Racism: Bad for your community

A holiday faced us, a sunny, wintry day just before the inauguration of our transformational president. The university and my wonderful publishing company both acknowledge the day as the holiday it rightly is. No sense giving in to guilt and working. This day was asking for a short road trip.

We decided to go somewhere we had heard so much about, just an hour away. It’s at the confluence of two powerful rivers: the Ohio and the Mississippi. Cairo, Illinois.

Now I don’t know much about the history of Cairo, only that racism killed the place. I had read about it, and to be honest, was afraid to see it. What better day than the Martin Luther King holiday to go there and confront the demons?

In some ways, it was more pleasant than I expected; in others, it was more horrible. There were some mansions in an area with brick streets. But then there was the once-downtown. The photo here shows how sad and complete the state of decline. You think about “the tipping point” and wonder what date that was in Cairo.

I’ve been to places defined and shaped by their racist pasts: Birmingham, Chicago, Memphis, Detroit, Newark, Philadelphia—but none have touched me like this. This is where fear met despair.

~

Living with chickens

“May you live in interesting times.” Sometimes, that thought is all the solace I can take away from the relentless drone of the day’s frightening news. Insecurity grows with stories of foreclosures, job losses, store closings, bankruptcies and suicides. I obsess over blogs like that of James Howard Kuntsler, check in on the stock market at Bloomberg.com, or quickly check the latest headline at the Huffington Post to see how much further the world has fallen apart while I was on that last phone call.

But other times, I adopt a more sanguine attitude. I’ve been through tough times in my life, and I know how to survive. I make a mental note to dissociate my concept of who I am from the trappings around me. I am not what I “own,” nor am I the job that pays me. I’ve started changing my myriad of passwords to affirmations instead of cynical constructs full of @ signs and !s. Using words like “light,” “new” or “hope.”

I’m getting as fit as possible. That’s why I’m swimming a half mile three times a week and have kept it up for three months now. A new personal best.

I’ve looked around at the resources at my disposal, and they are vast. Based on them I’ve developed a plan to expand the list of things I can do to survive—whatever happens next. The plan includes:

• utilizing the wood all around me. We’re culling trees, using the tops for firewood and turning their trunks into lumber. Oak. Cherry. Poplar. Pine.
• further utilizing the wood around me by taking a woodworking class at the university craft shop.
• getting serious about getting chickens. Living with Chickens is my current favorite book.
• focusing on the garden. We need to make it better than last year’s.
• apprenticing myself to the region’s best wine-maker. He says his business is recession-proof. No doubt.
• toying with the idea of turning our walk-out basement into an apartment. Help with the mortgage might be good down the line.
• also thinking of becoming a B&B here on the lake in the Shawnee Hills Wine Country for a couple of months next fall.

It’s a lot better to think about positive things.

~

American cars

As a child of the 50s and 60s I was obsessed with cars. I filled notebooks with drawings of how I thought they should look. The highlight of my year was going to the Indianapolis Auto Show with my dad. Back then, “foreign cars” were odd, small, and to my thinking, not very appealing.

Through my adulthood I’ve always bought American cars (except for that one kind-of-regrettable Saab.) My 1984 Mustang Turbo convertible was probably my favorite, and driving it solo across country with our dog Lola for company was sublime.

It makes me sad to see the state of the big three today. In September I thought about buying a new Ford Focus, but when I went to the dealer to take a closer look I discovered they are just a shadow of the original models, of which we’ve owned two: dumbed down styling, a reduced choice of body types, and little, if any improvement in mileage. They scream “bland!” so I walked away.

I hope the government rescues the car companies so they can try again. I want them to succeed. I want to buy their products—just not the ones they’re offering now.

~

I’m much too young to feel this damn old

That’s the title of my current favorite country song. Why? I reached the august age of sixty last week. Besides the inconcieveability factor of such a thing, I still visualize myself as thirty.

My wife took me to Chicago for the weekend of my birthday. We stayed in my favorite hotel (the Intercontinental on Michigan Avenue), friends from Indianapolis came up and joined us, and we went to the Vic to see Steve Earle and Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine. We did the galleries in River North on Saturday afternoon. We took the El to go to dinner. The whole weekend made me feel young again.

There’s been a sudden burst of energy regarding my physical condition. I bought a tape measure and took stock of the sorry sight of my gut. The measurement shocked me. I rejoined the Rec Center and have been swimming a half mile three times a week. I bought a weight bench and put it in the alcove in our bedroom. I’ve actually used it—frequently. My goal is to have a “six-pack” at sixty. (I'm not there yet.) Maybe I can market myself as Mike Six-pack.

Thanksgiving came and went. We drove to Indy and were hosted by my gracious sister and her husband, twenty-five in all. There was a bit of political tension because about half those in attendance are Republicans, and there was this Obama thing that had taken place a couple of weeks earlier.

On Saturday, they threw a party for my sixtieth birthday. It was eight days after the fact, and I tried to feel festive. It was sweet, and a little sad. I can’t help but obsess about the (maybe) two productive decades I have left. And why do they have to be in what looks like one of the most challenging periods in our history? Why couldn’t they have been easy sailing?

~

The depression comes to Southernmost

I read blogs and newspapers and all the articles are about bailouts and banks going under, people losing their homes, and still it seems abstract to me. That is, until another of my favorite businesses closes its doors.

Earlier this summer, we lost a treasure in Carbondale: the feed store that had been downtown for more than 100 years. They tried to hang on selling pet food and plants for your garden and seed for bird feeders, but in June they closed. Then I called Animal Crackers, the slightly nutty, hippie-dippie pet store/kennel to schedule baths for the dogs. Phone disconnected. Store closed. Last week, we saw the signs go up in the windows of one of our favorite stores, Kaleidescope. They (used to) sell reasonably-priced imported items, candles, cards, scarves, jewelery—a perfect source for a wife or sister’s birthday gift.

Tonight it was a punch to the stomach when I drove into Murphysboro and dropped by the grocery store to pick up some things for dinner. I suddenly noticed all the shelves had empty spots, and when I got to the checkout, the magazine racks were bare. I asked, “are you closing?” “Yes, December 13.” I tried to imagine what it’ll be like in this little town with the grocery store an empty building.

Each of these businesses employed people, and gave vitality to our community. They feel like canaries in the coal mine.

~

The freest I ever felt was when I ditched my Ford Pinto. I had moved to Chicago in 1970-something, and urban living meant a car was superfluous. I let my sister take over the car payments and gladly walked away from other expenses like car insurance, gasoline, oil, maintenance, parking tickets, registrations and city stickers. I saved up enough money on my meagre $6,000 salary to go in with a buddy and buy a 40 acre farm in Wisconsin.

My sister actually needed the Pinto, because she was studying nursing in Indianapolis, and had to get to school in a city with almost no public transportation. I, on the other hand, availed myself of my bicycle and the CTA and made out like a bandit.

But in the end, I, like my country, just couldn’t wean myself from the automobile. A few years later I bought a beat-up pickup truck and I was once again a slave to the oil companies and the car companies.

Over the next 30 years I watched, horrified, as the city I grew up in, and every other city I lived in or visited, ate up the countryside around it, spewing out strip malls and vinyl-sided subdivisions as far as the eye could see. I knew in my heart it was not healthy, and I knew it was not sustainable.

Now we’ve reached the point where billions of dollars of taxpayer money are gonna be spent to bail out GM and Chrysler and Ford. I think this is a fool’s mission.

There once was a time where our government was able to fund public scoools, trolley lines, universities, libraries, museums and more. Then all the public money got sucked into building and maintaining highways. The automobile reached into our pockets and caused us to spend more than we could afford as a society. Now we’re at a crossroads.

~

Christmas came early this year

Our Christmas cactus has bloomed way before it should have, usually sometime after Thanksgiving.

Oddly too, today, a week into November, it is so warm I was able to pick a bunch of zinnias, still blooming in the garden.

I’m feeling a sense of calm and confidence that I haven’t had for quite awhile now.

Christmas came early this year.

~