White Trash

Bern and I lived in a trailer for a year or so when I left Harvard and found out I couldn't teach school in Morgantown, WV because of my long hair and beard. We were on foodstamps for a year or so too. My grandmother and aunt lived in trailers for years. Grandmaw got commodity cheese and other things from the Welfare Department. But it was in my aunt Georgie's trailer that my cousin Mejol locked me in her room with a Bob Dylan album and a copy of Catcher in the Rye and wouldn't let me out until I'd absorbed them both.

When I was at Harvard Divinity School (paid for by the Rockerfellow foundation) I discovered that the more "Appalachian hick" I sounded, the more people thought I was brilliant.

I am, for the most part, 'white trash'. My mother and two of her sisters had college degrees. My Aunt Elsie even, God bless her, had a Ph.D. before she was finished. But I was in the first generation of my father's family to go to college.

Hard working people on the Jones and Bradley side. Decent and kind. But what would be called, today, 'white trash'.

There's a new book out about my social class. It even has the words "white trash" in the sub-title. I hope to get it and read it soon.

I live in Connecticut, for Christ's sake, but I still know my roots. I know my blood comes from Appalachia, deep in the mountains, far from the main-stream, for from the madding crowds, far from the elite.

I come from that strata of America that Donald Trump has found and fueled their anger.

And I don't understand because I left West Virginia before "Coal as King" was no more and heroin was nothing more than a female hero.

I got out. Many didn't.

I've been back to see how tragically life has left so many behind.

They are Trump People.

They have no hope. They weren't one of the lucky ones like me.

"White trash" isn't a negative term to me. I embrace it. And I long to embrace my brothers and sisters left behind whose anger drive them to Trump.

I want to give them another path. And I don't know how.

I know their anger and despair. It is not mine.

And my greatest pain is not knowing how to welcome them into the America I know.

They are not there. And Trump will not lead them there. And they should, ought to be, deserve to be there with me.

They do.

OK, OK...

So, I got some comments on yesterday's post wondering why I didn't get comments and several emails telling me that they found it difficult, for various reasons, to comment on my blog.

OK, I get it.

One wonderful email said they saw my blog like a collection of short stories. You read one and think about it and later read another.

So, no one much writes to short story writers. Short stories aren't a conversation. Maybe my blog isn't either.

OK, I get it.

And that's fine.

I won't worry myself about it any more.

And I appreciate anything that makes me not worry myself about something.

I don't like to 'worry myself'.

So, I'm pleased with the whole thing. Thank you guys.

I'll keep writing and not ponder the lack of comments.

How's that?

And I might have some things to say about Donald Trump, if you don't mind....

Just wondering about conversation

My blog is getting many more page visits than it used to. I've mentioned the number of Russian views.

But what I don't get is comments.

My friends, Mike and Rowena do make comments from time to time. Mike about random things and Rowena about church stuff.

Just wondering and pondering if a blog should be a monologue or a conversation.

I don't know.

I guess I don't want to spend my time responding to comments rather than pondering stuff, but it is like a vacuum when I write and write and no one comments.

I do have one dear woman who emails me from time to time about what I write.

But even though more people seem to be reading, nobody much comments.

Maybe my ponderings are so profound and true everyone just thinks "well said" and moves on.

Devoutly to be wished. I don't want to stir up a firestorm, but I simply have no way to know if what I sit here typing provokes much of anything in the readers, who, as I said, seem to be multiplying lately.

So, if you don't mind, comment on this post to tell me why you don't comment on all the hundreds of others.

And I probably won't respond to you comment, just to let you know. I'd just like to know why you don't comment.

Does that seem fair? Let me know.

As the Africans say in parting, "Be well, umfandusi" (good friend). The response is "stay well, umfrandusi."

Back home...

The Republican candidate for Sheriff in Berkeley County, West Virginia was arrested for possession of heroin after an ambulance removed him from his house unresponsive and police found heroin in his bedroom and a needle in his arm.

His name is John Orem. His website promised to address 'recent incidents' soon. He was released on $5000 bail and will be arraigned next week.

Welcome to my home state.

People worry about voter fraud (which is almost non-existent these days) but when I was a teenager more people voted in Logan County, West Virginia than lived there, much less were registered to vote.

I once wrote a short story for a writing class in college in which a West Virginia State Policeman assaulted a drunk guy for dancing with a duck on a string in a bar.

My teacher told me it was too 'outrageous' and no one would believe it. My teacher was from the Midwest, not West Virginia and the story was based on something I witnessed in a bar in Anawalt, WV when I was in high school. It happened. I saw it.

When I retired back in 2010 someone asked me if I would be 'going home' to West Virginia.

It took all my years of training and all my restraint not to laugh in their face.

McDowell County, West Virginia, where I spent the first 18 years of my life was called, by the natives, 'the free state of McDowell' and for good reason.

Not much the state or federal government said or instructed happened there. If heroin had been around back then, our sheriff would have been shooting up.

McDowell County (circa 50's and 60's of the last century) was like the whole country would be if Donald Trump were President. No limits, no rules, no sense of decency and order.

I was young. I didn't realize how crazy things were, how out of whack. Looking back I know.

When I was there McDowell County had nearly 60,000 people living there. Last census there were a little over 28,000. Coal is dead. So is McDowell County. Trump will probably get 40,000 votes there in November!!!

The mind of a Puli

Bela, our Puli dog, won't go down the back stairs anymore. I just don't get it.

For 10 years he's gone down the back stairs just fine. Those stairs are carpeted and have a turn in them and should be much easier to go down than the front stairs--bare wood and straight down. In fact he often slips going down the front stairs but never did on the back ones.

Before our cat, Luke, died, I used the think I'd like to be in Bela's brain for a while but never Lukie's. The brain of a cat, I imagine, is such a complex labyrinth that you could never escape. But a Puli brain, that I thought would be simple--food, pet, bark, poop, pee, sleep. Nothing more complicated than that.

But, I can't for the life of me fathom why he should, all of a sudden, decide he won't go down the back stairs. I've tried to force him several time to no avail. He just won't, for reasons only he knows.

Why would a dog like Bela, a creature entirely dependent on 'habit' and 'routine'--up and out to bathroom/eat/out again to bathroom and walk/sleep/bark/sleep/follow me everywhere/sleep/eat/out to bathroom/sleep and hang out/one last pee/sleep for the night--change his mind about going down stairs which, to my knowledge, have never caused him any problems?

So, I'm no longer sure I'd like to hang out for a while in his brain.

Who knows what I'd stop doing that I have always done?

Waiting for Ellie

My fourth granddaughter isn't born yet. She's due on Thursday but Mimi's doctor said, 'probably not' and gave her until August 12th.

It's eerie, waiting for a grandchild.

Waiting for a letter, a return email, a package, a birthday, a holiday--all that is different.

Letters and packages depend on who brings them, a return email depends on who you sent your email to, birthdays and Holidays come when the come and can be depended on.

But Ellie's arrival isn't like any of that.

She will come when she comes.

And I can't wait.

My 'baby' is having a baby.

How sweet is that.

I'll just wait.

Not much else available to do.

I'll be here, Ellie, when you show up....

This is retirement....

I've been 'retired' since April of 2010. I retired when I had 30 years in the Church Pension Fund (one reason to consider being an Episcopal priest that has nothing to do with spirituality or religion, is the Church Pension Fund. Each month I receive over 80% of my total compensation from the 7 years of my highest pay--including housing, pension and medical care. Amazing!)

I still do stuff. I am a long term Interim Missioner for the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry--three little churches--10-12 hours a week. So, I get paid for that. I also teach at UConn in Waterbury in the Osher Life-long Learning Institute every other semester. I choose to let my stipend go back into the Institute, so I don't get paid. And I'm a leader of the Making a Difference Workshop several times a year. I pay my way for that, except the Mastery Foundation pays when I go to Ireland for the plane ride. So, I stay busy.

But all that is stuff I love to do. What I do the rest of the time is, well, read.

I read 5 books a week--mostly mysteries, though some straight novels and poetry (which I read in a way that doesn't take much time). Almost never non-fiction. I did that in 7 years of post graduate studies (2 at Harvard for my MTS, 2 at Virginia Seminary for my M.Div. and 3 years at Hartford Seminary for my Doctor of Ministry degree) and since I was an undergraduate minor in political science--thinking I might go to law school--I read some non-fiction there for 4 years.

Now I do 'fiction'.

Five books a week. 260 or so books a year.

I spent a lot of time in the 'real world' as a social worker and a priest. And I still have a hand in that world. But I live for fiction.

I think fiction is a way into 'reality'. Fiction creates realities in our heads, places to live for a while knowing we can come back to what is 'real' whenever we need to cook dinner or walk the dog or have a visit with friends or talk to adult children.

But I always have a book with me--no matter what. There's a book on my passenger seat when I go to church, just in case I'm a little early and can steal a few minutes in an alternative world. I don't mind doctors' appointments because I can read while I wait. Plane and train trips are time for reading. I've thought about getting novels on tape (of course, it's not 'tape' anymore--whatever it is) to play while I drive. But I love National Public Radio almost as much as I love reading so I'll never do that.

I've always been a reader--but being retired has made 'a reader' who I am.

And I love it. I went to the library on Wednesday and got 4 books. I'll be starting the last one in bed tonight. And I'll finish it Tuesday if not sooner.

Read, beloved. Read.