Foster Dickson's Blog, page 36

A Look Back at “Patchwork: A Chronicle of Alabama in the New South,” part one

[image error]I can’t believe that it has been ten years since Patchwork: A Chronicle of Alabama in the New South. The project was funded by an Arts Teacher Fellowship from the Surdna Foundation and entailed a nearly a years’ worth of travel, interviews, readings, and news-watching to learn more about my home state of Alabama. During its fifteen-year timeframe, the Arts Teacher Fellowship, which was later renamed the National Artist Teacher Fellowship, provided funding for arts teachers to explore a subject, practice, or art form to then take back into the classroom. For me, that meant enhancing my knowledge of the controversial and problematic place where my students and I live. Readings in major state histories gave me a better sense of our past, and travels took me to see new things that were happening, new projects or businesses or people who were taking Alabama in a different and hopefully better direction.

My self-assigned reading list was thorough but admittedly not flawless. The four books I read were the multi-authored Alabama: History of a Deep South State, Wayne Flynt’s Alabama in the Twentieth Century and Poor But Proud, and Frye Gaillard’s Cradle of Freedom. These books constituted a broad overview from territory days through the 1990s, a thematic overview of the century we just ended, an examination of poor white culture, and a narrative of the state’s Civil Rights history. In addition, I also followed news alerts with the keyword Alabama, which was lively since the years 2009 and 2010 had national championships for both Alabama and Auburn and had Gov. Bob Riley going buck-wild over gambling. (The major work that I chose to leave off my list was Albert Pickett’s 1851 History, because my project was forward-looking and my time was limited.)

[image error]Starting out in August 2009, my travels kept me close to home. I spent some time back in my old neighborhood, which had changed dramatically and become somewhat dilapidated, and in Montgomery’s downtown, where I passed some time as a kid. I also wandered around in eastern Alabama, near Lake Martin, where we spend a lot of time. On those trips, I went off the usual track to see what was else was around there, including going further north than I usually do, through Alexander City to the mythical community of Peckerwood. There wasn’t much there, but I still had to see it for myself.

September got me into the thick of it. Traveling into Alabama’s Black Belt, in the western part of the state, was a natural first choice, since this region is heavy with history that affects me daily. This time, I made a loop through Selma, Newbern, Greensboro, Livingston, Thomaston, and Burkville. The formal interviews for this trip were with Andrew Freear, director of The Rural Studio; Joe Taylor, editor and publisher of the University of West Alabama’s Livingston Press; and Barbara Evans, an activist and organizer of the annual Okra Festival. Though these two- and three-day trips were a little bit strenuous, they were far beyond worth-it, allowing me to see parts of the state and meet people I might not have otherwise.

To see some of the images from that trip into the Black Belt, scroll down.

[image error] Butterflies in downtown Selma

 

[image error] Rural Studio students and their skate park
[image error] Beautiful blue skies in the Black Belt
[image error] Joe Taylor of Livingston Press
[image error] At the Rural Heritage Center in Thomaston
[image error] Barbara Evans’ Civil Rights museum and art gallery Annie Mae’s Place in Burkville

Coming next: Part two, containing a retrospective of the latter months of 2009.

#throwbackthursday: “The Life and Poetry of John Beecher,” 2009

It was ten years ago this month that my third book with the very long academic title, The Life and Poetry of John Beecher, 1904 – 1980: Advocate for Poetry as a Spoken Art, was published by Edwin Mellen Press. The book was based on my master’s thesis for the Master of Liberal Arts program at Auburn University at Montgomery. At the time of its publication, it was the only book about Beecher, though Angela Smith’s Here I Stand was since published in 2009.

A descendant of the abolitionist Beecher family, John Henry Newman Beecher was a prolific writer, editor, poet, journalist, and social activist who rebelled against his privileged upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama after experiencing the working conditions in the steel mills as a teenager. After a bit of success as a poet in the 1920s, he worked as a New Deal programs administrator in the 1930s, then volunteered for the Navy’s first racially integrated crew during World War II. In 1949, Beecher was blacklisted for refusing to sign a loyalty oath and spent the 1950s as a rancher, letterpress printer, and independent publisher. Beecher’s return to mainstream society in the 1960s led him to cover the  Civil Rights movement for Commonweal and Ramparts magazines, and his poetry received greater attention. His Collected Poems, 1924 – 1974 was published by Macmillan in 1975. However, after his death in 1980, Beecher’s works went out of print, and he faded into obscurity until a volume of selected poems, One More River to Cross, was published by NewSouth Books in 2003.

 

Sharing #Goodstuff: Romare Bearden at the High, Atlanta

Dirty Boots: “Thank You, Peter Greene!”

It was really refreshing to read Peter Greene’s “We Need to Stop Talking about the Teacher Shortage” on Forbes.com earlier this month. Greene’s byline explains that he spent thirty-nine years as a high school English teacher, and now writes on education issues. It’s nice to know that someone with that much ground-level experience is out there countering the ideas from people with only an eagle-eye view.

Here, Greene takes exception with this notion that we have a teacher shortage in America. He begins by using the analogy that, if you tried to buy a car for $1.98 and didn’t succeed, you wouldn’t go tell your friends that there was a car shortage. Or if you tried to dine out in a restaurant for $1, you wouldn’t claim there was a food shortage when you left hungry. The stronger insight would be that you couldn’t get what you wanted for what you were offering. Same thing with education and teachers.  Greene writes:

Calling the situation a “teacher shortage” suggests something like a crop failure or a hijacker grabbing truckloads before they can get to market. It suggests that there simply aren’t enough people out there who could do the job.

There are, actually. But they’re finding other lines of work. And it’s not just money for salaries that keeps those folks away. Again, Green writes:

But over the past couple of decades teachers have also suffered a steady drumbeat of disrespect, the repeated refrain that US schools are failing and terrible, an accountability movement that is more about threats than support. The rise of reforms like Common Core and high stakes testing regimens have meant a loss of professional autonomy for teachers. The rise of alternative pathways and “any warm body will do” solutions send the message that teaching is such a simple job that any shmoe with minimal training can do it.

Back in 2016, I wrote a post called “Tiny Glimmers of Hope” about this very issue, and cited two important facts: first, that the state of Alabama cut education funding by 17.8% between 2008 and 2015, and second, that 40% fewer college students majored in education during that same period. In Alabama, where I live and teach, thousands of education jobs were eliminated in 2009, 2010, and 2011. My question, asked rhetorically, is: who would anyone choose a career field where jobs are disappearing?

In more recent years, though, the jobs are coming back. As the economy has grown, tax revenues have come up from the Recession-era abyss, enabling most school systems to approach to whatever normalcy is now. Meanwhile, the last ten years’ worth of teacher-bashing have taken their toll on the public consciousness. Cash-strapped administrators shamelessly told the media that the remaining teachers would have to “do more with less.” The growth of social media has allowed angry parents to post wildly and prolifically (and often half-truthfully) about all manner of indiscretions (supposedly) committed at their children’s schools. The number of school shootings has increased dramatically, and school names like Parkland joined names like Columbine. The leaders of the school reform movement based their improvement strategy on having the ability to fire teachers. Everybody gave Waiting for Superman and NBC’s Education Nation their rapt attention. And now, the filthy residue left behind by all that highly publicized ire and desperation— that’s what normalcy is now.

So, we can’t find enough people who want to work in that environment. Peter Greene isn’t surprised. Neither should we be. If there were fewer education majors in the early 2010s, there are fewer people becoming new teachers now. With retirements and other departures, education leaders are finding that many job postings going unanswered. I guess thye’ll just have to – how did they put it? – do more with less.

“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.

Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “To Regard Others as Worthy of Kindness”

In the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, after the often-repeated “Love is patient, love is kind” passages, we read another often-repeated portion:

11. When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.

12. At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.

We come into the world knowing nothing, not even who or what we are. We can’t even open our eyes, the new light is so bright, and our only recognizable instinct is to suck on anything put into our mouths.

Our parents are our first educators. During our earliest years, they teach us the basics, things we never remember not knowing, like how to aim a spoon at our mouths and actually get the food in there. Others around us, like neighbors and daycare workers, teach us to be social: to regard others as worthy of kindness, to value cooperation and order. As our consciousness of the world grows, our knowledge of ourselves is enhanced by the ability to compare unlike ways of living to our own. Though St. Paul’s letter is addressing our relationship to God, in the temporal world we also come to know others as we are known to them.

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Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “The Anxiety of Too Many Choices”

At the end of last year, I felt like I had an overzealous announcer from a cheap TV commercial inside my head, shouting, Everything must go! I had reached a saturation point— a mental one.

[image error]Over the last few years, the crazy number of choices provided by the internet and digital media distribution had caused me to build up a seemingly interminable self-assigned “reading list.” Every time I’d see a book I’d like to read, I put it in my Amazon Wish List. If I’d see a movie I’d like to watch— in my Netflix queue!  When I browsed the cable guide, I took full advantage of the DVR’s ability to save every movie on Turner Classic that sounded interesting.

This compulsive hoarding of intended acculturation had also been urged forward by two well-meaning friends: one, my retired next-door neighbor who leaves his weekly Sunday New York Times on my porch when he’s done with it; and the other, a friend who makes a periodic donation of eight or ten weeks worth of New Yorkers, intended for my classroom. Among my ordinary duties as a husband, father, and teacher, I felt like I needed to read them all. (I couldn’t teach an article I hadn’t read, so even reading The New Yorker had become “working.”) Those print publications were stacking up, too.

It may seem pretty harmless, what I just described, but as a person who is driven by a sense of responsibility and by intellectual curiosity, my anxieties had been growing. At any given time, no matter how much I read or watched, I still had thirty or more movies saved on Netflix, a dozen more waiting in the DVR’s Recorded list, five or six dozen books wish-listed on Amazon, a foot-tall stack of Sunday Times, Times Magazines, and New Yorkers reminding me that I was behind . . . The Times’ weekly Book Review and Arts & Leisure sections, where I found a lot of this fodder, were going to be the death of me!

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#throwbackthursday: The Flor-A-Bama, 2013

By the time we get to this point in the school year, in mid- to late September, the newness has worn off, the slow slog to end of the first grading period is being felt by all, it’s still 100 degrees outside, and I want to make this face. Here I am, before I went back to wearing a beard, having a drink on the beach outside the Flor-A-Bama back in 2013.

[image error]

Dirty Boots: “The Wisdom of ‘WarGames'”

At the end of the 1983 movie WarGames, after the WOPR computer (called Joshua) had completed its frightening game of Global Thermonuclear War, its conclusion was: The only way to win is not to play. In that age of deep-seated fears about Russia and nuclear war, this thematic statement pointed toward what we all knew in real life, too. If a nuclear war did break out, we would all lose.

In a way, Joshua’s truism is correct, and in the Deep South, we have a euphemism for no-win quarrels: a pissing contest. The fight that will gain nothing and change nothing, but is only about causing damage in the interest of bravado and perceived superiority. From middle-school bullying to political grandstanding, these conflicts lack value and substance, but sadly so many of us get sucked in by them, picking sides (because we feel like we must) and digging the trenches we’ll use for self-defense. Then the nitpicking starts, then the antagonisms, then we look up and things have gotten out of hand . . . but the needle doesn’t move one way or the other. These are pretty prevalent on most social media platforms.

[image error]However, Joshua’s little truism is also wrong, in a way. In some situations, we must play. We’ve got clear and present problems in this country, and in this world, and our attention, time, and effort will be required to solve them. While more than half of American adults check social media every day, more than half of us also don’t exercise the most fundamental right in a democracy once every two years. I often hear from people that they don’t vote because they don’t know anything about the candidates. That can be remedied . . . with attention, time, and effort. For an American adult with internet access, it would take a few minutes to establish which districts he or she lives in – city council, county commission, board of education, state legislature, and congressional – followed by a few hours every other year to get a better understanding of who and what are being decided upon. Someone who was really ambitious might even spend some extra time exploring third-party candidates.

Like that game of Global Thermonuclear War at the end of WarGames, these days elections break out and we lose, because the machine is playing itself while we watch. Then we end up like that roomful of awestruck on-lookers who can do no more than stare anxiously and hope that everything turns out OK. In the movie, the bureaucrats were so busy with their pissing match that the only hopes for a positive outcome were a down-and-out computer scientist who had faked his own death and a slick teenage hacker who reorganized the world from his messy bedroom. While we all felt relief when Joshua didn’t blow up the world, when these anti-heroes saved us all by defying The Man, in the real world the wisdom of WarGames lies in an altogether different realization, one that has great relevance in our current era: the people who are supposed to be taking care of business need to quit bickering and do the work they’re charged with doing.

“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.

Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “Ten Films about the South”

[image error]In case you can’t already tell from reading other posts in this blog, I’m marginally fascinated by depictions and conceptions of the region where I live. I say marginally because I’m not obsessed by it, but I am more than a little bit interested. And since films are the major mass media of the 20th century, meaning that many of these depictions occurred on the silver screen, movies form the conceptions that lots of people hold. If you can’t tell what I mean by that, I’ll ask this: how many people outside the South take their ideas about the South from Gone with the Wind or Forrest Gump and how many take their ideas from actual historical or journalistic research?

Of course, these depictions produce, in part, the stereotypes that we’re known for . . . Birth of a Nation was the first ever blockbuster movie hit, in 1918, and that film created a lot of people’s conceptions of what the South was— and is. I took the time a few years ago to watch this movie, and I found it absurd, looking at it nearly a hundred years later. To think that so many people actually bought into the holistic idea that was presented there!

So here are some of my commentaries on ten films that feature the Deep South in their plot lines. I’ve already spent a previous post writing about Smokey and the Bandit so I won’t include that one in this list . . . but that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it.

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