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Friday, August 5, 2016

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.

cold

So far, this has been a very mild winter in Connecticut. But it's pretty chilly tonight.

When I took Brigit out for the last time, I remembered a winter night in Morgantown, WV, when Bern and I lived in a trailer.

Yes, beloved, I was, for a while, West Virginia trailer trash.

Bern's brother was visiting and the heat went off on a very, very cold night.

We pulled out all the clothes in our closets and covered ourselves with them.

We survived and the next day the problem was fixed.

But if things go wrong with you, consider all the warmth in your closets.

Lots of warmth there.

Cover up tonight.

OK, he was aquitted, but at what cost to us?

In his hour of rambling speech today, the President proved he hasn't 'learned his lesson', as I heard several GOP Senator's say on TV.

If I talked about people I didn't agree with from the pulpit the way the President did today, I would be defrocked by the church and probably be in count on several counts.

But not him.

I've always admired (but not agreed with) Mitt Romney. But his vote to impeach was a 'profile of courage' and he will, as he admitted he will be, ostracized and bombarded by other Republicans and most of all, the President.

What will the next year cost us?

I'm not sure how bad it will be, but 'bad' it will be.

'Unhinged' doesn't come close to describing the President.

The things he said (O my Lord!) a the PRAYER breakfast today is enough to prove he is not settled in reality.

Of Romney (without naming him) he said, "I don't like people who use their faith to justify doing what they know is wrong."

Of Pelosi, who was four chairs away from him, he said "I don't like people telling that they pray for me when they don't mean it."

A Mormon and a Roman Catholic attacked at a PRAYER breakfast.

Lord, save us from the cost to come because GOP Senators (except Romney) have no backbone and no balls.

The worst case of not type casting ever

Our granddaughter, Eleanor, 3 1/2, has been cast as Rosa Parks in her pre-school play about the civil rights movement.

So little blond haired, white girl is going to play a late middle aged Black woman who wouldn't move to the back of the bus!

Mimi and Tim were supposed to move from Brooklyn to Manhattan on February 18, but the play is February 21. That move will put Eleanor in a different pre-school.

The teacher took Mimi's arm when she told her about the move.

"You can't do that," she said urgently, "Eleanor is the only one who can do it!"

So, Mimi and Tim may put the move off for a few days.

Eleanor--so smart and outgoing--is going to get that a lot, I fear, in years to come.

Being 'the only one who can do it' can be a burden.

I hope and pray she'll come to a place where she can say 'no' if she doesn't want to do it.

I don't have cancer

I posted a while ago about my PSA being high when it should be non-existent.

I have an Oncologist now and had a Cat and Pet Scan last week.

I went in today to find the results--and it was very good news!

No cancer anywhere in me!!!

The doctor told me that she had many patients like me who have no prostrate gland and still has PSA. They just don't know what's up with that.

So, she's going to monitor my PSA.

There are shots to bring it down, but they have side affects, so she's going to hold off on that unless the PSA doubles.

I love women doctors. Somehow, I trust them more than men. I don't know why, but I do.

All over but the shouting

The impeachment of the president is over.

By a party vote, he will be declared fit to stay in office.

No witnesses or further evidence.

All over but the shouting.

And shouting there will be!

By the president claiming 'total exoneration'.

And by the Democrats shouting about how unfair the process in the Senate was.

Shouting aplenty! I promise you that.

75% of Americans, in several polls, wanted witnesses and evidence.

They won't get them.

What will be the political implications of this fake trial?

I'm not sure. But I know what I hope for. Americans realizing how dangerous this president is and voting him out of office big time.

That I hope and hope fair well.

Here's what I don't understand

In the last week 7 times the people who have viewed any other post have viewed the one below.

I don't understand why. It's over a decade old.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Charlie Manson

He's 74 and bald and has a beard not unlike mine but still more black in in than my whiteness.
I didn't know he was that old until I saw it on the Internet with his new photo, looking even older than 74, but still with the swastika tattooed between his eyes.

I was 22 when the murders happened and as shocked as I was--as we all were--by that violence (how tame it seems to what violence we've known since...) I probably wouldn't be so obsessed with him except for two things. Squeeky Frome, one of his girls, was in prison in Alderson, WV and all things West Virginian interest me. And there was this: the first parish I served was St. James in west Charleston--a black church in a redneck neighborhood because the diocese wanted to kill it off, so far as I could see--about a block from where Charlie grew up. I probably passed relatives or friends of his in the Kroger store or on the street. I was always aware that I was in Charlie's 'neighborhood' while I was the priest at St. James.

And now he is old and will die in prison. And I am getting older and will die somewhere, somehow. Charlie probably had people who loved him when he was a child--maybe not, since that would explain his madness--but I think he did. I don't think madness of the category of Charlie can be easily explained away. He grew up about 75 miles north of where I grew up and his disciples killed Sharon Tate and Abigale Folger and three others one night in California. I'm not sure why I remember those two names and not the names of the other three, who are as dead as Sharon and Abigale.
And I don't know why I was so surprised and moved to see his picture on the web. Or why we are still, in some way connected.

While I was at St. James, there was a gas station half-a-mile down the road that blew up when two men from the state were inspecting the tank. The explanation was that one of them was wearing shoes with heel tabs on them and a spark set off the gaseous residue around the tanks. Does anyone put those tabs on their shoes anymore? But the people in the neighborhood knew different--that gas station blew up because it was only a hundred feet from where Charlie grew up.

Evil endures for most of us and insinuates itself into everything around it.

I heard a radio show today about "excitable children". It was about kids that in my childhood we would have called 'bad'. I wonder if Charlie was like that or if he was just a normal, everyday kid who, in ways beyond believing, went bad?

Maybe if his mom had heard that radio show Charlie would be a CPA in Charleston and Sharon Tate would be an aging starlet and those two guys who got blown to Kingdom Come at the gas station would be grandfathers playing golf somewhere.

My theology runs dry when it is confronted with Charlie Manson or Stalin or Hitler or the rulers in Darfor or those folks who blew themselves up this week to kill innocent people. I don't know what to make of them--they don't fit the grid and defy my optimistic view of human nature.

Today one of the most helpless homeless who come through St. John's, a guy who is seldom, if ever, sober or straight and lives under a bridge or in a tent city behind the Home Depot was wearing a sweat shirt someone obviously gave him that said "Save Darfor".

Don't tell me there is no irony. Irony, by the way, is something I will write about at lengths beyond your willingness to read at some point.

Tonight I will sleep with two thoughts in my mind that I hope my dreams will inform: what is my 'animal familiar', because my friend Malinda told me she asked that from a dream and got a horse--a creature she does not like--AND I hope my dreams will tell me someway to deal with Charlie Manson and his ilk, who I cannot explain.

Sweet dreams.....

Posted by Under The Castor Oil Tree at 6:58 PM