Best of 2009: My Picks

Once again, I have two albums as my top album of the year because they are both so masterful that I cannot choose between them: Golden Apples of the Sun by Caroline Herring and Give Up the Ghost by Brandi Carlile. These are the two albums of 2009 that anyone who really loves great music (read: that which is most likely not on contemporary mainstream radio) must buy right now.

Last year Caroline Herring topped my list (in a tie with Ben Sollee’s Learning to Bend) with her album Lantana, a record that I believe to be as packed with as many keen observations about humanity and the Gothic South as the best of Flannery O’Connor or Lucinda Williams. The standout track on that album, “Paper Gown,” a modern murder ballad about Susan Smith, is among the best songs I’ve ever heard in my life. I didn’t think she’d ever be able to outdo herself, but then she goes and records the best album of 2009, and a modern masterpiece: Golden Apples of the Sun.

If there was any justice in this old world (and children, I hate to say it, but there just ain’t, not for true artists) everyone would know that Herring is one of the best contemporary American singer/songwriters. Golden Apples is an album in the true sense of the world: it begs to be listened to as a whole, in one sitting, and it’s magic every step of the way. I don’t know which to brag on first: the songwriting, or the singing, or the fact that Herring manages to pull the whole thing off with little more than her own voice and a couple of guitars (she’s on one, the producer—David “Goody” Goodrich--is on the other).

I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the key to all good writing. And that every character has to have a secret. Herring is a masterful writer, and each of her songs are little mysteries and big love stories, economic and perfect, full of secrets and poetry.

Take a song like “Tales of the Islander,” wherein every single line is a mystery begging to be solved. Even if you don’t do your research and find out that it’s about Gulf Coast folk artist Walter Anderson, a brilliant, troubled artist who eventually left his family and sought out solitude on an island in the Gulf, you still know that it’s a song about the power and joy and pain of being an artist with such heightened senses that the birds call just to him “so deep.”

“The Dozens,” her powerful look at the continuing Civil Rights movement is especially timely and is garnering all kinds of praise. Once listened to, you’ll never get the beautiful melody out of your head. Another favorite of mine on the record is “Abuelita”, which resonates with me in particular because I, too, had a grandmother whose history and heritage had been denied to me. And there there is “A Little Bit of Mercy,” a song that manages to captures the very essence of hope in less than four minutes (and supplies a perfect tambourine that serves as a heartbeat for the song). And the best cover ever of “True Colors,” which was made famous by Cyndi Lauper but is made even more moving in Herring’s capable hands. And her take on “See See Rider” that brings out every bit of emotion in the song that you might have missed before. I could go on and on, and you see where I’m going here: the truth is that I love every single one of the songs on Golden Apples of the Sun (okay, I could have done without another cover of “Long Black Veil,” but her arrangement of it is so great that I’ll forgive it, and it’s grown on me). This is a record by an artist at the height of her game. One listen and you’ll know that Caroline Herring is the real deal, and she’s the singer-songwriter for this generation of people who appreciate real, unadulterated music.

Read my friend Marianne Worthington’s brilliant review of Golden Apples of the Sun in New Southerner, then check out Herring on “All Things Considered" and become a fan on facebook, where you can listen to some of her songs.

Something about the songs Brandi Carlile writes and/or records seem like the soundtrack of my life. It’s as if she and her songwriting partners, Phil and Tim Hanseroth, (affectionately known as “The Twins” by her devoted fans) can look in and see everything that matters. There are so many great songs on this album that I can’t even begin to articulate how much I love them. Each song is a gem that aches with joy and pain and everything in between. Let’s look at just a few of this collection of eleven songs:

“Dying Day” manages to capture longing. And that’s a hard, hard thing to capture. If the lyrics don’t kill you, the fiddle will.

“Dreams” starts with Brandi’s soft declaration of “I have dreams” and builds to a thundering, screaming declaration of someone ready to go out and start living instead of dreaming. The most beautiful song ever to which you’ll head-bang.

“That Year” is a mystery that will leave you reeling, one of the most heart-breaking songs you’ll ever hear, even before you figure it all out. Anyone who has ever regretted something will relate.

“Caroline” sounds like what it feels like to be in love. Again, a hard thing to capture. But she does it. I've heard that this song is actually about Brandi's niece, but I think it can be applied to love in any form.

“Oh Dear” is three voices and a ukulele. And it’s magic.

If you ever get the chance to see Brandi live, don't hesitate. Best live show I've ever seen, hands down.

The rest of my favorites of the year, in no particular order, some with anecdotes, some not, all highly recommended:

Scott Miller has written some of my favorite songs (“The Way,” "Angels Dwell," “For Jack Tymon,” “Ciderville Saturday Night,” “Dear Sarah,” “Highland County Boy,” I could go on and on) but he has flat outdone himself with two compositions on his latest record: “I’m Right Here My Love,” a duet with Patty Griffin is one of the most beautiful love dialogues I’ve ever heard, while “Appalachian Refugee” manages to zoom in on the very personal (the death of his wife’s father) and transcend that, becoming a defining song of the Appalachian people, tapping into emotions about our connection to this place and doing nothing short of articulating feelings that have only previously been properly articulated by people like Harriette Arnow, Loretta Lynn, James Still, and Lee Smith.

Hardly anyone knows the record Sea of Tears by Eilen Jewell but everyone should. It’s definitely in my top five favorite albums of the year (although I’m not really ranking anything but the best one, and you see how that went, since I had to chose two as the best). Rooted deeply in a fever pitch moment of the rockabilly-meets-folk-meets-rock of the early 1960s andy yet fully contemporary, Sea of Tears is full of good songs and plays like a beautiful novel when played all the way through. This album is the underdog of the year, and I’m saddened it didn’t get more attention. It deserves it. Give her a listen when you can. My favorite tacks are "Rain Roll In," "Sea of Tears," "Shakin' All Over," and a great Loretta Lynn cover: "Darkest Day."

Dave Rawlings Machine-A Friend of A Friend. A couple years ago, some of my best friends and I rushed over to The Pour Haus (say it out loud), one of the best places in Louisville’s great working-class neighborhood, Germantown, when we heard through the rumor mill that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings were strolling around there (lots of whispered cell phone calls were being made about this…and doesn’t the mere fact that the Pour Haus’s clientele so easily recognized two of indie music’s most beloved singer-songwriters make you want to go to this bar?). About the time we got there Gillian and David had taken the stage with nothing more than their voices, their haunted faces, and two guitars. They played for the next two hours and it was total magic, a night that those gathered there still talk about with some amount of awe. For two hours no one moved, not even to buy another drink. In a bar. On a Saturday night. It was mesmerizing, and before long we realized that it was also different from what we were used to. Although Gillian Welch has always been a duo made up of Welch and her partner (on-stage and off), David Rawlings, Rawlings has usually supplied background vocals while Welch took the leads. That night he took the leads and she was there to lend her support. At the end of the show they announced themselves as the Dave Rawlings Machine and we knew that the operations of their duo had been switched. Little did we know that this album would soon follow. The best tracks on it are “The Bells Are Harlem” and “Sweet Tooth.”

Rosanne Cash-The List. Usually cover records are snorefests to me, but this is Rosanne, man! I especially love her and Rufus Wainwright doing “Silver Wings,” and her version of “Sea of Heartbreak” (with help from Springsteen) trumps the original.

Another record that flew completely under the radar is one of the year’s best: Your Heart Is A Glorious Machine by Sometymes Why is definitely worth checking out, especially “Aphrodisiholic” (seen here at my very favorite place to hear live music in NYC, Banjo Jim’s), definitely among my most-played songs of the year.

This summer I had the great pleasure of seeing my friend Ben Sollee playing at the Knoxville Botanical Gardens. I went to take my daughters to see him and had no inkling that his opening act, The Black Lillies, would become one of my favorite bands. And their album Whiskey Angel has become one of my favorites of the year, too. I love the sharp songwriting and the tight harmonies between Cruz Contreras and Leah Gardner. A couple people I trust most about music can’t seem to get on the Black Lillies bandwagon, so they may not be for everyone reading this, but I think they’re great. I especially love “Where the Black Lillies Grow,” “Cruel,” and “Little Darlin’”. Here they are at that Knoxville performance, competing against the masses of cicadas in the trees above them, but winning:

I loved the movie Once because it was a working class musical, something rare and special indeed. But I suppose the bigger reason I love it is because it featured Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, collectively known by their band name of The Swell Season. Their harmonies are perfection, and Strict Joy is full of them. Best tracks: “Low Rising,” “I Have Loved You Wrong,” and the haunting “Fantasy Man.”

Say what you want about Scarlett Johnnson’s vocals, but I think she sounds great on her collaboration with Pete Yorn on Break Up. This album is upbeat and rough and smooth, sad and pretty. I have played it over and over and over again. My favorite tracks are “Relator,” “Wear and Tear,” and especially “I Don’t Know What to Do.”

Somehow this album is the most fun of the year while also being serious.

Langhorne Slim’s “Be Set Free” is his best album to date and although I loved songs from previous year (“Worries” and “In the Moonlight”), this album provides his best song yet, “I Love You, But Goodbye.”

I love Jim James from My Morning Jacket, here called Yim Yames (as on his EP Tribute To), and he’s the best thing about Monsters of Folk, especially his lead vocal on “Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.)”.

Seems like forever ago that it came out (it was way back in March 2009, and a lot has happened since then) but Buddy and Julie Miller’s Written in Chalk is still one of the best records of the year, and of their career. “Hush, Sorrow” is also one of their best songs, ever. They’re two of the nicest people in the business, and two of the best.

It seems like everyone I know really loved The Avett Brother’s I and Love and You, so I won’t say much about it except to say that I had the honor of working with the Avetts way back in 2001 when nobody knew who they were. My publicists at the time were amazing (hats off to you, Craig Popelars and Shelly Goodin, who not only worked very hard but also had excellent taste in music) and they often booked musical acts to play with me at booksignings while I was on the road. It worked really well because it drew in people that may not have come out to readings otherwise, and made for a good time. On that one tour I did gigs with people like Tift Merrit, Caitlin Cary (formerly of Whiskeytown), Tim O’Brien, and Scott Miller. One of my first booksignings was in Asheville, NC, at Malaprop’s, and The Avett Brothers played before my reading. They were very nice and gracious even though they had just that minute driven into North Carolina from a long trip out West. They were still figuring out who they were musically but there was no doubt that they already had a huge following (although lots of them were those faux-poor kids who sometimes hang out on the streets of Asheville with their self-torn Lucky jeans, unwashed hair, Birkenstocks, and sleeping bags rolled up on their backs. Note to them: it’s not cool to act poor if you’re not since there are plenty of real poor people in the world, so stop being jerks) and it was clear that they were budding musical geniuses who did something I had certainly never seen before: head-bang while playing banjoes. It was pretty awesome, I must say, and so is I and Love and You

.

Yes, I loved Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone. No, I don’t know what I want to say about it except that I have strange feelings about it: when I’m listening to it, I love it. When I’m not listening to it, I forget it exists. I don’t know what that means, but there you have it.

I wish that I could say Patty Loveless’s Mountain Soul II was as good as the first one, but the thing is that it’s just too bluegrassy for my taste (I love mountain music but am not so keen on bluegrass…sorry to although those bluegrass-lovers out there). However, Patty’s latest does supply the best song she’s ever written, the moving and powerful “Children of Abraham,” and a masterful reworking of the classic “Busted,” which can be seen as a commentary on the current state of coal-mining as well as the 60s version of it.

The soundtrack for the documentary Appalachia is really good, even if it isn’t one of my favorite albums of the year. But one of it’s tracks, “Susanna Gal,” by Clack Mountain (featuring the great, great vocals of Karly Dawn Higgins, whose voice is what these mountains sound like) is definitely one of my favorite recordings of the year.

I normally don’t put pop records on my list, just because they get enough attention as it is, but there were some great ones this year, and I’ll just mention the ones I love best. Regina Spektor’s Far is a meditation on God and religion, and it’s full of great songs, especially "Laughing With". I loved U2’ No Line on the Horizon, especially “White As Snow,” which is one of their best songs ever, as far as I’m concerned. Norah Jones hasn’t made a bad album as far as I’m concerned, but The Fall is among her best, especially the song “You’ve Ruined Me,” which has ruined me, it’s so good. And I know some of my friends are going to give me a hard time over this, but I just have to tell you that I can’t imagine what this year would have been like without The Music of Glee, so I’m going to go ahead and say that the albums Glee 1 and 2 were being continuously played at my house and in my car, mainly because they’re the two records that my daughters and I can always agree on. I love the show and it’s a lot of fun to introduce my girls to great pop songs of the olden days (and some contemporary ones I wouldn’t know otherwise) by way of these soundtracks. Our favorite ones to sing along with: “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” “Bust Your Windows,” and “Don’t Stop Believing.”

I’m sure there are some great ones I’ve forgotten, but these are the ones that come immediately to mind, so they must be my favorites. There’s you some good music to listen to. Even if you don’t go straight and buy it, at least give it a listen, and just think of all the great music coming soon, including Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore’s amazing, important record Dear Companion, coming out in February and produced by Yim Yames. Be on the lookout.

Since we're on the subject of the Best of 2009, I'll go ahead and briefly mention my favorite movies of the year, too:

Up. The best movie of the year. No other film moved me so deeply or made me laugh so hard. No other film better understands dogs and old people, either. It's a beauty on every level.

Bright Star. Jane Campion's underlooked and intimate look at the love between Keats and Fanny Brawne is filmed like a poem. I loved every single thing about it.

The Last Station. This film, about the last days of Tolstoy, is funny and charming, lush and beautiful. Helen Mirren shines, as always, and Christopher Plummer is great, too, but the big surprise to me was James McAvoy, who has never been better.

Precious. Lots of people I know said they didn't want to see this because it looks like too much of a downer, but it is anything but. It's hard to watch, but full of hope.

Avatar. I'm still torn on some of the political undertones of the film but overall I thought it was a cinematic feast (I never thought I'd actually say a phrase like "cinematic feast" in all seriousness, but it was). And I give it extra points for being one of the few blockbusters ever that has garnered hours-long discussions.

Whip It. Drew Barrymore's directorial debut wasn't a huge hit but it was one of my favorites of the year. Funny and sweet, with a great message for young women (or anybody) about being your own hero. Also managed to portray rural America in a dignified way, which is something that is very rare for Hollywood movies.

Adventureland was funny and smart and reminded me of what it was like to be a teenager in the late 1980s. "Nice pipe, grandpa!"

I loved Sunshine Cleaning, especially the performances of Emily Blunt and Amy Adams, two of my favorite actresses.

State of Play was an insightful, timely look at the demise of the newspaper industry.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was beautifully filmed and the actors continue to make me endeared to the characters.

Nine. Not a great musical, and Daniel Day-Lewis didn't work for me, but all of the women are amazing, especially Sophia Loren, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, and Fergie. A totally enjoyable couple of hours, even if it won't stick with me forever.

Other movies from the year that look great, but that I haven't seen yet are An Education, Crazy Heart, Young Victoria, A Single Man, The Road, Broken Embraces, and The Hurt Locker. Most overrated movies of the year: Up in the Air (Vera Fermiga was great and some scenes (the whole Miami section of the movie was great) couldn't make up for a movie that was smarmy and not as smart as it thought it was) and Public Enemy (Marion Cotillard was the only good thing about that...how could the director of such a great movie as Manhunter turn the story of Dillinger into such a vulgar and uninteresting thing...my mind was boggled that it was just a bunch of men running around delighting in killing people; it was disgusting).

The (Im)Perfect Word

Writers are always looking for the perfect word, the perfect sentence. Put a bunch of writers together for a little while and you’ll most likely hear one of them declare “I love that word” in response to something someone has uttered.

We are not normal (and don’t want to be); we actually discuss our favorite words. Mine is “gloaming”. A friend of mine prefers the word “Sabbath”. Another favors “diaphanous”. Writers are people who love words, plain and simple; that’s our craft, our job.

Of course it is the sound that draws us in first. How can a person not appreciate a word like “diaphanous” if they say it aloud? So yes, we pronounce these words audibly, savoring them like fine chocolates on our tongues. We roll them around in our mouths, feel them taking flight from our lips. Yet it is more than that. We even love the way words look. Take another perfect word for an example: Appalachia. Not only is it interesting to say (mostly because the way a person says it can tip you off to whether they are a native of the place or not—a true Central Appalachian says “App-uh-latch-uh” while non-natives or people from other parts of the mountain range usually say “App-uh-lay-chuh”) but it is also beautiful to see spelled out, and made even more beautiful because the shape of the word so perfectly captures what it is describing. Look at the steep mountainsides of those four As, the rolling hills atop those ps and the c and the h. Notice the straight-trunked trees of the l, the h, and the i, the perfectly-round dot of sun floating over the landscape (the dot on the i). The word looks like what it’s talking about. A word doesn’t get much more perfect than when it’s beautiful to say (whichever way you say it), interesting to look at, and exact in what it is explaining.

So, among a writer’s many, many responsibilities (illuminating an essential truth, entertaining and informing, preserving, telling a good story, capturing sense of place, etc.) there is that greatest responsibility: choosing the perfect words with which to tell your story and using these words to form perfect sentences that will lead to perfect paragraphs and scenes and eventually a perfect book. Of course there are very, very few perfect books, but as writers that is what we must strive for and I believe that some writers have achieved that (My Antonia by Willa Cather, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Home by Marilynne Robinson…I could name a few more). And it is definitely possible to create the perfect sentence and to choose the perfect word.

But what happens when the perfect word is one that you do not want to use?

This has happened to me a few times, but only in my latest book did it become particularly troubling to me. Thus, this missive.

In the past, it has only been the necessary, ugly words that have been bothersome: it, and, of, but, that, so…words that we absolutely must use, but don’t find particularly attractive. A few times I have been confronted with my own prudishness, too. I admit it: I have consciously tried to keep the f-bomb out of my novels, mostly because I believe that I shouldn’t write anything in my books that I wouldn’t say in front of my children, or my mother, or a total stranger.

I must go out on a limb here and confide that I do like the f-word, as words go. Sometimes it’s the absolute perfect word. But it’s also incredibly overused, to the point of having lost its power. Call me old-fashioned, but I think it’s a very vulgar word. It’s mostly that –ck at the end that makes it so simultaneously perfect and offensive. And while I might totally appreciate this word privately it’s not something I would ever say in front of just anyone; frankly I think it’s the height of tackiness to say this loudly in a public place, as so many people are want to do, or even quietly in front of someone I’ve just met. So, to make a long essay short, my point is that I’ve only used it in print once, and that was when I knew that I could not possibly be true to the character in the short story I was writing without using it. There was no getting past the fact that she would use that word. No way. The character was very drunk, very high on cocaine, she was very frustrated, and she insisted on saying that word in print. In other scenarios in my writing I had always suggested that the characters might be saying it off-screen or, more likely, I was dealing with characters that would have never uttered the word to begin with. So I had been able to very naturally avoid it while remaining true to my writing. But in this one story the woman had to say it. So I let her, and because I knew that it was absolutely right and true for that character, I wasn’t ashamed.

But now I have chosen a perfect word for a character of mine to utter, and I can’t seem to let go of the guilt. As I do whenever I can’t do anything else, whenever I am completely powerless and confused and don’t know what else to do, I have to write to try to make sense of the situation.

In my new novel, Eli the Good, which was published in September 2009, one of my characters, Edie, a tough, twelve year-old girl in 1976, addresses her 11 year-old male best friend, Eli, as a “retard” (the pronunciation is important (rë-tard) mainly because those two short syllables make it sound meaner). Eli has come out of his house early in the morning and is getting ready to jump on his bicycle when Edie, who is sitting in her adjoining back yard, hollers for him to come over. Eli, who is somewhat mesmerized by the beauty of the morning, pauses before responding, and stares at her. She asks him if he is coming or if he is going to just stand there and stare at her “like a retard.”

I really, really struggled with using that word. I went back and forth on it many times. I wanted Edie to address him some other way. I tried to get her to call him a dummy, or even a dumb-ass, or a dork. Not because these words mean the same thing as “retard” but because in her mind they do. But I knew Edie. I had lived with that character for years, in my head, and I knew that that is what she would call him. That’s just who she was. So after struggling with this one small little short word for months and months, I relented, let the character win, and I turned in the final manuscript with that word included.

I have regretted it ever since.

I know that people are going to write angry letters to me, accusing me of political correctness and self-censorship and such. But this is my struggle, and I believe it’s a struggle we should all have.

Words have power. Words mean something. Words live and breathe.

I regret it, however, because “retard” is one of the words I have absolutely forbidden my children to say. I also hate it when someone refers to something they consider bad or boring as being “gay” or when someone pronounces someone as being “trash.” I was raised in a trailer until I was almost nine years old, and nothing ever cut as deep as the time I overheard someone called “trailer trash.” Since their definition of trailer trash was anyone who lived or had lived in a trailer, then that was me, too. And my parents. And lots of people I know, respect, and love. Not trash. Human beings.

It is the carelessness with which these words are used that bothers me so profoundly. We must always think of the meaning and connotations of words before we spout them. Also, when someone uses a word like “retard” or “gay” or “trash” in this way, it changes the meaning of the word. It distorts the meaning into something cruel.

Take the word “retard”: its entire intention as a word—in Edie’s usage, and in the way most people use it nowadays, at least—is to insult, to negate, to imply superiority, to hurt.

That whole thing about sticks and stones breaking your bones but words never hurting you is wrong. I would argue that I’ve been far more hurt by words than by sticks and stones. And the main thing, of course, is that negative words usually lead to the sticks and stones. All wars are rooted in words to begin with, in arguments, in the careless dispensing of insults. I’d say it’s pretty rare that a fistfight is mute, or that a killing is preceded by silence. Yet words have the power to heal, too. Words make prayers and terms of endearment and declarations of love and peace.

As a writer, I realize the power of words. That’s part of my job. But it is also part of my job to listen to my characters, to know them so well that I know what they eat for breakfast every morning, that I know the contents of their purses and billfolds, that I know what words fit correctly in their mouths or not. Sometimes these characters do things I don’t want them to. In The Coal Tattoo, for example, I tried every way in the world to convince Anneth to not leave Matthew. I loved Matthew. But she didn’t. And they say things I don’t want them to.

Which brings me back to what Edie says in Eli the Good. The main reason it bothers me is because this book is being marketed as a young adult novel (which means it’s for everybody) and I certainly don’t want kids to think I’m condoning the use of that word. Usually I just take it for granted that readers know that the characters are the ones speaking; not me. But in this case, I can’t help thinking of some middle schooler thinking because a word is in print that makes it okay. It doesn’t. As much as I love words, I do not agree with all of them. I suppose it would be foolish of me to wish that some of them didn’t even exist, but secretly, I do wish that. Because then some sticks and stones might have been avoided.

Ultimately, however, a writer’s responsibility is to report the truth. Even in fiction. Especially in fiction. And as much as it pains me for that word to be in print, to know that that word is being used to damage and hurt people (and to stereotype an entire group of people), I still believe in words. All of them, even if I don’t agree with them all.

On Excuses, Excuses (and Sexton's Creek)

Well, I fell a little bit short of my original challenge to discover something new everyday posts because I didn't make it the whole month.  In fact, I only made just over half a month.  I won't list the reasons why here, but let's just say life intervened, as it sometimes does.  And here's a discovery I made (which I already knew, but had to be reinforced for me):  sometimes life must take the driver's seat, even over your writing.  The thing is, though, life doesn't know this, but no matter what is happening, the writing is still in high gear.  Because even though I wasn't able to write those discovery posts everyday, the real-life problems I was having that was keeping me from posting were, in fact, teaching me more and more discoveries every single day.  So I'm thankful for that.  And if I learned one thing during my little exercise in trying to discover something new everyday (and posting it online) it is...well, it's two things:  1.  You can discover something perfectly well without posting it online and 2.  the discovery is all that matters.  It's like that line in one of my favorite books of all time, Fair and Tender Ladies, by Lee Smith:  "It was the writing that signified," the narrator, Ivy Rowe says, after she burns a bundle of letters she has written over the past century.  Well, this time the discoveries signified.  

Now I know I can at least post a new blog every month, and before this exercise I couldn't even do that.  Thanks for listening.  

During this post I did want to share a little piece of writing of mine.  Here's a video of the song "Sexton's Creek," to which I wrote the lyrics and my boon companions Kate Larken and Jason Howard wrote the music.  It's my favorite song that I've written or co-written because, like a good short story, I think it works on lots of different levels. The video was filmed by another boon companion, Denton Loving, at the Highlander Research and Education Center's 77th Anniversary Celebration. It was such an honor to speak there, where people like Rosa Parks learned to do civil disobedience and people like Myles Horton and Don West helped to light the fire of revolution and pride in Appalachia. Oh, and if you've never been to Sexton's Creek, in Clay County, Kentucky, then you've missed a little foretaste of glory.  I hope you like it...

On Dogs (Discovery for 8.29.09)

Good dogs are everything that humans hope to be, but never have quite achieved yet.  

When I think back on all my good dogs I had when I was a boy, I can't help getting a little bit sad. There was Arky, a little obese weiner dog my aunt in Arkansas gave me.  He thought he was a big, ferocious dog, and would bare his teeth to anyone who threatened me.  He sat right beside me when I propped my back against a tree to read a summer afternoon away.  There was Fala, a white spitz I named after FDR and Eleanor's trusty dog.  Every day Fala trotted out to Hoskins' Grocery where my bus let me off. Everyone on the school bus crowded to one side so they could see him sitting there patiently awaiting my arrival.  When the bus screeched to a halt there he'd wag his tail--three thumps on the ground behind him--then jump up to walk home with me.  

Those were the two I had the longest, although there were others along the way.  I miss them every single one.  

And now I have other dogs, but my favorite of all is old Rufus, who is ten years old now, and showing his age in the way he's not running quite as fast anymore, in the slow way he arises in the mornings when I first step outside, in his wise brown eyes.  He's the best of dogs because he always knows when you need him, and when you do, he'll sit right there and not move a muscle until he knows that you're done with being still.  Then he will arise and even though he's old and tired he'll dance around a little to get you smiling.  And once he knows he has done his job he'll zoom back off into the woods to rush rabbits out of the underbrush or mess with a groundhog.  Sometimes he emerges from the woods completely covered in mud from rolling around in the shoals of God's Creek.  Or covered in burrs from an overgrown pasture he's travelled through.  Once he came back home with his butt full of buckshot.  But he always comes when I whistle for him.  

That's the main thing we can ask of those we depend on the most:  to simply be there when we call.  That's what Rufus always does.  That's what the really good dogs always do.  The thing is, dogs are so much more dependable that way.  They're who we want to be.  

On Opportunity to Start Anew (Discovery for 8/27/09)

Every morning the whole world gives us the opportunity to start our lives anew. 

That's what I kept thinking as I drove the winding roads of Eastern Kentucky yesterday as the land came

awake.  A thin mist breathed out over on the hills and hollers.  A white rind of moon in the struggling

shadows of first daylight.  The sky burned purple and gray on the horizon.  I passed through Big Hill, Morrill, Clover Bottom, Sand Gap, Gray Hawk, Mummie, Elias, Traveller's Rest, Levi, and other little communities.  In each of these, the houses along the road were coming awake, too.  Yellow rectangles of light in the windows.  An occasional square of blue where a television flickered the morning news.  

Best of all, the people stirred outside.  

A woman sweeping her porch, her mind on something far, far away.

Two women sitting on a bench outside the Little Angels Daycare Center, smoking and laughing. One of them threw her head back to cackle out; the other slapped her knee.

A man stretching beside his truck before he climbed into it to head off to work.

Children, sleepy-eyed, disgusted, waiting for the bus. 

A group of men standing around a truck at the quarry entrance, passing around a packet of powdered donuts.  Their shoulders were heavy with the prospect of their labor that lay ahead of them, their hands big and square-fingered.

Several good dogs:  a yellow one trotting down the shoulder of the road as if on a determined path; a white spitz marking his territory; a beagle yawning on the concrete porch steps of her home; a long-legged black dog coming out of the kudzu-covered woods from a long night of carousing. 

Along the way there were all kinds of little businesses and churches:  The Frostyette Dairy Stand, The Lord Jesus Christ Bapticostal Church of God, Mack's Used Cars, the Bobcat Diner.  

And along the way there were a million trees, blue in that space before full daylight.  And wildflowers, still not completely awake, standing tall, bright in their purpleness and whiteness and yellowness.  In all the dew-laden grasses there clicked the night bugs that didn't quite understand that day had arrived, their songs slowing, quieting.  

Silver Creek, the South Fork of the Kentucky River, Spruce Fork, Brushy Creek.  Water creeping along, and rushing along.  Clear and wild, slow and coffee-with-cream-colored. 

 

All of this, and so much more, stretching, awakening, opening eyes, hoping, hoping, hoping.

Every morning we get the chance to start our lives anew, and the world offers that to us like a prayer, every single day.  That's why it's a comforting thing to drive the winding roads of Eastern Kentucky on an August morning when the night has been cool but the day promises to be hot, because it's so easy to discover all of that.  

  

On Roadside Discoveries (Discoveries for 8/25/09 and 8.26.09)

1. 

A homeplace, left to be devoured by the ironweed.  Once, someone lived there.   A family, maybe.  They had lives and loves and sorrows and most of all, they had their own stories.  In the cool of the day they'd sit on the porch and tell big tales and flies buzzed in the kitchen and the children ran down to the creek to play and a woman with weary eyes broke beans on the porch, so used to this work that her hands didn't even think about what they were doing.  One of the children--the last one--left when he was eighteen and looked back at the little house and remembered all the good and the bad and everything in between.  He had no idea that he'd never be back there, that he'd go off and forget who he was.  He had no idea that someday nobody would remember any of them and the house would sink down and down and down until it had been completely overtaken by the wildflowers, the weeds.  He had no idea that the only thing that kept the roof from taking flight was the gathered mass of their stories, an entity which survived, a poltergeist, hiding in the corners, warmed by the heat of tin on an misty August morning.  

                                                                                

2.  The book of Habakkuk is part of the Old 

Testament and is only three chapters and

has three clear parts:   A discussion

between God and the prophet,

an oracle of woe, and a psalm.  

They call Habakkuk a minor prophet, but

Paul the Apostle admired his writing, and

used it, and spread the Word of it.  Some 

prophet in Irvine, Kentucky took it upon

him or herself (let's say it was a man, just for

the sake of brevity) to work hard on this sign.

I'd love to know what the builder thought while 

he worked, while he latched those black letters to the

board.  I'd like to know why he used a U instead

of YOU.  I'd like to know what happened to 

him that caused him to feel to strongly about

drinking.  Maybe he had a good, thick testimony

when he stood up in church and curled his calloused

fingers over the rounded part on the back of the ash-wood

pews.  Maybe one of the hands rose up into the air

as his voice grew in strength, telling how he used to be

an old drunk but then a stranger stopped and helped him

and made him see the Light and ever since then he had been

living that good old way and then the whole church might

have exploded in praise, the Sermon the Mount fans stopped 

from their waving momentarily while the people cried out

their approval.  The next day, I bet he went back to 

work on the sign and felt that his hands were being 

directed by God.  And for all we knew, they were.   

On Headaches (Discovery for 8/24/09)

An especially terrible headache is as big and endless and dark as the ocean, stretched tight across the globe, middled by black white-capping waves that chop at the horizon, a largeness and darkness like death.