Just a few years beyond the setting of THE PRETTIEST STAR by Carter Sickles, sometime during the mid-‘90s in western North Carolina, which is a few miles south of THE PRETTIEST STAR’s Chester, Ohio, my wife had a good friend whose son was in a hospital dying of AIDS. Leesa went to visit him, taking our younger son with her. In the hospital room, while Leesa visited with her friends, Raleigh climbed up on the bed and sat feeding Allen one round Cheerio at a time.
Reading THE PRETTIEST STAR, I was reminded of those panicky days in the ‘80s and ‘90s that come to life so vividly in Sickles’s novel. The horrors of Chester were all around us throughout those days—whether the product of an ignorance weaponized by the fear at the root of hate or by simple, thoughtless ignorance alone. The Chester recreation folks drain the public swimming pool after the sick man, Brian, enjoys a momentary, ecstatic float on a hot day. His grandmother is kicked out of the town’s only sit-down restaurant for bringing Brian along for a meal. A passerby throws a soft drink in his face from the window of a pickup truck. Anonymous people call Brian’s home and whisper hate speech—the period’s version of hateful social media posts. The church joins in the fearful persecution, of course, smiling benevolently all the while. The universe of family, from the satellite cousins to the near moon of a father, fall away into the dark distance. Hospital staff won’t touch him.
In the midst of this, especially the abandonment by the caregivers (so different from many caregivers in the current COVID-19 devastation), I remembered Raleigh and Allen and the Cheerios. I’d always thought that a sweet story, but while on my deep dive into the world Sickles revives I suddenly realized that this simple gesture of a child must have shaken the world of Allen’s hospital room. I imagine Allen in Brian and his mother Suzy in Brian’s mother Sharon, and I begin to understand that such a kindness was beyond sweet. Far beyond sweet.
I mentioned this to Leesa after I’d finished reading THE PRETTIEST STAR, and she reminded me of a young nurse that day, who pulled her aside as Raleigh sat picking out one Cheerio at a time and said that she’d been afraid to go near Allen—afraid to treat him as a patient, afraid to treat him as a fellow, suffering human being. After seeing a child’s innocent act of feeding the sick and hungry, she said, she would no longer be afraid. I hope she followed through with that. I want to believe that she did.
This is what great and simple acts do to and for us. And this is how great stories powerfully told, stories like THE PRETTIEST STAR, connect us to our humanity and that of all—all—around us.
I try every year in late December and early January to read two things: Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and James Joyce’s “The Dead.” I try to finish Dickens’s story of Scrooge and his ghosts before midnight on Christmas Eve. Last year–last month–I finished it around 6:30 PM that evening. Then I try to finish Joyce’s story of Gabriel Conroy and his ghosts by midnight on January 6th (aka Epiphany and, I just learned from Silas House’s blog, Old Christmas). This year I finished it around nine o’clock. (I would have finished it much earlier, but I was distracted by the attack on the U.S. Capitol by domestic terrorists: #AmericanTerrorists.)
The last piece in Joyce’s 1914 story collection Dubliners, “The Dead” is often praised as one of the greatest short stories written in English. It’s a wonderful narrative of Dublin life as it convenes at the home of elderly Julia and Kate Morkan and their niece Mary Jane. The evening is experienced most vividly through the perceptions–and misperceptions–of the Misses Morkan’s nephew Gabriel Conroy. Joyce brings to rich life the social event that swirls around Gabriel and then follows this central character to a solitary ending, including one of the most beautiful paragraphs in all of English literature:
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
This is the kind of literary beauty to which many of us who write aspire. One form such aspirations can take, at least initially, is that of imitation. New York Times bestselling author Silas House, for example, took up Joyce’s “The Dead” and adapted it to an Appalachian setting and called it “Another Country.” On his blog, A Country Boy Can Surmise, House writes of Joyce’s story and his,
“The Dead” by James Joyce is one of my favorite pieces of writing to have ever been written. A few years ago I was teaching the story in Ireland and it struck me that many of the issues being explored in the short story are still pertinent in my homeland today. Themes such as the complications of being loyal to your own place in the world, choosing sides, homesickness, and the way a culture can become so immersed in the past that it threatens to impede its own progress. I do not think there is any way to improve upon Joyce’s story but I did think it’d be interesting to pick up the story from early 1900s Ireland and move it to contemporary Appalachia. . . .
As I mentioned above, I finished my mostly annual reading to “The Dead” yesterday, January 6, 2021, and I was pleased to learn of House’s “Another Country” today. I read it and enjoyed the way the adaptation works in its migration from a big house in Dublin, Ireland, to a farmhouse just outside Manchester, Kentucky.
Recently, I had a similar impulse to capture something of Joyce’s “The Dead” in a piece of my own. My imitation took the form of a song that I titled “Michael Furey Is Dead.” The lyrics and the music attempt to recreate–to transfigure–the feeling I always have while reading the story from the moment Gabriel is watching his wife Gretta, where she stands on the stairs and listens to an Irish tenor sing “The Lass of Aughrim,” to Gabriel’s final moment at the window in their hotel room.
Michael Furey Is Dead
She stands on the stairs and listens to the song floating down from above– her face half hidden in shadow, half in light. The ghost of a sad smile trembles on her lips freshly colored with care. I tremble at the sight, and I wonder what she might be thinking.
She doesn’t know that I saw her as we walk side by side on the street, both acting just like we didn’t feel what we felt– my tongue tripping over her mystery, hers trying to cover it up. I ask her if she’s well. Then I beg for her to tell what she’s feeling.
Ooo Ooo Ooo—Michael Furey is dead—Ooo Ooo Ooo
Deep in the days of a cold and wet autumn, they took waltzing walks through the woods. A delicate boy and a handsome young woman they were. She was an orphan with her aunt until winter, when she’d pack up and go back to school, and he worked in the mines and coughed all the time they were dancing.
[brief waltzing interlude]
The weather turned black before she was to leave; the rain fell without taking a breath. The last twilight she saw Michael Furey alone ‘neath the trees. She’d been back at school for only one week when the letter arrived from her aunt. And it brought her to her knees with its news of Michael Furey’s passing.
Ooo Ooo Ooo—Michael Furey is dead—Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo—Michael Furey is dead—Ooo Ooo Ooo
I stand in the dark by the window and listen as her sobs subside into sleep and look for the ghost of the boy who died for love of my wife. The stars hang in heaven like the caught breath of snow or like sparkling rain in dark hair. And I tremble at the sight, and I wonder what she might be dreaming. And I tremble deep inside, and I’m afraid of what she might be dreaming.
Ooo Ooo Ooo—Michael Furey is dead—Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo—Michael Furey is dead—Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo—Michael Furey is dead—Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo—Michael Furey is dead—Ooo Ooo Ooo
I wish that I could post these words with their music, but I haven’t recorded it yet. It’s in a suitably minor key, I can assure you. And when I get around to recording it, the Ooos will likewise be suitably ghostly.
Recently, a group of friends and I were sitting around–masked and socially distanced–and talking about favorite Christmas memories from the pre-pandemic life we all once lived. One of my favorite Christmas memories was from back in the mid 1980s (probably ’84 or ’85), when I was living in Nashville and had to work Christmas Eve at Cat’s Records. After the store closed, I went back to Goodlettsville, north of Nashville, where I lived alone in an apartment that was inside the office building of my producer and publisher Earl Richards. I went to bed when I got there after work, thinking as I fell asleep, that I’d already missed the annual Christmas Eve gathering with Pansy Cody Wallin, my dad’s sister, her husband Edison and my cousin Donna. I woke up around two or three o’clock Christmas morning, showered to wake myself, loaded a bag and my guitar into the orange Mercury Bobcat I drove, and headed for Walnut, North Carolina.
An “orange Mercury Bobcat . . .”
I made my way south to I-40 and drove east into the stilly darkness of Christmas morning. I remember stopping here and there along the way, at convenience stores mostly, and noticing the deep quiet of the night and the interstate and the brightly lit pumps and parking area of the stores. I stopped maybe three or four times through the night, and it was such an old-time treasure of a feeling to go inside for a Mountain Dew and a Moon Pie and to wish the sleepy clerk a Merry Christmas on my way out.
I rolled into the driveway in the morning light that heralds the sunrise. I’d love to say that the old Reeves place was covered in snow like a Christmas card. But Mom and Dad and Jerry were there, and from the time I walked in, Christmas morning carried on as it always had.
A Gift
Given that Leesa and I didn’t marry on Christmas Day, given that Lane and Raleigh weren’t born on Christmas Day, I can easily name some of the best earthly Christmas gifts I ever received — from Santa, a football uniform with a Dallas Cowboys helmet when I was small; from my uncle JD, a solid gold Star Trek insignia ring when I was in my twenties. Those and others were incredible gifts. Yet they and so many others are now lost to time and living.
But THE GIFT? I received it in 1975, when I was seventeen years old, forty-five years back from Christmas 2020 when I’m writing this. Ever since, it has been my constant companion, over many miles and across many years, and much of the life I’ve lived and much of the man I’ve become are bound up in this one extravagant gift from my parents.
Back in the days of the White Water Band, guitarist Jim Stapleton and bassist Harlon Rice worked at Dunham’s Music in Asheville. I’m fairly certain that the two of them gave Mom and Dad the employee discount and that Harlon delivered it to the house on Christmas Eve. I was, I recall, in my room and was only vaguely aware of a visitor stopping by after we’d returned from the Wallins’ house.
Then, in the wee hours of the morning, I awoke and knew I wouldn’t be going back to sleep. So, I got up quietly and slipped out of the room Jerry and I shared when home. I continued as quietly as I could into the living room and made my way, by a light that shone in from out by the highway, to the tree and poked around until I got the lights plugged in.
It was in this way that I first saw the gift by the light of our Walnut Christmas tree at three o’clock in the morning, looking much like this —
Guild F-40
After forty-five years and untold miles–one end of the USA to the other and east to the Czech Republic–its finish no longer shines as it did that Christmas morning in 1975, but I’m certain that the music coming from it sounds better now than then (with little thanks for this to my minimally improved guitar skills).
I could recall hundreds of memories of moments with this guitar in my arms–writing, recording, performing. So many songs! I remember a beautiful, moonlit Montana night, sitting on a stump in the Thompsons’ yard during my visit to their caboose Bed & Breakfast in Stevensville, south of Missoula. I played my songs for the Thompsons and a group of their neighbors.
When Gary Morris recorded “The Jaws of Modern Romance” in the late ’80s, the Nashville studio musicians had a bit of trouble getting the right feel for the song. Gary or somebody called to ask if I could come to the studio and play during the tracking session. I grabbed my guitar and headed to the studio. My guitar track ended up making it on the record. You can hear it best at the beginning.
One more. This is my guitar and me on stage in Vimperk, Czech Republic, singing a song we wrote called “The Bells of Vimperk.”
Montana, Nashville, and Vimperk represent many wonderful and rare moments. Many, many more are the moments of just sitting around the house with the guitar in my arms and listening to it sing for me and sing with me.
Maybe it’s a single word–socialism–or a phase–Defund the Police or Black Lives Matter or Stop the Count or Stop the Steal!
A knee jerks. Eyes and ears close and go mostly inactive except for seeing and hearing only what they want to see and hear. The mind closes, too, but behind the slammed and locked door the brain-on-fire burns hot inside its echoing silo. With no further information or misinformation needed, the mind will run with what little it has a grip on and build around it a belief system, a world, a plan of action, a limited reaction of likes-loves-hates-etc.
The system of likes-loves-hates-etc. as it appears on Facebook
Here’s an example.
Back in the summer of 2020, sometime after the murder of George Floyd, I engaged in a brief conversation with a friend on Facebook. While Leesa and I were mostly on lockdown, the online environment was charged with reaction to the Floyd murder, as well as other similar situations. This friend–with whom I’ve shared a worktable at a Rise Against Hunger event and Christian mission in the Czech Republic (although we weren’t there the same summers)–shared a happy plantation story about an east Tennessee ancestor and the slaves who loved him. That was beyond my knowledge, of course, but I couldn’t help but think of my experience reading Frederick Douglass, who wrote at one point in his Narrative, “I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart.” Happy or not (and that’s a perception largely from the slaveholder’s point of view), the condition of “a slave for life” or even that of being black in America is one that white people can’t imagine or dismiss.
But then my friend threw out this gem as a response to the issue of racial violence: In American history, he wrote, “As many whites were lynched as blacks. You won’t see that in the books at school.” Now, this is exactly the kind of (mis)information I referred to above. Fact or not, a mind such as my friend’s takes hold and reacts. The knee-jerk reaction. The easy spark of satisfying anger over the outrage of whites being lynched in Christian Euro-America ignites the brain that then burns not to seek the truth but to spread the fact without knowing if it’s true or not (and how it’s true or not), if it’s information or misinformation.
“As many whites were lynched as blacks. You won’t see that in the books at school.” Having no relevant information in my own mind, I don’t think I responded with anything more than a “Really?” (not sarcasm but as in “Hmm, I wonder if that’s true”). What was his response but a prime example of deflecting responsibility or recognition with a mindless, heartless “Both sides!” dismissal of racial violence. I could have done the easy thing, which would be to accept that violence occurred on both sides–“you also had very fine people, on both sides”–so that my friend and I both walked away with a “Fine!” or a “Whatever!” and our respective (mis)information–or no information–intact. But because I don’t like not knowing things and because I wanted to model what I think is right behavior when faced with something I don’t know to be a fact, I decided to do just fifteen minutes worth of research.
Here’s what I learned.
From the 1830s through the 1850s, the majority of people lynched were white, making my friend correct as far as that simple, unqualified fact goes. But if that’s as far as knowledge reaches, it’s easy to manipulate the fact to the typical bullying, shallow “Both sides!” argument. Crack open an eye–crack open the mind–just a little bit, and a couple of qualifying facts present themselves. First, 90% of white lynchings took place in the West–Arkansas (which was West then), Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Montana). There, white posses caught and lynched fellow whites for crimes such as murder and rustling cattle. White men were on both ends of the rope, so to speak. Second, almost all blacks during that same period–1830s-1850s–were slaves and therefore valuable property, everywhere through the South generally too valuable to be destroyed by lynching except at the utmost fever pitch of white insult. So, yes, “[a]s many whites were lynched as blacks,” but I hope you can see that’s nowhere near the whole story my friend’s mic drop suggested.
After the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, between 1882 and 1968 (yes, year of our Lord nineteen hundred sixty-eight, a mere fifty-two years ago), 4,743 lynchings were recorded; given the nature of the act, however, it’s almost certain that not all incidents of lynching made it into the records. Of the 4,743 lynchings recorded 1882-1968, 3,446 (73%) were blacks while 1,297 (27%) were whites. Almost all black lynchings (90%) took place is four Southern states: Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. It’s safe to say that near 100% of these black lynchings were carried out by mobs of white men. While black crimes probably included actual crimes, such as murder, theft, and so on, they also included such behaviors as not being respectful enough to whites, especially white women, or just being perceived as being not respectful enough.
Again, almost all white lynchings during the same period, 1882-1968, took place in the West and North. In fact, these states lynched only whites: Maine, Vermont, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona. It’s likewise safe to say that near 100% of white lynchings were carried out by mobs of white men not only for those crimes previously listed (murder and livestock theft) but also for helping blacks or just being anti-lynching.
“As many whites were lynched as blacks. You won’t see that in the books at school.” Okay, this contains some surface truth, but even if you don’t have the details my research revealed above (again, about fifteen minutes of research), it’s easy to understand how this fails miserably as a “Both sides!” argument. The fact of white lynchings works as a “Both sides!” argument only if those white people were lynched by mobs of angry blacks. That’s only fair, right? But then how likely is it that between the 1830s and the 1850s, and again between 1882 and 1968, more than 1,297 whites were lynched by blacks? It isn’t at all likely. It simply isn’t.
So, in this time when social media, conspiracy theorists, and politicized news media tend to spit up all kinds of nasty one-liners that come ready-made for chant-able slogans, before we join the chanting we should take a breath, first, then just expend a bit of energy to think about what we’re being invited to chant, maybe even research it. And before we cut off an argument–or allow our argument to be cut off–by the whining cry of “Both sides!” let’s just stop and think, ‘Really?’ Then make sure it is truly the condition or equally faulty behavior of both sides before we do the “Whatever!”-walkaway or engage in friendly debate as citizens of a democracy–or democratic republic, if you prefer–should.
My aunt Ernie walked on last Saturday at the age of 85 (some three months shy of her 86th birthday). She was the last of eleven children of Papa Reeves, three and a half years younger than Mom, who walked on some six months ago).
Ernie’s younger son, my cousin Mark, wrote this obituary:
On November 14, 2020, Ernestine Reeves (Ernie) Plemmons drew her last breath on this earth. After six years, the disease of pulmonary fibrosis had robbed her lungs of the ability to sustain her earthly body, but her family rests easy in the knowledge that she now breathes freely in heaven.
Ernie’s 85-year life was marked with a love of God, family, chocolate, Braves baseball, her work, gospel music, laughter, serving others, practical jokes, Duke basketball and more chocolate.
After graduating from Blanton’s Business College in 1954, Ernie started working at French Broad Electric Membership Co-op as a teller. Over her 42-year career, she saw her job and the world change greatly. On her first day, one of her duties was to send a telegram to co-ops in eastern North Carolina to let them know that French Broad was sending help in the aftermath of Hurricane Hazel. By the time of her retirement in 1996, she held the position of Director of Member Services and Public Relations, and she was responsible for publishing the monthly newsletter, The Electrifier, for French Broad Members. Long gone were the days of the telegraph; a desktop computer and publishing software had become the tools of her trade.
In 1957, Ernie married Cloice Plemmons. The two settled down in a new house they built a literal stone’s throw from the house where she was born in Walnut. The new home became a center of activity as Ernie mothered not only her two sons, Joey and Mark, but her nephews, Jerry and Michael Cody and Stevie Davis, as well as the any other boy who might wander through the doors.
Ernie’s love of God led her in the service of others. First at the Walnut United Methodist Church and later at the Walnut Presbyterian Church, Ernie was a church leader. She taught Sunday School, played the piano, sang in the choir and served as an Elder. In the community, Ernie gave of her time and energy to organizations like the American Cancer Society, Hospice of Madison, The Walnut Community Center, and the Hot Springs Health Program.
During all this time, for more than half a century, Ernie mixed her soprano voice with the alto voice and piano skills of her sister Dot. They sang at church services, revivals, family reunions, funerals and weddings. Thousands heard them sing through the years, and they now sing together once again in the choir of angels.
Ernie is survived by her husband of 63 years, W. Cloice Plemmons of Walnut NC; son Joey Jay Plemmons of Weaverville, NC; son Mark Cecil Plemmons and wife Kimberly Rudisill Plemmons of Kingsport, TN; granddaughter Amanda Plemmons Lively and husband Joshua Ryan Lively of Price, UT; granddaughter Hannah Plemmons Adams and husband Robert Joe Adams III of Dumfries, VA; and granddaughter Grace Wilson Plemmons of Greenville, SC.
Ernie is preceded in death by her parents Amos Stackhouse (Stack) Reeves and Charlotta (Lottie) Barnett Reeves as well as her 10 siblings Leta Reeves Ledford, Albert (Al) Reeves, Aubrey (Doc) Reeves, Evoline Reeves Baker, William (Bill) Reeves, Harold Reeves, Amos Kenneth (June) Reeves, James Dedrick (JD) Reeves, Joseph MacDonald (Joe or Mack) Reeves and Dorothy Lee ( Dot) Reeves Cody. As Ernie’s nephew Michael Cody put it, “I don’t pretend to know what Heaven is actually like, but if it is indeed a place of homecoming and reunion, then I love the image of the Reeves table being complete with the arrival of the youngest.”
Due to concerns about the spread of Covid-19, the family will be holding a private ceremony and will not be receiving friends. The family asks that you celebrate Ernie’s life with fond memories, smiles, a prayer, laughter and maybe even a piece of chocolate. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to either the American Cancer Society or Hospice of Madison.
Have you wondered what’s been going on out in the world while we practice our “America First” policies–that is, in the absence of longstanding American international leadership? If so, here are three sources you might want to check out:
Friends on my Facebook page are going back and forth and back and forth about the value of the current White House Administration. What’s apparent is that America now is divided between two completely separate and irreconcilable realities. You know what they are, so I won’t go into them here.
Honesty is clearly crushed under the heel of political agendas and the personal desires of weak wannabe strongmen. So, the truth, while always still hoped for, is no longer to be expected, and that’s on all of us for being, like our politicians, so invested in our particular reality that we no longer value or even understand what is truth–or what truth is.
Out the proverbial window with honesty has gone integrity:
I’m sure that lots of examples can be cited from “both sides” (although I despise the constant call of “both sides, both sides, both sides,” which tends toward mitigating the often important differences between real good actions and real bad actions).
The most obvious example of this is the current bad action being undertaken to fill the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat on the Supreme Court. Justice Antonin Scalia died in February of 2016–an election year, yes, but certainly not in the final weeks of the campaign and even long before the national party conventions had selected their candidates. When President Obama brought forth a nomination to fill Justice Scalia’s seat, Mitch McConnell’s Senate refused to consider the nominated. Here are a few quotations from GOP Senators of the time:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): “It has been 80 years since a Supreme Court vacancy was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is a long tradition that you don’t do this in an election year.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): “I don’t think we should be moving on a nominee in the last year of this president’s term – I would say that if it was a Republican president.”
Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.): “The very balance of our nation’s highest court is in serious jeopardy. As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I will do everything in my power to encourage the president and Senate leadership not to start this process until we hear from the American people.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa): “A lifetime appointment that could dramatically impact individual freedoms and change the direction of the court for at least a generation is too important to get bogged down in politics. The American people shouldn’t be denied a voice.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.): “The campaign is already under way. It is essential to the institution of the Senate and to the very health of our republic to not launch our nation into a partisan, divisive confirmation battle during the very same time the American people are casting their ballots to elect our next president.”
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.): “In this election year, the American people will have an opportunity to have their say in the future direction of our country. For this reason, I believe the vacancy left open by Justice Antonin Scalia should not be filled until there is a new president.”
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.): “The Senate should not confirm a new Supreme Court justice until we have a new president.”
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Col.): “I think we’re too close to the election. The president who is elected in November should be the one who makes this decision.”
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio): “I believe the best thing for the country is to trust the American people to weigh in on who should make a lifetime appointment that could reshape the Supreme Court for generations. This wouldn’t be unusual. It is common practice for the Senate to stop acting on lifetime appointments during the last year of a presidential term, and it’s been nearly 80 years since any president was permitted to immediately fill a vacancy that arose in a presidential election year.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.): “I strongly agree that the American people should decide the future direction of the Supreme Court by their votes for president and the majority party in the U.S. Senate.”
[And last but not least . . .]
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky): “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
Thanks to Jon Anderson (probably not the lead singer of YES) for collecting these quotations and the one below.
Of course, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a politician of disabled integrity, from my birth state of South Carolina, said this in 2018:
“If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait to the next election.”
Obviously Graham and the rest of Mitch McConnell’s Senate have tossed these convictions to the wind, and with a full-throated “Screw you, stupid old me!” they’ve entered into the 11th-hour process of confirming a newly nominated conservative judge to what should be an apolitical entity–the Supreme Court.
Integrity loss confirmed. Again.
In an 1841 essay titled “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” While the “little minds” of the “little statesmen” quoted above have changed (avoiding “consistency”), their loss of integrity remains.
The loss of the nation–the loss of our democracy, at least–will surely follow it into a dis-integrated future.
September 6. . . . all being compact together in one ship, they put to sea . . . with a prosperous wind, which continued divers days together, which was some encouragement unto them. . . .
William Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation, Chapter IX. Of Their Voyage and How They Passed the Sea; and of Their Save Arrival at Cape Cod
As I’m writing this, it’s the afternoon of September 6, 2020 (a Sunday), four hundred years after the Pilgrims (what we call this band of Puritan Separatists) sailed from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower in 1620–the 6th being on a Wednesday that year. Around 100 travelers–some Pilgrims and some not–had set out a few hours or a day or so earlier in two small ships–the Speedwell and the Mayflower. But they hadn’t gotten far before they realized that the Speedwell wasn’t physically up to the trip, so they returned to Plymouth and repacked the people and what supplies they could into the Mayflower and set out again.
Every semester when I teach William Bradford’s history of the colony that was known as Plymouth Plantation, I’m impressed with the bravery and the commitment to their religious ideals that Bradford and his group showed. Our world in 2020 offers very little we could venture to replicate their experience in 1620, its particular unknowns (the so-called New World wasn’t nearly as unknown as popular history would have us believe) and the certain hardships they dreaded as they steered the Mayflower away from its English harbor and, finally losing sight of the coastline of home, turned their faces west to the Atlantic Ocean. Again, their bravery and commitment astound me.
Surely such bravery and commitment should be enough to remember them by, but, of course, American myth-making has made much more out of their story than was actually in their story. They have famously been mythologized as the originators of American ideas of religious freedom and democracy.
Neither is really true of them.
Religious freedom? Yes, to England they were Puritan Separatists. As the first part of that phrase–Puritan–suggests, they wished to purify the faith practices of the Church of England, ridding it of all the popery they saw as held over from Henry VIII’s split from the Roman Catholic Church. Ultimately, however, this group of mostly plain folk–Bradford was a farmer who taught himself Greek and Hebrew so that he could read scripture in its original languages–decided the Church of England couldn’t be purified, and so they separated from it–becoming Separatists. But to separate from the official church of the realm was to separate from the realm itself, which made them traitors.
The strength of their faith was committed to their particular faith practice. They wanted to show themselves as right regarding how God’s people should believe and the way church things should be done. Deviations from their way were not to be tolerated; this included other Christian practices that weren’t their own. In essence, their faith practices became the official practices of Plymouth Plantation–a state church like the Church of England.
The notion that the victim of child abuse often grows up to be an abuser of children can be adapted here. The Pilgrims and the Puritans that followed them in 1630 (to found Massachusetts Bay Colony and Boston) tolerated no deviations from their religious practices, even from other Christian sects. Just as they’d been persecuted, they in turn persecuted others: Catholics (of course), Quakers, Anabaptists, etc., sometimes carrying out these persecutions to the death of the deviants.
A truer character of religious freedom had to wait for the late 18th century.
And as for democracy among the Puritans, none existed among the Puritans. In fact, democracy was to be feared. It threatened community stability, which they understood to have been established by God. If an individual was poor, God made him that way, so he shouldn’t attempt to change his station in life. Such an attempt would be understood as contempt for God’s creation. In a 1630 speech or sermon delivered to the Puritans in the process of establishing the non-Separatist plantation of Massachusetts Bay, colony leader John Winthrop said,
God Almighty in His most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection.
In Winthrop’s understanding, community organization is not at all democratic. If you’re rich, congratulations are in order. Don’t be an ass. If you’re poor, that’s just your lot in creation. Don’t be an ass. But Winthrop suggests that God expects both rich and poor to “be knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection.” All should be filled with and unified by God’s spirit, which works
first upon the wicked in moderating and restraining them, so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against their superiors and shake off their yoke. . . .
We could use a little of that moderation and restraint these days, perhaps especially from the rich. Winthrop tells them to take care of the poor so as not to tempt God to miracles for their care.
The Puritans had nothing to do with democracy and little to do with the notion of religious freedom. Certainly, they had many admirable qualities, but they had at least as many qualities that led to the devastation of America’s indigenous peoples and contributed to the false consciousness of American Exceptionalism.
Edith Ann (Lily Tomlin) from Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In
Busy day, this September 2nd of 2020, thirty-one years after that September 2nd in 1989. I turn sixty-two in a few months, as will Leesa, which means that we’ve been married half our lives!
We did make time for a great early anniversary supper at Red Meze!
We’re not big on cards and such, so I woke up this morning wondering how I might commemorate the anniversary this year. I didn’t have time to write a song, so I thought I’d share a bunch of the songs Leesa inspired in whole or in part. Most of them were written before September 2nd, 1989, so they’re not all happy songs. . . .
I’ve been away from this progression through my old journals–my “Captain’s Log”–longer than I intended. Looking back, I see that I was chugging along fairly well through February. Then the pandemic hit, and I made no posts at all in March as I rushed up to spring break, went to Charleston for half of that week, and then had to come home early (because our favorite restaurants closed) to get my courses thrown up online for the remainder of the semester. I then made one more “Through the Years” post in April and one in May.
Now, here we are in August, and the pandemic is still going strong. Stronger than in March, actually. At least that’s the case here in east Tennessee. I’ve wondered if I should skip ahead and reboot with August entries, but I haven’t decided about that yet. If I could get my shit together well enough, I might be able to do two posts in a week. One coming up from the spring–this one gets into March–and one running along through the days we’re actually living.
I’ll think on that some more.
Captain’s Log: Stardate 022.878 (Tuesday, February 28, 1978)
Today was just like yesterday. I missed all of my classes and just stayed in bed. I’ll have to wait and see how I feel tomorrow before I decide about classes. I feel hot like I’ve got a temperature.
I guess I’ll get get some sleep now and try it again tomorrow. . . .
How unsettling it would be in this COVID-19 moment to “feel hot like I’ve got a temperature”!
I’m working on a novel that is based on the summer of 1979, which I spent in Europe with strangers-who-became-friends from all over the country. One of the things that I want to do with that novel is keep an awareness of the real world surrounding our fun and games and the actual events that took place in the world as I was living mostly carefree days in Europe.
Likewise, I’m going to try to find interesting things that go along with the lived days I’m transcribing from my journals. So, I’ll think about–I’ll google–what was happening in the world as I was doing this or that in my daily life.
Captain’s Log: Stardate 030.178 (Wednesday, March 1, 1978)
I finally got out of bed and went to classes today. I felt really bad this morning but I’m doing OK now.
Well, 48 hours from now I’ll hopefully be with Kelly, the good Lord willing. I pray that He’ll give me a good time down there. Now that I’m better physically I’m anxious to start practice again ’cause the Lord gave me these talents to polish and We’re gonna make it!!!! I think George and Betty are gonna meet me at the house tomorrow night for supper. . . . God gave you a mind, a body, and a soul so Be Yourself and at the same time be His
Cowboy flutist in the back room in Walnut
While I was living through this day–probably while I was sleeping through the night–Roman Wardas and Gantscho Ganev, Eastern European refugees, stole the coffin and remains of Charlie Chaplin from a Swiss cemetery and asked for ransom equivalent of $600,000 for the return of these. Chaplin’s fourth wife Oona refused to pay, saying that her late husband “‘would have thought it rather ridiculous’.” The grave robbers were caught in May.
Captain’s Log: Stardate 030.278 (Thursday, March 2, 1978)
Today the blizzard hit. That about cansells [sic] my plans for Greensboro this weekend.
I’m supposed to have a flute lesson tomorrow, but Dr. B probably won’t be here.
I think I may call Leesa and ask her out one night soon. . . . Ernie got a tape for accompanying the Alleluiah music . . .
As I’ve probably written in these pages before, Leesa was hard at work in Asheville’s Creative Hair Design and mothering Lane during these months when I was in my freshman year at Mars Hill College.
It’s been a nice easy weekend but I wish I could’ve gone to Greensboro. I reckon I’ll go over Spring break. I’m really not ready for another week so I’m gonna have to draw on the Lord heavily for this week. . . . George and Betty are in. . . .
On Saturday night the 4th, the Duke men’s basketball team–remembered as “Still Forever’s Team”–won the ACC basketball tournament, defeating Wake Forest 85-77. This was the first time the Duke men’s team had won the tournament since 1966. To my knowledge, the most recognizable name on that roster was Mike Gminski.
Captain’s Log: Stardate 030.678 (Monday, March 6, 1978)
Today has been a bummer but I’m still alive and trying not to complain.
Tomorrow night I’ll be going to Tweed’s for supper so hopefully tomorrow won’t be so bad. . . .
The Tweeds: Scott, Bobbie, Mike, and Brian
I have no memory of why this day was a bummer for me, but history tells us it was a greater bummer for Hustler publisher/pornographer Larry Flynt, who got caught in the crosshairs of a sniper in Georgia, a shooting which left him crippled.
Six trips around the sun later . . .
Captain’s Log: Stardate 8403.04 (Sunday, March 4, 1984)
I wish I wasn’t so lazy and would keep up with this as I should. Still, I guess when things are slow it seems futile to write it down. I [sic] going to try to do better.
1984 has been a very nice year so far. I’ve been home a few times, seen the folks in Knoxville, taken Geri out a couple of times (things are still feeling good there), and I’ve moved. I now live in the apartment that is upstairs in Earl’s office, where I stayed during my first prolonged trip to Nashville. It’s kind of tough living alone after Lynn and Cindy. We had such a good time. I still haven’t gotten settled in though I’ve been here for almost two months. I’ve stayed in the studio with Earl watching the progress of a new album he’s got on Bobby Lewis. They recorded one of my songs but it didn’t make the album as it was too pop to be consistent with the rest of the music. Still, just hanging out during the going’s [sic] on is a great learning experience. After that project was over Earl took Jim, JB, Danny, and me to Nassau, the Bahamas for some R&R before beginning my next album. It was a fun time between the ocean[,] the hotel life, and the casino. I got a sunburn the first day and didn’t get to spend as much time on the beach as I would have liked but it was still a great time. At one point Earl brought this hooker over from the casino for JB who is very straight and shy about girls and he ran. It was so funny! The girl’s name was Ivory, and she was from Milwaukee, Wi. When we returned from Nassau we went into the studio with musicians for a couple of days for rehearsals which went quite well. Tomorrow we begin tracks on “Blondie Goes Latin”, “Isabella”, “In Old Chicago”, “Can’t You Hear the Music”, “Waiting for the Night”, “The Friday Night Serenade”, “A Kiss in the Dark”, “Promises”, “A Rose for My Lady”, and “Madrid”.
My songwriting has fallen off seriously I think mostly because my mind feels so very cluttered with what I’m doing. I also feel very superficial, very shallow because I’m not staying as close to God as I want to. It just seems I keep my mind so occupied with nothing that it’s hard to think about anything. Then again I haven’t done enough travelling [sic] which always seems to spark me. Hopefully when this album is finished I’ll settle down and get some things done. I’m going to do better! I should say my prayers and get some rest now.
Clockwise from top: jb, Danny (whose last name I can’t remember), and Earl (striking his 1970s country starlet pose) . . . in the Bahamas
I have no memory of which song Bobby Lewis recorded. I do remember that Bobby’s schtick was playing the lute.
Earl, Bobby Lewis, and Jim Isbell
I noticed a couple of things about the songs set for the recording of my second album, which was to be titled Waiting for the Night. One is the presence of “Madrid,” a piano song that I wrote and, unfortunately, can no longer remember how to play. I think I actually had a complete song, but I’ll have to try to find the lyric for it to prove it. I don’t think I even have a recording of it.
The second thing is the absence of “Thunder and Lightning.” Those who know my music know how important that particular song has been for me. I think you’ll find it in the next cluster of entries that I post.
Potential album cover for Waiting for the Night, shot in Nashville, 1985
Captain’s Log: Stardate 8403.05 (Monday, March 5, 1984)
Today was a tough day, not really all bad or good, just tough. We started in the studio with problems this morning. Even though this caused bad vibes, we still got 3 good tracks down. I had a cloud hanging over me because of the vibes so I had a hard time finding good in anything but they must have been OK or we wouldn’t have left them. There was also a bad attitude toward the drummer we were using and I’m afraid Earl is going to fire him. It’ll be a shame because he is a good guy and a Christian. Maybe things will blow over tomorrow, who knows? Hopefully tomorrow will go much smoother technically, musically, and personally. . . .
Top: Joe Osborne & John Jarvis; Middle: Earl, Greg Jennings, & me; Bottom: Me, Earl, & jb
Earl had hired the already-legendary Joe Osborne to play bass on Waiting for the Night. Our drummer for the sessions was a young guy named Mark Hammond. I don’t remember exactly what the beef was between the two of them, but it’s likely that it could be boiled down to style: Old School versus New.
Captain’s Log: Stardate 8603.02 (Sunday, March 2, 1986)
It is Sunday and I’ve had a good time. Church was good, work was good and dinner at Anita’s with my friends was also good. My situation in general still feels the same despite indirect word from Goodlettsville that things are finally worked out and on their way. My reaction is still like those to whom the boy cried wolf. Show me something real is what I’m asking for. I know I sound like I’m from Missouri but that’s all I can do right now. Cindy heard Dickey Betts play “Thunder and Lightning” in Asheville a couple of weeks ago. She said it was pretty good and it got a good reaction. I’m playing the Bluebird Cafe a week from tonight but as usual I don’t know what I’m going to do so I’m not very comfortable with the idea. I’m thinking I’ll start with “Fiesta” but I don’t know. All else is as usual except that I’m not writing right now. I’m not afraid though as I’ve learned that it’ll be back when the well fills back up so I guess I’m actually gaining experience and becoming more accostomed [sic] to my music taking a vacation now and then. There’s not much happening in my life for me to react to and I’ve written enough for now about pain, depression and loneliness. So there you have it.
Earl & me
So, two years on from my sense of panic about not writing, I’m okay with not writing, knowing that it’ll return–which it did. I remember that it was my friend Noel Hudson who passed on to me the idea–Mark Twain’s, I think–that the well will fill up and the writing will return. Anita, mentioned above, is Noel’s mom, and I’m sure the “friends” who came to dinner with me were Noel, T. Michael Scalf, and probably the women they were dating at the time.
