Foster Dickson's Blog, page 39

Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “They: An Evolutionary Tale”

During fourteen years of teaching, I’ve spent a lot of time marking the improper use of pronouns. The way that some high school students, especially younger ones, switch pronouns so fervently has driven me nearly mad. In just one paragraph, I might get something like this:

I think that teenagers shouldn’t have curfews. You know when you need to be home your parents don’t. If a teenager wants to be out late, they should be able to.

No, no, no, I reply with my red pen. The first sentence utilizes first-person voice – the writer’s voice – but begins with the flabby phrase, “I think that.” The second sentence – a run-on that’s actually two sentences and needs punctuation – changes to second-person, which should be used to speak directly to the reader, but in this case, isn’t. The sentence instead utilizes a non-voice that speaks both for the writer and for the subject of the paragraph. Finally, the third sentence shifts once again, this time to third-person, while committing an agreement error between “a teenager” singular and “they,” which is plural.

The grammarian in me cringes at the weak, inefficient, and inexact writing that is caused by pronoun errors. I’m not some schoolmarmish stickler for rules and regulations, not in the slightest, but this kind of writing I equate to a quarterback throwing the football ten feet over an open receiver’s head: we can tell who he was throwing to, but he didn’t have the remotest chance to connect and accomplish anything.

Grammar is a system, like a city’s transit system. No matter how badly you want the Main Street bus to pick you up on Third Avenue, it probably won’t. I know about the attitude that grammar is a mass of useless, erudite restrictions created to confuse otherwise competent speakers and writers, but that dim view overlooks the societal need for agreed-upon transactional standards: in traffic, in law— and in language.

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That Golden Deliciousness

[image error]There are people who say, “I don’t know anything about art, but I know what I like.” That’s kind of how I am about beer. I’ve got a working-man’s understanding of this nectar of the gods, and much of that understanding is rooted in my taste buds. I’ve had, or at least tried, lots of beers. While my intellect comprehends what ABV means and my wallet comprehends what the price tag means, my mouth figures out what matters when I pour that golden deliciousness in. I get around people sometimes who want to talk history – this foodie thing about knowing the story – or who want to critique brewing methods or to pontificate on regional practices— I just want to drink good beer, preferably with other people who like to drink good beer.

The idea of what beer should be was defined for me by Miller High Life. That was my dad’s beer, the one he imbibed after work, the one perched in his hand on the armrest of his recliner. When I was a boy and my dad said, “Go get me a beer,” I went to fridge and brought back a Miller High Life. That beer, in its gold can, is the gold standard by which other beers are measured. Some are better, some are worse, but all the beers that pass my lips and tonsils are evaluated by the zero-counter that is the Champagne of Beers.

We’re lucky in the Deep South to have some darn good breweries. In Alabama alone, we’ve got Good People, Straight to Ale, Blue Pants, Yellowhammer, Red Clay, Fairhope, and Back Forty. I’d put Good People Brown, Back Forty’s Truck Stop Honey, and Yellowhammer’s Rebellion up against most beers. My favorite among Straight to Ale’s products is Brother Joseph’s Belgian Dubbel, named for the creator of the Ave Maria Grotto in Cullman, but it’s 8% ABV, which is a little stronger than most folks want. From over in Mississippi, Lazy Magnolia’s brown ale is quite good, and for higher-ABV beers, I’m also particularly fond of Southern Prohibition’s Mississippi Fire Ant, which, like Brother Joseph’s, is 8%. For good solid drinking, though, Louisiana can be counted out, too; I heartily recommend Dixie Lager, which just came back to New Orleans, and any of Abita’s beers, especially Purple Haze (one of the few fruit beers I like) and Andygator (another at 8%). About Georgia, I’ve liked what I’ve had from Red Hare, and I also liked Red Brick but since they changed their name to Atlanta Brewing, I can’t tell what’s-what anymore . . .

However, about this current craft-brewing craze, I must say that it has opened things up but not always for the better. All in all, I’m pleased, but not overly pleased. Where it used to be easy to find a Shiner Blonde or a Red Hook ESB in a grocery store, now the ongoing cycle of look-what’s-new prevails. I’ll go ahead and get it to over with, too, and say: I don’t like IPAs. And it pisses me off when I pay a handsome sum for what looks like a good six-pack only to find out on first sip that it’s hoppy to the point of undrinkable. When I drink a beer, I don’t want to pucker my face, shiver like an old lady’s chihuahua, and struggle to stomach something I bought to enjoy. But don’t get me wrong, the hoppy-hoppies aren’t the only highly celebrated stinkers out there. Among the tidal wave of new brews, it’s pretty clear that, for some operations, the most skilled person in the process is the graphic designer who makes the labels. Which is why I don’t get too excited about what “just came in this week.”

While the trendies have managed to lift this working-class treat into higher echelons of social being, they have also made something complicated that shouldn’t be. Just as any drink whose name has more than two syllables isn’t coffee – a double-half-caff frapalapalatteccino, for example – it might not be beer, or even beer-esque, if it can’t be named in two syllables or less. Ales, stouts, porters, lagers, pilsners, sours, dubbels, trippels— those are beers. And while I respect that newer brewers are trying to stand out with radical additions to their creations, I would suggest that, if you need a gimmick, you probably need a better product. (One exception is Duclaw’s Sweet Baby Jesus! Chocolate Peanut Butter Porter, which is delicious. Whatever the GABF bronze medal is, they deserved it, I’m sure.)

I’m a beer guy in the way that Clint Eastwood was when he popped open his Olympia tallboy, in the way that the McKenzie Brothers were in Strange Brew, more cultured than a ballpark dad in a PFG shirt holding a styro full of gas-station light beer but less effete than a hipster with a mustache and skinny jeans sipping his triple IPA. A beer should drink like Sam Elliott talks. If a beer were a song, it should either be “Miss You” by The Rolling Stones or “I Might Be Crazy” by Waylon Jennings. Neither make-up, hairspray, nor jewelry will make it sexier. Its brother is the whiskey shot, and its redheaded step-cousin who moved away and never comes back for family holidays is the fruity hard soda. Golden beers are best ice-cold after cutting grass on a hot day. Darker beers are best when football is on the TV. I’m a beer guy because I know these things.

About ten years ago, I interviewed a guy named Stuart Carter, who was then the president of Alabama’s Free the Hops group, which successfully lobbied to change beer laws in the state. Prior to their efforts, maximum ABV for beer was 5% (though malt liquors hovered just above that), which severely limited the beers that could be sold in-state. I met Carter at The J. Clyde in Birmingham, of course, where we talked beer and such, and as I asked questions, one of his answers has stuck with me for a long time. I asked why, of all the problems in Alabama, such a hard-working and well-organized group would focus their efforts on an issue like beer. He replied that, after working all week, being responsible people who had families, and taking care of business, in the free hours that remained they wanted to spend time on what they valued and enjoyed— and what they valued and enjoyed was beer. 

There are a lot of us like that. I value and enjoy beer, and I’m thankful for many of the choices that I have. But I also know that we’ve reached a saturation point, so that variety, which is good, has overgrown into a glut, which is not. Looking on the Brewers Association website at the upsurge in the number of breweries, we don’t need any more new brewers. We need the good ones to survive and grow sustainably—meaning that we need the weak ones to crash to clear some space. I’m thankful that the craze has brought the craft-beer industry so much economic success in the last two decades, but that success has clearly enticed too many folks to hop on the bandwagon. Now, it’s time to separate the wheat from the chaff . . . by using our mouths, not our senses of style, not our vulnerability to imagery, not our desire to impress our friends, to determine which is which. Our taste buds should be a greater force in deciding what to drink than the influence of some bearded, snapback-hat-wearing version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Cut out the glitzy marketing and the nouveau chicanery— the whole situation would be better if we just drink good beer with other people who like to drink good beer. Then, I do believe, the whole situation would work itself out.

Dirty Boots: “‘Overlooked’ on TED”

In the TED Salon talk “How we’re honoring people overlooked by history,” which was posted earlier this summer, New York Times obituaries editor Ana Padnani discusses her project to revive and re-examine lives that were neglected by the great newspaper’s section for posthumous biographies. As I listened and watched this smiling woman give a good-natured, slightly humorous explanation of her work uncovering the stories of women and people of color who deserved more attention than they got, I knew both the exhilaration of accomplishing this myself, as well as the other side of what she’s talking about.

[image error]I also work to uncover neglected stories, ones that are either lost and forgotten or that had not yet received attention. I began writing I Just Make People Up about artist Clark Walker in 2004, and when it was published in 2009, it was the first and remains the only book on his life and five-decade career. Similarly, The Life and Poetry of John Beecher was the first full-length biography and critical analysis of that social-protest poet, writer, and journalist; published in 2009 as well, it was the only one until Angela Smith’s Here I Stand was published in 2017. Most recently, Closed Ranks contains the only full-length account of the Whitehurst Case, an unresolved police-shooting controversy in Montgomery, Alabama from 1975, ’76, and ’77.

Bringing lost or neglected stories into the light can be really rewarding. I’ve had the wonderful privilege of interviewing people who had never been interviewed before about their involvement in the Civil Rights movement. Some of those interviews are held in the late Gwen Patton’s archives at the Trenholm State Technical College library. I’ve also been able to work alongside public historians to collect interviews from two of Montgomery’s underserved historically black communities, Madison Park and Newtown. Those interviews are being made available to public by Auburn University and the Montgomery County Archives, respectively. Access to those interviews is free, exactly the way it should be.

[image error]However, I also know what Padnani did not share: the emotional tightrope-walking that neglected stories require of a researcher-writer. Unlike engaging with prominent subjects who are accustomed to the limelight, the people whose lives are tangled up in lesser-known stories can be reticent, hesitant, or suspicious, and some even refuse to participate, especially those minor characters who aren’t proud of their roles. Some key players can also look at a writer excited by the re-discovery of a lost tale and see a shyster and a profiteer, a suspicion that can lead to mighty struggles both during and after the project. Sometimes, friends, family, neighbors, and church members – who know nothing about public history, writing, or publishing – create unrealistic scenarios where millions of dollars are earned while the subjects themselves are denied a share of the profits. Finally, there are a scant few who, perhaps out of embarrassment or an inability to cope with the attention, even sabotage the eventual end product by quitting near the end, shying away from post-publication press, and telling their own friends to reject what has been written.

Efforts like Ana Padnani’s (and mine) are picking up steam again in a twenty-first century culture that wants to unearth buried perspectives. The Equal Justice Initiative is conducting its research on lynchings and other racial violence, not only compiling the results institutionally but seeking to have markers placed publicly. SUNY-Binghamton’s Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender is working on publishing the Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States (for which I wrote an entry about an activist-teacher from Alabama). The deep-digging research and careful writing are important, not because the publications will earn money – they generally won’t, though works like Theodore Rosengarten’s All God’s Dangers have caught on – but because lesser-known stories are just as much a part of our history as the widely circulated ones.

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#throwbackthursday: Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” 1984

When I was young, the music of the ’80s seemed kind of weak compared to the music of the ’60s and ’70s, which had brought us Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, and The Doors. It’s sad to report that it wasn’t until I was older that I realized what a genius Prince was, and moreover what a masterpiece the whole Purple Rain album is. Being ten years old in Reagan-era Montgomery, Alabama and seeing that little man in his high-collared, purple-glitter trench coat writhing around, staring straight into the camera, and playing genre-defying music begat a mixture of awe and admiration and confusion and bewilderment. I didn’t what he was doing, but I knew I wanted to keep watching.

It was thirty-five years ago this summer, in 1984, Purple Rain was released. Among the hits from the album, “When Doves Cry” held the number-one spot for five weeks throughout July and into August, only to be ousted by Ray Parker, Jr.s sing-along theme song for Ghostbusters.

Dirty Boots: “Year 17 in the Classroom”

This has become a spotty, barely kept tradition for me to write about the school years as they pass. It began at a dozen years, then this tendency to rumination appeared again at the start of year fifteen. Now, here I am about to begin my seventeenth year in the classroom and feel like I have something to say about it again.

[image error]What I’m thinking about these days is: what has happened to the teaching profession since I got into this racket in 2003. I started teaching the year that No Child Left Behind took effect and instigated the testing frenzy that still looms over everything we do. I’ve also taught through and since the Great Recession and have watched as jobs, benefits, and classroom funding were all cut. Now, a decade-and-a-half after NCLB and a decade after the Recession, teachers are so harried by the cultural and political effects of those two catastrophes that we’ve seen strikes and walkouts all over the nation. Even though politicians and other leaders don’t boil it down like this, I will: all working people are struggling these days and don’t want their taxes raised, but most still want a good education for their children, so we’re left with having to demand that schools provide high-quality services with inadequate resources, which doesn’t work. In the Grateful Dead song “New Speedway Boogie,” Jerry Garcia sang, “Now I don’t know, but I been told / If the horse don’t pull, you got to carry the load. / I don’t know whose back’s that strong. / Maybe find out before too long.” In education, we’ve found out— it’s teachers.

Notwithstanding those national factors, I teach in Alabama, a state that consistently ranks among the lowest in education. Back in 2016, then-governor Robert Bentley got a few chuckles and raised more than a few eyebrows when he said in public that “our education system in this state sucks.” He was referring to Alabama ranking dead-last in NAEP scores: “51st? And we ain’t got but 50 states? That’s pretty sad,” he remarked. Since the Recession, Alabama has made the second most severe cuts to education of any state, and we weren’t exactly in a good place before that.

Those cuts have meant that teachers have born the brunt of the hardships. Last April, US News & World Report ran an article bluntly titled “Teacher Salaries Fell 4.5% over the last decade.” In fairness, it’s not that our paychecks have gotten smaller; the dollar amounts of our gross pay have actually grown, but the cost of living has outpaced the increases in pay. So, we’re doing more work for less money in harsher conditions. The article goes on to explain that fewer college students are majoring in education because they don’t see it as a viable way to make a living and that teachers earn 21% less than workers in other fields who have similar levels of education and experience.

Despite the public rhetoric, what’s seldom discussed is: most Americans do value teachers. One August 2018 article about teacher shortages explained:

In a new nationwide study, 49% of the public said they believe teacher pay should be raised in their states from current levels. In six states where teacher strikes were held in 2018, 63% agreed that teacher pay should increase, the Education Next study found.

However, ponying up the money is another matter. We have chosen to believe rhetoric from politicians who want our votes, who tell us that they will improve education, and who don’t ask us to raise our taxes. Common sense should tell anyone that getting something better for the same or less money doesn’t sound right. To buy into that incongruity, a voter would have to believe that schools don’t need more money, they need more “accountability,” which would lead that voter to believe that teachers have been wasting the public’s money and time. If a person cares to do the research and can face the facts, he or she can look into how those policies have worked out.

Back in 1977, country singer Johnny Paycheck made the phrase “Take This Job and Shove It” famous, and though the song was about the job and about the woman who had left him, it’s the hook that people remember. Sadly, lots of teachers and would-be teachers have said that about working in this field. Teachers whose jobs were cut during the Recession went out and found new careers, and between 2009 and 2014, the number of young people studying to become teachers dropped by one-third. That’s how the teacher shortage came about. This may be startling, but isn’t new. One March 2019 article title from the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute put our conundrum well: “The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought.”

While hearing about a teacher shortage may incite thoughts of larger class sizes and more paper grading, the peripheral effects are significant, too. Having fewer teachers in a school means that there are not as many adults monitoring hallways and parking lots, which is a security issue, and that teachers have required supervision duties more often, which takes us away from tasks like planning and grading. It also means that fewer extracurricular activities have sponsors, which matters a great deal. Last March, The New York Times ran an opinion piece titled “High School Doesn’t Have to be Boring,” in which its two authors wrote this:

After the final bell — in newspaper, debate, theater, athletics and more — we treat students as people who learn by doing, people who can teach as well as learn, and people whose passions and ideas are worth cultivating. It should come as no surprise that when we asked students to reflect on their high school experiences, it was most often experiences like theater and debate that they cited as having influenced them in profound ways.

Some high school students’ only motivation to come to school and tolerate what they find dull is to participate in an extracurricular: sports, the arts, a club. Cut the job of the teacher who sponsors it, remove its funding as “non-necessity,” and you’ve got students whose interest in school just went away. And “accountability” won’t solve that.

Seventeen years in, I’m confident in my ability to teach and in my ability to work with scant resources. I’ve been teaching longer under this post-Recession situation than I did under the situation before it. I know that I can do it— and so do the people who craft policy and budgets. Because we don’t have what we need, they count on me and other conscientious teachers to continue working hard. But there’s only one way to get our schools to where we say we want them to be: to support education with funding and action, not just words.

“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 39: “The Dynamiter” (2011)

Though it came out in 2011, eight years ago, I had never heard of The Dynamiter until I came across it in Amazon Prime, where its icon in that never-ending scroll of film choices was littered with award laurels. A stark independent film, The Dynamiter tells the story of a young teenage boy named Robbie Hendricks, who is living in dire poverty in Mississippi and whose responsibilities exceed his abilities. In the absence of a father and of his drug-addicted mother, Robbie tries to take care of his little brother and his grandmother, while navigating the return of his wayward older brother, who has failed to make it playing college football.

The story begins in an open field full of rolled hay bales, where Robbie and his younger brother Fess are playing a medieval battle game where they charge and attack (with sharpened sticks) the hay bales as monsters. Both boys have crew cuts. Robbie is a muscular young teenager in a sleeveless t-shirt and baggy jeans, while Fess looks to be 8 or 9 years old, a chubby kid, and we get from the scene that Robbie is a good old brother.

As the boys leave the field, they walk down a lonely dirt road. Robbie tells Fess a vulgar joke, and when Fess tries to share a joke of his own, all he can do is tell Robbie the same joke. Robbie then asks his brother where his pocket knife is. The boy looks guilty, and the older brother makes him admit that he lost it.

When they arrive home, an elderly woman is sitting silently and stoically on the small porch of their trailer, rocking in her chair, and Robbie tells Fess to give their grandmother a kiss. Fess says he doesn’t want to, but Robbie makes him anyway. That night at dinner, the three eat a simple meal, and Robbie emerges as the clear leader in what is left of their family. After dinner, the two boys take a shower outside with a garden hose while standing on old pallets, and Robbie instructs Fess to bathe properly and use soap. Inside, the boys lie down to sleep in one bed, head to foot.

In the morning, Robbie is taking out the trash while he sings a vulgar song to himself, yet when he is walking back to the trailer, he steps in a pile of dog mess. He yells after a young African-American teenage girl who is walking her dog, saying that her dog messed in his yard. She doesn’t look worried, saying, “If you saw it, why’d you step in it?” Robbie has no answer and goes back to the messy trailer, where Fess is standing on the steps in his skivvies and an old t-shirt.

Next we see Robbie, he is at school, leaning against the wall alone while other kids run around during what looks like recess. A few bigger boys bully smaller ones, and girls smile and talk. Robbie then picks up his backpack and goes inside where the halls are empty except for one bald, mentally retarded boy in a wheelchair. He begins to try lockers one by one, until one opens, and he takes a pocket knife just as a male teacher turns the corner. Though Robbie denies he is doing anything wrong, the teacher takes him by the t-shirt to the principal’s office.

[image error]In the office, a stern Principal Curtis with a Col. Sanders-style mustache begins by asking him what’s going on. Receiving no reply, the principal asks him about his family – his mother and his brother – and we find out a few details. The mother is absent, though Robbie lies and says she is living there with them, and his older brother was a good football player but a bad student who made it to play in college but got cut for academics. Robbie shrugs off these facts as though they have nothing to do with him. The man continues though, apprising Robbie that going to high school next year with a reputation as a criminal will not serve him well. So Curtis wants to withhold the option of calling the police. Instead, he gives Robbie a green spiral notebook and instructs him to write a long essay over the summer, and “if it’s well written,” Robbie will move on without the locker break-in being reported

Out in the hallway, Robbie is confronted by one of the boys we saw bullying other kids. Of course, he has his middle-school minions behind him. The boy, who is a head taller than Robbie but looks more affluent, accuses Robbie of stealing his knife. Robbie blows him off, and the boy clearly knows better than take Robbie on right there. Instead, he hands Robbie a sheet of pink paper and says to be there, or everyone will know he’s a thief and coward. Robbie unfolds the paper, and it is a homemade invitation to a girl’s year-end party.

On the bus ride home, passing expansive corn fields, Robbie’s thoughts come to us in a voiceover, as if he is writing the essay. He doesn’t know what to put in this essay . . . and moreover takes the opportunity to be ugly about the school, the teachers, and everything he can think of about the school. The bus drops him off at a dirt crossroads, where Fess is waiting for him. He gives the knife to Fess, who asks where he got it, but he tells the boy not to worry about that.

When they get home, a young man is sitting in their kitchen with pretty, half-dressed woman on his lap. It is their older brother Lucas, who is cocky with a pock-marked face and and messy hair, and his new girlfriend is with him. Lucas oozes misplaced arrogance, as he invites the boy sit down and eat what looks like KFC takeout. Of course, the hungry boys begin shoveling in the chicken, corn, and biscuits, while the grandmother sits silently smiling.

Later, on the porch, Lucas sits with Robbie while Fess shows the young woman his collection of makeshift weapons. Lucas advises the woman to give Fess some money so he’ll be quiet, then explains to Robbie that she is a lawyer’s wife and that he sees himself as allowing her the freedom that her husband doesn’t. Robbie seems taken aback by this and tells his brother that their mother sent a postcard from California saying that she wanted to come back home but couldn’t yet. Lucas advises Robbie not to have any faith, that it’s a waste of time, before he ends the conversation by getting up to play with the dog.

Robbie and Fess are then in waders, sifting through the muck in a slimy quagmire, looking for spare change thrown in for wishes. They have found eighteen cents so far when Robbie finds a silver dollar. As they wonder over Robbie’s find, a fat sheriff walks up and says that he knows they aren’t doing what it looks like they’re doing. He asks them if they know anything about some boys who have been filing pennies down into dimes and putting them in Coke machines, but the boys deny any knowledge. That fat man makes Robbie throw the silver dollar back in the water then ambles back to his car. Of course, the next thing we see is Robbie and Fess filing down the coins and putting them into a rusty Coke machine.

Back by the waterside, Robbie eats a sandwich and contemplates the pink invitation. Fess asks what he will do . . . then Robbie is seen with his thumb out on a two-lane rural road. The voiceover begins again as Robbie tells Mr. Curtis (and us) that he has never been in a fight before but that he can’t let these boys smear his name: Hendricks, his father’s name, a man he has never seen. He ruminates for a few sentences on what past and future generations of Hendrickses will do or think, and he ends there as he arrives at the middle-class home where the party is.

In the backyard, a group of middle schoolers in shopping-mall clothes stand around, cups in hand, while music plays. When Robbie comes in, he is obviously an outlier. He gobbles down a cupcake in one bite, then sees a pile of gifts and cards on the table, before he is told by one friendly mom to go outside with other “graduates” (from eighth grade). When he steps out the door, the mood turns swiftly, since everyone knows that the fight will happen. One friendly girl, whose house it is, comes over to dance with him, asks him about the fight, but he blows it off. The big bully then comes over and they get into it! Robbie holds his own, until every other boy at the party jumps in to help the bully pound and kick the thief.

When Robbie wakes up, his face is bruised and he is lying on the girl’s couch. The girl tries again to be sweet to him, but Robbie decides instead to move out of her sight, steal her graduation cards, and sneak out the door. He takes the cards to the bathroom of a closed cafe to empty the cash, but the law is already on his tail. The fat sheriff and a black deputy pound on the door as he tries to hide the evidence, but Robbie fails miserably. They have him. Robbie is taken out in cuffs as the sheriff explains that the girl and her mother don’t want to press charges. The two lawmen get into the car to drive away, and Robbie tries to get in the back, thinking this will be his ride home. He declares to back of the car that the walk home is twenty-two miles.

It is still night when Robbie walks up on the side of a house to drink from the hose. As he does, a shotgun enters the picture and the person holding it puts one in the chamber. It is the African-American girl from the dog-mess scene earlier in the movie. Robbie tells her that she’ll have to shoot him, since he’s been walking all night and is too tired to run. They talk for a moment and during the conversation, the girl Mamie kisses him. Robbie jumps in a panic and leaves quickly.

Back at home, Robbie gets a postcard from their mother. It contains a vague message about how she loves them and wants to get better. He reads it to Fess, who grins as he listens, then tells the boy that need to get up and clean the house in case their mother comes home. The two sloppily paint the porch white, while their grandmother watches quietly, and when Robbie goes inside, he is called into the den by Lucas, who is smoking and drinking beer and lying in the couch. Lucas suggests to Robbie that he should get a job to tide them over. The middle-schooler looks tiredly at his college-dropout brother and acknowledges the idea but not much more.

Taking this task onto himself, Robbie hitchhikes his way into town and begins job-hunting. He has Fess with him, and he first storms awkwardly into two businesses – a clothing shop and a restaurant – but is denied both times. Then he wanders into a ratty, little gas station where a big, bearded man behind the counter is looking at a girly magazine. At first, he ignores Robbie then gives him the worst job one can imagine: cleaning a nasty gas-station bathroom. But it’s a job, and Robbie is thankful. He announces at dinner that night that he has a job. All his brother can say is: “Great, let’s eat.”

Next, Robbie is up at sunrise, heading for the gas station. By this point in the movie, about halfway through, it isn’t hard not to notice a few things: Robbie is wearing the same clothes all the time, and that his personality is a strange mixture of the angry defiance of a young teenager and the mature kindness of a person with people to care for. Robbie’s life is comprised of an absent father, a wayward mother, an elderly grandmother, a simpleton little brother, and a useless older brother. Robbie’s days are now filled with pumping gas and walking long distances. He is at once a hard worker and a thief, a caregiver and a tough.

One evening, in a restaurant, where Robbie and Fess are eating ice cream with Lucas, Robbie begins to chastise his older brother for lazing around the house and not working, but Lucas shrugs him off. He is eyeing one of the waitresses, and soon ditches his brothers to talk to her, promising to cook them all a big breakfast the next morning, Of course, the next morning, Lucas is still asleep when Robbie gets up for work. Robbie is visibly disgusted.

Later, Lucas appears drunk with two women, neither of whom are the waitress or the lawyer’s wife from earlier. They look like mother and daughter, and Lucas has his arm around the older of the two, telling Robbie that the younger woman is for him. The crassness of his display is uncomfortable as Lucas treats them like objects, new toys that he has brought home to play with. The two couples go to the movies, where Lucas makes out with the older woman. The younger woman quickly gets frustrated with Robbie, who won’t make a move, and when she tries to force him to grope her and kiss her, his inexperience makes it awkward. She quickly gives up on him, pouting that he won’t do anything.

The next day at the gas station, Lucas shows up and claims that he is going into town to look for a job. Somehow, he has money and is riding with someone in a nice new truck. A man in a car tries to speak to Lucas, asking him if he is still playing football, but Lucas turns his back on the man rudely.

At home that evening, Lucas comes home drunk while the rest of the family is trying to sleep. Robbie gets up and tries nicely to ask him to be quiet, but Lucas doesn’t respect the request. Robbie tries to keep it calm until Lucas begins banging on the bedroom door, calling Fess a “half-breed” – he is their half-brother – and saying the little boy has to leave. Finally pushed over the edge, Robbie tells him to leave Fess alone or “I will kill you!” Surprised by the response, Lucas lets loose some bluster and threats but does not try to overpower or even challenge his younger brother.

Robbie’s situation gets progressively more sad and pathetic, and that culminates in a scene at the little league baseball field. He and Fess are eating shaved ice, and as he looks around, Robbie sees boys warming up in their uniforms, children playing with puppies, girls giggling— and he knows that all of these things are beyond his reach. Though he never says it out loud, Robbie recognizes that he has too many responsibilities.

Two things happen then that make Robbie realize that something must change. At the gas station, a sheriff’s car pulls up for gas, and the waitress that his brother was talking to is in the back seat. Robbie asks what happened, and she replies, “Ask your brother.” Then, at home, right as Principal Curtis calls the house wanting to speak to their mother, Lucas comes in, carrying the lawyer’s wife, who is unable to stand on her own, and he drops her on the bed, gets her wallet, and takes all of the cash. Robbie hangs up on the principal and witnesses this theft, and after Lucas steps out onto the porch, he orders Fess to his room and calls the police on his brother. At the emotional crux of the film’s story, Lucas is standing on the porch and declares that he is ready to leave and wants Robbie to come with him, the two of them, brothers, but Robbie shakes his head and says, “No.” Knowing the police are coming, Robbie goes out the back door and has a screaming and crying breakdown.

As The Dynamiter moves into its last twenty minutes, things have changed. Robbie goes on a bus to visit Robbie in jail, but the elder brother only tells him an anecdote about how their upbringing leaves them with no chance of a decent life then he hangs up. Robbie tries to tell him that he brought him some things, but gets cut off. Next we see Robbie, he is working again, cutting grass for a woman, while Fess sits on a rock nearby.

When they get home, he declares that they are going out to Spectator’s, a sports bar, for dinner. Robbie, Fess, and Grandma get in a taxi and go out to eat. While they’re there, Robbie runs into Mamie, who tells him that she is having a going-away party. Robbie wants to know why, and she says that he is leaving her father’s house to go live with her brother and mother. Back at the table, Robbie looks long and hard at his grandmother and brother. It is clear that he is thinking again about his responsibilities.

A knock then disturbs us into attention. Robbie wakes and goes to the door. It is two foster care workers accompanied by Principal Curtis, who hangs his head and will not look at Robbie. The vicious tension in Robbie’s eyes tells the story. The social workers tell him to get his brother and come with them.

The Dynamiter ends with scenes that come at us quickly. We see Robbie and Fess sitting at a table full of boys, eating in silence, and we see Robbie walking alone through the halls of high school with an intense gaze downward. We also see him eating lunch alone, and just as happened with the party, a Chevelle full of bigger boys pull up beside him on a dirt road and jump him. It is clear that, while his situation may have changed, Robbie has not. He sees that Fess may well be taken into home or adopted, too. Robbie has a quick talk with Fess, who answers questions with his usual slow indifference, and then he takes his little brother out into the field one more time to attack and defeat and the hay-bale monsters. During these scenes, Robbie’s voiceover essay to Mr. Curtis explains that he has always had dreams but they shrink into nothingness, and as that voiceover comes to an end, he rides in a truck with Mamie and her brother, running away from foster care, leaving for good to start fresh somewhere else, but not forgetting to throw his silver dollar in the water and make a wish before he goes.

Critics’ responses to the film seem to center mainly on the fact that, despite its title, the story lacks the explosive plot point that we expect given that title. However, reviewers also didn’t fail to give props to what was done well. The Times-Picayune‘s online NOLA.com called this film “a slow-burn, Mississippi-set drama that is steeped in atmosphere and a gritty, sweaty sense of place – but the film has more of an appreciation for subtle, emotional charges than for big, attention-getting ones.” Similarly, Variety had this to say: the film “captures the rhythm and texture of its environment but is too understated in the telling, owing largely to an ensemble of non-pro locals who look the part but lack the charisma to make us care.”

I agree with Lewis Grizzard that there are few things more aggravating than a non-Southerner trying to act and talk like a Southerner, and while the acting in The Dynamiter may not have been Hollywood quality, what the actors do have is Southern-ness: swagger, attitude, speech patterns, pronunciations, reactions. This movie couldn’t have been what it was, if it had seasoned pros in the roles, because these “no-pro locals” didn’t have to be taught how to carry themselves. Sadly, you have reviewers like IndieWire’s James Rocchi, who wrote, “It’s not about real people, it’s about making the director look like an artist,” which proves that he might know movies but doesn’t know the South. The director may not be a Southerner either, but his movie got it right because the players did.

What is most beautifully Southern about The Dynamiter is that the subtext is all there. Robbie’s attitude is steeped in his circumstances, and all he has left is his integrity and the love of his family. Lucas feels cheated and resorts to petty criminality because football was the only way out of poverty that he saw. Fess is at the bottom of the food chain, and only knows how to sit still and to be guided. Unfortunately, just as the other characters are left in morally unwinnable predicaments, Principal Curtis has it no better, left with a choice of violating this boy’s pride by taking him away from his only remaining possessions – home and family – or leaving a middle-schooler to near-starve and work himself to the bone trying to be a stand-in parent and caregiver. Any Southerner would watch this movie and know why the characters behave the way they do. Don’t get me wrong: we wouldn’t necessarily condone it, but we would understand it. Because it is real.

EAT South’s Sprouts School Garden Workshop, July 31

A week from today, on Wednesday, July 31, EAT South will have its third annual Sprouts School Garden Workshop at the Downtown Farm in Montgomery. This teacher professional-development workshop is free but you do have to get a ticket to attend. It last from 7:30 AM until 1:30 PM and includes lunch. From the event description, “topics include:

Community organizing for school gardens and outdoor classrooms
Bringing the curriculum to life with Project Learning Tree
Maintaining and using a school garden as an educational tool
Community resources with Alabama Cooperative Extension System

EAT South “is an urban teaching farm that engages our local community by gathering around, learning about and growing food. We empower people to change the way food travels from the ground to our plates.”

 

Dirty Boots: “Descriptive or Prescriptive?”

Last month, I was reading David Foster Wallace‘s 2006 collection Consider the Lobster and Other Essays and got sucked into his sixty-page review of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage titled “Authority and American Usage.” In it, Wallace winds his way through a number of linguistic and semantic topics, among them the pros and cons of the dueling types of lexicographers and scholars who write dictionaries and usage guides: descriptive and prescriptive. The former type, of course, focuses on accurately describing the language as it being used, while the latter attempts instead to prescribe what correct usage should look like.

[image error]I think about the same pros and cons, but not about lexicography: in writing about this region, is it better to simply describe what we see, or should we be prescribing what we’d like to see? The fact is that descriptive writing about the Deep South is typically ineffective in producing meaningful societal change. Simply describing the situation on the ground, casting light on the ugly realities, seldom changes much down here. (One exception would be Howard Odum’s Southern Regions of the United States, published in 1936, which used sociological research to combat the effects of the Great Depression.) This kind of writing is also done by what Wallace calls “hardcore academics,” people whose understanding of a specific, narrow topic is strong and deep but whose audience is small and definite. Descriptive writing, like a study or a report, seldom reaches the ordinary people who could benefit most from a greater understanding of the issues.

However, prescriptive writing about our region’s politics and culture has an equal if not larger challenge: it suggests that we change. And that’s a hard sell in the Deep South. Because it implies that we might have been wrong at some point, that we might have been doing things in inferior ways at some point, that we might not have been perfect all along. Prescriptive writing, which provides a rational, solution-oriented approach to a problem, also implies that structures in our society should be re-aligned, and that re-alignment would mean changes in the distribution of power and in access to resources. What that would mean, ultimately, is: some people who now have plenty might have less in order to ensure that everyone has enough. In a region where a belief in individual rights is paramount, that approach goes over like a lead balloon.

Sometimes, I hear that no one cares about the problems we have down here. That’s not true. Both descriptive writing about the facts and prescriptive writing about new ideas address the problems in the Deep South daily, but the question remains: what is being done with these facts and ideas? The current answer is: very little. Why? Because, as scholar Mark Larrimore put it in his book on The Book of Job, which is perhaps ultimate narrative for asking humanity’s questions about seemingly senseless suffering: “Can language do justice to unjust suffering of any kind?” No. Writers can describe the problems – al.com’s Reckon does a good job of this – and writers can proffer possible solutions, but only action will bring progress into fruition. Unlike Job’s three “friends” in that story, a true response will not come from pointing fingers and saying to the downtrodden, ‘You must’ve done something to deserve your suffering.’ A true response, one that will change the course of our culture for the better, will embrace the most accurate descriptions and the most viable prescriptions and turn those into action that compassionate, appropriate, and responsible.

“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 read find and read previous posts, click here for a full list.

(Unpublished) #Poem: “The Clamor”

This poem is one in a series of seven religious poems that I wrote in late 2011 and early 2012. Among the series, it had no title; none of these poems did. I was writing them around the time when I was baptized and joined the Catholic Church in my late thirties, and also shortly after the sudden death of my father. Looking back on the poems, I find them hopeful and searching, but also with an aggravation, typical of me, toward the common propensity to muck up the silence needed to consider important ideas. 

The Clamor

Small hints of paradise clamor together

begging for attention, but we are too busy

wondering what any of it has to do with us.

Rearranging angels’ songs into ditties

we will hum while we work, into confections

we will consume for dinner, into wine

we will use to get to sleep, into puff pastries

we will transform and sell as dry goods.

Instead, I request sweet honey to help

digest vegetable, meat, and mineral; for you,

my brothers and sisters, are clamoring

so carelessly, so wildly, that I cannot hear

my God, whose voice is in the whipping winds

unwinding the twisted truths that blast Man’s

made mountains down to simple sand.

More than ten years ago, I all but quit submitting poems to literary magazines and began sharing a few here.  To read previous (Unpublished) #Poem posts, each with its own mini-introduction, click on the title below:

“Just Wait”  •  “I should’ve been George Willard”  •  a haiku series

“Don’t Nobody Even Like You”  •  “Point to Something Red”  •  “Yes, I Know”

“They Come, Growling”  •  “Lost Things”  •  “Taking Root”  •  “Sabbatical”

“Southern Soil”  •  “I Know”  •  “Common”  •  “Zero”  •  [Untitled]

“Reading Kenko”  •  “Curb Market, Saturday Morning”  •  “Greatest Unknown”

Love + Marriage: The Fitzgerald Museum’s Annual Literary Contest

[image error]Last year, it was “What’s Old Is New.” This year, it’s “Love + Marriage.” The Fitzgerald Museum’s annual Literary Contest for students opens its submissions period on September 1, 2019. For more information, please see the guidelines below— and please feel free to share them with any parents, teachers, students, and organizations that may be interested, as well as with any media outlets that may be willing to spread the word. As contest coordinator, I’ll be glad to answer any questions that folks may have, or questions can be directed to the museum.

The Fitzgerald Museum Literary Contest: Love + Marriage

F. Scott and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald were daring and revolutionary in their lives and in their art and writing. One hundred years after their 1919 wedding in Montgomery, Alabama, the Fitzgeralds’ literary and artistic works from the 1920s and 1930s are still regarded as groundbreaking, and The Fitzgerald Museum is seeking to identify and honor the daring and revolutionary young writers and artists of this generation. 

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Multi-Genre

Categories: Grades 9–10, Grades 11–12, Undergraduate

General Guidelines for 2019 – 2020:

The Fitzgerald Museum’s annual Literary Contest is seeking submissions of short fiction, poetry, and multi-genre works that exhibit themes of love and marriage. Works with traditional forms and styles will be accepted, yet writers are encouraged to send works that utilize innovative forms and techniques. Literary works may include artwork, illustrations, font variations, and other graphic elements, with the caveat that these elements should enhance the work, not simply decorate the page. 

The submissions period is open from September 1 until December 31, 2019. Works will be judged in three separate age categories, so please be clear about that category. Submissions should not exceed ten pages (with font sizes no smaller than 11 point). Each student may only enter once. Awards will be announced by March 16, 2020. Each category will have a single winner and possibly an honorable mention.

Submissions should be sent to fitzgeraldliterarycontest@gmail.com with “Literary Contest Submission” in the subject line and relevant information in the email. Due to issues of compatibility, works should be attached as PDFs to ensure that they appear as the author intends. Files should be named with the author’s first initial [dot] last name [underscore] title. For example, J.Smith_InnovativeStory.pdf.

This year’s judges are Kwoya Fagin Maples for the undergraduate category and Joe Taylor for the high school categories. Maples is the author of the poetry collection Mend, teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and is currently an Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellow. Taylor is a professor at the University of West Alabama, an editor at Livingston Press, and the author of six novels and story collections. For more information, contact the Fitzgerald Museum or contest coordinator Foster Dickson.