Whispered Imagination - Jul 2
And now a few words about Elsinore, Oklahoma – with a particular nod to our folks in the Major Media who only interrupt the in-flight move to gaze at the American Heartland from 30,000 feet.
Like Lake Wobegon, Yoknapatawpha County, or Brigadoon, you won’t find Elsinore on any map. No telephone directory shows it. No Google mapping cars have ever found it.
Not invented though. Stitched together. Quilting squares of memory from the tiny town where I grew up, the village where we were exiled for a time, the city where I went away to college, and fragments of so many people whose attitudes, and conversation, and schemes I remember.
Elsinore is proudly rural – which suggests a brief mention of what might be called our Two Americas Problem. Even though this issue gets some media attention, it doesn’t seem to be the right kind of attention. Because the split we are experiencing, the vehemence and barking we hear every day, is a matter of Time – Past versus Future. A matter of Age – Old versus Young. And a matter of Place – Rural versus Urban.
Within the last two days, I have heard the phrases “depopulated America” and “knuckledragger Amerca” used as equivalents. The good people who still reside in the Heartland might label themselves “ignored America”.
They didn’t want to be ignored before – and they don’t want to be ignored now. They don’t want their states to be thought of as natural grasslands where buffalo can be released to wander free again, now that so many people have gone.
The Heartland feels that America is losing its heart. Losing its way. Losing focus. Losing its heritage — and its priorities.
The Heartland was once very young. And now is becoming very old. It is not just the “brain drain” of the best and brightest. It is the absence of children, and grandchildren, as older people find themselves in the company of the Unworthy - the Worthy children having left, never to return. Small town America is filled with people who settled for what was there at home - and they're not a very inspiring bunch.
They are caught up, of course, in the epic movement of people all over the world – the inexorable movement from farms to the city. One of the foundational characteristics of the 21st Century: the countryside emptying out while the cities fill up. But rural people don’t really concern themselves about trends in global population. They would love to feel a little less left behind – a little less marginalized. At the same time, they’re not particularly interested in the challenges of Modern Times.
That’s part of the charm. Small Town America is not the site of challenges. Not the theatre of ambition. The operative phrase is "used to". Place where things used to happen. Where people used to live. (https://medium.com/@TheFurryMarxist/w...).
But even in the tiny sparks of light you can see from 30,000 feet there are people living, loving, working, hoping, and (sometimes) losing hope.
As much as any street in Brooklyn, any slum in Calcutta, any apartment house in Paris, Elsinore shows people living as they have always lived. My people of Elsinore might wonder if the Heartland will ever be relevant to the larger nation again, but – in the meantime – they have things to do.
Like figuring out how to gt their hands on their husbands' life insurance. (More on this later).
Like Lake Wobegon, Yoknapatawpha County, or Brigadoon, you won’t find Elsinore on any map. No telephone directory shows it. No Google mapping cars have ever found it.
Not invented though. Stitched together. Quilting squares of memory from the tiny town where I grew up, the village where we were exiled for a time, the city where I went away to college, and fragments of so many people whose attitudes, and conversation, and schemes I remember.
Elsinore is proudly rural – which suggests a brief mention of what might be called our Two Americas Problem. Even though this issue gets some media attention, it doesn’t seem to be the right kind of attention. Because the split we are experiencing, the vehemence and barking we hear every day, is a matter of Time – Past versus Future. A matter of Age – Old versus Young. And a matter of Place – Rural versus Urban.
Within the last two days, I have heard the phrases “depopulated America” and “knuckledragger Amerca” used as equivalents. The good people who still reside in the Heartland might label themselves “ignored America”.
They didn’t want to be ignored before – and they don’t want to be ignored now. They don’t want their states to be thought of as natural grasslands where buffalo can be released to wander free again, now that so many people have gone.
The Heartland feels that America is losing its heart. Losing its way. Losing focus. Losing its heritage — and its priorities.
The Heartland was once very young. And now is becoming very old. It is not just the “brain drain” of the best and brightest. It is the absence of children, and grandchildren, as older people find themselves in the company of the Unworthy - the Worthy children having left, never to return. Small town America is filled with people who settled for what was there at home - and they're not a very inspiring bunch.
They are caught up, of course, in the epic movement of people all over the world – the inexorable movement from farms to the city. One of the foundational characteristics of the 21st Century: the countryside emptying out while the cities fill up. But rural people don’t really concern themselves about trends in global population. They would love to feel a little less left behind – a little less marginalized. At the same time, they’re not particularly interested in the challenges of Modern Times.
That’s part of the charm. Small Town America is not the site of challenges. Not the theatre of ambition. The operative phrase is "used to". Place where things used to happen. Where people used to live. (https://medium.com/@TheFurryMarxist/w...).
But even in the tiny sparks of light you can see from 30,000 feet there are people living, loving, working, hoping, and (sometimes) losing hope.
As much as any street in Brooklyn, any slum in Calcutta, any apartment house in Paris, Elsinore shows people living as they have always lived. My people of Elsinore might wonder if the Heartland will ever be relevant to the larger nation again, but – in the meantime – they have things to do.
Like figuring out how to gt their hands on their husbands' life insurance. (More on this later).
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