More Independence

Because July 4th was on Tuesday this year, our family gathered and feasted
on Saturday. Most had to report for work on Monday and wished to rest at
home the following day.

I've had my own special days of Independence in the past, about which I may
write some day, but my July 4th celebration was contingent on burning the
shoulder-high pile of brush accumulated since spring, along with a big trash
can of waste paper from my office.

The county-wide burn ban in effect from May 1st until November 1st provides
exceptions for recreation or for cooking food, so I roasted a couple of hot dogs
and 2 foil-wrapped potatoes and Buckie and I circled the fire a few times, which
might pass for a sort of recreation. Then we waded in the creek to cool off. And
then we ate.

Independence Day is one of the few holidays I can support whole-heartedly.
Even so, I know it does not have the same meaning for all Americans.

I have a CD of Whitney Houston singing America the Beautiful over and over,
5 or 6 renderings of the same song, each slightly different. Quite a trip to play it.
And I like to play it on trips.

From sea to shining sea.

At one point Ms Houston stops singing and calls out: "America- America,
I love you!"

I saw African Americans buying charcoal and all the parts for a cookout on
Tuesday.Yet the Declaration did not mean Independence for their ancestors.

Thousands of slaves and freedmen fought with the British, for the British had
abolished slavery. (Thousands more fought with the Revolutionaries, mostly
Northern Blacks.) And thousands left on British ships for lands where men
could not be bought and sold like cattle. But many were simply abandoned,
left to face the masters they had deserted, when the defeated British pulled out.
And many died from smallpox.

There had been an epidemic, devastating to the Revolutionary Army, but less so
to the British, for more of them had acquired immunity as children. The slaves,
isolated on plantations, were especially susceptible to the disease. Most of those
infected were simply abandoned by the British, or driven into the woods to die.
But some were used in an early example of Biological Warfare: "On July 13,
1781, [British] General Alexander Leslie outlined his plan in a letter to Cornwallis.
'Above 700 Negroes are come down the river in the Small Pox.' he wrote.
'I shall distribute them about the Rebell Plantations'." (Pox Americana, the Great
Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, by Elizabeth A. Fenn, New York 2001, p.132
see also p.130)
This seems patterned after the even earlier genocidal plan to give Native
Americans blankets from the deathbeds of smallpox victims.

And purple mountains majesty....

I may not love our history of injustices, but I do love this land. I love the rolling
fields and the deep valleys and even the cities. I love the ridges and hills and
mountains here in North Georgia. My heart lifts up when driving back from the
relatively flat Atlanta area into a higher and higher elevation where the road
begins to wind between wooded hills.
I love this little bit right here beside Cane Creek.

When we first began to march against the war in Vietnam, there were people
on the sidewalks calling out: "Go back to Russia!"

With Paul Robeson I wanted to say: I am an American. I was born here
and here I shall stay.

The biographical book by Robeson, the great African American singer, actor,
former football star, was entitled "Here I Stand.". And so he did. And so shall I.

Independence Day

Last year July 4th fell on Monday, so when a British customer emailed during
the weekend, urging that the book she was ordering be gotten off first thing
Monday by global priority mail, I wrote her that on Monday the post offices
would be closed and we Americans would gather around charcoal fires in our
yearly ritual of "celebrating our victory over you folks".

"Oh," she wrote, I'd forgotten about your Independence Day," and ended her
message: "But we still love you!"

This year the 4th was on Tuesday. President Bush spoke at Fort Bragg, NC,
home of the 82nd Airborne Division and the XVIII Airborne Corps,
America's only airborne corps and division. "I'm not going to allow the
sacrifice of 2,527 troops who have died in Iraq to be in vain" by pulling out
before the job is done, he said.

According to news reports it was the first time he spoke the actual numbers of
those who have been killed in this futile war. The row upon row of flag-draped
coffins have always been concealed from view. No trumpeting about Gold Star
Mothers.

I think of the young person led to the altar long ago as sacrifice to the tribal god.
If hunger followed, turbulent weather, game scarce, battles lost, did the tribal
members wonder if their offerings were not adequate or not sufficiently
attractive? Did they select two victims for the next sacrifice?

Bush did not speak the numbers of the 10 to 12 thousand wounded, many
maimed for life. He never has.

Does he not believe that their sufferings can be made not in vain by keeping
our troops in Iraq until there are 10 to 12 thousand more mangled bodies
shedding blood upon that ground.

Where have all the flowers gone....

The idea of propitiating the gods does not remain in the distant past. A
chaplain returned from serving in Iraq, in an interview with Terry Gross on
the National Public Radio's Fresh Air program broadcast on July 6th, said he
had counseled a soldier who believed that God was angry with him because he
had not felt remorse over killing an Iraqi and therefore had "visited" his mother
with cancer.

Couple years ago I was in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in the largest anti-war
rally ever held in that city. We, too, wanted to speak to the troops at Fort Bragg,
but that was as close as we could get. We would have told them that we support
them, too. We would support them by not sending them to be wounded and die
in a war that is enriching Halliburton and other big corporations.

Last year I was in D.C. with more than 100,000 marching in the biggest
anti-war action since the end of the Vietnam War. The Bush administration
were not swayed. Polls show that the majority of Americans do not support the
war. Their elected leaders turn a deaf ear, and Bush prattles on about continuing
the bloodshed so that the blood already shed will not have been shed in vain.

I think of the song Pete Seeger wrote and sang during the Vietnam War:

"We're knee deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool says to push on."

Pets for a City Backyard

These photos were taken by my daughter four years ago in the Birmingham,
Alabama, back yard of her friends who own these gentle pets.
















I was trying to draw its face.

















It was easier to take another photo.
That's a bit of dried grass hanging from the side of its mouth.
They go under the house at night and hibernate there during
the cold months.

World's Longest Yard Sale

From Covington, Kentucky, to Gadsden, Alabama, it's called the
World's Longest Yard Sale. Also known as the Highway 127 Corridor sale,
it's usually held the first weekend in August. This year it was August 3- 6.

And every year I talk about taking some time off and traveling as much of the
450 mile, four-state route as I could cover in 4 days. I never did. And this
year I didn't even talk about it. Not in this heat wave.And not with these gas
prices. I just filled my cooler with bottles of water and set out on my usual
daily forays.

On the first day, Thursday, I sped past the parking lots and yards filled with
vendors and the tables set out in front of stores and headed for a place on
Lookout Mountain where I knew there would be books for sale. There I spent
about three hours. There were boxes and boxes of books, some set out
in the blazing sun. It's usually cooler on the mountain, but not a whole lot.
There is usually a breeze, but the sun feels just as hot at that elevation as it
does in the valley.

The books were cheap, but I must have looked poor in my straw hat, for
one of the women in charge came over to me as I sat on the sidewalk,
taking all the books out of one box and slowly putting them back in.
Lowering her voice so the others couldn't hear, she said: "Did you have a
limit to what you wanted to spend? We've added up the books you've set
aside and they come to almost fifty dollars!"

I know I was sweaty and grubby. Or maybe she had heard that old people
sometimes get confused and act erratically.

After I left that sale, I stopped at Mountain Mamas, a complex of little stone
buildings that many years ago were tourist cabins. Now they are filled with
pottery and craft items made by women and jellies and preserves made by
one of the owners. They offer rental spaces out front for the annual yard sale.

I found there a new aluminum squeegee thing for washing the car that had a
longer than usual handle for $1.50. I was standing at a table in the sun which
reminded me my straw hat was missing. I'd left it at the book sale. That hat
was a favorite, so I drove all the way back to get it. And bought another
book. And decided I'd had enough and headed for home, stopping only
to replace the $25 worth of gas I'd used and to buy a gallon of milk.
The sign on the bank read 100 degrees as I passed by at 7 p.m.
I don't know how hot it was in the afternoon.

Buckie always forgives me for leaving him. He's just glad that I have
come home.

It was 77 inside and felt good, but I turned on the ceiling fan because
Buckie likes to lie under it. I've never had air conditioning in this building,
and have never wanted any except for about two weeks in August,
but this year we were already having August weather early in July. Our cold
weather lasted longer than usual this year. I had to keep the heater on much of
the time through early June. And now, with this heat wave that is killing old
folks like me in California, I'm beginning to think seriously about the global
warming theories.

When I went back out on the front porch, I saw a large snake curled in the
shallow water at the far bank. I believed it was a watersnake, but the water
silvered it so I couldn't tell. I tried to photograph it from several positions along
the bank near the house. Too much light reflecting from the water.Then,
because it still lay unmoving, I decided to try and get closer. I put Buckie in the
van so he wouldn't follow me into the creek. And, because this was atypical
behavior for a watersnake, I took along my pistol.

When I got within about five feet of it and was ready to snap a picture, it
glided away. Wish I had snapped the picture sooner. I had gotten close
enough to know it was indeed a watersnake, the dark, heavy-bodied kind
that so many mistake for the poisonous water moccasin or cotton mouth.
This is why so many watersnakes are needlessly killed.

Slaughter of the innocents.

For the next three days I braved the heat and humidity and returned to the
yard sale vendors on the mountain. I got a couple more books, lots of
clothes, a dark pot that I need for making a solar cooker, and a strange
and inaccurate thermometer with little eliptical glass globes that float up and
down. So what if it doesn't tell me the exact temperature, I still like to look
at it. I got it and an ironing board and a slide viewer which also accepts film
strips- exactly what I needed!- on a return trip to Mountain Mamas.

The Tri-County Rescue Service at the Georgia-Alabama state line had
three funeral home tents hung full of clothes, many of them brand new
and most of them really good. They were selling at $1.00 for a plastic
grocery bag full, and, by careful rolling, a lot of clothes could be packed
into one of those little bags. I had to stop there every day because
shoppers were welcome to use the clean john in the firehall. There was
a fireman's boot outside the door for donations.
On the last two days there were signs under the clothing tents urging
people to "Take as many as you can haul off- all Free".
When I went by for my john stop late Sunday afternoon, the tents still
hung full of clothes.

On Friday I had dropped off Buckie for his second shaving of the summer
before heading for the mountain, and at 3 p.m. when I had picked him up
and was driving home, the bank sign read 104 degrees. I'm glad the yard
sale isn't running for two weekends as it did last year.

Buckie after his second and last shaving of the summer


Now I have a van full of books and clothes and not enough closet space
in this building. All my clothes except what I had packed for the trip
and the things I'd bought while away burned with the house. (I most
fortunately had not unloaded the van.) So I had had enough casual clothes,
but not much for dress. Now I do.

And the books- well, I will always find a place for books.

One of the best parts of the weekend was when it rained on Saturday
night. I went out at 11 p.m. with a bucket of suds and the new squeegee
I'd bought and washed the van by the light of the porch light.The blessed
rain, gentle but steady, washed the suds from my van and the sweaty
weariness from me.