My last post was about the old word "bargain." This post is about the word "reckon," or reckoning. As with bargain, I come across reckoning in Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina. In this story of the late nineteenth century, reckon can mean to count or account. For instance, when one is conducting business, making an offer, to reckon means to calculate or consider everything that is to be considered. To state that one has reckoned everything out, as Stepan Arkadyevitch does in the novel, is not just to say that one has accounted for everything. More importantly, to make this statement is to give one's word that the transaction is honest.
One of my friends, a Southern lady who has lived all over the world, has told me that reckoning and bargaining belong together. Both are old words that are more than business terms; they belong to a cosmology, a system of beliefs about the order of the universe including the business and politics of humans. One of the key questions that Tolstoy seems to be asking in the novel is if God in fact wills certain relationships, or how marriage fits in the order of things. He asks as well how class fits. Are the monarchy and bourgeoisie divinely appointed? Is Konstantin Levin supposed to be over his peasant workers? They seem to accept their place. They are disturbed when he labors with them. They think that he is in fact disturbing the order.
Certainly, Anna Arkadyevna disturbs the order when she loves someone other than her husband. But, Princess Mayakaya defends Anna, arguing that it is not Anna's fault that more than one man's soul is tacked to her. Mayakaya is suggesting that there exist soul connections that transcend one's earth life. Anna too defends herself. When she believes she faces death, nothing is more important than that she receive her husband's forgiveness for her infidelity, which is not to say that she feels she has been wrong to love another. Yet, she shows us that at death one must reckon or account for what one has done on earth.
This concept of reckoning gives me a way to understand my own ancestors' practice of having their land sold at death and having their executor pay off all debts before disbursing any bequests. This is another form of reckoning at death. I have seen this a number of times in wills including in that of one ancestor whose will was challenged because the request would result in her being expelled from the land where she had lived with her husband. Her case went to the Supreme Court of the State of Mississippi, where she prevailed. She was allowed to remain on the land until death, which unfortunately wasn't long after the case was decided. In this case, the ancestor's reckoning might have included care for his surviving spouse.
The case reminds me of my grandfather, who I knew in my lifetime, his having lived until I was fifteen years old. It would appear that, a couple of years at least before his death, he tried to get his house in order by making sure that my grandmother's needs would be met. This task included purchasing my grandmother a washer and dryer to replace the wring washer she had used for many years. I guess he didn't want to, from his grave, see her working as hard as she had while he lived. Or, maybe Grandma had asked for a new washer and he didn't want that request to go unfulfilled. Whichever is the case, I do see his actions at the close of life as a reckoning, and I very much feel that this was behavior he had learned from his elders and ancestors.
So, if bargaining is an attempt at honest business, reckoning points to an ethic based in the belief that one may be outside the will of God or outside of a certain order if one does not settle, make proper account, of one's earth doings. One may turn in one's grave if things are left unsettled or undone.
Another reason I have been interested in the concepts of reckoning and bargaining is that I think that these may come into play with the activities of African-American soldiers in their own dealings. I am looking in particular at the 63rd USCT, which was a guard unit stationed at Memphis. These men served basically in John Eaton, Jr.'s Department of Freedmen and in the area's contraband camps. Following their service, as well as during, they appear to have sought every benefit that was coming to them. For example, most of them applied for a bounty, which a significant number of them used to get started in farming. Many of them opened accounts with the Freedmen's Bureau Bank. They vouched for each other's service when applying for a pension and informed their wives that they too should apply if they preceded them in death. In short, even though most of these men were former slaves, they appear to have evaluated their experience in the war, systematically, which is to say as a part of an order, and they placed their lives in agreement with that order. I see their various applications as a reckoning, a commitment to discerning God's will in a situation and acting accordingly. This is a theory in need of some work, but these are my beginning thoughts.
Friday, September 18, 2015
Saturday, August 15, 2015
What's a Bargain?
I have been studying this term bargaining or bargain, which I first began making note of as I read through Civil War documents. Since then, I have been noticing it elsewhere. I noticed it last summer in Gone with the Wind though I cannot find the reference at the moment, something about Gerald, Scarlett's father, not wanting to spend his life bargaining. I suppose in this context bargaining is an ungentlemanly act. Bargaining is better left to merchants, whose livelihood depends on buying and selling at a reasonable price.
I have a second example of the practice; it comes from this summer's reading of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Darya's wayward husband, whom she sometimes allows herself to call Stiva, is selling off a piece of her property to a Ryabinin, who is actually taking advantage, getting the property at a steal. Stiva's friend Levin advises him not to sell at the agreed-upon price; Levin even offers to buy the land himself. It is timberland, and Levin informs Stiva, otherwise known as Stepan Oblonsky, that because so it is worth many times what he is getting for it. The correct procedure for determining price of such land is, according to Levin, to count the trees. Needless to say, that would be tedious work, and Stiva--who spends much of his time philandering and otherwise enjoying a life of good food, women, and wine--doesn't have time to count trees.
In Levin's own words, there is a difference between bargaining and haggling. With the latter, one continues bargaining after the deal is done. Oblonsky would not haggle. I suppose his word meant something, his character and reputation as well. He says, "I've given my word, you know." Apparently, one's word was everything.
I had an aged cousin tell me once that this is how it was as well in the South, in northwest Mississippi. If someone, white or black, gave their word, you could count on it. For instance, if a white man said he'd sell a black a piece of land, the white would not go back on his word because of the interference of others who might like to influence the deal one way or another rather as Levin tries to do in the novel. Maybe this is just my cousin's opinion. I don't know. I do know that fair dealing between whites and blacks in the past runs contrary to popular belief, which is that whites would not have had the wherewithal or integrity to sell to blacks or to deal fairly with them in the first place. One of the reasons I'm investigating traditional business behavior is to see if business ethics in the South encouraged a transcendence of race. I feel naive in even asking this question given all that I have been told about black life in the Old South, but, as a scholar, I have to ask and investigate rather than assume.
Why besides humanity would a white, say, during the Reconstruction era or the Jim Crow era, bargain fairly with a black? Did standards and practices of gentlemanly behavior always or ever extend to blacks? Again, were business people compelled by some ethic to deal fair and square and to stand by a word given, a promise, a deal? My guess is yes, for I believe I have gathered much proof of this in my many documents relating to my own family's land purchases. I also have an opportunity to witness indirectly business deals of an acquaintance who lives in the South today. I notice that he employs the same language of the past. The other day he spoke of the standard "fair and square." I think this phrase, which my father used often undoubtedly influenced by his father who conducted much business in Mississippi, means on the up and up--honest dealing. I am intrigued by the association of the social term fairness with a geometric term square. The latter gives the former a visual and physical aspect. Fairness is exact. Fairness can be measured and seen. It is not asymmetrical or uneven. Maybe our ancestors, both black and white ones, believed that bad dealing, unevenness, would haunt them, that they would have, through bad dealing, set up bad karma.
Likewise, close dealing too can be frowned upon though shrewdness is sometimes admired. Ryabinin says of Stepan's advisor, "Very close about money is Konstantin Dimitrievitch...there's positively no dealing with him." Ryabinin claims for instance that he offered Konstantin, also known as Levin, a pretty price for some wheat. In this case, it seems that a good deal to Ryabinin is the offer of what he may consider a fair price but one that his rival may consider too low. One key to dealing obviously is to know what one's goods or one's labor is worth. I am studying also a colored hauler from the Civil War era. He claims to have made fifty dollars per bale of cotton hauled to Memphis. He said that he'd haul for anyone who paid his price. I would assume that plenty did, which says to me that he knew what a fair price was for the job. Another black, enlisted, wrote home to his wife that he could have made more money outside the service using honest, close trading. His words too suggest knowledge of business etiquette, and they imply that a black skilled in dealing could play the game.
I have a second example of the practice; it comes from this summer's reading of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Darya's wayward husband, whom she sometimes allows herself to call Stiva, is selling off a piece of her property to a Ryabinin, who is actually taking advantage, getting the property at a steal. Stiva's friend Levin advises him not to sell at the agreed-upon price; Levin even offers to buy the land himself. It is timberland, and Levin informs Stiva, otherwise known as Stepan Oblonsky, that because so it is worth many times what he is getting for it. The correct procedure for determining price of such land is, according to Levin, to count the trees. Needless to say, that would be tedious work, and Stiva--who spends much of his time philandering and otherwise enjoying a life of good food, women, and wine--doesn't have time to count trees.
In Levin's own words, there is a difference between bargaining and haggling. With the latter, one continues bargaining after the deal is done. Oblonsky would not haggle. I suppose his word meant something, his character and reputation as well. He says, "I've given my word, you know." Apparently, one's word was everything.
I had an aged cousin tell me once that this is how it was as well in the South, in northwest Mississippi. If someone, white or black, gave their word, you could count on it. For instance, if a white man said he'd sell a black a piece of land, the white would not go back on his word because of the interference of others who might like to influence the deal one way or another rather as Levin tries to do in the novel. Maybe this is just my cousin's opinion. I don't know. I do know that fair dealing between whites and blacks in the past runs contrary to popular belief, which is that whites would not have had the wherewithal or integrity to sell to blacks or to deal fairly with them in the first place. One of the reasons I'm investigating traditional business behavior is to see if business ethics in the South encouraged a transcendence of race. I feel naive in even asking this question given all that I have been told about black life in the Old South, but, as a scholar, I have to ask and investigate rather than assume.
Why besides humanity would a white, say, during the Reconstruction era or the Jim Crow era, bargain fairly with a black? Did standards and practices of gentlemanly behavior always or ever extend to blacks? Again, were business people compelled by some ethic to deal fair and square and to stand by a word given, a promise, a deal? My guess is yes, for I believe I have gathered much proof of this in my many documents relating to my own family's land purchases. I also have an opportunity to witness indirectly business deals of an acquaintance who lives in the South today. I notice that he employs the same language of the past. The other day he spoke of the standard "fair and square." I think this phrase, which my father used often undoubtedly influenced by his father who conducted much business in Mississippi, means on the up and up--honest dealing. I am intrigued by the association of the social term fairness with a geometric term square. The latter gives the former a visual and physical aspect. Fairness is exact. Fairness can be measured and seen. It is not asymmetrical or uneven. Maybe our ancestors, both black and white ones, believed that bad dealing, unevenness, would haunt them, that they would have, through bad dealing, set up bad karma.
Likewise, close dealing too can be frowned upon though shrewdness is sometimes admired. Ryabinin says of Stepan's advisor, "Very close about money is Konstantin Dimitrievitch...there's positively no dealing with him." Ryabinin claims for instance that he offered Konstantin, also known as Levin, a pretty price for some wheat. In this case, it seems that a good deal to Ryabinin is the offer of what he may consider a fair price but one that his rival may consider too low. One key to dealing obviously is to know what one's goods or one's labor is worth. I am studying also a colored hauler from the Civil War era. He claims to have made fifty dollars per bale of cotton hauled to Memphis. He said that he'd haul for anyone who paid his price. I would assume that plenty did, which says to me that he knew what a fair price was for the job. Another black, enlisted, wrote home to his wife that he could have made more money outside the service using honest, close trading. His words too suggest knowledge of business etiquette, and they imply that a black skilled in dealing could play the game.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
The Sociology of Work or Makin' a Livin' (first installment)
This is the blog where I try ideas out, and so I will use this space to continue thinking on one of many questions belonging to my manuscript--Mississippi Wound, Detroit Bound. In that text, I am considering my father's family's migration to Detroit after World War II. One of my angles into answering the question of why the family moved from DeSoto County, Mississippi to Detroit is their philosophy and experience of work.
To answer this question, I have come to Mississippi since this is one of the places where the family would have been socialized to work, which is not to say indoctrinated into an ethic of work, meaning busy-ness, but socialized to ways of valuing or measuring the value of work. In Detroit, this question emerged as an important one for the family as they reorganized their lives. This question is relevant to so many migrating families, yet one of the things that perhaps makes our story different if not unique is that it would seem that my grandfather--who I think of as the sponsor of their migration--did not go to Detroit with the intention of working in an auto factory. He was not pushed into the city by disappearance of farm work from rural areas due to mechanization. He may have been thinking about factory employment, eventually, for his sons, but, for the time being, this is a question that remains open. At the moment, I am fairly certain that he never considered factory employment for himself.
My grandfather was an enterprising man, which, an aging Mississippi cousin instructed me was not uncommon in the past. My Big Daddy did everything from undertaking to running a store to raising bulls. He inherited the family's land from his own father and uncle, which I'm sure helped him get his start. The same cousin reminds me, however, that "Moody 'em" (not sure who's included in the "em or them) "never made no crop." Making a crop was in northwest Mississippi from Reconstruction well into the 1970s a center of life. My great grandfather grew cotton though it is unclear how many acres he himself worked. The aged cousin brags about the family's wealth partly created by the numbers of blacks they had "workin' on half." When I came here, I didn't know if "workin' on half" was a good arrangement for the worker or not. The question comes of a sensitivity gained growing up in the nation's premier union town. I'm still not entirely sure of the answer since I have shied from asking that exact question, because of the way in which it might implicate my ancestors. Whatever the case, it is clear that the family was in a relatively better position for having owned the land they lived on, and that better position allowed their children to choose what work they would do while they were in Mississippi. I am mindful, however, that black, spoiled, and Mississippi do not go together--not in the 1940s--when Big Daddy packed up a truck with the family's belongings and headed north.
I live part-time, which is actually most of the year, in northwest Mississippi, in a small town that is not quite a bedroom community for or a suburb of Memphis. This is not the county my father grew up in but the one to where my earliest Mississippi ancestors were brought as slaves. There is a college in town, (my Big Daddy attended it for a while) which is where I work, and there are the typical black businesses, barbershops and beauty shops, eateries, and funeral homes. Most blacks are employed by the college, others work for the municipality and its auxiliaries, or for retail establishments.
It didn't take me very long to realize that most blacks in this general area of Mississippi have more than one job or source of income. Some work two jobs while others are employed by some entity and also earn money from self-employment, for instance, catering. Lots of people sell various wares. There are some roads where one will find sometimes a half dozen people, not always black, selling mostly clothing, usually procured from auction storage lockers, out of the trunks of their cars. The goods are sold along the roadsides dirt cheap, leaving me to wonder whether the enterprise is profitable. The low prices do keep things moving, which is good, yet I have asked myself if the main purpose is for these vendors to keep up a habit of work more than it is to make good money.
When I first moved here, not knowing how long I would be, I bought lots of household items from a woman, I estimate in her sixties, who has a yard sale at her rural home ten miles from me about once a month. Compared to other sellers, I actually found her prices to be somewhat high, but I bought from her nevertheless because she also delivered and set up the items for me. Eventually, after I had everything I needed I stopped buying from her, but I still see her around from time to time. She may be seventy by now and is thin as a rail but obviously as strong as the day she carried a heavy couch off her truck, brought it through my kitchen door without even having to turn it, and set it down in my living room. She did break a sweat, it was August after all, but she broke nothing else.
Other, more genteel, types, also may have two jobs. For instance, some of my colleagues, who work full-time in higher ed, are ministers and have churches. Others rent out houses around town. This level of industriousness surely unsettles stereotypes of Mississippians as a poor lot, sitting on porches swatting flies, getting little exercise while contributing to their own poor health through sedentary living.
Full disclosure, my own lifestyle may be more sedentary than that of the Mississippians I observe though I bolt out the door every Saturday morning to see what's for sale along my favorite route. The thing is, I wasn't really taught to work. I was the youngest child in my family and reaped all the benefits thereof. My family, my mother excepted, believed children were to be spoiled, especially pre-adolescent children. The point of childhood was play. This was in Detroit.
Evidence that the family's philosophy of childhood was no different in Mississippi is the fact that all of the blood relatives who remained in Mississippi remember all of my grandparents' children, well, most of them, as spoiled. "They had him spoiled," I hear a cousin say of my Uncle Sonny Man, the youngest son. Of my father, called Lil' Bro though he is older than Uncle Sonny, they say nothing. No one remembers my father. This is perhaps because, as the son a step up from him told me, he didn't do much but sit under a shade tree with his nice shoes on rather than walk around barefooted like the rest of us.
My father did carry those same behaviors into Detroit from age thirteen until his death. The brother who, pun intended, threw shade worked until he died at the age of eighty. The two of them may be in heaven right now arguing about who really worked. You see, my father was employed by Ford Motor Company for at least two decades while his blissfully barefooted brother appears to have shunned such employment. Just a few years before my uncle's death, he showed me a big catfish he had caught. He specialized in river catfish, and he had a ready and steady clientele. As far as I know (only my father might disagree), Uncle was never without money.
These are my own inheritances relative to work; the case is very different on my mother's side, but that is another story for another day. For now, I'll just say her orientation to work is much more in keeping with what I've been observing in northwest Mississippi. As for me, I continue to adjust to the pace of life and the work ethic as I see it at my place of employment. I had not expected to be more oppressed by clock and calendar in Mississippi than in Detroit, but I am, which makes having a writing life exceedingly difficult. The only option is to fit it in within the imposed structure of work rather than to allow it to flow throughout my day, making itself primary. I know that half the time I am being negligent even to think about having a writing life. It is a luxury few can afford and one that few people with whom I have become acquainted believe I can afford. Perhaps not yet. When people poked at my father for taking periodic, unscheduled and unapproved, vacations from Ford, he would respond, "I've worked enough." When he was alive and when I was a kid, I never could wrap my brain around that rejoinder. There were just so many doodads for a kid to have, and the income from Ford was more than enough to buy them. When a paycheck wasn't forthcoming, my Big Daddy stepped in. I'm coming to understand different orientations to work including my father's which is probably most akin to my own. The differences go to a basic question of existence--just how much work is required of us humans.
To answer this question, I have come to Mississippi since this is one of the places where the family would have been socialized to work, which is not to say indoctrinated into an ethic of work, meaning busy-ness, but socialized to ways of valuing or measuring the value of work. In Detroit, this question emerged as an important one for the family as they reorganized their lives. This question is relevant to so many migrating families, yet one of the things that perhaps makes our story different if not unique is that it would seem that my grandfather--who I think of as the sponsor of their migration--did not go to Detroit with the intention of working in an auto factory. He was not pushed into the city by disappearance of farm work from rural areas due to mechanization. He may have been thinking about factory employment, eventually, for his sons, but, for the time being, this is a question that remains open. At the moment, I am fairly certain that he never considered factory employment for himself.
My grandfather was an enterprising man, which, an aging Mississippi cousin instructed me was not uncommon in the past. My Big Daddy did everything from undertaking to running a store to raising bulls. He inherited the family's land from his own father and uncle, which I'm sure helped him get his start. The same cousin reminds me, however, that "Moody 'em" (not sure who's included in the "em or them) "never made no crop." Making a crop was in northwest Mississippi from Reconstruction well into the 1970s a center of life. My great grandfather grew cotton though it is unclear how many acres he himself worked. The aged cousin brags about the family's wealth partly created by the numbers of blacks they had "workin' on half." When I came here, I didn't know if "workin' on half" was a good arrangement for the worker or not. The question comes of a sensitivity gained growing up in the nation's premier union town. I'm still not entirely sure of the answer since I have shied from asking that exact question, because of the way in which it might implicate my ancestors. Whatever the case, it is clear that the family was in a relatively better position for having owned the land they lived on, and that better position allowed their children to choose what work they would do while they were in Mississippi. I am mindful, however, that black, spoiled, and Mississippi do not go together--not in the 1940s--when Big Daddy packed up a truck with the family's belongings and headed north.
I live part-time, which is actually most of the year, in northwest Mississippi, in a small town that is not quite a bedroom community for or a suburb of Memphis. This is not the county my father grew up in but the one to where my earliest Mississippi ancestors were brought as slaves. There is a college in town, (my Big Daddy attended it for a while) which is where I work, and there are the typical black businesses, barbershops and beauty shops, eateries, and funeral homes. Most blacks are employed by the college, others work for the municipality and its auxiliaries, or for retail establishments.
It didn't take me very long to realize that most blacks in this general area of Mississippi have more than one job or source of income. Some work two jobs while others are employed by some entity and also earn money from self-employment, for instance, catering. Lots of people sell various wares. There are some roads where one will find sometimes a half dozen people, not always black, selling mostly clothing, usually procured from auction storage lockers, out of the trunks of their cars. The goods are sold along the roadsides dirt cheap, leaving me to wonder whether the enterprise is profitable. The low prices do keep things moving, which is good, yet I have asked myself if the main purpose is for these vendors to keep up a habit of work more than it is to make good money.
When I first moved here, not knowing how long I would be, I bought lots of household items from a woman, I estimate in her sixties, who has a yard sale at her rural home ten miles from me about once a month. Compared to other sellers, I actually found her prices to be somewhat high, but I bought from her nevertheless because she also delivered and set up the items for me. Eventually, after I had everything I needed I stopped buying from her, but I still see her around from time to time. She may be seventy by now and is thin as a rail but obviously as strong as the day she carried a heavy couch off her truck, brought it through my kitchen door without even having to turn it, and set it down in my living room. She did break a sweat, it was August after all, but she broke nothing else.
Other, more genteel, types, also may have two jobs. For instance, some of my colleagues, who work full-time in higher ed, are ministers and have churches. Others rent out houses around town. This level of industriousness surely unsettles stereotypes of Mississippians as a poor lot, sitting on porches swatting flies, getting little exercise while contributing to their own poor health through sedentary living.
Full disclosure, my own lifestyle may be more sedentary than that of the Mississippians I observe though I bolt out the door every Saturday morning to see what's for sale along my favorite route. The thing is, I wasn't really taught to work. I was the youngest child in my family and reaped all the benefits thereof. My family, my mother excepted, believed children were to be spoiled, especially pre-adolescent children. The point of childhood was play. This was in Detroit.
Evidence that the family's philosophy of childhood was no different in Mississippi is the fact that all of the blood relatives who remained in Mississippi remember all of my grandparents' children, well, most of them, as spoiled. "They had him spoiled," I hear a cousin say of my Uncle Sonny Man, the youngest son. Of my father, called Lil' Bro though he is older than Uncle Sonny, they say nothing. No one remembers my father. This is perhaps because, as the son a step up from him told me, he didn't do much but sit under a shade tree with his nice shoes on rather than walk around barefooted like the rest of us.
My father did carry those same behaviors into Detroit from age thirteen until his death. The brother who, pun intended, threw shade worked until he died at the age of eighty. The two of them may be in heaven right now arguing about who really worked. You see, my father was employed by Ford Motor Company for at least two decades while his blissfully barefooted brother appears to have shunned such employment. Just a few years before my uncle's death, he showed me a big catfish he had caught. He specialized in river catfish, and he had a ready and steady clientele. As far as I know (only my father might disagree), Uncle was never without money.
These are my own inheritances relative to work; the case is very different on my mother's side, but that is another story for another day. For now, I'll just say her orientation to work is much more in keeping with what I've been observing in northwest Mississippi. As for me, I continue to adjust to the pace of life and the work ethic as I see it at my place of employment. I had not expected to be more oppressed by clock and calendar in Mississippi than in Detroit, but I am, which makes having a writing life exceedingly difficult. The only option is to fit it in within the imposed structure of work rather than to allow it to flow throughout my day, making itself primary. I know that half the time I am being negligent even to think about having a writing life. It is a luxury few can afford and one that few people with whom I have become acquainted believe I can afford. Perhaps not yet. When people poked at my father for taking periodic, unscheduled and unapproved, vacations from Ford, he would respond, "I've worked enough." When he was alive and when I was a kid, I never could wrap my brain around that rejoinder. There were just so many doodads for a kid to have, and the income from Ford was more than enough to buy them. When a paycheck wasn't forthcoming, my Big Daddy stepped in. I'm coming to understand different orientations to work including my father's which is probably most akin to my own. The differences go to a basic question of existence--just how much work is required of us humans.
Friday, July 25, 2014
The Alley Less Traveled
The other day, I read an intriguing article on folk agriculture. The writer suggested that we might return to more sustainable food systems--meaning local food systems. She pointed out that humans used to get their food closer to home. I was introduced through the piece to wildcrafting, a word I immediately fell in love with. I don't know which part of the word I love most--wild--or--craft since both define me pretty well. So, put together, we're talking about a lifestyle right up my alley.
Speaking of alleys, on my morning walk I realized that I've not walked through any alleys this summer. I always do so two or three times to capture images of vines growing on garages that haven't been painted in twenty years. I love getting a back alley view of America--a glimpse of the side of ourselves we don't show the world. I also hold out hope that I'll find something really interesting growing back there. Quite purposefully, I keep my nails long enough to have them serve as sheers. This morning, I pinched off a sweet pea in full bloom. It was growing on a beautiful old stone wall that bordered what I suspect may be a carriage house. This morning, I noticed that the neighborhoods in the general vicinity of our house have many properties with carriage houses. This fascinates me. I long to know what life was like in South Bend 100 plus years ago when people still had horses and carriages. And I am amazed that these structures are still standing. There are some pretty "ancient" ones at the back of some Victorian houses along Lincolnway East. This is not a highly sought-after neighborhood. Actually, no neighborhood in South Bend benefits from the rule location, location, location. But, the neighborhoods along Lincolnway are even more ignored, which is fine by me because it means that maybe one day, if I'm lucky, I may for a song own one of these gems.
Perhaps what makes the area even more unappealing to most is that it backs up to a very active railroad. I walked along it this morning as well, picking some weeds, aka wildflowers--some yellow ones I'd not noticed before but which were growing abundantly and the purplish blue ones that grow in every Rust Belt city I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. These foot-high beauties have taken over huge fields in my hometown of Detroit. As I plucked these two varieties up by the root--intent upon planting them in my already wild backyard--I prayed that I wouldn't break out in a rash or, worse, die upon contact. I slightly exaggerate my fears. In fact, I should be more fearful. Most people would agree that walking highways and byways, not to mention urban alleyways, is not smart. Maybe so, but my rebellious spirit against all things others consider smart and not smart naturally makes me go against the grain. I also am curious and growing more so with the passing of each day about the historic functions of all of the weeds that populate cities. If I had another lifetime to investigate, I sure would like to become an herbalist. How wasteful are we to ignore daily plants that for all we know could be tremendously pleasing to our palates or, even better, a panacea for much of what ails us? I'd like this city in which I currently reside much better if on my walks I ran into other wild children out foraging (another word I love). We could share recipes. I could invite such persons to my kitchen, and they'd invite me to theirs. We'd sit on our front or back porches surrounded by trumpet vine and have a lunch of dandelion greens, nasturtium flowers, and marigold heads.
I actually met such a person just a few weeks ago. She lives on a corner on a questionable street with at least one vacant house with a large lot next to it which she plans to buy for a full-fledged garden. Her home is inspired. You can hardly see her front porch what for the growth, and on the facade of the second floor is a huge metal, painted dragonfly. I spotted this urban gardener when I'd gotten done checking out the abandoned house, which, since for rent, may serve as my writer's cottage next summer. As I approached the slender lady, she was bent over, snipping off something with her own fingers. I said something. I forget what, and she told me that she was collecting radish pods, which are great on salads. Right then, I could see that she was going to talk to me and that she had a lot to teach. I view her home, replete with chickens and a shed turned into a coop, as an urban farm. This woman of the house--whom I will call Laura though that is not her real name--can get most of her meals from her yard, and she let me know, after she'd given me a couple dozen basil leaves, that I could stop by with a basket anytime. According to her, many of the plants I saw growing, even the tomato plants, had volunteered, so even though giving one's city lot over to a garden can require a full-day's work, diminishing one's food anxiety--increasing one's food security--may allow one partner of a two-adult household to quit her day job. I dream of this possibility when I walk throughout the city. I wonder what all besides eating I can do with the lush vegetation of South Bend--dried floral arrangements, pretty water colors to be sold at the local farmer's market in winter? I have sold there before. I am not above it even though my Ph.D. suggests I should want more or other for myself and family.
My new friend is just the type who would keep me in this city though I swear every year I will not endure another. She scavenges, and she has told me there is a whole group of urban foragers here who make it their job to know every apple, pear, plum, and peach tree within the city limits and also a few fruit varieties long forgotten or, like mulberry, underappreciated. Laura had completely won my heart when she shared that she traipses onto abandoned lots looking for food. I am similarly drawn, as much for the beauty of decay, a good picture that I might paint to share on Facebook, or to just dream about restoring as I am drawn to potential foodstuff, but I am not closed to the latter. Laura told me to try one of the most plentiful edible greens--lambs quarters. I have Googled it, and she is right. It can be eaten raw or cooked. It's good on salads, and when cooked some say it tastes like chard. The weed is quite plentiful. God's provision I think. There is a warning, however. When it is found in abundance, the ground is likely contaminated, for it is there to restore the soil. This it seems is its other purpose. I have not yet consumed any lambs quarters, but I'm definitely gearing up. Would that the whole world would step outside of the box and live a little on the wild side. Life would be so much more interesting, but then, such radical change should it ever become the norm might lead me to search for the old order.
"Food access used to happen in lots of places in our lives, not just at grocery stores and restaurants." Gordon Smith
Speaking of alleys, on my morning walk I realized that I've not walked through any alleys this summer. I always do so two or three times to capture images of vines growing on garages that haven't been painted in twenty years. I love getting a back alley view of America--a glimpse of the side of ourselves we don't show the world. I also hold out hope that I'll find something really interesting growing back there. Quite purposefully, I keep my nails long enough to have them serve as sheers. This morning, I pinched off a sweet pea in full bloom. It was growing on a beautiful old stone wall that bordered what I suspect may be a carriage house. This morning, I noticed that the neighborhoods in the general vicinity of our house have many properties with carriage houses. This fascinates me. I long to know what life was like in South Bend 100 plus years ago when people still had horses and carriages. And I am amazed that these structures are still standing. There are some pretty "ancient" ones at the back of some Victorian houses along Lincolnway East. This is not a highly sought-after neighborhood. Actually, no neighborhood in South Bend benefits from the rule location, location, location. But, the neighborhoods along Lincolnway are even more ignored, which is fine by me because it means that maybe one day, if I'm lucky, I may for a song own one of these gems.
Perhaps what makes the area even more unappealing to most is that it backs up to a very active railroad. I walked along it this morning as well, picking some weeds, aka wildflowers--some yellow ones I'd not noticed before but which were growing abundantly and the purplish blue ones that grow in every Rust Belt city I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. These foot-high beauties have taken over huge fields in my hometown of Detroit. As I plucked these two varieties up by the root--intent upon planting them in my already wild backyard--I prayed that I wouldn't break out in a rash or, worse, die upon contact. I slightly exaggerate my fears. In fact, I should be more fearful. Most people would agree that walking highways and byways, not to mention urban alleyways, is not smart. Maybe so, but my rebellious spirit against all things others consider smart and not smart naturally makes me go against the grain. I also am curious and growing more so with the passing of each day about the historic functions of all of the weeds that populate cities. If I had another lifetime to investigate, I sure would like to become an herbalist. How wasteful are we to ignore daily plants that for all we know could be tremendously pleasing to our palates or, even better, a panacea for much of what ails us? I'd like this city in which I currently reside much better if on my walks I ran into other wild children out foraging (another word I love). We could share recipes. I could invite such persons to my kitchen, and they'd invite me to theirs. We'd sit on our front or back porches surrounded by trumpet vine and have a lunch of dandelion greens, nasturtium flowers, and marigold heads.
I actually met such a person just a few weeks ago. She lives on a corner on a questionable street with at least one vacant house with a large lot next to it which she plans to buy for a full-fledged garden. Her home is inspired. You can hardly see her front porch what for the growth, and on the facade of the second floor is a huge metal, painted dragonfly. I spotted this urban gardener when I'd gotten done checking out the abandoned house, which, since for rent, may serve as my writer's cottage next summer. As I approached the slender lady, she was bent over, snipping off something with her own fingers. I said something. I forget what, and she told me that she was collecting radish pods, which are great on salads. Right then, I could see that she was going to talk to me and that she had a lot to teach. I view her home, replete with chickens and a shed turned into a coop, as an urban farm. This woman of the house--whom I will call Laura though that is not her real name--can get most of her meals from her yard, and she let me know, after she'd given me a couple dozen basil leaves, that I could stop by with a basket anytime. According to her, many of the plants I saw growing, even the tomato plants, had volunteered, so even though giving one's city lot over to a garden can require a full-day's work, diminishing one's food anxiety--increasing one's food security--may allow one partner of a two-adult household to quit her day job. I dream of this possibility when I walk throughout the city. I wonder what all besides eating I can do with the lush vegetation of South Bend--dried floral arrangements, pretty water colors to be sold at the local farmer's market in winter? I have sold there before. I am not above it even though my Ph.D. suggests I should want more or other for myself and family.
My new friend is just the type who would keep me in this city though I swear every year I will not endure another. She scavenges, and she has told me there is a whole group of urban foragers here who make it their job to know every apple, pear, plum, and peach tree within the city limits and also a few fruit varieties long forgotten or, like mulberry, underappreciated. Laura had completely won my heart when she shared that she traipses onto abandoned lots looking for food. I am similarly drawn, as much for the beauty of decay, a good picture that I might paint to share on Facebook, or to just dream about restoring as I am drawn to potential foodstuff, but I am not closed to the latter. Laura told me to try one of the most plentiful edible greens--lambs quarters. I have Googled it, and she is right. It can be eaten raw or cooked. It's good on salads, and when cooked some say it tastes like chard. The weed is quite plentiful. God's provision I think. There is a warning, however. When it is found in abundance, the ground is likely contaminated, for it is there to restore the soil. This it seems is its other purpose. I have not yet consumed any lambs quarters, but I'm definitely gearing up. Would that the whole world would step outside of the box and live a little on the wild side. Life would be so much more interesting, but then, such radical change should it ever become the norm might lead me to search for the old order.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Where the Ancestors Reside
Margaret Mitchell does not make light of the O'Hara's Irish ancestry. This comes across in the novel in ways that it did not in the film. Irish ancestry is a key aspect of the story; it is how both Gerald O'Hara and Scarlett's determination is explained. In the case of Gerald for certain, his success is at least partly for the ancestors who never could have experienced the good life in Europe. Rhett Butler recognizes Scarlett's "Irish spirit." It is one of the things he likes about her. He notices when she has her Irish up. Scarlett herself hardly recognizes the depth of her heritage while she has but one goal before her--winning Ashley Wilkes. It is not until she figures him dead and perceives herself as abandoned in the world, left by Butler as well, that she acknowledges her ancestors.
This is what comes to Scarlett as she lay in bed planning her future. She wonders if the ancestors are in fact in the room with her, or if the dimension she has entered is only a dream. "'Whether you are there or not,' she murmured sleepily, 'good night--and thank you'."
The mystical including presence of ancestors can be found throughout the novel. In the same chapter, Mitchell writes, "There were too many Irish ancestors crowding behind Gerald's shoulders." One can read this figuratively, Gerald seen to be standing on the shoulders of his ancestors. Their perseverance
has led to his. One can read it symbolically, which would be to read it from a symbolic universe in which there is a crowd existing in another dimension and yet ever present as witnesses. I do not think it unintentional that Mitchell places the ancestors behind the shoulders or, perhaps, off to the sides, for it has been suggested by others that this is how, visually, they are attached. Mitchell would seem to know this. Mitchell has undoubtedly acquired such an understanding.
"And when they died, they died spent but unquenched. All those shadowy folks whose blood flowed in her veins seemed to move quietly in the moonlit room. And Scarlett was not surprised to see them, these kinsmen who had taken the worst that fate could send them and hammer it into the best. Tara was her fate, her fight, and she must conquer it."
This is what comes to Scarlett as she lay in bed planning her future. She wonders if the ancestors are in fact in the room with her, or if the dimension she has entered is only a dream. "'Whether you are there or not,' she murmured sleepily, 'good night--and thank you'."
The mystical including presence of ancestors can be found throughout the novel. In the same chapter, Mitchell writes, "There were too many Irish ancestors crowding behind Gerald's shoulders." One can read this figuratively, Gerald seen to be standing on the shoulders of his ancestors. Their perseverance
has led to his. One can read it symbolically, which would be to read it from a symbolic universe in which there is a crowd existing in another dimension and yet ever present as witnesses. I do not think it unintentional that Mitchell places the ancestors behind the shoulders or, perhaps, off to the sides, for it has been suggested by others that this is how, visually, they are attached. Mitchell would seem to know this. Mitchell has undoubtedly acquired such an understanding.
Reading Gone with the Wind
I began reading Gone with the Wind at the beginning of June. I am almost half way through. I'm an incredibly slow reader because I savor and make a study of text. I am amazed at just how much cultural information Mitchell's book contains. I am especially interested in what she suggests throughout her text, about class.
She helps us understand how it is that Gerald has come to be a slave owner and that, despite his success, he will always be confined to a certain class partly because of his Irish heritage. Gerald, she explains while giving the background leading up to his becoming a planter, didn't want to be "in trade" like his brothers. He didn't want a life of endless "bargaining."
I have been studying trade and bargaining. I am fascinated by these terms and their meaning in the context of nineteenth century America and, even more so, in the context of slave society. I first became familiar with this term, however, through my grandfather, a Mississippi expat, who always spoke of "trading" with certain grocers in Detroit. He had been a small grocer himself in both Mississippi and Detroit, but I suspect that he had learned the term in the South, where he had done much business with area whites in both the small town where he lived and in Memphis, where he traveled regularly to buy and sell cotton and cattle. Many times, I've come across historical writings in which trade and bargaining are mentioned. For instance, right now, I'm studying the Southern Claims Commission file of Cato Govan, a former slave who made a good deal of money during the Civil War hauling cotton to Memphis.
What intrigues me about Mitchell's commentary is that she places the planter far above that of the merchant. A good deal of Gone with the Wind is in fact spent telling a story that has this class problematic as its foundation. Gerald is not Ellen's social equal; Scarlett is not Ashley's equal, and Rhett, despite coming from a good family, is not received by any reputable families, so, in the end, he is not Scarlett's equal. I am interested in this issue for many many reasons as I have immersed myself in Southern culture of the twenty-first century, studying at the same time William Crump, who was an attorney but appears on the 1860 census as a grocer despite the fact that he was a relatively prosperous planter. What gives? Why would Crump self-identify as a grocer rather than as a planter, especially if the former was less respectable?
I have my suspicions about Mr. Crump given that I have read more than one account of his character and person. He appears to have been a Unionist of sorts. As I've been reading GWTW, I have compared him to the unforgettable Rhett Butler. Was Crump too all about profit? Was money everything to him? He was attorney for Elizabeth Hull, owner of my ancestors. Hull trusted him both to take care of her business and with her daughter, whom he married. It was apparently an unhappy marriage; Crump was thought to be uncaring. Elizabeth the younger died, it would seem, heartbroken. Neighbor Henry Craft's diary is one source for this view of the marriage.
My guess is that there were layers and dimensions to William Crump. These deserve to be investigated, for to do so would be to provide a more complex view of Southern society than most of us have received. This investigation may have capitalism as its foundation. Why was Crump Unionist? Was he simply the same pragmatist as the fictional Butler? Was he as dead set on survival as even our heroine Scarlett O'Hara Butler would come to be? How well did Crump come through the war?
In 1870, we find him living in a household led by Morris Anderson, a 32-year-old mulatto carpenter born in North Carolina. Crump, now 65, would appear to have a good amount of money relative to his neighbors. Perhaps he eschewed all social convention. This living arrangement would certainly seem to suggest such independence. I look forward to digging deeper to find out.
She helps us understand how it is that Gerald has come to be a slave owner and that, despite his success, he will always be confined to a certain class partly because of his Irish heritage. Gerald, she explains while giving the background leading up to his becoming a planter, didn't want to be "in trade" like his brothers. He didn't want a life of endless "bargaining."
I have been studying trade and bargaining. I am fascinated by these terms and their meaning in the context of nineteenth century America and, even more so, in the context of slave society. I first became familiar with this term, however, through my grandfather, a Mississippi expat, who always spoke of "trading" with certain grocers in Detroit. He had been a small grocer himself in both Mississippi and Detroit, but I suspect that he had learned the term in the South, where he had done much business with area whites in both the small town where he lived and in Memphis, where he traveled regularly to buy and sell cotton and cattle. Many times, I've come across historical writings in which trade and bargaining are mentioned. For instance, right now, I'm studying the Southern Claims Commission file of Cato Govan, a former slave who made a good deal of money during the Civil War hauling cotton to Memphis.
What intrigues me about Mitchell's commentary is that she places the planter far above that of the merchant. A good deal of Gone with the Wind is in fact spent telling a story that has this class problematic as its foundation. Gerald is not Ellen's social equal; Scarlett is not Ashley's equal, and Rhett, despite coming from a good family, is not received by any reputable families, so, in the end, he is not Scarlett's equal. I am interested in this issue for many many reasons as I have immersed myself in Southern culture of the twenty-first century, studying at the same time William Crump, who was an attorney but appears on the 1860 census as a grocer despite the fact that he was a relatively prosperous planter. What gives? Why would Crump self-identify as a grocer rather than as a planter, especially if the former was less respectable?
I have my suspicions about Mr. Crump given that I have read more than one account of his character and person. He appears to have been a Unionist of sorts. As I've been reading GWTW, I have compared him to the unforgettable Rhett Butler. Was Crump too all about profit? Was money everything to him? He was attorney for Elizabeth Hull, owner of my ancestors. Hull trusted him both to take care of her business and with her daughter, whom he married. It was apparently an unhappy marriage; Crump was thought to be uncaring. Elizabeth the younger died, it would seem, heartbroken. Neighbor Henry Craft's diary is one source for this view of the marriage.
My guess is that there were layers and dimensions to William Crump. These deserve to be investigated, for to do so would be to provide a more complex view of Southern society than most of us have received. This investigation may have capitalism as its foundation. Why was Crump Unionist? Was he simply the same pragmatist as the fictional Butler? Was he as dead set on survival as even our heroine Scarlett O'Hara Butler would come to be? How well did Crump come through the war?
In 1870, we find him living in a household led by Morris Anderson, a 32-year-old mulatto carpenter born in North Carolina. Crump, now 65, would appear to have a good amount of money relative to his neighbors. Perhaps he eschewed all social convention. This living arrangement would certainly seem to suggest such independence. I look forward to digging deeper to find out.
Friday, June 6, 2014
The Rose Hotel, 1812
Today began my annual trek from Mississippi to Indiana. In my new position, the school year doesn't end as neatly as it did when I was not an administrator, but I have managed to get away still the first week in June. As busy as I was, however, tying up loose ends, I had only a couple of hours to look for a nice play to stay overnight--as I had decided before taking off that I would not drive straight through. I've done it far too many times, and my constitution is not, it seems to me, better for it.
I looked online for a bed and breakfast somewhere between northern Kentucky and Southern Illinois. I must have looked at rooms in at least a dozen, but with the exception of those in Paducah, which seem very interesting, some even exquisite, others seemed too fru fru. I am really not that much into Victorian. It can be sweet but is usually not restrained enough for my taste. I did find one B&B in Harrisburg, Illinois--the Lafayette Inn--but I called them, and their phone just rang and rang. When the time came for me to hit the road, Highway 7 north out of Mississippi, I had not yet found a room. This was a little discomforting. I feel a little less desperately out in the world by myself when I know ahead of time where I'll be laying my head for the night.
So, the plan then was to stop in Paducah, Kentucky--a town whose name I've known for years only because I've seen signs for it off of the interstates I've traveled. I also traveled through Paducah last year although from Highway 45 one does not see the city's downtown, which must be where the snazzy inns are located. Things did not go as planned. I got a phone call while I was driving through Paducah, and then I somehow wound up off 45 and on 60. Despite having navigation, I also carry a road atlas, and my car has a compass, which has saved me many, many times. So, I saw that 60 travels northwesterly, and since I was headed to Indiana... Besides that, 60 also connects to 91, which connects back to 45...
I've forgotten how long I was on 60, but I wasn't the least bit worried since I still had over a half tank of gas, having filled up in Jackson, Tennessee. I'm also not sure how long I was on 91, but somewhere along the way I saw a sign that said that trucks of a certain tonnage could not take the ferry. Ferry? I know what a ferry is, but this water vessel that takes people and vehicles across rivers is not a part of my experience, which is likely the reason why I, despite forewarning, didn't think about what the message to truckers meant.
The next thing I knew, the Blazer and I were in a line of cars and a big truck. A guy at the shore beckoned for me to go around the truck, and that's when the reality that my car and I were about to cross the Ohio River, not on a bridge but on a ferry, began to sink in. I did go around the truck, and the same fellow directed me to get behind another car, very snugly I might add. I was scared, honestly, I was, first of getting too close to the car in front of me and, then, that I was going to suffer some kind of cognitive dissonance from not adjusting my mind quickly enough to the fact that my car was moving without my having to press on the gas. I started to turn the car off but was unsure that that was the proper thing to do, so I left it on and hoped that automatic pilot would not kick in and instruct me to press on the gas pedal. In other words, I was just a few minutes shy of freaking out.
Of course, I managed to remain calm somehow, and on the other side of the river, I landed at Rock-in-the-Cave, which I have since learned is a major tourist site. There is a cave. I drove maybe a couple of blocks--can't really recall how far, could've been more--then saw a sign for a lodge. Yes! I turned a corner, went less than a quarter of a mile and entered a state park whose signage directed me to the cabins. There was a restaurant as well, and I entered there to ask about the cabins. The price was incredibly reasonable, but they were all booked. The clerk could only offer a full house for $165, and I'm glad to say that, not needing a washer and dryer and three bedrooms, I was not tempted to rent it for the night. Still, I regretted that the cabins weren't available; they are situated overlooking the water. I asked the clerk if he could recommend other lodging and he told me that there were two beds and breakfasts in Elizabethtown about thirteen miles away. At that point, I was even more stubbornly committed to not trying to reach Indiana; it was around 3:00, and I wasn't interested in driving in the dark or of arriving in town exhausted.
I got to Elizabethtown in maybe fifteen minutes and found the B&Bs pretty easily. One need only go toward the water. As the clerk had said, there are two right across the street from each other. I had no idea which to choose. I started toward the one and then turned toward the Rose Hotel, founded in 1812. There was a vacancy sign (as there was at the other), and when I entered the front door, with the look of the road on my face--the innkeeper smiled. He showed me the rooms that were available, and I chose the Sarah Room, which is very nice, with a sleigh bed situated in the corner, a lilac chenille spread covering the bed. The room is carpeted and furnished with simple antiques, like a wooden rocker and a wardrobe. There is a nice clawfoot tub as well, equipped with shower.
So, the room is very tranquil, and this of course is not the point of this blog post, but I enjoy telling the whole story because I think how I came to this place is important. After arriving here, actually, before arriving here I began to think about journeys of our ancestors. The thing is I crossed at least two other rivers, and since I haven't checked my atlas I'm actually not sure that I wasn't crossing the same river in different places. I imagine that one of those rivers was the Little Wabash, which if I recall correctly figures in that awful story of the unsuccessful escape attempt by William Still's brother. But, more to the point, how can I stay at the historic Rose Hotel, which was open and running during the era of slavery, and not think about slaves who lived just across the river in Kentucky and hoped against hope one day to be able to cross the river to freedom. I didn't see any literature to this effect when I checked in. Maybe I will find some tomorrow. Breakfast is at 8:30. I will be sure to ask then.
If there is not such history, or if there is, but it has not been told, then I expect I'll be doing some writing on this. All day, I had been thinking about my trip, how eccentric I am to keep taking this annual slow jog through the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. On one level, I am consciously covering the steps of freedomseekers, and yet I struggle greatly to even approximate feeling what they felt. I may have worried about getting loss, having mistakenly gotten off 45, but they worried about being caught and sent back. I felt a little unsafe getting so far off the beaten path, but they must have thought it wise to do just this. As I crossed the Ohio, I was afraid; this is true. The journey seemed to take a long time. I wanted to speed it up. I worried, irrationally, that we might somehow tip into the water. Maybe I had a moment, a visit, an alignment of sorts.
Finally, curious about the Rose Hotel, I of course Googled it when I got a chance, after having a lovely meal at a floating restaurant that can be seen from the hotel. One website was of ghost-trackers. I didn't click on it. The innkeeper had earlier told me to call "if anything happens." Her assurances that nothing would did not erase the suspicion she had already aroused in me. From that point on, I pretty much accepted that the hotel is haunted; how could it not be? It's 200 years old! I decided I would sleep with the bathroom light on. My mother has always said that ghosts cannot harm you; only people who are alive can harm you. I believe she is right, but I have come to accept that there are intersecting spheres, and I have no doubt that there are here at this beautiful hotel remnants of the one-time presence of our ancestors who may very well have taken refuge here.
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