by some quartets and trios, by chamber groups who live by playing chamber music, who spend extensive time playing the piece together, and who play with a sense of attunement that adds another dimension to the work.  I didn't mean this as a criticism, just as a reflection on something I sometimes missed, a different kind of listening.  It struck me that the musicians never looked at each other, as if they were each playing their role, and the piece would come together, which it did.  There is nothing wrong with this, and yet all of life is a relationship, a relationship of experience, or being, of creation.  And I suppose, like life, there are different types of relationship, even in music.  Again, I'm not trying to criticize, only to explore, and explore my own understandings more than anything else.

 

I still enjoyed the concert.  Far from being sad, I was thinking how lucky I have been, how lucky that I have been privileged to hear such a wide variety of musicians, playing in such a wide variety of settings.  I was also thinking how playing as a member of a symphony orchestra is different from playing as a soloist, and as playing as a part of a quartet (or trio or quintet).  In both the orchestra and the chamber group it is not about you per se, but how you play and interact with the group, but the dynamics are completely different.   And great ensembles develop their own personality, their own space within the music.

Even then however, the experience involves more than the musicians.  Although the musicians are critical, either the musicians, or the audience, can make or break the total experience. Wednesday's concert became more than 3 or 5 people on a stage, playing music together.  The musicians were excellent, the audience was appreciative, and it was in this relationship between the two that the true music took place. 

 

During the second half of the performance, when the Wind Quintet was performing an arrangement of the Dolly Suite by Faure, my fingers could not stay still, instead they were rapidly seeking out the keys on the imaginary piano in my lap, experiencing the music audibly, emotionally, and physically. And so I listened to the music, but some part of me injected myself, rather than my mind stepping back, my fingers stepped in, and this changed the equation.  This change was not necessarily bad, or good; it simply altered my experience of the music.  But  don't we all react this way to some extent or another?  Something resonates, and some part of our soul runs toward that connection, dragging us behind willy-nilly.  And that is an essential part of the experience of music, why all cultures, all peoples, all times, seek it out and share it amongst themselves.

 

And that brings me back to my question: what is the experience of music?  And is any one experience any better, or more powerful than another?  What is the role of the listener in the equation?  The simple truth is no experience can be duplicated.  So shouldn't we enjoy each experience for the joy it brings, even when our minds wander slightly?  How has life changed my ability to listen?   Has my heart grown softer, or more hardened?  What perambulations will my thoughts take the next time?  How will I experience the music? How will you?

 

 

This and That

I've been so wrapped up in a couple of things the last four or five days that it feels now like I really can't focus on anything. That probably isn't completely true; I am getting things done after all, and in order to do something, anything, you have to be able to focus at least some little bit.  Yet I still feel scattered and some part of me wants to solve the problem by doing something else -- after all getting things done seems to be the secular religion of modern life.  It is easy to tell ourselves we are good as long as we are getting things done, and to feel like we are somehow slipping if we just let time wander by.  But I suspect this feeling is not so much an inability to focus but a process of sorting out, although I can't quite put my finger on what exactly is being sorted.

So what have I been doing that occupied all my attention?

 

PHOTOS

The big time-suck was sorting out photos and putting them in albums, although that wasn't what I originally set out to do at all.  I was simply rearranging furniture in the guest room, and I had other plans for the end of the week.  But in order to move a bookcase I had to unload it.  Then it seemed like such a shame to put the big box of photos back on the shelf along with the pile of empty photo albums just waiting for those photos to magically arrange themselves on the pristine pages.  I decided the time had come to either finish unfinished things or let them go, and this thing needed finishing.

It took far longer than I would have liked.  First there were the old albums that were falling apart, the one's that were not archival quality, that my younger self purchased at Hallmark, the albums that were not doing anything pretty to my photos.  Those photos all had to be transferred to newer albums.  And then there were the photos that never made it to albums for one reason or another, usually because George had started exploring black and white photography and had turned a guest bathroom into a darkroom, but it would sometimes be two or three years before he would have photos from a trip ready, by which time my own motivation had waned.

 

And yet this proved to be a good time to sort through that previous life and revisit it, to explore the healing balm of memory when it is not held too tightly out of fear. It was a good life, and it was good to see the young woman I was then and reflect on the woman I have become, am becoming.  By the time I had finished with three decades worth of photographic memories, I was sick of glue dots and photo squares, sick of the process, but then I moved on and gathered and sorted the digital photos as well, the markers of this new life and ordered prints for a new album.  I hadn't originally thought I would do that, create a new album.  I was wrong.  I like paper.  I may not revisit those photos frequently, but for now at least I like knowing they are available.

 

 MUSIC

Friday night I went to my first symphony concert of the season.  I was tired and somewhat cranky, lost in my own internal monologue, and not eager to go out.  But I knew I should see people, knew I should let the music carry me away, knew I should get out of my head.  Sometimes I do think it there may be benefits to not living one's life so deeply wound up in one's own mental peregrinations, but then without my swirling thoughts I wouldn't be me.  

Suffice it to say the concert was beautiful although I feel incapable writing of my normal review.  I've heard the pianist, Orion Weiss play before, both as a soloist and in chamber performances, and have long been a fan.  His nuanced playing of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #3 in D minor was breathtaking, as was the interaction between the soloist and the orchestra, and the dancing flow of the music.  The performance played up the depths of this piece, a piece that is often overplayed.  The orchestra also did a magical job with Tchaikovsky's Symphony #5, another piece with great lyricism and emotional depth, which is not always adequately explored in performance.  I know the musicians and our new music director are still getting to know each other but I went home smiling, and looking forward to the upcoming season.

 

READING

 

 

I finished reading Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life.  I had actually started it in June, but only got half way through it before my mom arrived.  Somehow, it is a book that takes too much out of the reader, and I couldn't read it while Margaret was here, so put it aside and started over.  It held up surprisingly well to rereading, and suspect it will be worth reading again at some future point, but not again immediately.  It is a difficult book, both lyrical and gentle and yet simultaneously brutal and emotionally wrenching.  I know that many feel extremely manipulated, and although I think it is part of the role of fiction to manipulate our emotions and our understandings, this book is particularly difficult and I can see why many struggle with it.  And yet, despite some issues, I believe Yanagihara has nailed the unimaginable struggle in the psyche of anyone who has survived significant childhood trauma, and who, even after overcoming it and perhaps even living a successful life, still struggles with that trauma as an adult, that unimaginable inner voice of the small child whose sense of self was so compromised before there was any opportunity to build self defenses.  That small voice, that crying child, that sense of being evil, wicked, dirty, wrong, whatever you call it -- it never goes away completely, no matter how much the rational mind tries to convince one otherwise.  If we could understand only this, perhaps we could change the world.

 

There is more to the book than just this, much of it even more evident on the second reading.  I highly recommend it, but not as casual reading, and not if you are not willing to be pulled in directions you may prefer not to go.  It is not a book that can be forgotten once it has been read.

 

 

 

 

 

Word-less Wednesday

I've been distracted, and although I do have things I want to write about, I do not want to write about them right now.  Fortunately, although it is still wickedly hot, the mornings have been cooler, and rather than writing in the mornings, I have been out in the garden tackling the signs of neglect.

The habaneros are ripening nicely, and I think I've finally found the right spot, a spot where I can put in 2 or 3 pepper plants, and perhaps a tomato or two.  Next year I'll put up a teepee for the tomatoes and give it a shot.

I am especially grateful however for the long season of crape myrtles and hydrangeas and the constant push of knockout roses, which continue to brighten the flower beds.

 

I'll admit that I am a wimp, and this summer was just too darn hot for me.  Admittedly I also experienced a gluten-related incident and had a raging case of dermatitis herpetiformis, which would become aggravated in the heat.  It is amazing how quickly a weed population can proliferate given nearly 4 weeks of neglect in high summer. 

Oh well, at least the flower beds looked green, and some of the weeds had pretty blossoms as well.  But I am mostly grateful that my flowers soldiered on and continued to bloom despite the invading hordes.

I

A Knitter's Rug

 

In my house the main living area is fairly open,  and although there are 4 bedrooms in the house, the master is front and center.

 This was desirable when George was alive, partially because we moved from an open floor-plan house to this house, and partially because if he didn't see something it didn't exist and he worried.  Of course the master bedroom is there, but separate.  There is a door.  I have no problem closing that door when privacy is needed, but I have also learned that, unless someone is using the room, I do not like having that door closed, even when entertaining.  The positioning of that room and that door, almost at the spoke of the flow of the public areas seems like an affront,  a negative energy flow.  I have no trouble closing other doors, doors off hallways at the front of the house or upstairs, only this door. 

 

As you might surmise, this posed a problem.  On the one hand a bedroom is  a private space: Cheryl Mendolson, in Home Comforts, calls it the Den of Nakedness;  Martha Stewart, in her Homekeeping Handbook, says she eschews decoration in bedrooms.   On the other hand, this bedroom is in a semi-public space, and I am uncomfortable both with the idea of it being too private, but also too public.  What to do?  What to do?

 

It seemed to me that I needed a more intentional approach, and yes, a little decoration.  Truthfully, I've always had some kind of decoration in bedrooms, a painting, a sculpture, a vase or vessel, for what is life without beauty.  Art, craft, handwork, these are the human touches that, for me at least, bring a sense of comfort and security.  But the bedroom was kind of a mishmash of things that worked, but didn't really "spark joy" to use another popular phrase.  And so one of my summer projects has been to pull that bedroom together in such a way that I would be happy with the door open, but also happy with the door closed.

 

It has been an ongoing project, with each change or improvement sparking other ideas, other refinements.  Yesterday the new rug arrived.  It had been ordered long ago, and although I had tried to keep it in mind as I fiddled and moved things around, I fretted.  Well, I'll always find something to fret about if given the chance.

 

First, the detail shot.

Hopefully you can see why I love this rug, I who knit, and sew and love handwork.   I also love color and pattern, but sometimes color and pattern are too much, and this most certainly can be true in a bedroom.  The rug is gray, but a gray that is neither warm nor cool; my photo can't capture the true color, although it is probably closest where the edges of shadow begin to blend into the light.

 

 

So which is it?  Private space or public space, or a marriage of both?  This photo is taken from the dining room looking in, although I am not likely to have all the lights on routinely when I am entertaining.  Darkness and light can also define a space, perhaps as effectively as a door.  It remains a work in progress.  There are still some mismatched pieces, and I may not need both a bench and an ottoman.  Or perhaps I do.  I find that I love the play of shadows captured in this photograph. There are paint swatches on the wall, although neither of the colors shown in this photo will be the final color of this room.  You see Tikka in her favorite spot.  From this vantage point she can see and hear all comings and goings, inside and out.  I suppose then, in its public aspect, this is Tikka's room.

 

 

 

 

Diving Into The Wreck

I remember the first time I saw a painting by Anselm Kiefer.  We were in the Albright Knox museum in Buffalo NY and the ginormous painting was in a stairwell.  We turned a corner and there it was.  George headed up the stairs, somewhat oblivious I suppose, and was surprised, upon reaching the next floor, to find that I was no longer with him.  I was rooted in place, awed and overwhelmed.  In fact, George had to come back down the stairs and wait patiently while I took in that painting, even though as far as he was concerned it was just an enormous, and enormously ugly, painting.  Museums trips were often like that with us.  George would have to wait patiently while I slowly took in a single piece of art, and I would patiently traipse from room to room with George who always eager to see more and more, after I had already surpassed my absorption limit and was museumed-out.  It was good for both of us.

 

I still have that reaction every time I see a painting by Kiefer.  They are immediately recognizable, and to me they have a palpable physical presence that extends far beyond their place on the wall.  I am also aware that this feeling is not necessarily shared by all.  Kiefer's paintings are not beautiful.  If I had all the money in the world, I would still not want a Kiefer on my wall.  They are, in fact, almost painful to see, drawing us deeply into the darker sides of human nature, to the stranger that exists in all of us.  And yet, or perhaps because of this, they are extremely necessary.  Art is not about pretty escapism, although it can be, art is about something far deeper, far more elemental.  I would say art shows us the path to grace, but that path is not an easy path, and to get there we must also face the fact that we are not who we pretend to be.

 

I went to SFMOMA while I was in San Francisco.  I never intended to wander through the entire museum, just to stop into two or three galleries.  I did not go in search of Kiefer, but upon arrival that is where I found myself, and in fact, it is where I spent most of my time.  I did step outside of the moment long enough to take some photos, although my quick smart-phone photos do not do the works justice, hoping I might eventually pull my thoughts together.   I am not writing about the works in the order I saw them, or even all of what I saw or thought on that day.  It would be too much, even for me.

 

 As I walked into the gallery, this painting drew me toward it, although it was not the first painting I saw. Notice the Wagnerian theme, the twelve pillars of straw, like torches, burning yet unconsumed as they tower above a world in ruin, a culture consumed.

It is significant that the pillars are made of straw, and that Kiefer has incorporated actual straw into the work.  We like to think we are building for the future, that we are building of stone, and that the stone pillars we erect are built on a bedrock of truth and justice.  But this is actually rarely the case.  These are the stories we tell ourselves as we congratulate ourselves on the back, only to be shocked when the world burns around us and we see how ephemeral we and our beliefs really are.

All of this filtered into my first impressions of the painting.  And then I looked at the title, actually later, after walking around the gallery a bit.  It reminded me also of the painting above (the name of which I did not write down).   The portraits are all of great German thinkers: philosophers, writers, novelists.  They symbolize the ideas on which German culture is founded, and prides itself.  But they also all symbolize ideas that were taken and twisted into something outside their original intent to fuel the Nazi ideology.

 

Kiefer's art specifically focuses on German culture, and the perversion of that culture under the Nazis.  It is both historical but morally important, and it is relevant to far more than just Nazism.  All of human history has its dark sides, all civilization, all religions even, can be and have been turned into something they were never meant to be, all in the name of good.  Kiefer reminds us to be vigilant. 

I personally believe that people are good, that most of our lives are good, and I am pretty happy most of the time.  But happiness is not a drug, and we must remember our darker selves.  Only by acknowledging the darkness can we ensure that the light will continue.  Looking at these paintings I am reminded that we all understand ourselves, and our world, our pasts and our futures based on our own experiences and understandings.  History is filtered through the eyes of the historians.  We need primary sources, but it is rare that we find sources from both sides of any human struggle.  The story of history is often told by the victors, and it is written and rewritten time and time again.  We must remember that it was always a choice, and that there always was, and always will be a might-have-been.  Cling to the joy, the longing for cleanliness and purity and innocence, but do so with honesty and vigilance, lest the tide carry us away.

 

The title of this post comes from a poem by Adrienne Rich.  I last read the poem quite a few years ago, but it popped into my head while I was writing this post.  I will share it with you here:

 

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.

Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

 

    -- Adrienne Rich

 

A Review of Hillbilly Elegy

I finished Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance about three weeks ago and it has taken me this long to be able to figure out what I wanted to say about the book.  I picked it up knowing full well it was about the pervasive poverty of a class of poor white people  in failing or failed industrial towns in the mid-west.  I knew the rough outline of Vance's life.  I knew that it was not about Appalachia, or at least what is today deemed as cultural Appalachia, which is limited to the southern and central regions of the range of a far larger area called Appalachia, an area that extends across eastern Kentucky and up into Southern New York.  And this region too, is different, culturally, from the areas surrounding it in many ways.   Middletown Ohio, where Vance grew up is not in Appalachia, although it is in what is called Greater Appalachia,  a term that has gained considerable currency since the publication of Colin Woodward's book, American Nation.  Woodward tracked culture based on migration patterns and thought that specific regional cultures had developed based on those migrations.  And the area called greater Appalachia was heavily populated by an influx of settlers from Northern Ireland, Northern England and the Scottish lowlands, a population that settled the area not only known culturally as Appalachia today, but up into southern Ohio, the Ozarks, and the central hill country of Texas.  I grew up in "greater Appalachia" and I can tell you there is far more cultural similarity between Texas, at least the part of central Texas in which I grew up, and East Tennessee, than there is between East Tennessee and the deep south, or even the greater Appalachian part of Texas and other regions of Texas, which Collins, I believe rightly, puts in different cultural regions.

 

But this book isn't really about Appalachia, and although Vance considers himself a hillbilly, and his family background is definitely Appalachian, even though his grandparents had moved north before his parents were born,  the book isn't really about Appalachian culture.  It is about a subset of that culture, actually about a subset of American culture, because the problems Vance describes are widespread, and affect a far larger portion of our population than we would like to admit, whether their origins are hillbilly or not.  The book is a memoir, it is Vance's memoir, and although he is young, and there are issues in this book that I do not feel he has fully reconciled, it is a book that explores a problem that plagues our country, a problem that the majority of us do not really see or understand, and it is told from the perspective of someone who has experienced both sides and chosen to share his experience with us, hoping that we might learn something from it.

 

I still believe the book is an important book about the current state of American culture, I believe it is important even if it doesn't address my segment of American culture, or yours.   Not all Appalachian families are like Vance's.  Not all working class families, or poor families are Appalachian.  But the problems Vance describes are widespread, and it is rare that we find someone who has lived through it and not only survived, but succeeded by the standards of successful America, and who is able and willing to tell the tale in a way that, much as we may not like it, we can understand.  In Vance's story of his childhood, and his struggles, we see a microcosm of the various trends that are indeed plaguing poor white American families.  Although it may not be Vance's intention, I see the point of reading this book being to open our eyes and get beyond labels and look at a problem without anger, and without blame (because although yes the government has abandoned people, and yes we have a long history of disenfranchising the poor, a history that dates back to well before this country was founded, a history that was supported by our founding fathers) because it is a problem of complex and multilayered causes with far-reaching effects, a problem that carries catastrophic implications for our country and the American Dream as we imagine it to be.

 

I can't say that Vance's experience echoes my own in any important sense, although there are definite parallels in our backgrounds and experiences.  Nor can I say that I fully understand where he is coming from, or even if there are clear answers to the many questions his story presents.  But I can say that his story has helped me understand a few things that I have encountered since I moved to Tennessee, even though his experience is in Ohio, not here.  There are aspects of the culture he talks about that Ihat I have encountered, things that I suspect are intrinsic to a specific culture or area or mind-set, attitudes and biases that I did not encounter when I lived in New York, even though I did volunteer work with economically similar segments of the population in both locations. 

 

And although Vance wants people, his people, poor white people, to accept responsibility for their own actions and the lies they tell themselves, I do not believe this is an adequate response.  It is admittedly part of the problem.  And part of that problem also comes down to blaming one's ancestry.  Genetics are only a part of who we are.  Many, if not the majority of Scots-Irish Americans, have not succumbed to the pitfalls experienced by Vance's people, but ancestry can also be a crutch and an excuse. But just as the answers do not lie completely in the hands of the poor themselves, they are also only partially the responsibility of the government.  The solution, if there is to be one,  also lies in the hands of the middle class and the wealthy, in the hands of the majority of us, the readers of this book.  We like to tell ourselves that we live in a land of opportunity, and yet a significant portion of our children have little to no access to that opportunity.  Those who have opportunity often ignore, or shield themselves, from the reality that many do not.

 

Hillbilly Elegy is an autobiography of a person who has come a long way, but who hasn't yet come to terms with everything that his journey has involved or what it all means.  He is still a young man after all, and much of his story still feels raw and unsettled.  But the book offers a sobering look at parts of our culture that we perhaps would prefer not to see.  It is easy to blame the poor, the jobless, the drug- or alcohol-addicted. It is easy to ignore them and pretend like they are irrelevant to our lives.  Except they aren't, and their children aren't.  Their children, as much as our own, are the future of our country, are our children's future.

 

How can you expect anyone to have any hope, to believe that there actually can be a better life, when all they see is decay, chaos, and despair?  How?  How can you expect children to believe in something they cannot see, that seems unimaginable compared to the world they do in fact see every single day? Can you honestly believe  that people who grow up in such circumstances will not become people consumed by anger and despair?

 

Do we want to pat ourselves on the back, relegating the idea that we live in a land of opportunity to the realm of myth?  When do we admit that there is a problem and that we are not perhaps as compassionate as we claim to be?  The poor are not the only ones who need to come to terms with their own denial.  Those of us on the other side of the fence must do the same.  We need to admit that we as a society are falling behind if a significant portion of our population is falling behind, and we need to decide if we really are a country of compassion, of opportunity, of liberty and justice for all.

 

 

 

Three Things Thursday

1. I  was wandering around in the garden this morning, looking at all the weeds I need to pull and admiring the ways the flowers continue to bloom and thrive despite benign neglect.  I've not been the best gardener of late, being somewhat preoccupied with other things, although I have to admit that summer heat has never been my friend.

Mostly I was feeling a little tired and faded, willing to sit back and just look at the weeds, pulling a few here and there, reminding myself that I'm  about ready to return to the garden, but not today.  Sometimes it is best to just sit back and let things be.  I was drawn to the glorious color of these roses from across the yard, but when I got close I could see how they were a bit tired and faded along the edges. 

The roses look exactly how I feel, a little floppy and droopy, but still hanging in there, and generally pretty happy.

2. Our church installed our new rector on Tuesday night.  The ceremony was beautiful, and I got a chance to see some dear people I hadn't seen in a long time.  Following the service was a celebratory dinner, held outside.  It was a glorious evening, perfect for a joyous event.  We had set up for 300, but there were a few empty seats so it is possible we only had 280 or 290.  Either that or not everyone was seated at the same time, which is also quite likely.

I chaired the dinner committee, but if ever a project took a village, it was this one and I am so thankful for all the people who donated their time, money, or other miscellaneous items to make this truly a community celebration.  I am also honored to have been a part of such a fabulous team of creative, dedicated, hard-working people.  The team had been out in the heat Monday afternoon, with the advanced prep work required for setting up tiki torches and assembling items for the tables, and then again for most of the day on Tuesday getting everything set and ready. 

 

3. This morning I was up early, having finally caught up on sleep, and fluids, and perhaps some quiet, meditative, time as well.  I was up in the sewing room before dawn, disassembling this dress I bought in Florida in June, and re-sewing the side seams, whacking off about and inch and a half at the bust, and three inches at the hips.  Granted it was about an inch too big in the hips when I bought it, but it still feels good to be able to wear the dress, and to knock one simple project of the to-do list.  As you can see from the photo, I still have stuff piled up in the guest room, stuff that needs to go back to the master bedroom now that the floors are finished. The big boxes actually contain new light fixtures waiting for the electricians to return, or are they waiting for me call the electricians now that my schedule is once-again free? Heaven forbid I should have nothing to do...