Where I come from

Where I come from, the southern most county of West Virginia, when you met someone, your first question to them was "where are you from?"

Where I've lived since 1980, when you meet someone, your first question is "what do you do?"

That tells you most of what you need to know about 'where I come from.

"Location, location, location" was the Appalachian mantra. Where you fit into the geography of life was the beginning of a relationship. "What you did" was secondary...not even secondary, rather beyond importance.

Knowing where your roots sunk into the mountains was remarkably telling. I would then have known who 'your people' were and who lived around you and what your universe looked like. I would begin to 'know' you as soon as I could place you in the landscape.

People, where I come from, were defined by which mountain, which valley, which creek they lived near. It was in our DNA to seek out location as a way to begin to know another person.

"Oh, you're from Filbert," meant the person was most likely a second or third generation immigrant from, most likely Italy. "Oh, you're from Spencer's Curve" meant the person was generations after generations a Scots/Irish resident of Appalachia.

When people asked me where I was from and I answered "Anawalt" they knew I was from a town (if you can call 500 people a 'town') and that I was probably of a merchant background or a teacher was in my family. People in Anawalt, everyone knew, didn't work in the mines because Anawalt wasn't a mining camp. Being from Anawalt meant your family sold stuff or taught school. And it was true.

Amazing what knowing where someone was 'from' could tell you about them. Ethnicity, employment, educational level--all that quickly. My father 'sold stuff' and my mother was a teacher. I was the quintessential resident of Anawalt. Knowing where you were from told people what you "did for a living".

It's much more complicated here in New England. Being from Cheshire doesn't tell you a damn thing about your ethnicity or employment or education. All 'being from Cheshire' says is that you're probably upper Middle Class or you couldn't afford to 'be from Cheshire'.

Appalachian 'location' is much richer and more telling than other places.

(This is my third post about being an Appalachian in the last couple of weeks. I need to ponder why that's so obviously on my mind. Most of the time I don't think of it unless someone catches something in my accent and asks me if I'm southern....)

Appalachians as a minority group

Going through some old stuff I found an old, yellowed article from The Register Herald, a Beckley, West Virginia newspaper from July 5, 1999 titled "Cincinnati designates Appalachians as a minority group."

It seems the Cincinnati Opera has a survey in the program to La Boheme, which included a place to mark your ethnicity. The options were: African American, Native American/Alaska native, Asian American, Latino-Hispanic, White and Appalachian.

(By the way, the second a in the word is a short 'a' for those who live there. It's "Appalatchian" to a native. John Kennedy, running for President came to West Virginia and pronounced it "AppalAchian" which confused even us who lived there and made people pronounce it that way....If JFK said it, it must be true!)

Well, we'd always suspected people saw us as a minority group and that proved it.

Appalachians, when the coal mines were on strike, would go to Cincinnati or Detroit or Toledo for work. Bern's father went to Detroit a time or two, if I remember correctly.

And a joke we told (don't you DARE tell it! since we're a minority group, only 'we' can tell jokes about ourselves...the same as Jews and Blacks) went like this: How can you get 20 West Virginians in a Volkswagon bug? Tell them it's going to Cincinnati....

Cincinnati, according to the article, protected Appalachians from discrimination in employment and housing just like racial and sexual minorities.

There you go. Treat me with some respect from now on and dare not discriminate against me. I'm a minority group! Full protection of the law and all that.

There's a quote in the article from a 1994 LA Times article about Cincinnati that goes like this: "Here in Cincinnati, it is clear that those who retain traces of the hills can be made to feel different."

Well, I have traces of the hills dripping off me. Don't make me have to report you for making me feel different....

At last, civil rights for mountain folks....

requiescat in pace

Jim Johnson was my classmate at Virginia Seminary (class of 1975). We were ordained deacons together at Trinity, Huntington, WV. I was at his ordination to the priesthood and he was at mine. We served together in West Virginia for 5 years, until I went to New England.

I exchanged emails with him on August 6 and 7 of this year about the 40th Anniversary of our graduating from VTS. He's been the class steward all these years, the one who kept the class informed about stuff from 'the Holy Hill' in Alexandria. He was urging me to be at the 40th Anniversary celebration which coincides with the dedication of VTS's new chapel (the other having burned down 4 or 5 years ago). In fact, I told him, I'd be in Washington DC during that time in October, helping to lead a Making a Difference Workshop, but wouldn't be able to cross the Potomac to be in Alexandria.

I told him about my children and grandchildren. He sent me his phone number so we could catch up more.

And today I got an email from the seminary that he died suddenly and at home on August 8 and has already been buried.

It was eerie to know I must have been one of the last people he communicated with.

I wrote about Jim once. He always wore a black suit and clerical collar, even on airplanes, which is inviting crazy people to talk to you. He flew from LA to Chicago with a business man and had a long conversation with him. Landing at O'Hare, the man asked Jim, "what do you do?" Jim looked down at his black shirt and collar and said, "I'm an Episcopal Priest."

The man replied, "I know what you are, I just wondered what you do."

Interestingly enough, the Making a Difference Workshop is about 'who you are/be' rather than what you 'do'.

Jim, I'm sorry I didn't call on the 7th or since. Go not gently into that good night. Be well and stay well. Rest in Peace. I will miss you now.....

Deuteronomy 15.1

"...At the end of every seven years you shall grant a relinquishing of debts...."

Somehow I happened upon a website that was called 'Shemitah 2015 survival data'.

I listened to the droning voice for over 10 minutes telling me how Deuteronomy 15.1 predicted both World Wars, the Great Depression, 9/ll and the recent recession and now is predicting a September 2015 melt down in the US that will see both federal and state governments close, banks close and martial law.

I stopped listening at that point. Deuteronomy deserves better.

I never got to the survival data since it doesn't seem any of us would survive.

I hate when people use the Bible to push their own agenda. I especially hate it when Christians (born again, of course) use the Hebrew scripture for their own agenda.

Maybe I should have listened to the whole thing and sent money and found out how to survive Deuteronomy 15.1 next month.

But I didn't.

God, has everyone gone crazy? Is the Trump Affect overcoming all rationality and logic.

Deuteronomy 15.1 for goodness sake. It was simply good agricultural advice and solid socialism. How did this guy get all he got out of it.....?

How did I forget?

I missed my mother's birthday this year. I never forget my father's since he was born on April Fool's Day in 1907. My mother's birthday is in July. It was July 10, 1909. My Uncle Lee Pugh's birthday was July 9, 1910 and he'd always say, "Cleo and I are the same age for one day a year...."

I don't think I've ever plum forgot her birthday before.Well, she did die a few days after I turned 25, so it's been a long time. Missing it once probably isn't a reason to go to The Home.

And though I know within a day or two the date of my mother's death, I don't remember my father's death date at all. I am normally 'lost in linear time'. I can only place things around events--'that was before Josh was born' is one, and, 'that was after Mimi was born' is another. But putting a date certain on things is beyond me.

Did you ever read Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five ? The main character is Billy Pilgrim and Billy is 'unstuck in time'. For  him it means he may wake up at 25 or 55, depending on the day. I'm not that bad, but I simply don't have a good handle on the sequence of events in linear time besides "before Josh was born" and "after Mimi was born" and, when I'm really sharp I can put an event in the three years between their births--but never the exact year.

Bern thinks it's because I'm never really paying attention--which may be so. One of huge, enormous, gigantic differences between us is that she 'really focused" and I, to be truthful, am seldom so intent on anything that you can't interrupt me and I'll be pleasant and not upset.

When Bern cleans the house or works in the garden, those two especially, I have learned after nearly 45 years of marriage and nearly 50 years of knowing her, not to interrupt (or, if I do...and I sometimes do, after all this time...expect either 'the glare' or a mumbled response.

Her computer got truly taken over the other day and she missed dinner fretting over it. I found the sockeye salmon (the only kind she will eat) I grilled and the grilled vegetables and salad wrapped in saran and in the refrigerator after I ate. I cut a wide path around her during that evening.

But my car could blow up and if you asked me a question I'd be totally yours. I live in a state of constant interruption. And I don't mind. Kind of like it, truth be known.

I can be in the middle of something relatively important (writing a sermon or working on a class I'll be teaching or reading a book I particularly love) and I'm perfectly happy to walk away from it and do something else, less important.

Part of the difference is that I'm an extrovert and Bern is an introvert. I draw energy from interaction and she draws energy from being focused. But, another part is I'm probably on the ADO (is that it: 'attention deficit disorder'?) scale and she isn't. She's the one who gets to be 'normal'. And, truth is, I've never particularly longed for normalcy! And another part is, as a priest, I've always believed 'the interruptions were my ministry.' People always were saying, "I know you're busy..." and I'd say, "not at all. I've been waiting around for this interruption...."



But forgetting my mother's birthday this year and not remembering I forgot it for over a month--that makes me wish I was more focused.

I kissed Diane Sluss

In this very vivid dream I had last night, I kissed Diane Sluss.

As soon as the kiss happened, I drew back and said, 'that wasn't a good thing....'

First of all, who is Diane Sluss (and, yes, that was her name). I went to Junior High and High School with her. She was from the very top of Jenkinjones Mountain. Another few feet and she would have gone to school in Virginia instead of West Virginia. She was very smart, so I was in class with her a lot. She was extremely outgoing and funny, so I liked to be around her. But she lived a long school bus ride from me in Junior High and I wasn't 'into girls' in Junior High--in fact, they scared me silly...except for Diane, who was my friend. And there was this: she was the greatest 'listener' I knew in that 6 years of my life. The workshop I help lead is mostly about 'listening'--and Diane, more than most everyone I've ever known--could get her 'listenings' our of the way and simply be 'present' to whatever I was saying. Rare, indeed.

When we went to high school in Gary, she was the first person to get on the school bus that came from Jenkinjones through Conklintown and O'Toole (yes, where I grew up places were named stuff like that!) and then to Anawalt, where I got on, then on to Spencer's Curve and Pageton, which was, as I remember, the last place Woodrow stopped. (Oh, by the way, the bus driver's name was, God help me, Woodrow Wilson, brother of a Methodist minister in Pageton and an all around good-guy. A couple of his nephews got on the bus in Pageton and he treated them just like the rest of us--fair and consistently. (I can't imagine driving High School Students was the best job in the world, but he did it with grace and even flair.)

{Here's an example of Woodrow's flair. He had to pull over the bus near a monument to 6 white men killed by Indians in Black Wolf--there was no drama to the place he pulled over, it's just that in southern West Virginia, there aren't a lot a places along the roads to pull over a school bus. He pulled over to read us the 'emergency school bus schedule'. It was the day that the Navy was stopping Russian ships taking missiles to Cuba and McDowell County had plans to evacuate us from school sine the largest coal processing plant in the world was 4 miles from Gary High School and thought to be on the Russian ICBM list of targets. He was half-way through reading the paper he'd been given to read when Gwen Roberts freaked out.

She ran down the aisle and tried to get off the bus. She was screaming stuff like: "We're going to die!" and "Let me off this bus!!" and "Oh Lordy, Lordy!"...people in southern West Virginia said that last one a lot.

Woodrow dropped the sheet of paper and wrapped Gwen in his arms. He spoke softly to her and rubbed her back until she calmed down. Masterful, he was, dealing with her.}

I know how masterful he was because I was sitting in the seat right behind his driver's seat with Diane Sluss. For three years Diane and I sat in the front seat behind Woodrow as he drove down to Gary in the morning and back in the afternoon. Everyday for three years. People on the bus knew better than to try to take that seat. The way down was no problem, Diane was first on the bus every morning. On the way back people just knew--that's Diane's and Jimmy's seat (Lord yes, I was Jimmy in high school until I decided to be 'J. Gordon' my senior year.)

I'd have to think long and hard about how many hours Diane and I spent sitting next to each other, talking over those years. She was a large girl, but not fat, and had a beautiful face and wondrous hair. It's not that I wasn't, at some point, attracted to her--she was shapely and attractive--it was that she was my first long time 'friend' who was a girl. We talked about everything--our heartbreaks, our loves, current affairs, movies and tv, political stuff (during our three year conversation I moved from being a Goldwater Republican, like my father, to being a left-wing Democrat and she talked me through that transition).

Truth be known, when we graduated and she disappeared from my life, I missed her not enough.

Diane gave me one of the greatest gifts anyone ever could--the sure and certain knowledge that I could have intimate friends who were female with none of the complications that men and women have between intimate friends and intimacy.

What a gift! And it has served me well over the decades since. Many of the closest friends I've had in my life have been women. And I value them mightily.

So, in my dream, kissing Diane on the bus...It was not a good thing, it was a mistake, it would have robbed both of us of one of the abiding relationships that got us through those awful years from 15 to 18.

Ride on Diane. I won't ruin the gift we gave each other.

What I want in 2016

Surveying the candidates for 2016, I've come up with what I really want. Here are the scenarios in order of what I really, really want.

1. Donald Trump vs. Bernie Sanders: there's no one I agree with more than Bernie. If we had a party, as many European nations do, called "Democratic Socialist", I'd be a member. I'm in favor of single payer health care (a.k.a. 'socialized medicine') on the Canadian model; I'm in favor of European like taxes on the rich and European like social programs for the poor. I think we should wave the cap on Social Security contributions. I never made more than $80,000 and my SS payment was almost at the cap. Let's push Trump's (and the rest of the rich) to a flat and equal % of what the middle class pays and no one would ever worry about Social Security going broke. What should be capped is how much you can received, based on need.

But the only way an avowed 'socialist' like Bernie would be elected is if he ran against Trump. In many circles, the 'S-word' is on a par with the 'N-word' and the 'F-word' as unacceptable in polite conversations.

2. Whatever Republican vs. Joe Biden/Elizabeth Warren: It's a shame that Elizabeth isn't running herself--she is Bernie without the S-word. She is the one national politician I agree with as much as I agree with Bernie. And Joe is just so lovable and awkward and 'sweet' (there I said it...'sweet' to describe a politician.) He'd be a one term President because of his age and Elizabeth would run and win and become the first woman President in 2020.

3. And must less, much less exciting than 1 or 2 to me. The inevitable Hillary. I'll vote for her because I couldn't 'not vote' and would never vote for any of the Republicans. But I wouldn't have that feeling in my heart I had when I voted for her husband or Barack Obama. I'll just hold my nose and vote.

I really want a 'real progressive'--Bernie or Elizabeth. I'm not sure it's possible, unless Bernie runs against the Donald.

We'll see--#2 seems, at this point anyway--the best of all possible worlds. We'll see, won't we....?