Archive for the ‘Community and Attitudes’ Category

Be Saved, Smoke, and Shoot Thy Gun

Virginia is a larger state than one might imagine, and the drive from the DC area to the Knoxville-Chattanooga corridor can take a long time; long enough to generate a sense of confusion as one tries to sort out the sordid from the sorghum.

Cigarettes are big part of life between Roanoke and Bristol along 81, as is Jesus, his legions, and their guns.

Dickey referred to those in North Georgia and parts of eastern Tennessee and western NC as being from the land of nine fingered people. But I think he had it wrong in some material way; derisive and observant, such descriptives fail to see a deeper, richer hue.

It’s not the land of nine-fingered so much as it is the place where dogs aren’t on leashes, where dogs are bred and fought, where dogs are loose on country roads, where dogs are strayed on highways but not spayed at the vet, where dogs are shot when no longer convenient.

It takes a special kind of person to have a dog but not care for it. Such people surely live special kinds of days.

I imagine they get up and reach for a cigarette. Then they head over to the the bait and tackle to get ammo for their guns, pausing to genuflect at their own calvary. They take a breather between sermons to raise pups they’ll let wander the dirt roads, then drive their oversized F350s past a handful of a few more dogs on the side of the road.

Yet they are courteous people, and genuinely so. Deeply so. Careful drivers. Their farms are family farms at a family scale. In parts of Maryland where its more sophisticated, the farms reek of manure ponds and industrial scale. South of Knoxville n a country road last Sunday at 6 am the farms smell good, healthy. Even in the heat of the afternoon it smells like a farm, the way it should. When lost I found supportive, kind people offering direction and coffee, if not a ride to Sunday services.

There are always multiple truths.

As Daniel Quinn wrote, the world is divided between leavers and takers. It’s not blue and red as I used to believe. It’s those who think and those who don’t.

My farmer friend from near Hiawassee said to me overlooking the Tennessee River at sunset contemplating the Trail of Tears, “you can’t teach stupid.” And in some way I suppose he was right. But stupid is often courteous. Sophisticated is often selfish.

It’s grace I am looking for, in whatever color, along whatever road.

reflecting on projects completed the last several years – a housing policy for the city of bridgeport, a series of deep dives for the pennsylvania housing finance agency, an implementation guide for a mothballed economic development strategy for a city that can’t presently be mentioned, analysis of the landbank in eugene for harvard university, and others – i believe deeply that buried in the nation’s appetite for systems change are a series of critical lessons.

one is that the appetite to do things differently is very different than the capacity to do so. when you reflect on the limited gains by the otherwise ambitious agenda of new urbanism, or on the stalled implementation by housing agencies across the country to heed the evolved knowledge of common experience and science that concentrated poverty is to be avoided, or on any number of other stalled or came-up-short efforts, you see that HAVING DECISION-MAKING TOOLS IS NOT THE SAME THING AS HAVING THE CAPACITY TO PULL THE TRIGGER.

once i gave a speech in austin texas, and laid out a wonderfully coherent vision and even a decent plan. proud of myself someone in the audience stood up and in front of about 300 people said, at my expense: “your presentation was lovely. (more…)

somewhere between mennonite farms and corrupt cement contractors, bound by the delaware and the alleghenys, the commonwealth of pennsylvania saddens the way apples ripen. some of our nation’s most beautiful rolling terra is firmly in the grip of a billboard aesthetic, which is to say captive to the craven interests of the motel set that would advertise on late night TV for everything from ‘why rent when you can buy’ opportunities to ‘government auctions woohoo’. when you cross the mason dixon line heading north you feel transported not to the inherited lands of educated quakers and other underground rr’ers, but, instead, to south of the border myrtle beach tawdry get your fireworks here. you cross from new jersey into monroe county and you have been transported to alabama with foliage and hillsides. the cracker set has taken over the county commission and from the poconos to york it’s the pre-diabetic rural south with their ATVs and yellow ribbon fight songs. south from NY. west from NJ. north from MD. its one enormous concrete road construction fiasco after another, tied together by the common theme of whatever can be placed on a billboard and read between bites of chicken nuggets. poor william penn.

Originally posted on November 1, 2007

when you are in leadville, also, you are reminded of the work of responsibility to self and to community and the elusive balance required to hold the two together. to let the barking dog next door wail at the sirens and the moon but somehow find the voice to help larry get on with the removing the 1966 impala from his front yard without so irritatinng him that he off and shoots you after five too many at the Manhattan. even the agnostic cannot fail to find god in the clouds up at columbine at 12,600, when your lungs scream, and the descent to twin lakes begs your attention. there’s a reason aspen and telluride are boring.

Originally posted on August 21, 2007