Foster Dickson's Blog, page 33

Saturday Morning Reruns: “Things.”

[image error]

I’m in my office, scanning a three-rack stack of old cassette tapes. As my finger runs down the middle column of the lower rack, there are Keith Richard’s Main Offender, T. Rex’s Electric Warrior, The Best of the Band . . . Like everything in those racks, each tape has its own story. I can remember liking “Wicked As It Seems” after I saw the video on MTV, a black-and-white montage that featured a near-elderly Keith Richards emerging from the darkness to mumble his lyrics. I can remember discovering T. Rex after seeing that iconic image of Marc Bolan, face covered and top hat on, the look that Slash was copying. I can remember buying The Band’s album as a primer to that group I’d heard about, the one that backed up Bob Dylan in the ’60s.

And I don’t want to throw them away.

Some of the hundreds of tapes in those racks don’t even play anymore. Every once in a while, when I’m feeling nostalgic, I’ll pop in various ones of them to find that the spools won’t budge. I try flipping it over, rewinding and fast-forwarding— nothing. I try using a pencil to loosen it up manually— nothing. Then I have to make that decision: Do I throw it away? Maybe . . .

I can remember when tapes became a thing. In the early 1980s, my brother and I used to buy new music at a record store in the open-air arcade of the now-dilapidated Normandale Mall. The albums had unusual prices, like $7.69 or $8.29, proclaimed on a bright-colored sticker attached to the plastic wrap, and singles in their paper sleeves were usually a little over a buck. But you couldn’t carry an LP and a record player with you. And then came tapes! And the Walkman.

Those racks of tapes symbolize my youth. My mother bought them for me, one by one, as she grew increasingly frustrated by the piles of music laying all over my teenage bedroom. Those disparate titles testify to my changing tastes. Motley Crue’s Shout at the Devil and Megadeth’s Peace Sells . . . But Who’s Buying and— oh my goodness, Danzig, with their comic-book villain doomsday metal. And Anthrax’s attempt at rap, I’m the Man. I look, and then wonder what I was thinking when I was 14 and 15. Then I went classic: Steppenwolf, Hendrix, The Doors, The Band, Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Dylan, and Van Morrison. That was 16 and 17. Then it hit: “alternative.” I’ve still got my required listening – Nevermind and Ten and Nothing’s Shocking and Hole’s self-titled album and everything Sonic Youth did up to Dirty and BloodSugarSexMagik and August and Everything After and a couple of REM albums – with some other oddities: The Dead Milkmen’s Smoking Banana Peels, My Life with a Thrill Kill Kult’s Kooler Than Jesus, and a couple of Taang!-era Lemonheads albums. Those document 18 and 19 and 20— later I settled down from grunge, let my goatee grow into a full beard, slowed down the tempo, and accepted my eclectic tastes: James Taylor and Widespread Panic, CSN and Neil Young, Victoria Williams and the Dead, Chris Whitley and Gordon Lightfoot.

And I don’t want to throw them away. Though I’m right now chuckling at the person I was when I put so much stock in those songs, those outdated relics need to stay where they are and continue collecting dust.

Because I’m not reconciled to all that yet. I may be forty-something, married with kids, and I may spend my time worrying about lesson plans and healthcare premiums, but I still haven’t made sense of the shit that went down when I was a teenager. Even though I question the quality of the music that those miles of tape contain, I also still question the events and the people and the attitudes that made me seek solace in those lyrics and those melodies and those sounds. I may be middle-aged, but I’m not dead.

Read the whole post

 

Three Students, One Film: “Just Mercy” at EJI

I was pleased, about two weeks ago, to receive an email from a recently graduated former student telling me that she had won second place in an essay contest sponsored by Equal Justice Initiative. The young woman is attending the University of Alabama now, and wanted to be sure that I’d be at the awards ceremony. Of course I will, I told her. That pleasure grew when one of my current seniors told me later that day that she had received an honorable mention. And it was like the cherry-on-top to get another email last week from the parent of another recent graduate, saying that her daughter, who is in college in New Orleans, had placed first!

The essay contest was rooted in an EJI event last spring, which had New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones in Montgomery speaking about issues of race, justice, and education to students during the day then to a general audience that evening. Students from both public and private schools in Montgomery who attended the daytime event were invited, as a follow-up, to write and submit essays responding to what they’d heard from Hannah-Jones, and I pushed my students to take advantage of the opportunity– not only because it was writing contest, but because it would mean considering her ideas in a serious way. Late in the school year, an essay contest is a hard sell, so I was proud of them for putting in the work. I am even more proud that these three were recognized for that work on Tuesday evening at a ceremony that accompanied an advance screening of the new film Just Mercy.

I first met Bryan Stevenson in late 2014, when his then-new bookwas my main pick for the nonfiction lead title at the 2015 Alabama Book Festival. At the time, I handled the selection of nonfiction for the festival with my friend and colleague Nancy Anderson. I knew about Equal Justice Initiative’s work through a family member who worked there and from taking students to their law offices on a field trip. Their in-office presentation back then contained some of the images now seen in their two museum sites, and I’ll admit that a few of the images affected me so strongly that I had to leave the presentation for a moment to avoid melting into tears in front of my students.  Even without reading the book, I had an idea of what its powerful content would be.

Stevenson was a gracious man to work with in that process. I had halfway expected someone in his position to be haughty, self-important, and dismissive of me, a writer and teacher who was volunteering for a literary festival. He was none of those things. Over the phone, his soft voice was gentle and his tone appreciative. He agreed immediately to what I offered, in part since I had given him plenty of advance notice about the date. As the April event approached, the reviews and praise flourished, and it was clear that he would draw a crowd. I didn’t moderate his talk, since my students and I have a display table at the festival, but did meander over and listen. Having dealt with Stevenson only over telephone and email, I had to tell him who I was when I went to the author tent to get my copy autographed. Once again, he smiled, shook my hand, and thanked me graciously for inviting him.

Since then, Bryan Stevenson has been featured on awards shows, talk shows, and national news, and EJI’s public profile has increased dramatically. In addition to his own story, told in Just Mercy, St. Martin’s Press published exonoree Anthony Ray Hinton’s The Sun Does Shine in 2018, and it was then picked up by Oprah’s Book Club. Also last year, the widely acclaimed Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened and have drawn hundreds of thousands of visitors to Montgomery to survey the often-undiscussed aspects of our history that are depicted within. Though I avoided the initial rush, I’ve been to both sites several times now, with students and as the master teacher for an Alabama Humanities Foundation teacher workshop on justice issues. So, it was with great interest, as a follower of these issues and narratives, that I accepted the invitation not only to see my students honored but to get an early glimpse of the movie adaptation of Stevenson’s book.

The film, which I won’t describe in detail since it hasn’t been released yet, does a good job carrying  the book onto the screen, though it does leave out some of the content (for time reasons, I’m sure). Stevenson is played by , and the story centers on his first big success obtaining the release of Walter Macmillan, a man wrongly convicted of a brutal murder in south Alabama. The film is dramatic, emotional, and captivating as it shares the upward trajectory of EJI along with the commensurate obstacles. As we watched, the audience in EJI’s auditorium cheered and wept and let out scattered uh-huhs and that’s-rights throughout the screening. Afterward, Stevenson came out to say a few words and shared that Just Mercy will open in six cities on Christmas Day, with screenings in Montgomery a few days a prior. I was glad to hear that our local community would have dibs on seeing it first.

[image error]If you’ve read any of my Southern Movie posts, you’ll know that I pay particular attention to representations of the South, particularly of my home state of Alabama. Just Mercy casts Alabama in a distinctly negative pall, but there’s a reason why that doesn’t bother me this time: the events portrayed are true.  Just Mercy does include the stereotypes of the corrupt Southern sheriff and the flippant Southern prosecutor, but this time, they may be dramatizations, but they aren’t fabrications. I’ve read the book twice, as well as Hinton’s book, I can relay that the film mirrors Stevenson’s written account well. And one thing I’ve noticed about Bryan Stevenson is: some people disagree with his goals or with his work, but no one contradicts his narrative. For my part, I’m glad that this story will reach new audiences, especially those who might not read Just Mercy (or The Sun Does Shine) for themselves. He’s right that we need to bring the truths about injustice out into the open, and there are lots of ways to do that. Sometimes it takes a guest speaker, sometimes an essay contest . . . and sometimes a mainstream movie with popular stars playing the roles.

 

Dirty Boots: “Farm School Lessons and My Stubborn Optimism”

It was about five years ago, in the winter of the 2014 – 2015 school year, that I started a school garden where I teach. The idea came from a conversationwith a small group of students who, it quickly became clear, had little understanding of where food comes from. While I’m no expert and have no formal training in agriculture or horticulture, I had more experience than they did in how to build, plant, grow, and harvest. Due in part to those facts, and also to the facts of weather and funding, we’ve had ups and downs, successes and failures. And lately, it has seemed like the time to seek out people who know better about these things than I do and to bring some of that knowledge and wisdom back home.

[image error] So last week, I drove up to Nauvoo, Alabama for a Farm School workshop at Camp McDowell to learn more about how to run my school garden. Though I’d known about Camp McDowell already, I had never been there before. I had childhood friends who went in the summers, and around Montgomery, it isn’t uncommon to see one of their bumper stickers on a Volvo or SUV. As a Gen-Xer who never went to camp, I’ve always been a little wary of these places, since my conceptions about them have come from movies like Meatballs and Friday the 13th. Thankfully, my experiences last week bore no resemblance to either.

The particular appeal of this workshop was that it was taught at a farm school, where a dedicated staff not only take care of both crops and animals, but who also teach students and campers about what they do. Though they’re operating a much larger scale, that’s essentially what a school garden sponsor does. There’s the work of caring for the plants and animals, and then there’s the work of explaining the processes and products to students. That second part is the kicker for a guy like me with no real training.

[image error]Though I did learn a few particular methods and tactics that I can use in my work, the greater truth that I learned at Camp McDowell’s Farm School involved the need to think like a farmer, not like a guy tinkering around outside. So far, my administration method for the garden has been to ask students, “What do y’all want to do?” Of course, they don’t know. That’s why they’re coming out to a school garden: to find out. Inevitably, my well-intended laissez-faire attitude has meant that I’ve created problems that I would never tolerate in my classroom: indecision, spotty participation, delays, missed opportunities. There’s that old saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” That has been me. But, as we walked around the farm, at one point surveying 10′ x 40′ vegetable beds, at another feeding and milking goats, later discussing differences in composting methods, I noticed farmers Scotty Feltman and Andrew Shea doing what I never do in my garden: measuring, taking notes, reviewing outcomes, employing a method. What I realized that I need for my school garden is to make a plan and implement that plan, showing students how to measure progress and success so they can (hopefully) replicate results.

One of my goals with this sustainability effort at my school is demonstrating how the inconvenience of “going green” – small-scale gardening and urban farming included – is not as great as some people might assume. Once you get into it, it’s more a matter of skill than talent. What I want my students to focus on are the ways to accomplish the task, rather than the perceived reasons that the task seems difficult or even impossible. During our last meeting, Andrew Shea told us that farming is about deciding what to plant then creating conditions that both cause that crop to thrive and deter pests. That’s good advice for anything in life, not just farming.

[image error]If a person has some measure of humility, he can watch a professional go about a task and realize just how much of an amateur he is. I went up to Nauvoo hoping to be humbled, and was. I’m proud of having built a school garden program out of six raised beds (and no water hookup) on an unused patch of gravel, and also of rebuilding an even larger garden in a new spot, but became clearer last weekend that I’ve outgrown a reliance on stubborn optimism and need a better approach moving forward.

“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige,” a weekly column published every Tuesday afternoon, offers a Deep Southern, Generation X perspective on life in the 21st century. To find and read previous posts, click here for a full list.

Southern Movie 43: “The Defiant Ones” (1958)

Released in 1958, during the early years of the Civil Rights movement, The Defiant Ones was a daring foray into the nuances of race relations and white supremacy in the South. The film came out the year after the Little Rock Nine controversy in Arkansas and two years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama, and it presented a scenario that would have been uncomfortable to many Southerners: two escaped convicts, one white, one black, chained together, running like hell, and learning to cooperate. They are pursued by a posse of locals led by a dour, cynical sheriff and an overzealous state police officer who duel and bicker over control. Filmed in black-and-white and employing little spectacle, The Defiant Ones is spare and lean in its portrayal of two unlikely anti-heroes and their misadventures.

The film opens with Noah’s raucous singing. A transport truck carrying prisoners is driving through the rain at night, and Noah (Sidney Poitier) is among the group, which is comprised of both white and black men. He is the only one who is not silent, and after a few moments, one of the men up front yells at him to shut up. Yet he continues howling a loose, a cappella version of “Long Gone (from Bowling Green).” Soon, one of the prisoners, Joker (Tony Curtis), who is white, calls Noah the n-word and tells him to shut up as well. The two are chained together, and when Noah objects to the epithet, they start to tussle. About that time, another truck comes down the winding road toward the prisoner transport, and swerving to avoid a collision, the transport crashes and rolls down the hillside. Noah and Joker are now chained together and on the run!

In the next scene, we see a variety of law enforcement officers standing around trying to get their work set up. The grouchy sheriff Max Muller (Theodore Bikel) is reminded that this is a delicate situation and that it is an election year. The sheriff shouts at nearby state police captain Frank Gibbons to call once again to check on their help and resources, but then a small posse of yokels shows up, among them a goofball with a blaring portable radio around his neck. The sheriff asks what good they will be, and one man says that they’ve hunted plenty of rabbits and that men and rabbits are basically the same thing. The sheriff is calmly disgusted and advises them that, if they truly want to help, they’ll put down their guns.

After a quick appraisal of who the inmates are and what their crimes were, the question is asked, why are a black man and a white man chained together? “I guess the warden’s got a sense of humor,” Max says. No one laughs, then he adds that they ‘ve been advised not to bother chasing them. “They’ll probably kill each other before they go five miles.”

In the gray light of morning, Noah and Joker are running frantically through the woods. Back at the police’s site, men are drinking coffee while the trucks are towed back on the road. The dog man has brought his bloodhounds and Dobermans to track the men, and Muller tells him that the dogs have to stay on a leash.

When our view shifts back to Joker and Noah, they are trying to break the chains with a rock. First, Joker smashes at the chain while proclaiming that he wants a new suit and a girl on his arm, then handing it to Noah, he takes his turn while bitterly grumbling that there will be “No more yassuh.” The chain doesn’t budge though, and they must decide what to do next. Joker wants to go south, but Noah objects, saying that he won’t go that direction. No, it must be north or nothing. Noah says that he knows a train that passes by about sixty miles north on the edge of the swamp, it carries turpentine to a paint factory in Ohio. Refusing to abide this plan, Joker tries to drag Noah in the direction he prefers, and Noah laughs. The tension between the two men rises from Joker’s indignant anger met by Noah’s resolute cynicism. When Joker realizes that he cannot budge the man, they go Noah’s way.

At this point in The Defiant Ones, it is vague about where exactly the story is taking place. The movie was filmed in California, so the landscape is rural but not Southern. The prisoner transport truck has no writing or logo on its doors. Noah mentions working in a turpentine camps and being south of Ohio. IMDb lists Mississippi as one of its keywords, probably because later in the film, Joker tells a story about parking cars in Natchez. It’s only safe to say that this is playing out in the South, though there is no solid indication of where.

When the buffoonish crew finally gets moving tracking the two escapees, they must first listen to a military-style lecture from the gravelly voiced Capt. Gibbons, as Sheriff Max shakes his head in snarky dismay. Meanwhile, Joker and Noah are crossing a rushing river with Noah going first. But Noah slips, Joker is unable to hold on, and they are swept away by the current. Down the way, they find a tree branch and fish themselves out. Despite their mutual situation, when Noah tells Joker thank you for pulling him out, Joker replies harshly, “I didn’t pull you out. I kept you from pulling me in.”

[image error]After a brief scene where Max and Gibbons spar over how hard they can push the men and the dogs during the pursuit, we are back again with Noah and Joker. It is night, and they are roasting and eating a big, fat bullfrog. In the quiet, they talk to pass the time, first about nature and its predators, and we learn that Noah has a good sense of the animals’ behavior. Yet, the tone changes when Joker offers him a drag of a cigarette, and Noah says, “Thanks.” Joker tells him again to stop saying that. Noah asks why, and Joker tells him a story about parking cars at a fancy hotel in Natchez, Mississippi where he had to say thank you constantly. Noah doesn’t see the point in the anecdote, but gets tense himself when Joker continues to call him “boy.” Joker doesn’t see the harm in it, or in any racial slur. The two men then debate their positions in society: Joker reminds Noah that could only get in the back door of that fancy hotel with a bucket and a mop, and Noah reminds Joker that he only got in the front door long enough to collect his tip.

The rain then kicks in, and the two men are sleeping cuddled together like children. They wake suddenly, are embarrassed, and get moving quickly. They reach a dig site and are startled by a man rushing past in horse-drawn cart, which causes them to leap into a clay pit that looks to be twenty feet deep. Since they’re chained, Joker and Noah must work together to get out, and it takes a few tries. Once they’re out, Noah realizes that Joker has injured his hand and wrist. Joker is of course resistant to being helped, but Noah tries to show him what compassion he can.

Back among the posse with their dogs, now in the daylight, they’ve reached the rushing river that the two escapees crossed earlier. Max is on the phone, nonchalantly giving orders to cancel the road blocks and to tell his wife that he’ll be out a bit longer. The dog man gives Max another piece of his mind, telling him that he cares more about the dogs “than any old escaped convicts,” then Max has to go consult with Gibbons again. Of course, Gibbons wants to seek military support, but Max sees no point in it. Gibbons tries to argue, but Max tersely explains that he has the authority in the situation.

The next tribulation for the escapees is a little turpentine camp. They have already navigated Man versus Nature and Man versus Man, and now it is time for Man versus Society. After two days of running, they are hungry and tired, but want more than anything to be separated. Realizing that they can’t waltz into town and ask for help, Joker and Noah settle in and wait for everyone to be asleep, so they can break into the company store and get some tools and food.

While they wait, Joker and Noah have another heart-to-heart. Noah mentions that he had a thirty-six acre farm and a wife and son, but had to work it with “hands tools and a mule.” Joker explains how he never could ahead, not even working a job as a car mechanic in Mobile. He’d get paid and spend it all on Friday night on some woman, then be back it at on Monday. He went to prison for being a small-time thief, he says, really for not being a big-time thief so brazen that it didn’t matter. (This is a class-conscious jab at the wealthy.) Noah, it turns out, went to prison for assaulting the man who came to collect a mortgage note that he couldn’t pay. His wife had always told him to “be nice,” even when he was being cheated, but “I’ve been mad all my natural-born life,” he tells Joker.

After the last light is out, they scamper down the hill and into the silent camp. They devise a scheme to get into the store, which has barred windows, from the roof, but of course, it doesn’t go well. They crash to the floor and make a mess, which wakes the town! They try to run for it and hit one man on their way, but they are easily caught and cornered in an alleyway.

Now, they are to be lynched. One of the townspeople, Mack (Claude Akins), throws a rope over a beam and instructs another man to take the women and children away. One woman asks what’s going on, and he replies, “Just an old-fashioned prayer meetin’.” Mack finds this funny but no one else seems to, so he proceeds to interrogate the convicts. Neither Joker nor Noah budge, which makes Mack angry. Big Sam (Lon Chaney) enters the scene, and says their friend will be okay but hasn’t woken up. Mack pushes harder for a confession, and Joker tries to talk his way out of it, first noting that they can’t legally lynch escaped convicts, then that there’s usually a reward for escaped convicts, and finally by saying, “You can’t lynch me . . . I’m white.” Noah gives him a look, and Mack insults his white-ness by telling Noah to spit on him. Noah silently refuses, then spits on Mack, who punches him.

Yet, the tide turns when Big Sam steps in. He grabs Mack and throws him to the ground. He begins then push the other men in the crowd to act, but we can see that his urging is ironic, that he knows that they don’t have the courage or the desire to do this to another human being. He offers one a rope, another an axe, then finally he offers fire to Mack, who takes it and moves toward Joker and Noah. But Big Sam grabs him and knocks him to the ground. In the silence of men’s shame, Big Sam orders the men to tie up Joker and Noah in the barn so he can carry them to the law in the morning. They all disperse.

Joker and Noah are tied to a post back-to-back, and Noah is once again singing “Long Gone.” He believes that it’s over, they both do, and rightly so. Noah suggests to Joker that being dead is better than going back to a chain gang for another twenty years, but Joker disagrees. He admits to Noah that he has seen a lynching and knows how they work, which was the reason for his fear. But what they don’t know is that Big Sam will be their saving grace. As they fuss with each other, Sam comes in and unties them, allowing them to leave. They wonder why at first, but the scars on his wrists show them that he was once a lynching victim as well. On their way out the door, Noah asks for his crowbar, but Sam tells him not to push his luck.

After once again seeing the exhausted posse trying to find our anti-heroes, the focus returns to the fleeing escapees. They share a cigarette, but the tension returns when Joker tells Noah that he should have gotten what he deserved after spitting in a white man’s face. Noah then returns the jab by telling Joker that he is nothing but a “monkey on a stick,” that he hasn’t enough spine to stand up for himself. This exchange leads to the fist fight we’ve seen coming, and they eventually tumble down the hill and into some cane brush where each man tries to use their chain to strangle the other. But their fight is interrupted by a boy’s voice, telling them to cut it out.

When they look up, a young boy named Billy is pointing a rifle at them. He instructs them to get up and come over to him. They do walk over, scared and confused, but they quickly use the chain to knock the boy’s gun out of his hand, though he hits head on a rock on the way to the ground. Here, we see the intricacies of a racialized culture. Joker says to leave him there but Noah stays to help, lifting Billy, checking his head, and waking him up. But the boy starts at being held so closely by a black man, and jumps up to seek protection from Joker, who just wanted to leave him there hurt. As Noah questionsBilly about his home, his father, and what he is doing out there, the boy is hesitant to answer and only does so when Joker says it’s okay to. The boy then asks Joker, “Are you taking him to jail?” to which Joker replies, “Something like that.”

At Billy’s house, his mother lets in the two escapees and they calmly demand food. Of course, she fixes Joker a plate directly, but has to be told to fix one for Noah, too. She has an obvious attraction to Joker, and they begin to get to know each other, as Noah looks skeptically at them. The woman has a picture of Mardi Gras in New Orleans on her wall, and Joker tells her that Mardi Gras isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She then offers him to stay the night, an offer he meets with silent coldness, and then she tells them both about a train that passes by every afternoon about 1:00, a bit of information that gets Noah’s attention. About that time, Billy comes in with a hammer and chisel. The two escapes jump up like their chairs are on fire, and they proceed to take off the chains. When their brief work is done, there is a mixture of relief at having them removed, and a visible recognition that there fortunes are no longer tied. Quickly, Noah jumps up and grabs the gun, pointing it at the woman and child, but his nervous effort is stopped when Joker passes out and falls on the hearth, reeling from the sickness caused by his injury.

On the other front, the search patrol has reached the turpentine camp, where Big Sam is explaining away their disappearance. He claims that they broke out, but Max remarks that he sees marks on the outside of the door, meaning that someone broke in. He then tells Sam that, if they lynched the two, he’d better fess up, since the dogs will find their corpses. But Sam isn’t worried and shrugs him off. Frustrated now, and tired, Max tries to get his crew moving despite their protests, and he orders Gibbons to bring in reinforcements to wall-in the two convicts. Max’s buddy says, “You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen him smile.”

The next ten minutes of The Defiant Ones shifts gears and develops a sentimental and romantic connection between Joker, who is lying shirtless in the bed, and the nameless woman who has taken them in. She describes an awful and lonely life: her husband is gone, and she and her son have nothing. When Joker awakes, the house is quiet. Noah is sleeping with his head on the kitchen table, and the boy is in his bed. (It is implied that Joker and the woman slept together.) He finds her outside pumping water, then she tells him that she wants him to be her new man— and they can leave in her car. Astounded by the revelation that there is a car, Joker sprints to the barn and gets it cranked. They will run away together, she tells him, and start fresh after dropping off her son with relatives. However, Joker wants to know what will happen to Noah— she doesn’t care, she tells him callously, and a hesitant Joker agrees. Then they realize that Noah is standing there. He understands what is happening and suggests slyly that he’ll be “the bait.” The tension is severe, and the woman goes inside to fix them something to eat.

As the story comes to a close, the woman makes Noah some sandwiches and gives him directions to get to the train through the swamp. He appears suspicious but she tells him that it’s the most direct way and that dogs won’t be able to track him there. He leaves without much fanfare, and the woman begins to pack herself and her son to leave with Joker. However, she makes a remark about Noah during their conversation that catches Joker’s ear: he won’t make it anyway. Joker asks what she means, then presses her, only to find out that she has sent Noah into a place where he’ll certainly drown or sink into quicksand. She has done this to ensure that he isn’t caught, and can’t tell on them, which will give them time to get away. Joker is furious at what she has done, but the woman pleads with him tearfully that this is their only chance. She has $400 saved, she tells him, and lists all of the wonderful things they can do in a big city. But Joker is having none of it. He tells her as he leaves that she doesn’t even know his name or anything else about him. She tries one more tearful plea, but Joker leaves. However, as he does, the boy Billy has the rifle and shoots Joker.

Joker runs and soon catches up to Noah in the swamp. Meanwhile, the posse has arrived at the woman’s house and tries to get information out of her. She coyly resists, while Joker and Noah continue their scramble in the swamp. As the posse closes in, the two men see the railroad bridge and make a dash for it. Noah makes the jump onto a flatcar, but Joker is too weak and can’t.  Noah reaches out his black hand, and Joker reaches out with his bandaged white hand. For a moment, they clasp but Joker’s slips away. Then we see them both tumble from the train and tracks down a hill. We realize that Noah must’ve jumped to be with his friend. Finally, as Max walks up on them, Noah is holding Joker in his arms, as they wax philosophic then begin to chuckle at their bad luck. Joker, who has said the whole time that he wants to “Charlie Potatoes,” says that he is now “mashed potatoes.” To end the film, Noah is once again singing “Long Gone,” as Max holsters his pistol, recognizing that they’re not a threat at all.

David Roediger, a historian and scholar on issues of race and class, wrote of the film: “This blockbuster liberal ‘race film’ was as noteworthy for its striking successes as for its lamentable limitations. [ . . .]  The Defiant Ones also is regarded by some film historians as one of the first ‘crossover’ successes, a work tailored to attracting both a black audience and a white one.” The Defiant Ones is not a very Southern film— it is, I agree, a ‘race film’ instead. Though Noah and Joker have depth, the portrayals of the lawmen, the posse, and people who commit the near-lynching are set up as types, like chess pieces to be moved around the board until a check-mate is achieved.

Certainly, some truths about mid-century Southern culture and racism and their effects can be garnered from the portrayals, but where the film takes us relates more to an idea of Harold Bloom’s: a hero’s journey is defined not so much by success as by having learned something from having undertaken it. At the end of The Defiant Ones, the anti-heroes Joker and Noah are captured and will go back to prison, but they’ll go back having learned that race need not separate them. And that outcome may have been Southern-enough for audiences in 1958 to think about, as they witnessed the  burgeoning movement for racial equality that was erupting below the Mason-Dixon Line.

 

Dirty Boots: “And we ain’t got but fifty states.”

[image error]Back in 2016, when then-governor Robert Bentley quipped to a small crowd that Alabama’s education system “sucks,” he explained that our schools were ranked 51st, adding, “And we ain’t got but fifty states.” His remarks drew a few chuckles from that audience, but the larger response was swift, definite, and negative. Considering the lack of funding and widespread job cuts, there were defensive retorts and calls for an apology. But I doubt if anyone considered that things could get worse.

Apparently, they have. Earlier this month, al.com’s Trisha Powell Crain reported that, after a brief period of improvement, Alabama is now “dead-last.”

Alabama’s math scores were rock-bottom for 2019, 52nd in the country behind all states, Washington D.C. and the Department of Defense schools. Alabama’s reading scores slid to 49th in both grades.

The results of the National Assessment for Educational Progress, abbreviated NAEP, were released on October 30 in what they call “The Nation’s Report Card.” Alabama’s results show losses in both reading and math scores, and the page devoted to State Comparisons shows that forty-eight states “performed significantly higher,” three states were “not significantly different,” and zero states “performed significantly lower.” (Schools in New Mexico, Louisiana, and West Virginia only beat us by a point or two.) In fourth-grade math, reading, and science, only 28% of students in Alabama were “at or above proficient,” yet the percentages dropped by eighth grade to 21%, 24%, and 21%, respectively. These benchmarks signal a crucial need for improvement, not because of these scores, but because those three subjects teach students to use reason and logic (math), to take in and understand information (reading), and to base decisions on empirical knowledge (science). Somebody in education dubbed them “core” subjects because they impart skills that form the core of a reasonable person’s life.

However, it would too easy – and downright foolish – to use one document, with its particular set of numbers and subsequent rankings, to make a singular assessment of Alabama’s schools. Moreover, the most valuable perspective to have in looking at these kinds of reports would be one steeped in both honesty and hope. It may be an old cliché but it seems fair to say that there truly is nowhere to go but up. However, if we’re to remedy or solve the problems we see evidenced in low scores and a low ranking, we’ve got to take a more nuanced view than: our schools “suck.”

For example, the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA) has its own graphs and charts about Alabama schools. One bar graph shows that Alabama’s ACT scores have remained fairly constant, hovering around a 19 from 2015 through 2018, and another shows that workforce readiness, as measured by the WorkKeys test, has risen from 59% to 64% during those same years. So, if our fourth- and eighth-graders’ NAEP scores dropped, but our twelfth-graders’ workforce readiness scores improved, we should ask: what are we doing wrong, and what are we doing right?

Personally, I don’t like standardized testing – I think that it shifts the focus of education away from learning and onto scores and rankings – but my attitude is: if it’s going to be done anyway, let’s make good use of what we gain from it. I saw we make some multi-million-dollar lemonade. We spend a lot of money on these tests, and that money won’t be wasted if we use what we find out from them. That’s what tests are for. A plumber tests a water or gas line for leaks— why? To find and fix the problem. A mechanic hooks a car up to a diagnostic machine— why? To find and fix the problem. If we look at these results and use them as another opportunity to lament, to complain, to blame, or to disparage, then we will continue down the road we’re on. But if we choose honesty and hope, we stand a much better chance in the future.

Further reading: “Our Last-ness” from July 9, 2019

“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige,” a weekly column published every Tuesday afternoon, offers a Deep Southern, Generation X perspective on life in the 21st century. To find and read previous posts, click here for a full list.

Sharing #GoodStuff: “Trust Your Gut” on NPR, May 2019

[image error]Earlier this week, NPR’s app re-ran this May 2019 story from their Life Kit series. “Trust Your Gut” is about food and “intuitive eating,” and considering that I’m still on this mission to find the best way to eat, I wanted to share it.

Other posts on food and eating:

Feeding the Family, Part One

Feeding the Family, Part Two

Feeding the Family, Part Three

 

#throwbackthursday: The Defeat of Emory Folmar, 1999

[image error]

It was twenty years ago this week that lawyer Bobby Bright unseated Montgomery, Alabama’s long-time mayor and once-gubernatorial candidate Emory Folmar in a surprising upset. Folmar had been mayor since 1977, when he won the special election that followed the resignation of then-mayor Jim Robinson, and had won re-election five times, in 1979, 1983, 1987, 1991, and 1995. In two of those, Folmar had run unopposed. Heading into the 1999 election, another Folmar term seemed likely, as the Montgomery Advertiser reported in late August that he had raised three times as much campaign money (over $333,000) as the next closest candidate, Bright (over $114,000). There were six candidates in the race this time, among them was Robinson, the man Folmar had replaced.

On election day, October 12, Bright came within striking distance, garnering 21,000 votes to Folmar’s 30,000. Since no candidate received more than 50% of the votes, a runoff would come on November 2. Bright then won the mayor’s job in that two-man race by a margin of 32,819 (54%) to 28,223 (46%), effectively ending an era in Montgomery. Folmar had been a leader in Alabama’s capitol city for the last quarter of the twentieth century, having been city council president from September 1975 until April 1977 then mayor from April 1977 until November 1999.

Interestingly, that bold “BRIGHT WINS” headline on November 3 was followed by a subheading that read “Better schools, unity top issues for new mayor”— which were the same things that the candidates in the 2019 election were promising. Also interesting is: at the bottom of the front page, in an article about the shock and dismay among Folmar’s supporters, one of Montgomery’s 2019 mayoral candidates Ed Crowell was quoted as saying, “I’m a little bit perplexed about how it turned out [ . . . ] It’s obvious that the people spoke, but I don’t know what change they were looking for.”

Change came nonetheless. Bright completed his first term and was re-elected in 2003. His signature achievement was the revitalization of Montgomery’s downtown. Toward the end of his second term, Bright was elected (as a Democrat) to the US Congress and was succeeded by County Commissioner Todd Strange, who continued the revitalization work. After a few terms of his own, Strange did not seek re-election in 2019, and most recent mayor-elect is Probate Judge Steven Reed— the son of Folmar’s main political rival Joe L. Reed, a former city councilman and state senator, and the leader of the Alabama Democratic Conference.

 

Meeting Theodore Rosengarten

The first time I heard of All God’s Dangers, I was about fifteen and got the chance to see the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s one-man show based on the book. The production starred Cleavon Little, of Blazing Saddles fame, and it always stuck with me. Though I had no connection to the story of Nate Shaw/Ned Cobb, it was still compelling, even to a teenager with little interest in folk life or state history.

Some time after seeing that production, I encountered a copy of All God’s Dangers in a used bookstore called The Book Nook. The copy was a mass-market paperback from the mid-1970s, and I read it pretty quickly, though I doubt if I absorbed it.

More than a decade later, in 2002 and 2003, I came across the story of Nate Shaw/Ned Cobb while working at NewSouth Books. The company was publishing a volume of selected poems by a poet I’d never heard of, John Beecher, and among the longer ones on the collection was “In Egypt Land.” As I read it, I remember thinking, I know this story. Beecher had been a journalist writing an article for Social Forces about the shootout between black sharecroppers and white sheriffs in east Alabama in the early 1930s, and later recounted the events in verse.  (In the years that followed, I wrote the first-ever book about John Beecher, with “In Egypt Land” being part of his story.)

[image error]Perhaps it was fortune, then, that brought me together with All God’s Dangers again when it was included in a graduate-school course on Alabama’s Black Belt. This time, reading its sprawling narrative came easier, since I had the historical context to go with it and an adult writer’s mind with which to process it. The book remains one of my all-time favorites, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity when I saw that the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in Auburn was having a symposium on “The Life and Legacy of Ned Cobb”— and the author and his wife, and members of the Cobb family would be there. I would finally get to meet Theodore Rosengarten.

[image error]Though I only got to talk with him for a scant moment, it was nice to put a face with the name that I’ve known for so long. All God’s Dangers was published (and won the National Book Award) the year I was born, and I first heard the story in my teens, but I have enjoyed it for about thirty years now. Dr. Rosengarten was gracious, though a bit rushed, remarking that my old mass-market paperback was a rare find, since they didn’t print many. I got to explain my relationship to the story, then got the autograph that I’d come over for. He was even kind enough to make it out “to teenage Foster.”

 

 

Dirty Boots: “Before some ol’ fool comes around here”

I know that everybody in the Deep South knows the song “Sweet Home Alabama,” that anthem to my home state that balks at Neil Young, defends George Wallace in vague terms, and blows off Watergate as not worth worrying about. Yet, if you know more about Lynyrd Skynyrd than that one song, you may also know a song like “All I Can Do is Write about It.” If not, you’d probably be surprised by what you hear. That song, which was on 1976’s Gimme Back My Bullets, has co-writers Ronnie Van Zant and Allen Collins advocating for what sounds a lot like . . . well, environmentalism. Not left-leaning, Greenpeace/PETA kind of environmentalism, but still a clear endorsement for protecting undisturbed nature: “Did you ever see a she-gator protect her young / or a fish in a river swimming free? / Did you ever see the beauty of the hills of Carolina, / or the sweetness of the grass in Tennessee?” The song’s three verses end with a chorus that smacks of protest against suburban sprawl: “Yes, when I can see the concrete slowly creeping . . . Lord, take me and mine before that comes.”

[image error]I’ve always liked Lynyrd Skynyrd— that is, Lynyrd Skynyrd as it was originally, before the 1977 plane crash. (The band’s second incarnation . . . not so much.) Their biggest hit came out in 1974, the year I was born, so I can never remember a time when the band wasn’t a big deal here in the Deep South. Those boys from Jacksonville, Florida had grown up in rough circumstances and had used music to avoid what they saw as the only two clear options: hard work or prison. Their lyrics, which I like for their keen perception of gritty realities, are peculiarly honest.

What is impressive about Lynyrd Skynyrd’s lyrics is the gutsy and forthright way that the songs reply to  people who hurt others and who hamper our ability to lead a decent life. For instance, the song “Things Goin’ On” from their debut album offers some choice words for powerful people:

Too many lives been spent across the ocean.

Too much money been spent up on the moon.

Well, until they make it right

I hope they never sleep at night

They better make some changes

And do it soon.

That was the early ’70s, right after the 1969 moon landing, during the Nixon era, and near the end of Vietnam, and those working-class Southern boys weren’t cutting the “Southern Strategy” types any slack. On that same album, “Poison Whiskey” decries alcoholism – a far cry from the “bro country” of today – and “Simple Man” extols an uncluttered life. On Second Helping, the band celebrates the backwoods in “Swamp Music” and again decries substance abuse in “The Needle and the Spoon.” 1975’s Nuthin’ Fancy contains a clear caveat, in the song “Saturday Night Special,” that “handguns are made for killing / they ain’t no good for nothin’ else,” which is followed by a clear solution: “why don’t we dump ’em, people, to the bottom of the sea / before some ol’ fool comes around here, wants to shoot either you or me!” Not exactly God-and-guns.

Some of my favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd songs come from their next-to-last studio album Gimme Back My Bullets. The title track is an anthem for those who recognize that the time has come for action, though “Every Mother’s Son,” which follows it, is a distinct reminder to stay humble and don’t get too big for your britches. Personally, I don’t see “Gimme Back My Bullets” as a pro-gun song, but as a hardscrabble metaphor for saying, “I’m through getting pushed around.” Later in the album, the song “Trust” is a reminder to be careful of who you deal with, and near the end of it, “Cry for the Bad Man” contains some of my favorite lyrics of all time: “You treat me right, baby, I’ll treat you right. / That’s the way it’s supposed to be.” That album ends with the song I mentioned first: “All I Can Do is Write about It.”

Skynyrd’s final album Street Survivors has its share of good-time songs that have gotten a lot of radio play over the last four decades – “What’s Your Name” and “You Got that Right” – but there’s also another warning against drinking and drugs in “That Smell,” and the last track on that last album, “Ain’t No Good Life,” shows the side of the band that I’m talking about here. Van Zant sings, “I don’t even know where last month went, / Well, I can’t make no money baby / ’cause my money’s already spent. / And I know where it went, / I said it went on that damn rent.”

Sometimes I hear people ridicule or stereotype Lynyrd Skynyrd has nothing but redneck bullshit. That’s not true or accurate. In the Deep South of the 1970s, Lynyrd’s Skynyrd’s songs stated bluntly what hard-working people were saying in bars, in church parking lots, in grocery store aisles, and around kitchen tables. Those guys knew hard work – they practiced relentlessly in an un-air-conditioned shack they called Hell House, toured constantly, and put out six albums in five years – because they came from a culture that taught them that’s how life is. There’s a lot of classic Southern posturing there, sure, but there’s also a nuanced, real-world, and distinctly blue-collar understanding of inequality, substance abuse, the environment, and guns— all issues that we still struggle with today. The band had its share of songs about partying, women, and drinking, but what I like (and respect) about them is their honesty about facing the hardships that are always right there at arm’s length. And if Ronnie Van Zant were here today, I think he’d say to all of us: how about less talking and politicking and more simple, clear action that makes it where hard-working people aren’t getting the shaft.

“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige,” a weekly column published every Tuesday afternoon, offers a Deep Southern, Generation X perspective on life in the 21st century. To find and read previous posts, click here for a full list.

A Moveable Feast: Fall Finally Comes to a School Garden

*If you haven’t already, you should read the previous posts about the school garden.

[image error]In central Alabama, we just had the driest September ever on record, during a month that had highs of 90 degrees or greater every day. On seven of those thirty days, the high was 100–101 degrees, with heat indices going over 110 some days. We went 29 days without rainfall, yielding 0.05″ for the month, a sum that beat the old record of 0.12″ from 1924. It’s kind of hard to garden in that. But we tried anyway.

When the school year starts in August, it’s not really the time to plant in Alabama, but in our school garden, we planted herbs and actually got a nice yield overall— after watering and watering and watering . . . three times a day during the week and twice a day on weekends. Thankfully, almost all of the herbs have survived, and the basil – two types – has flourished! Though I’ve told teachers and students alike to harvest and use however much they want, I’ve chosen to leave it alone since the bees are enjoying it more than I ever will.

So with the basil, mint, catnip, sage, and other herbs going crazy in one tract, I went to Harwell’s Green Thumb in mid-October and picked up trays of cabbage, broccoli, and collards to put in the other tract.  The sunflowers that I had been letting the bugs chew on had to be removed, and there was a bit of nut grass to pull up. Then, on a sunny, cool morning, a couple of students joined me to spread mushroom compost and put some veggies in the dirt.

[image error]Thankfully, we got a lot more rain in October, and the temperatures finally cooled to something near normal for this time of year. I saw on the local news last weekend that October had twice the average amount of rain, which is beginning to balance out the drought we’d fallen into. Those conditions are helping our little baby plants to rise up and grow. That rain also has saved the confederate jasmine and rosemary that we planted last spring, though I believe that the other ornamentals and our muscadine vines have gone the way of the dodo bird.

[image error]However, never one to give up, I’ve got a plan for replacing some of those. I bought and potted a bright-yellow ligustrum bush and a parent donated two large aloe plants, also in planters. I lost five golden euonymus bushes, despite it being a notoriously hearty plant, in the hard soil of that old playground, so I’m going to Plan B for the beautification aspect of the garden. Plan A was to build something I could leave behind when we leave our temporary location and move to a new campus, but it looks like Plan B will involve more potted plants and container gardening, and thus fit more into the idea of this garden being a moveable feast.