Fire in the Hills

3-8-09
A fold in the Great Smoky Mountains
HWY 23/441

I’ve pulled the car over to the side of the road again. Back to its adorable un-dented self, by the way, thanks to a week’s work on the part of the guys @ Gerber’s on Dekalb Industrial in Decatur, GA.

Observing again the more conservative (not to mention, self preserving) practice of stopping the car in order to take a photo, I’m here on the edge of a country-road-turned-highway somewhere just over the Georgia line into North Carolina. There’s a town nearby named Franklin and that explains the homes tucked between and up the sides of this particular rising and falling of the Blue Ridge.

Right now as I write, one of these hills is engulfed in smoke. The tall billow is deceptively beautiful in its fullness of white. Accents of gray and an uninterrupted backdrop of blue only emphasize the cloud’s magnificence. I’ve been watching it for almost half an hour. I stopped when I saw flames.

Now there are fire trucks coming from all directions – small, local, volunteer. This work will take a while.

The drought stretching across Georgia, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee has been underway for three years, now. As a result these timbered hills have become quite temperamentally combustible.

Global warming, some say. Then it snowed a week ago, closing schools for two days. Climate change? Usual 100-year fluctuations? The best science says yes to the last two with the evidence of extremes trumping the wisdom of historic records when it comes to the preventive reasoning held in words like sustainability, responsible use, green.

Regardless of explanation, regardless of language – a hill is on fire. Homes are threatened. The best efforts of firefighters for miles around are converging.

This is what we do. When crises strike the urgency and salience of positioned ideologies fades. Our attention falls in sync with action, and whatever wisdom we’ve collected over time is brought to bear in our responsiveness.

I’m not sure our country is in a collective crisis on the magnitude of a burning hill, but we may be.

Over the past few days to get impressions on our shared quandary, I’ve spoken with Georgians across wide spectra of experience and worldview.

---Two businessmen in their mid-30’s – Black men raised urban and heavily socialized by the demanding forces of the streets who somehow chose a road out. “The attitude of self-confidence and positive thinking,” they say. “Attitude is contagious. Is yours worth catching?” These men advocate knowing one’s self very well. They also urge learning with and from people we think of as “other.” In their work and lives they are all about success; theirs and everyone else’s.

---The White mayor of a small suburban town – non-partisan in his leadership position, more conservative in his politics – beloved of his community in large part because of his capacity for keeping citizens in dialogue toward addressing the interests and concerns of the community.

---Two auto-body shop employees – White men – One a salesman, one a collision repair specialist. Both men are concerned with the application of incomprehensible sums to saving banks, and more specifically, to the bankers who they’ve understood as having primary responsibility for our economic crisis. Both men also speak of the intelligence of working people – especially when it comes to setting priority for spending when money is tight. “It’s the way we live. We have skills and sensibilities that can help solve this mess. What if listening to America really included listening to us?”

---A brilliant and respected White businesswoman in one of Atlanta’s bedroom communities who speaks with first-hand knowledge and clear conviction about the absolute dependence of social wellbeing on the vital freedom in our country for initiating and sustaining viable businesses. She too emphasizes dialogue for “reducing strife” globally and between people of varied ideological positions in the U.S. She describes her support for Sarah Palin’s candidacy as both symbolically and politically instrumental for advancing the defense of the free market.

---A 17-year-old White woman, senior in a mid-city high school spoke of sustainability in economic, environmental, health and international policies and practices. Really. She offered clarity and sophistication in addressing these ideas without prompting, without rehearsal. She was raised by parents with very progressive ideas and joins them in their values and perspectives. At the same time, there were frequent instances – way more than chance – of her using words and expressing ideas that echoed exactly the sentiments expressed by the conservative businesswoman I’d spoken with just earlier. “Progress is important, but change for change’s sake is a bad idea. Change is only good when it results in stronger, healthier, happier individuals, families and communities.”

This is the way it goes. Maybe it’s because of the circumstantial fires raging across the topography of our country. In the EX:CHANGE dialogue, again and again, the words of the Americans I’m talking with carry far more overlap than dissent.

Over time, we’ll see if and how this shows up in our collected actions – in the public policies that follow on crises to articulate, guide, sustain positive American Change.

The Heart of Dixie

2-27-2009
Town Square
Decatur, GA

Here I am in the heart of Dixie. This is where my mother was born, as was her mother, and hers.

I know the South. It helped raise me. All my young life we navigated the summer highways between TX and GA to visit relatives. The journey became second nature. Over time it went from a three day trip in the late 60’s to a one day trip when the interstate was finally finished through Birmingham – when I hit college and became newly prone to 13 hour road trips.

Since leaving Arkansas on this my latest driving adventure, I’m finding a new vibe in the conversations I’m having on Change. Constant is the essential interest people from all backgrounds are showing in the wellbeing of all Americans, our families, communities and the planet; but as I drive farther into the South there is a closer presence of the tension, the fundamental mistrust that has pervaded our nation in recent decades.

A white man in Jackson, MS spoke specifically of the noise of dueling ideologies – people on both sides bound and determined not to give an inch – to the point of sacrificing the wellbeing of the people of the country just to save their rigid positions and inflated pride. This frustration has been mentioned by Americans down the West coast and across the Southwest and Texas.

The new presence in discussions in Mississippi, Alabama and now in Georgia is a wariness – an expectation that one will be summarily dismissed and/or harshly criticized for stating her or his beliefs. Now that I think of it, there were shades of this tension already in Texas. A black man in rural Texas said this. “The primary change I’m looking for is to be able to trust my President. Right alongside that, I want to be able to disagree with my President of other elected officials without having my patriotism called into question.”

Maybe what I’m sensing rises out of exaggerated dialogue and emotion across the red/blue line. Maybe it carries the echoes of generational trauma from that long ago Civil War. Maybe it is evidence the suspension of “political correctness” – something that’s never been comfortable to conservative Southerners who see such posturing as a thin varnish that can render dangerously inauthentic and thus untrustworthy, the public statements of people in the rest of the country.

Whatever it is, this tension reflects quite accurately what happens in congress when rigid party lines predetermine votes and hold us so often socially paralyzed.

I can’t tell if people in the deep South aren’t talking with one another because of hatred or fear or both. I do know, however, that the stories we tell about one another when we are not talking are usually wrong. They’re wrong in their absolute and rigid adherence on both sides to versions of “the other” as being of ill will and bad heart – as being intractably absolute and rigid.

I’ll be here for a bit. I’ll try to listen across this tension to see if there are points of dialogue.

It sounds excruciatingly odd to many of my friends from other parts of our country, but I actually appreciate the opportunity this overt division provides. We are and have been a divided country. We like to gloss it over. The division embarrasses us. But the truth is, our vote this Presidential election was split 45.7% - 52.9%.

Many of the people I’ve spoken with who did not support Obama’s election have indicated sincere hope for his success. That magnanimity is bit less in evidence so far here in the deepest South. The fact of that tension may provide an opportunity. Listening across the strong feelings and words here in the South may give all of us a chance to learn in spite of our embarrassment from our most dearly held and explosive differences.