Foster Dickson's Blog, page 42

The summer is just one long planning period.

In the teaching and writing life, busy-ness comes in peaks and valleys. Sometimes people ask me if I can help them with something but seem confounded when my answer is something like this: I don’t have time right now, but I will in about [number of] weeks, but you need to go ahead and tell me what I need to do because by [date] I’ll be busy again. When I’m grading papers or meeting a deadline, I might not even have time to answer an email, but there are also periods of time when I’m doing a lot less— that is to say, catching up on neglected tasks while waiting to be busy again . . .

[image error]Having Closed Ranks to come out last November was a long-awaited blessing, but promoting the book, conducting the Newtown oral history collection, rebuilding the school garden, coordinating the Fitzgerald Museum’s literary contest, teaching and grading papers, and writing this blog made for a busy six months from November ’til April! While those were all good things, it has been nice to slow down in May and June, after sending the seniors to graduation, finalizing everyone else’s grades, and closing up shop. Yet, slowing down is relative— it’s already time to start planning!

Moving into year two as the coordinator of the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum‘s annual literary contest for high school and college students, summer is the time for me get the rules and timeline for the 2019 – 2020 contest set and finalized, as well as arranging for judging. I expect to have the upcoming contest’s details ready to share in August. The hint I can share right now is: where 2018 was the centennial of the Scott meeting Zelda in Montgomery, 2019 is the centennial of the couple’s wedding.

[image error]Also, now that the school garden has been rebuilt, there’s maintenance work to be done: cutting grass, watering, weeding. Later this month, I’ll be heading to Missoula, Montana for a week-long teacher professional development on sustainability. Aside from looking forward to working in the garden with students next year, it’ll be good to learn how I can help my school to incorporate sustainable practices, both on campus and in our students’ lives.  My goals are to reduce waste and to create a system of composting, but before I get my heart set on those notions . . . the whole purpose of the workshop is for them to tell me what might work best.

And since I haven’t been working on any major writing projects since Closed Ranks was finished, it also been nice to do some reading. I got copies of Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion, How Dante Can Save Your Life by Rod Dreher, and Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James Romm for Christmas and had read those by the time spring came. In February, a teacher at The Randolph School gave me a copy of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, after we talked about teaching British literature; that novel and grading papers kept me busy through the spring. More recently, I’ve been letting my mind wander over different books: the first two essays from Mario Vargas Llosa’s Notes on the Death of Cult[image error]ure, parts of William H. Stewart’s Alabama Politics in the Twenty-First Century,  A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines, and I just read the first essay in David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster. Additionally, last winter I started going weekly to spend an hour in our adoration chapel, and have taken that opportunity to re-read the four Gospels, as well as Ecclesiastes and parts of Proverbs and Wisdom. (I like the wisdom books particularly.) Right now, I’m reading Job, accompanied by Princeton University Press’s Literary Biography Series book on it.

Of course, no teacher or writer should spend the whole summer on work. I am finding time to sit by the lake, to drink some beer, and to throw the tennis ball to the dog. I spend mornings drinking coffee on the porch and watching the birds peck around in the yard. By late afternoon, the heat has subsided enough to return to the porch for a Fat Tire or maybe a Dickel. Sometimes I think I could get used to this life of leisure, and then I get real and think, Nah! It just wouldn’t do.

Southern Movie 37: “The Free State of Jones”

After writing a recent Southern Movie post about the sentimentalized Civil War movie Drums from the Deep South, it seemed appropriate to write one as well about an un-sentimentalized Civil War movie: 2016’s The Free State of Jones. Not only is this film brutal and stark, its scenario is an uncommon one for the mid-1800s South: a hard-working white man in Mississippi who understands the Civil War and the Confederacy to be nothing more than poor men dying in the service of rich men’s interest. Based on the true story of Newton Knight, the film combines a Civil War-era story with a latter-day Civil Rights-era twist.

The Free State of Jones opens with a gruesome battle scene. A cadre of stern-faced Confederate soldiers, most of them young, all of them scruffy and dirty, march in formation across a field. As they come to the top of a small hill, Union soldiers are waiting for them and begin to fire. During the smoky melee, we see the ugliness of this kind of war: the men upfront are cut down quickly, men’s bodies are mangled and torn apart by cannonballs and musket fire. Among the carnage appears Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey), a battlefield nurse, who frantically collects an injured man onto a rolling gurney and carts him quickly from the front to the camp, as shots fly past. We get a sense of Knight’s character here, as he attempts to console the soldier while risking his own life. When they get back to camp and find the medical tent full of men with severe wounds, Knight then strips the soldier’s coat off and presents him illicitly as a wounded officer so he gets preferential treatment.

Later that day, after the furor has died down, Newton and his friend Jasper sit and talk. They see a group of men loading a wagon, and Newton asks Jasper who they are and what they’re doing. Jasper replies that the men are going home to Carolina; due to the newly passed Twenty Negro Law, any man who owns at least twenty slaves gets a pass from fighting in the war on the grounds that they have to be at home managing their business affairs. Newton Knight immediately sees the injustice in this privilege.

Later that night, a small group of men sit around a campfire, as Jasper reads aloud, explaining the Twenty Negro Law. Newton declares that they are all dying for the rich men’s cotton, though another man named Will declares that he is fighting for honor. Newton disagrees, grumbles, and goes into the woods to relieve himself. There he comes across his young kinsman Daniel, no more than a teenager; he is crying and tells Newton that Confederates have come to their home, taken all of the goods and food, and conscripted him into the Mississippi 7th. Already frustrated by the situation, Newton allows the boy to stay with him and says that they will escape the war tomorrow.

The next day, during the fighting, Newton leads Daniel against the tide of the fighting, and the pair try to scramble through the shelling and shooting to flee into the trees. The going is harsh, but it’s working until they run across a small band of Confederates who are trying to outflank the Union troops. Newton lies and says they’re the last survivors of their unit, so the leader tells them to join in. As the rush out of the trench begins, though, Newton holds Daniel back from the charge, so they can continue their run, but the inexperienced boy stands straight up and takes a bullet in the chest. Newton tries to bring the boy to the tent hospital, but it is full again, and he holds Daniel while he dies in the grass under a tree.

Now, Newton has suffered the double-whammy. He has witnessed rich men’s privilege and watched his poor kin die. The next morning, Newton loads Daniel’s body onto a horse to take him home. Though his friends understand, they worry for Newton. He is becoming a deserter and is risking being executed. Newton’s allegiance to his home and family are greater than what he now regards as a bogus cause. He returns on foot to Jones County, Mississippi where he buries Daniel and answers his wife Serena’s questions about what he will do next.

In Jones County, the confiscation of goods from small farmers’ homes continues in the absence of the men who would normally protect their families. Here, we meet our villain Lieutenant Barbour, whose half-dozen lackeys take more than the ten percent that the Confederate government allows itself— they basically take everything, leaving women and children to fend for themselves with no food, no blankets, and no tools. Adding to Newton’s frustrations, there is this iniquity, too, so he vows to a small group of women that he will be their protector now that he is back home.

The next piece in the puzzle is added when Newton’s infant son gets sick, and Serena is unable to get the fever down. Looking for a doctor at a nearby pub, they are referred to a slave woman Rachel, who is an herbalist. She comes and passes the night healing the young child. Newton then shows his gratitude to Rachel by giving her a small bit of gold chain, which is unusual for a white man to do for a slave during this time.

Here, the scenario shifts. As Rachel walks away through a field toward the tree line, the words “85 Years Later . . .” appears on the screen and a voiceover carries us into a late 1940s courtroom scene. The court clerk explains miscegenation charges against Davis Knight, the clean-cut great grandson of Newton Knight, for marrying a white woman when he is one-eighth Negro, effectively making him black in the eyes of Mississippi law. As Davis Knight lowers his eyes in shame, the clerk declares this fact to be so, since his great grandmother was Rachel.

Back in the 1860s, Newton has come to the aid of a neighbor and her three children, to stop the confiscation of her food and blankets by Lt. Barbour. Knowing he will be outmanned and outgunned, Newton arms the woman and her little girls, but also sticks the handles of farm tools out of the holes in the barn walls to make it appear that there is a small army inside. Lt. Barbour first laughs but then is aggravated by being thwarted, and recognizes that Newton is a deserter.

Back home, Newton and Serena argue while he gets ready to escape. Newton tells his wife that he cannot leave these women alone, to which she responds that he is effectively leaving her alone. As Newton flees the men and dogs who’ve come to root him out, a black German shepherd tears up his leg before he kills it with his knife. Now, with a wounded leg and having lost his gun, he goes to Sally, the local pub owner who pointed him to Rachel. She has a slave man who will take him into the swamps to hide.

Newton is then dropped off in the swamps, without food or a gun, to wait. He is told that “they” will be here to get him later. In the darkness, Rachel appears to lead him to a campsite where a handful of black men are clustered around a fire. Newton asks, “Are they runaways?” to which Rachel replies, “Ain’t you?” Of course, the men’s de facto leader Moses, who wears a large, metal harness-like apparatus around his neck and head, is skeptical of their white visitor, but they allow him in anyway.

As Newton gets settled among the men, the plot picks up a little bit. We see that Serena lives under a constant state of surveillance by Confederate soldiers. That transitions back into the 1940s courtroom, where a prosecutor questions an expert about Serena leaving Jones County, Mississippi in late 1863 or early 1864, and thus could not be Davis Knight’s (white) great grandmother. We also see that Rachel is teaching herself to read by observing the master’s children’s lessons, and that she is the object of her master’s salacious affections. Back in the swamps, Newton and Moses get to know each other; Moses explains that he fled when his wife and son were sold and sent to Texas. Newton asks if he wants the harness off his neck, to which Moses responds that the removal would make too much noise and would bring the dogs. Newton then tells Moses that he is a blacksmith and that the dogs and the men can be handled.

In the daylight, the now-armed men – five black and one white – wait for the slave hunters after Newton removes the harness with great clanging of metal. They set up an ambush, and Newton reminds the men that they will only get one shot— so don’t miss! They quickly kill the hunters and dogs in a flurry of gun blasts, and the newly empowered slaves are left briefly to deal with the emotional impact of having the ability to defend themselves. Meanwhile, the relationship between Newton and Rachel grows more romantic.

[image error]At this point, a series of black-and-white battle images and some accompanying text move the story forward. We see that it is the middle of the Civil War, 1863 and 1864, and that the South is not faring well . . . The last frame shares that desertions are increasing.

The next thing we see is Newton pulling his friend Jasper out from under a house, and we understand that Jasper has deserted, too. As they approach the swamp base with two other bearded men, we see a camp now full of scruffy white men, including Will, who at the beginning of the movie insisted that the South’s case was honorable. Now emboldened by having others on his side, and with so many men to feed, Newton’s banditry begins. He first preaches to a group of farmers that the Bible instructs them that what a man plants, he ought to keep, and so, he suggests, they should move into the nearby cornfields, pick them clean, and hide the corn from Lt. Barbour and his men. The resentful group agrees, and they get to work. However, Barbour does find some corn in one man’s barn and takes it, but a mass of a few dozen deserters meets Barbour and his men on the road; they take back the corn and steal Barbour’s clothes. Barbour is outmatched by the rebellious deserters in the swamps, and we’re glad that this arrogant and uncaring man is being given a taste of his own medicine.

By now, a new villain has also appeared, Barbour’s superior officer Colonel Elias Hood, who takes the news of the corn raid poorly then appears at Sally’s pub to make a deal to extricate the deserters from the swamp. He offers whiskey and flour and money, claiming that anyone who comes out will not be punished but will simply rejoin the Confederate army. Sally forwards the offer to Newton who turns it down outright, and the hostility is ratcheted up.

The harried Confederates begin burning farms, but the ragtag crew’s morale stays high. They throw a big party in the swamp to thumb their noses at the army that know can’t reach them effectively. We once again see Rachel’s master James Eakins, who takes his jabs at Hood for not being able to get the job done. We also see racial tensions beginning to take shape as the dozens of white Southerners live among the five freed slaves who originally took Newton in. In recognition that Rachel is being raped by her owner, Newton begins burning cotton, an offense that ups the ante. To culminate this part of the film, one farmer, who represents the unsettled element in the camp, convinces a few men and boys that they should turn themselves in. He arranges that, but Col. Hood breaks his word that they will get off scot-free and has them hung. Though Newton opposed the move, he blames himself for their deaths.

An hour-and-a-half into Free State of Jones, with an hour left to go, the movie has established itself as a power-to-the-people story. Newton Knight makes regular remarks that rich families have gotten rich off the hard work of poor people and through the docile acceptance of an unfair system. The film is also very clear that the Confederate representatives, who collect “taxes” in the form of goods and food, are not acting in the best interest of ordinary people. Really, we have yet to see anyone of decent moral character working for the Confederate establishment.

For the most part, Free State of Jones has kept its integrity up to this point, not turning itself into a Die Hard-style action flick (like Mel Gibson’s historical drama The Patriot does). However, for a just a moment, it kind of does. At the real private funeral for the men and boys who were hung, Newton gives a tearful, bitter sermon about how both white and black always seem to end up as “somebody else’s nigger,” and  he looks to Moses for an answer about why he is not one: “No one can own a child of God,” he says. Then, at the staged public funeral, the Confederates led by Hood and Barbour guard the cemetery, waiting to capture these now-fugitives, as a few mourners arrive with the coffins. A skirmish begins when one of the women, clothed in black, draws a pistol and blows a soldier’s brains out. Of course, the coward Barbour flees on his horse as men pop out of the coffins and out from under the church, shooting from all directions, and one black-clad woman even hurls over a stone wall Dukes of Hazzard-style while continuing to shoot. Thankfully, that kind of hokey thing doesn’t go on long, and when the battle is over, Newton kills a wounded Hood with a knife inside the church.

In the next scene, Barbour has brought a force to Ellisville, and a battle rages in the streets of the tiny town. We learn from the titling that it is March 1864. Of course, the Confederates are defeated by a cooperative effort, with all the men and women now involved. After their victory, Newton Knight and his ragged array of rebels celebrate, but now they have a new set of problems: infrastructure and supplies. They have prisoners of war to house and guard, and they need guns and ammunition to hold their position in Ellisville. Newton assigns Will to seek help from the Union army, and he himself takes Rachel to an upstairs hotel room, where they share a tender moment.

Though things seem to be going well for Newton and his crew, the Confederates will not accept defeat so easily and neither will his own men accept this situation. With Col. Hood’s body laid on a table, a report is given on the state of affairs in Jones County, Mississippi. A retaliation is planned, and as we watch marching soldiers, the text on the screen tells us that a new colonel is coming with more than a thousand troops. Shortly thereafter, Will returns with a few guns and the news that Gen. Sherman will not help them. Newton protests, but Will says that’s how it is and also tells Newton that some of the men want to flee rather than dig in to fight. Newton disagrees but accepts their will, then stands on the stairs of a white-columned building to declare to the group assembled that they are now – and have apparently always been – on their own. As such, they are forming a Free State of Jones in southeastern Mississippi. In perhaps the most important feature of this new state, Newton affirms racial equality by saying that all men are equal: “if you walk on two legs, you’re a man.”

Free State of Jones is a long movie – well over two hours – but there is a lot to cover. Right after this political declaration, we see that it is April 1865. The Civil War is over, slavery is over, and the Union is reunited, though the South is under Reconstruction. We see tearful reunion of Moses and his wife and son, followed by the swearing in of James Eakins, Rachel’s old slave master, back into the good graces. But, as Eakins fortunes improve, returning to his beautiful white mansion with his smiling family, the fates of Newton, Moses, and the other freedmen are declining. The freedmen want to know where their forty acres and a mule are, and Newton has to tell them that Eakins will keep his land because the federal government has backed away from its promise. Then, Rachel tells Newton, over their small table in the dark, that they must leave the area. He may have fought the powerful men last time, she tells him, but this time he won’t be able to. They and the other blacks must move up to Soso, an isolated patch of ground, and try to make a living there.

Soon after arriving in Soso, Newton gets another surprise. HIs wife Serena returns with his son, who is now a small boy. They have no place to go, and Newton offers to let her stay there. The problem is: Newton now has Rachel as his wife. Though, as Newton ponders what to do and how, Rachel comes out and makes the decision with him. There is another house on the property and they can fix it up. Serena will stay there, too.

Back in the 1940s courtroom, this situation is discussed. The prosecution in the miscegenation case says that Serena Knight left Jones County never to return, but census records show that she did return. The defense lawyer explains the enigmatic scenario: usually there is trouble identifying who the father of a child is, but in this case it is difficult to determine who the mother is. There were two women living with one man on one farm.

The film next takes a turn away from the personal life of Newton Knight and toward the broader history of the South after the Civil War. One afternoon, Moses’ wife comes running to Newton’s house to tell him that Moses has gone to retrieve their son— from what we don’t know. When Newton catches up to Moses he is angry and armed, striding toward the cotton field where his son is being forced to work. Newton joins him, and they are quickly confronted by armed men. In court, we find that the justice of the peace is that old coward Barbour and that the “apprenticeship” scheme is being perpetrated by James Eakins. Though the lieutenant/judge tries with a smirk to suppress Moses and Newton with statutes, Newton will have none of it. He stands up and calls the bluff! Ignoring Barbour’s bashing of the gavel, he throws seven dollars at Eakins, declaring the matter done, and Eakins takes it, shamelessly and with his own smirk.

The last twenty to thirty minutes of Free State of Jones show us the history that we (should) already know, interspersing those scenes with the conviction of David Knight for violating racial codes. After some more black-and-white images and more explanation of how former Confederates connived their way back into power, leading to Radical Reconstruction, we see the formation of the Union League, led in this story by Moses . . . which leads to the Ku Klux Klan, the burning of black churches, and midnight violence against blacks. While Moses is working on voter registration, he is chased down and lynched: castrated and hung from a tree. After this, Newton takes it upon himself to lead nearly two-dozen black men into town to vote Republican. We see a dramatization of how white Southern men engaged in voter suppression and intimidation, though Newton meets their threats with his own, and the defiant outsiders cast their ballots. Text on the screen explains that this continued until the late 1870s. Newton, of course, never gave up on what he believed in, no matter the cost. And though Newton and Rachel were never able to get married, he does leave his 160 acres of land to her. In the middle of the twentieth century, though, his descendant did not fare well for their union. The film does relay that his conviction was overturned, since Mississippi did not want his case to go to the Supreme Court.

Notwithstanding this completely unconventional side of Southern history, Free State of Jones elicited mixed reactions. The film critic Roger Ebert found the screenplay to be flawed, an assessment I agree with, though he found the mid-twentieth century subplot to be a distraction, which I disagree with. He also wrote this:

There’s worthwhile history here, to be sure, but some of it’s tedious while other parts are dubious (e.g., a title tells us that in 1875-76 federal forces were withdrawn from Mississippi even as “Klan activity was on the rise”; in reality, the Klan was effectively suppressed by actions the federal government took in the early 1870s). Eventually, the film’s story feels like it just peters out, without reaching any discernible dramatic or thematic point.

I don’t know how true it is that the “Klan was effectively suppressed” in the decade after the Civil War, though I do I agree that the movie “just peters out.”

The Guardian called the movie a “startling, fiercely violent, superbly photographed and structurally audacious civil war drama,” and “a movie that with enormous confidence operates outside the traditional story arc.” However, the Hollywood Reporter shared my sentiments about the movie’s shortcomings:

But just as the film seems like it’s about to really click into a higher gear, it loses momentum midstream and ultimately becomes didactic in its time-jumping final act. There is much incident: Families are shattered, innocents are hanged, farms and churches are burned and the hell that is war and the fundamental unfairness of life are on abundant display.

And that writer also added later that Free State of Jones “devolved from an engaging historical drama into a compendium of regressive racial developments.” Sadly for this compelling story, Rolling Stone saw it the same way:

If you think a thick, juicy slab of Civil War history can’t be boiled down to 145 minutes of speechifying, stultifying cinema, then grab a seat at Free State of Jones. Like the worst civics lesson, this movie bores away at you till your reactions are dulled.

What I’m driving at is this: everyone seems to agree that the movie presented a compelling story that most of us never knew, but its shift from a bluntly honest action film into a text-driven educational video leaves it with structural/creative schizophrenia. In short, Free State of Jones couldn’t figure out what it wanted to be. Perhaps this story was too big to be told in one movie.

As a portrayal of the South, the movie contains elements both conventional and unconventional, though one reviewer pointed out correctly that there is so much going on that the characters don’t really have room to develop. One disappointment for me was that there was not one single pro-Confederate character who had redeeming traits or who showed any kindness—all of them were all bad, which isn’t accurate or true. Overall, it’s good to have Free State of Jones among available narratives about the Civil War. Too few people read these days, and even fewer read academic histories, so having an approximation of the story of Newton Knight put on the screen is, I would say, a generally positive thing.

 

Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige

I just finished reading Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, winner of the 1978 National Book Award, about the author’s 1973 trip into the Himalayas with a mountain-climbing field biologist who was studying an ancient breed of goat. Matthiessen, who was a Buddhist, went along on the journey partly because his friend’s destination was also the site of the isolated Crystal Mountain monastery and partly because he wanted to see, with his own eyes, the elusive snow leopard. One of the most descriptive books I’ve ever read, The Snow Leopard melds together the author’s experiences in those frigid mountains with considerate discussions of life, religion, and anthropology, as well as some interspersed backstory about his wife’s recent death and his eight-year-old son, who is waiting on him to return.

Among these side discussions, about a hundred pages in, Matthiessen is waxing philosophic about life and freedom, and writes this: “The absurdity of a life that may well end before one understands it does not relieve one of the duty (to that self which is inseparable from others) to live it through as bravely and as generously possible.” He ties this idea both to Buddhist “crazy wisdom” and to the French existential philosopher Albert Camus— some things just don’t make sense but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to abide them. Matthiessen was writing about hiking through Nepal, in a place that bore no resemblance to the late twentieth-century world around it, but this sentiment from his book could just as easily be applied to living in the Deep South.

[image error]For a cognizant person living in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the culture and accompanying politics of the Deep South are perhaps most remarkable for their absurdity. Tax rates are regressive, public administration is spotty, and social ills abound. State and local leaders augment our outdoorsy tourist economy with testaments to our difficult past, while making simultaneous efforts to suppress, ignore, or deny that past’s current manifestations. Meanwhile, the people of the Deep South express near-constant chagrin at the everyday facts that rank us near the bottom in most measures of quality-of-life, as the majority of us continue either not to vote or to vote for the same kinds of leaders who landed us in this predicament. We lament the consequences but refuse to alter the method . . . which is absurd.

Near the end of the book, Matthiessen is returning to civilization to make his way home and is pondering what this perilous experience will mean to him. He never did see the snow leopard, though it came near enough to leave tracks around their camp. By this point, he is glad to be out of sub-zero temperatures and away from the discomfort of tent living, though he is also sad to see that simple, unencumbered life be put behind him. He asks himself, ambivalently: “have I learned nothing?”

Sometimes I ask myself the same thing, here in the Deep South. After reading so much Southern history, after examining the problems and listening to various perspectives, after traveling around and interviewing people, after keeping up with who-is-who and who-did-what, have I learned nothing? No, not nothing, but just this: that I no more see what is over the horizon than that man who never even looks up from his dalliances. However, despite any bitterness that fact may periodically bring me, I agree with Matthiessen that we must still behave bravely and with generosity toward the facts of our situation.

Near the end of the book, Matthiessen is reminded of the advice he was given on the day they embarked: “Expect nothing.” That’s good advice, but hard to follow. A few sentences later, he writes about “that aching gap between what I know and what I am,” acknowledging his failure (to see the snow leopard) and the resources expended in that failure. Any progressive person in the Deep South knows how Matthiessen felt. We make preparations followed by great efforts to climb and traverse our cultural and political mountains, then at the end of each journey, we find ourselves exhausted and humbled by the fact that the mountains haven’t moved or changed one bit.

“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige” posts are published on Tuesday afternoons.

To read recent posts, click the date below:

May 28, 2019

May 21, 2019

May 14, 2019

May 7, 2019

April 30, 2019

April 23, 2019

Or to find and read earlier posts, click here for a full list.

Newtown Oral Histories: Finding Aid is Online

[image error]The Finding Aid for the Newtown Oral History Collection is posted on the website of the Montgomery County Archives. The collection itself is still being processed, but this document, which provides keys to researchers about its contents, is now online.

To learn more about this project that I coordinated for my students, you can read the posts below:

Oral Histories in Newtown (February 24, 2019)

Collecting Stories in Newtown, February 23 (February 15, 2019)

The Newtown Reunion, 2018 (September 4, 2018)

Alabama Bicentennial Projects for 2018 – 2019 (August 13, 2018)

 

#throwbackthursday: Rod Bramblett calling the ‘Kick Six,’ 2013

In honor of the voice of Auburn sports Rod Bramblett, who was killed in a car wreck last weekend, here is one of his finer moments in the booth. When Carlton Davis ran back that missed field goal to give Auburn a victory in the 2013 Iron Bowl, Bramblett went absolutely crazy.

#SummerReading: “Closed Ranks”

[image error]Closed Ranks: The Whitehurst Case in Post-Civil Rights Montgomery is available in both paperback and Kindle edition.

From the publisher’s website:

On a chilly December afternoon in 1975, Bernard Whitehurst Jr., a 33-year-old father of four, was mistaken for a robbery suspect by Montgomery, Alabama, police officers. A brief foot chase ensued, and it ended with one of the pursuing officers shooting and killing Whitehurst in the backyard of an abandoned house. The officer claimed the fleeing man had fired at him; police produced a gun they said had been found near the body. In the months that followed, new information showed that Whitehurst, who was black, was not only the wrong man but had been unarmed, a direct contradiction to the white officer’s statement. What became known as the Whitehurst Case erupted when the local district attorney and the family’s attorney each began to uncover facts that pointed to wrongdoing by the police, igniting a year-long controversy that resulted in the resignation or firing of police officers, the police chief, and the city’s popular New South mayor. However, no one was ever convicted in Whitehurst’s death, and his family’s civil lawsuit against the City of Montgomery failed. Now, more than four decades later, Whitehurst’s widow and children are waging a 21st-century effort to gain justice for the husband and father they lost. The question that remains is: who decides what justice looks like?

You can buy Closed Ranks online through any of the following retailers: Amazon, Target, Walmart, Books A Million, and Barnes & Noble.

 

 

Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige

It has been confirmed that they’ve found the Clotilda. This last known slave ship to enter the United States came into Mobile Bay in the early 1860s, just prior to the Civil War, with a load of enslaved people purchased on the western coast of Africa, and was sunk shortly after unloading its human cargo in order to hide the evidence of what was by then illegal.  According to Smithsonian.com:

The authentication and confirmation of the Clotilda was led by the Alabama Historical Commission and SEARCH Inc., a group of maritime archaeologists and divers who specialize in historic shipwrecks. Last year, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Slave Wrecks Project (SWP) joined the effort to help involve the community of Africatown in the preservation of the history, explains Smithsonian curator and SWP co-director Paul Gardullo.

This discovery puts a Southern historical puzzle piece into place that had been missing for more than a century-and-a-half.

[image error]While this discovery may seem of little interest outside of a community of historians, it goes an issue larger than that one ship. One of the modern tragedies of American slavery, something that is less often discussed in mainstream conversations about race, involves the inability of many Africans American to pursue and trace their family histories. In most cases, usable records cease in the mid-1800s, because slaves were inventoried as chattel, not recorded as human beings. There are also extremely scant records about slaves’ given African names or their places of origin prior to their forced entry into the peculiar institution. Even in this age of Ancestry.com and 23andMe, millions of African Americans can only trace their direct family lineage back to the late 1800s at best and, using DNA testing, can only find approximations of their place of origin.

While identifying the wreckage of slave ships doesn’t resolve this problem, since manifests and other records wouldn’t have been left on the vessels, this discovery does something important: it proves and formalizes the existence of a ship and a voyage that cannot be documented through official records from the time. In addition to the family-history road blocks in census records, the absence of records about illegal slaving voyages can mean that one’s ancestors never officially arrived— which is absurd. Identifying the waterlogged remains of an illegal slave ship is not, as some might claim, dredging up unwanted history; it is further acknowledgment of slavers’ inhumane and dehumanizing methods by turning myth into truth. Yes, this ship did exist, and it was hidden because it was evidence of a crime.

Carving kernels of truth out of the shells of myth means doing a good deal of thankless, often ignored work. It can mean spending hundreds of hours sifting through records to find that one tiny mention that points to the correct path. It can mean traveling, searching, and interviewing in inhospitable conditions, where locals can’t or won’t help and where landscapes have changed. It can mean devoting years of one’s life to a quest for an under appreciated treasure. Most Americans will pass by the news this discovery without so much as glancing up, but that doesn’t diminish its significance.

“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige” posts are published on Tuesday afternoons.

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Feeding the Family, Part Two

[If you haven’t read “Feeding the Family, Part One,” you should start there.]

[image error]Not being a dietitian or nutritionist or farmer by profession, I knew I was going to need help if I was going to answer this question:  how can an ordinary guy like me reform my eating habits and improve my overall health? In my writing work, I would normally go to a library or the Archives to begin any kind of research, but this time I started by checking Netflix and Amazon Prime first. (I know better than to browse the internet for anything related to health or wellness, since those rabbit holes can lead first to a self-diagnosis then to a panic attack.) I’m not looking for anything radical, so much as something transformative, and I still don’t know enough about food and eating to put my faith in any diet plan. Nor do I ever intend to ruin my enjoyment of food by counting calories, carbs, fats, or anything else. Starting slowly, with a nice documentary, seemed adequate.

On either of the two streaming services, there were a couple of films I’d seen and some I hadn’t, and since I like writer Michael Pollan particularly, I settled on one of his. In the PBS documentary In Defense of Food, released in 2015, Pollan brings his foodie wisdom from the pages of his book onto the screen – which I appreciate since I read a lot for work – and shares this simple modicum: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” I’ve been a fan of Pollan’s approach for years and already try to stick to another bit of advice that I once heard him give: eat things that look like what they are. He is saying basically the same thing in both cases, that we should eat naturally occurring foods rather than processed foods. Eating a chicken breast or leg is better choice than eating a chicken nugget.

Pollan also suggests in the film that we avoid the middle aisles of the grocery store. As I watched, it had never occurred to me before how the traditional and naturally occurring foods – fruits and vegetables, milk and bread, meat and fish – are typically arranged like a U on the outskirts of the store, while the processed foods tend to be in the middle. This sense of how to shop for groceries isn’t a total solution to the eating conundrum, and it doesn’t carve a direct route to a guarantee of perfect health, but it does seem to be a good guiding principle.

One other takeaway from In Defense of Food improved my understanding of the term whole grain. In the film, Pollan explains how and why white flour came to dominate the market, yet with consequences. Though white flour is more easily preserved, reducing spoilage and increasing shelf-life, it achieves that by removing the most nutrient rich parts of the grain. So, whole grain bread is made from flour that keeps and includes those nutritious parts that white flour lacks. Moreover, with white bread, manufacturers then “enrich” the bread with artificially produced vitamin supplements to put back what was taken out, and they also typically add sugar. Once again, the simplicity of Michael Pollan’s approach is appealing— bread should be made from four ingredients: flour, water, yeast, and salt. I’m a guy who loves bread, and there’s an easy move in the right direction.

[image error]After I watched In Defense of Food, one of the recommendations that followed was another documentary titled simply Sustainable. This relatively short film from 2016 offers a seasonal look at one family-owned farm that shifted its production away from a corporate, high-yield model and into being a local supplier of local goods. The owner Marty Travis thus became an important figure in the food movement in Chicago, and he also organized a cooperative of local farmers who now help each other by planning ahead to meet demand and consolidating orders.

Though Sustainable was more about farming than eating, it was good to see that there’s a proven way for an ordinary family farm, or a group of them, to become a source for people in cities to access healthier foods. I tend to think about small-scale urban agriculture and local farmers markets as the sole sources for suburbanites like me, but the Travis family showed a way to have that happen on a larger scale. It was also good to see not only his son taking an interest in the work, and also seeing the cooperative’s meetings where people were being asked, what do you want to grow?

What I’m learning about food as I look into ways to eat better and to support sustainable practices while I’m doing it is: somehow, we ditched the simple way in favor of the convenient way, which is unfortunately more complicated and more wasteful. Processed foods that have longer shelf-lives tend to achieve that by removing what is most healthy (nutrients, vitamins), adding what is most unhealthy (chemicals, preservatives), and utilizing the most nonrenewable energy (gasoline in trucks, electricity in freezer cases). These foods also appeal to our taste-buds with two things we shouldn’t eat much of: salt and sugar.

So far, two of the most difficult aspects of this effort to change my eating habits have been: giving up some of the ease and convenience, and avoiding processed foods that I’ve eaten for a long time. However, a bright side is there, too: my tastes are changing. These days, I like to eat a honey crisp apple, a banana, or both nearly every day, and the last time I fixed myself a can of Chef Boyardee, it didn’t even taste good. However, I’ve not achieved foodie sainthood just yet— I’d still take a Reese’s cup over a block of tofu any day. But at least I’ve recognized that I can’t have one every day.

Interestingly, while I was working on this post, NPR’s The Salt published an opinion piece that caught my eye: “Why Ditching Processed Foods Won’t Be Easy— The Barriers to Cooking From Scratch.” Even more interestingly, the piece, which was written by three sociologists, was about Michael Pollan’s seven-word advice, and how a “recent study now offers hard scientific evidence in support of Pollan’s message.” A few paragraphs in, there was this:

The study confirms what we’ve been hearing for years: Cooking from scratch and eating “real food” is better and healthier. The problem is that knowing this doesn’t make it any more doable for the average family.

Below that, the three authors explain that we typically get about 60% of our calories from processed foods, and for low-income families, that percentage is even higher. And that has a lot to do with two things: time and money. I know that, for my family, which has two children playing two sports, when we get home in the afternoon, there’s not a two-hour window to cook and eat a good meal before practice or a game. This often means that my children scarf down a Hot Pocket at 4:15 rather than sitting down and calmly eating a freshly cooked meal at 6:00. As for the money, post-recession wage stagnation accompanied by higher food prices hasn’t made it impossible for my family to have healthier foods, but that scenario has meant that it is a decision to make.

Near the end of the NPR piece, the authors shared this:

The idea that we have a responsibility to prepare wholesome, nourishing meals is appealing, and now there is more evidence to support that. For some food gurus, the decision to simmer homemade spaghetti and meatballs on the stove rather than heat up a can of ravioli in the microwave is evidence of a person’s moral fortitude.

In a way, that’s true. When, as they put it, “inequality is baked into our food system,” choosing to spend a greater portion of a limited household resources on better food can become a moral issue: if I do this, what will I have to do without? That decision becomes even more difficult when we’re thinking about our children, who may like processed junk food, but the facts tells us that minimizing its presence in their lives is imperative.

Part three is coming soon . . . 

Southern Movie 36: “Hot Summer in Barefoot County”

Alongside the 1970s fascination with Southern culture that manifested itself in action films like Walking Tall and comedies like Smokey and the Bandit was also the inclination of some filmmakers to make campy, dumb-bunny comedies like Hot Summer in Barefoot County. Released in 1974, the movie was directed by Will Zens, who also made 1967’s The Road to Nashville, 1975’s Trucker’s Woman, and 1985’s The Fix, and it was released by the Preacherman Corporation— as in the same folks who made the 1971 movie Preacherman. The story line centers on the efforts of a big-city special agent to find the source of bootleg liquor in a rural North Carolina county. Yet, this movie isn’t something to be taken seriously, and it’s got everything that’s needed to make sure that we don’t: stereotypes, bad acting, cheap stunts, the works.

Hot Summer in Barefoot County begins on a rural two-lane road with a speeding red hot-rod Ford, piloted by a young woman in a man’s straw hat and aviator sunglasses. Of course, we have banjo-picking to accompany the scene. As the car, which we understand to be a moonshine runner, flies by, we see the roadside sign declaring this to be Barefoot County. Soon, the red Ford is chased by a fat, heavy-bearded sheriff and his buffoonish deputy, but the bootlegger outmaneuvers the sheriff, who can’t do much more with his defeat than grimace and throw down his hat.

After the credits roll, the next bit of the story that we get brings in Special Agent Jeff Wilson, who we meet in a big-city law office. Wilson, who is youngish and perhaps supposed to be handsome, is receiving his orders to go to Barefoot County to put a stop to this bootlegging mess. He will have to go there by himself, undercover, and infiltrate the local scene.

Next, the disguised driver delivers a small load of white jugs to the back of store, and after she drives off, we cut to the backwoods, where a mother and two of her three grown daughters are filling those same plastics jugs at a moonshine still. Mama does a little quality assurance, then wonders out loud whether Mary Ann, the third daughter, the one in the Ford, will be back soon. She tells her daughters, who are decked out like Daisy Duke in short shorts and tied-up shirts, to hurry. Back home – in broad daylight, mind you – the mother and two daughters load more white lightning into the trunk of the Ford. The mama asks Mary Anne if she had any trouble, and with a laugh, she replies that there was none . . . except ol’ Sheriff Bull Tatum. Then they all laugh.

After we see Special Agent Wilson arriving in the area, Bull Tatum and his deputy Clyde are back at their office, when Clyde tells Bull that he got some mail. The letter tells the sheriff that the folks in the capitol are aware of the bootlegging in the area, and Bull worries out loud that another one of “them pesky agents” might come down there to look into it. “We got some sheriffin’ do,” he tells Clyde, and they leave.

But they don’t exactly get to work. Instead they go to the local gas station/diner, where Bull spills the beans to owner Otis Perkins that he will be setting up a road block to check cars, then he orders a couple of plates of bacon and eggs. Two young men Clarence and Junior play pinball in the corner, a few scattered locals sit at other tables, and then the scene cuts to local tomcat Culley Joe forcibly making out with a girl in the front seat of a truck. We find out momentarily, when the two pinball boys are sent outside to find Culley Joe, that the two lovers are out back of the cafe, that she is the waitress at the cafe, and that she is the sheriff’s daughter Nadine!

Inside the cafe, Culley Joe is instructed to go see Stella Holcomb – the mother who is leading the moonshine operation – and tell her that he has some “new developments” to share. (Of course, he knows that the road blocks are for her daughter Mary Ann.) Culley Joe does as he’s told, loads up his two pals into his topless Jeep, and rides out to the Holcomb place. Of course, Culley Joe and his friends see this as an opportunity not only to deliver the message but to molest the Holcomb girls. Finding that their mother is not at home, Culley Joe moves stealthily into the barn and halfheartedly tries to sexually assault the dark-haired sister, who fights him off pretty handily. Stella soon arrives though, and Culley Joe is told at gunpoint to take his philandering elsewhere, but he does manage to deliver his father’s message.

Out on the road, Jeff Wilson is just getting near to the town, and he is spotted by the Jeepful of wild boys. Hooting and hollering, they run Jeff off the road, then proceed without remorse to the sheriff’s road block. Of course, the sheriff finds nothing in the boys’ Jeep, but as the Holcombs are heading to the local cafe to find out what the news is, they find Jeff in his wrecked car. They pull him from the wreck and take him home, but also step out back to get the red Ford ready for another run (again, in broad daylight). This time, Mary Ann comes upon the road block and blasts right through it at full speed! Bull and Clyde try to jump in their car and make chase, but once again Mary Ann’s driving leaves them in a field, scratching their heads.

Pulling up to the cafe, with the second load of moonshine in two days, Mary Ann asks Otis what the news is, after explaining that her mother couldn’t come because they found a man in a car wreck. A road block, she finds out. She has a good laugh, then suggests that they unload the liquor before Bull Tatum shows up. And show up he does, with Clyde, disheveled, and empty-handed.

[image error]Out at the Holcombs’, Jeff Wilson wakes up, with a bandage on his head, and finds the mother and her three daughters at the dinner table. He sits right down, and Stella explains how he got there, then introduces her daughters. Mary Ann is giving him the sweet eyes across the table, while the salacious dark-haired sister Vicky looks him over, biting her bottom lip. (The third sister doesn’t seem too interested, or interesting.) Jeff lies, telling them that he was passing through, looking for work, and Stella suggest that he might find work with Otis at cafe.

After an evening on the porch, where Jeff tells the women about his upbringing on a farm, they take him to Sunday services, where he is introduced around and gets to speak to Otis about job. Otis offers him all he can, pumping gas mostly, and now the big-city law man all set to scope out the scene. He even has a pay phone at the cafe, which he can use to call his chief.

Among his first customers are the three Holcomb sister in their blue truck. However, as Jeff tries to pump their gas and check under the hood, Culley Joe butts in and wants to dominate the girls’ attention. Manly man that he is, Jeff deals with Culley Joe pretty easily, making his first enemy in the small community. Later on, inside the cafe, Otis suggests to Jeff that he move out of the Holcombs’ house and into the apartment at the cafe, which Jeff agrees to.

The next few minutes of the movie contain an awkward love scene between Jeff and Mary Ann, who are walking through a field as Jeff explains that he will leave their house. What makes the scene awkward are two things: mainly, the two are shown from about a fifty yards away, but also, in this hokey and oversexed comedy, a moment of sentimental sincerity is way out of place.

When we’re through with that, we’re back at sheriff’s office, where Bull tells Clyde that they need to go out to the Holcomb place and find out more about Jeff Wilson. Clyde objects on the grounds that they live not in Barefoot County but in adjacent Bedrock County, but Bull overrules him, saying that they aren’t going to arrest anybody. Out on the place, they’re met by Stella and Mary Ann on the porch, who explains that Jeff has left, yet when Clyde attempts to snoop in the barn, the two other sisters playfully detain the middle-aged deputy by undressing him. Of course, when he leaves barn with clothes unbuttoned, neither Bull nor Stella believe that it was they who were trying to “rape” him . . .

From here, the twisted plot begins to pick up the pace. As Culley Joe plays some music on the jukebox, the moronic sheriff and deputy try another roadblock. This time, Bull leaves Clyde there with the instructions not to let anybody through, then goes back to the cafe. Jeff is talking to Nadine there, which Culley Joe doesn’t like, and Otis discreetly sells a jug of moonshine to a man, who walks right out with it past the sheriff. (Of course, Jeff notices the transaction.) The conversation from there centers on Nadine, the sheriff’s daughter who flirts with every male who passes her, until a black man pulls up in a car to tell Bull that there’s a traffic jam up the road— Clyde has followed instructions perfectly and has let no one through.  

By now, Jeff is putting it all together. From his apartment window, he sees Otis unloading moonshine from Mary Ann’s car. Inside the cafe, Mary Ann tells her dancing sisters to get moving, since they are heading to the swimming hole. Culley Joe hears this and sees yet another opportunity.

Knowing that he must take action, since his real job there is to stop the moonshiners, Jeff tries to go to the Holcombs’ to warn them but no one is there. (They’re at the swimming hole, of course.) So, Jeff goes walking in the woods and sees Stella making moonshine. He jots some notes on his notepad, and we know that the jig is up.

Out at the swimming hole, the three naked sisters play in the water, and Culley Joe goes to pick up Clarence and Junior. All is well, until Mary Ann gets out of the water and Culley Joe is there to attempt yet another sexual assault. She struggles with him for a moment, but then here comes Jeff, who saves the day in a fight scene that any bad 1970s movie would be proud to have. Mary Ann is then so appreciative, and the two lover kiss happily.

Yet, Jeff still hasn’t fessed up to why he is there and what he is about to do.

The next few scenes are awkward once again. In the first one, Stella and Mary Ann talk in the dark kitchen about the moonshiner’s life, giving what almost appears to be an apologia for this illegal, backwoods tradition. Then, the next two scenes, which bounce back and forth, involve Jeff and Mary Ann falling in love, making out, and discussing trust, while Jeff sits alone his apartment mulling the difficult decision he must make. These out-of-place bits are problematic in a movie where sexual assault is taken lightly and where the law is merely a playground for shiftless buffoons. Periodically attempting to tug at our heart strings just doesn’t work.

With more than an hour gone and less than a half-hour to go, Hot Summer in Barefoot County gets tiresome by this point. The sheriff decides to try one more effort to catch that red Ford, but his plan fails again when Clyde, who has been placed to shoot out the car’s tires, shoots out Bull’s tires instead. Jeff then witnesses Mary Ann once again delivering a load of moonshine to Otis, this time on dirt road rather than at the cafe’s back door. Culley Joe gets his comeuppance when he is caught by the sheriff rolling in the sheets with Nadine, and we have a wedding at gunpoint, which will be followed by a big party. Also, Bull thinks he has discovered that Jeff is his moonshiner he finds him at the Holcomb’s still, which forces Jeff to reveal his identity— an identity that Bull shares with everyone at the party! Including Mary Ann, who feels utterly betrayed. Everything is all tied up in knots.

However, all’s well that ends well, as Shakespeare put it. Before he leaves, Jeff makes sure that the Holcombs will not be caught for making moonshine, the two younger sisters start their own new still in another location, half-wit sexual predator Culley Joe is off the streets now that he is a married man, and for the movie’s end, Jeff comes back for Mary Ann! The two close things out, kissing in the fading sunlight.

Trying to find critical commentaries or reviews of Hot Summer in Barefoot County is somewhere between difficult and impossible. It’s seems generally agreed upon that it is a bad movie— and not good-bad. Just plain bad. That absence may also be because the seminal Southern moonshine movie White Lightning preceded it by a year, and this movie can’t hold a candle to that one.

As a document (albeit fictional) that portrays the American South, Hot Summer in Barefoot County relies almost totally on stereotypes in the same way as its predecessor Preacherman. Its flippant approach to the supposed stupidity of Southerners, especially rural Southerners, includes the ideas that complete idiots are likely to be law enforcement officers, that the poor passively accept poverty and a lack of opportunity, and that everyone is sex-starved, immoral, and devoid of self-restraint. Films like this one use the modern cinema to perpetuate caricatures, created earlier by print media and touring shows, which reinforce the notions that Southerners are good-for-nothing, good-timing, and lazy. While it may have made for good comedy in the decade before political correctness, it was also harmful to a region trying to rebuild itself in the decade after Civil Rights.

To read other Southern Movie posts, click here.

If Schools were like Airports . . . (A Rumination)

After recently spending more than two hours on a jetliner wedged between a jock in a Jackalope trucker hat who chomped gum with his mouth open and refused to share the arm-rest, and a millenial yuppie whose overly loud action-film sound effects bled out of his ear buds, I found myself pondering whether there might be a reason why the airline industry does things the way they do. Unable to find any good answers to that cosmic quandary, my mind wandered away from the issue at hand, and my teacher brain began to wonder, what might it be like if we ran our schools the way we run our airlines . . . ?

We would start our day around dawn by requiring students to be at school at least two hours before the school day’s stated start time. This two-hour span of time would be necessary for teams of security guards to search, frisk, and otherwise humiliate students individually and publicly, while other guards with no apparent duties stand by. Students would only be allowed to get in line for this ordeal if they have complete documentation that they attend the school. Lacking even one document would disqualify a student from proceeding, even to the search. Parents and other family members would be held largely off-campus by school security, who would direct them to a nearby limbo populated mostly by students not eligible to enter.

Before entering the building, students would have to take off belts, watches, and shoes, to empty their pockets, then to enter first a wind-blown gunpowder chamber then a metal detector, leaving them eventually to stand half-dressed while they wait for their backpacks and purses to undergo similar treatment. A few will sheepishly sort out their feelings about being felt up and down by a stranger in rubber gloves. Of course, there would be a separate, private room for searching questionable students, or even randomly selected ones. And it wouldn’t matter how long any student had attended the school; this process would be completed every time.

Once students did enter the building — some of them hours before the school day starts — there would not be enough seating for everyone in common areas, such as cafeterias. Some students would be left sitting on the floor against the wall, or loitering around water fountains, a situation that would be necessary for reasons that would never be explained.

Of course, the school day may or may not start at the stated time, and moreover individual classes would be rescheduled with no notice and no explanation. A student might have second-period Chemistry but if first-period English starts late and ends late, then the student would certainly miss part of Chemistry, or all of it, especially considering that classrooms would be arranged so that no students’ next class would be anywhere near the previous class. Late students would have to go to the office and stand in line to arrange to attend a later class meeting, if one is available. This could lead to a domino-effect throughout the day, but teachers and office staff would be trained only to say that we “understand the frustration,” but will nonetheless remain inflexible and claim to be powerless. Students who object to the inconvenience with anything more than mild consternation would be removed from campus. Though the day’s stated end time may be around 3:00 PM, some students would not be finished at school until late in the evening. That would also be necessary for reasons that would never be explained. Those students’ families would have to circle the school parking lot or pay for an hourly rate for parking until their child comes out of the building, since free parking would not be available and waiting in the pick-up lanes would not be allowed.

Moreover, the classroom environment would be designed to ensure maximum occupancy, not comfort. Upon entering the classroom, all students would be required to put their backpacks in storage bins that are at least five feet above the ground. Some students’ bags won’t fit and those would be taken away and stored, probably to be returned but maybe not. Seats would be too small for most students, and aisles between desks would be narrow. (Students’ elbows should be held close to the body.) The back of each seat would be no more than a foot from the face of the student behind, and the desktops would be designed with greater width than depth, even though most paper is longer than it is wide. Textbooks would be left in a pouch on the back of the seat in front of each student, but some would be missing. Teachers would go over procedures for fire, severe weather, and lock-down at the beginning of every class period. Students sitting near the door would be questioned as to whether they’re capable of opening the door if someone knocks. Most importantly, students would be reminded that federal law requires that all students comply with all directives from teachers. Finally, no one would be allowed to leave class to use the bathroom, but a very small stall would be available in the back corner of the room.

Outside the classroom, students would experience similar aggravation and indifference. In the halls, custodians and other staff would drive beeping golf carts through crowds of students without slowing down. Food would be overpriced — most outside food and all drinks would be confiscated on the way in — and in the bathrooms, there would always be at least one person taking a really nasty dump. Of course, changing classes would have the additional challenge of navigating through the frustrated students who didn’t make it to class on time and who would idly occupy much of the available seating.

Finally, at the end of each school day, the same teachers and staff who refused to be flexible would stand in the halls and bid students farewell, saying with a smile, “I hope you had a good day, see you tomorrow.” That is, except for the students who leave late, who would slog through the dark, empty halls to the sidewalk and wait for their ride to pull up.

Since the proprietors of the airline industry seem to believe that this modus operandi works, I’m kind of surprised that some pro-business, security-obsessed reformer hasn’t already suggested that we apply it our nation’s schools . . . to ensure that students are ready, as future corporate employees, to participate in the modern travel system.