I have trouble remembering my life in the segregated 1950s and 60s.  People who are half my age and less must think of those times as just so many cowboy and Indian stories.

I saw movies at the Indian Chief Movie Theater next to the courthouse in Saluda.  Colored people or niggers as they were routinely called could only sit in the small balcony in hard seats.  I sometimes ate in Frank Hite’s cafe with its twin doors; the right hand side was for colored people.  None of my classmates from the class of 1967 were African-American.  I lived in a racially divided world.

Racial division exploded with the big city riots of the mid-1960s.  Segregationists like Senator Strom Thurmond championed the benefits of separate but equal.  The modern racist Republican party was born to thwart the work of LBJ and MLK.

The leading segregationist of the era was Alabama’s Governor George Wallace.  He is back in the form of President Trump.

I broke out of my childhood bubble at about twelve and adopted the cause of MLK as mine.  My world view was formed in the fervent belief that all humans are equal and much more alike than different.

For me reliving the re-popularization of racial division is painful.  The new segregationists are feeding the beast that led to the Civil War and pulled our country apart in my youth.  Trump is their momentary triumph.

His revival of racism will continue to  wake me up at night and darken my life but it will fade.  Racism and segregation is a walk backwards and young people will not see the attractiveness of the modern Republican’s revival.  They will walk forward.

Trump’s legacy will be the giant tear in the fabric of our country that will take the death of his–my–generation to repair.   Racism could re-emerge but the possibly of its thriving in the twenty-first century as a popular political expression in the United States is likely impossible.

My hope is that as we come to repairing the big rip created by President Trump’s election  a more unified country will emerge.

I usually keep one or more plastic grocery bags in my pocket.  On my daily walk around the neighborhood, I pick up trash.

I got started in a big way more than ten years ago when I would use big garbage bags to collect trash around my neighborhood every few months.  I would then circle back in my pick-up to take it to the recycling center. In the last few years I have started picking up trash each time I walk.

I think I first began this habit in the 1970s when my son was a child.  I would pick up trash but concentrate on aluminum cans.  I needed money to supplement my teacher’s wage and we had fun being outside.  He would trail along on a bicycle.

Now I pick up trash out of habit.  I have formed a kind of need or compulsion to do so.  At times I have photographed outlandish juxtapositions of items.  I once found a hundred dollar bill.  I have picked up cartoons of bullets and various electronic devices.  Maybe six or eight times, I emailed photos of my trash finds in an attempt to amuse or astound people.

Motorists do not understand the volume of trash along our roads.  What you see at road speed is just a tiny fraction of trash.

My far neighbor on Ragin Lane is in a wheel chair.  Once he and his wife stopped to thank me.  No once else has.

Yet I do what I do because it satisfies me to see a clean shoulder.  My dog Sun accompanies me on most walks, and we sometimes have short walks when we do not pick up anything.

Today I read letter in The Charlotte Observer about David Bradley.  He is moving from Charlotte to Brevard; the letter writer thanked him for picking up trash in his neighborhood.  He keeps a blog entitled pickupyourpath.com that details his walking work.

He plans to transfer that work to Brevard.  I checked his blog and emailed him to say he had a twin of sorts in Rock Hill.  I like knowing that I am not the only crazy old guy doing what I do.

My friend Barry Neal does what I do on his road along Lake Wylie.  Maybe there are more picker-uppers than we know.

January 12, 2018

I remember being a passenger in a car full of teachers back in the 1970s.  We had been to a meeting in Columbia, SC, as part of the South Carolina Education Association.  Six of us shoulder to shoulder in someone’s sedan.

“What would you wish for if you had one wish?” posed our driver, a lady named Pat from Fort Mill.  I remember what I said. “A Corvette.”  Conversation flowed and time flew.

I only recall one other answer. “Money to buy all the groceries I want in the supermarket” or something close to that.  I was struck by that humble longing and felt a little ashamed of what I had offered up and said.

Today’s wishes:

Banish Nita’s pain.

Have the magic ability to speak other languages and place myself in another country for a few weeks with my language ability.  I would love to drop into China and see into the rise of the new leading country of the world from the perspective of a native speaker.

 

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

 

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

 

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

 

–Wallace Stevens

 

I object to how it haunts my mind all these years later.  I do not want to always see jars.  Now I will put the book it is in up and hope for relief now that I have written Wallace Stevens words down myself.  (December 6, 2017)

Yesterday, November 12, 2017, I attended a memorial service for Peggy Fern at Green’s Sanctuary on Ebenezer Avenue.  We worked together teaching at Northwestern High School. She was a kind of a queen as observed by her eulogizers.  To my mind she was a bit haughty and somewhat imperious.  I admired her professionalism, her dedication to her husband John who suffered from ALS, and her love of travel.  I saw her as proud but vulnerable, though definitely not one to invite sympathy.  She was outwardly very confident and secure in who she was.

That loops me back to this collection of my thinking.  It is who I am or was, should anyone care to know as per my statement “Why I Am Writing danielforrest.org.”  I will be found in these words in this blog, not in an auditorium such as Green’s.

Briefly former teachers formed a kind of quick-to-dissolve community at Green’s.  We shared admiration for our colleague and news about ourselves as we walked out of the service in small clusters.  I hankered for a way to further our exchange of news.

I am the news: not the breaking news rather the continuing on-going analytical news of the times that binds us together.  I like knowing what is going on and trying to understand current events.  Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Russian interference in our last election and the rapid warming of the planet are stories I come to again and again to puzzle over.  They represent what I think about during my time on Earth.

The news of our time is who we are as a people.  A week ago another mass murder occurred and there was just another ho hum.  I wrote my representatives in Washington and a letter to The Charlotte Observer to give some release to my deep anger at the idea that military assault weapons should be available for civilians.  The national nonresponse to yet another mass murder is news. It is who we are as a nation.

The news is a reflection of me; therefore I am out sorts in a weekly news cycle that features President Trump saying he believes President Putin is sincere in not interfering in our last election, mass murder becoming ordinary, climate change continuing to be ignored, and an old English teacher friend dying. .

If I could talk to you, I would not seek to bend your opinion my way on an issue by issue basis, but I would I like to converse about what is happening because what is happening–the news–is who we are as a people.  It is a journey and a chance to discover the world.  Why is talking about it so difficult?  Why am I thought odd for taking such a keen interest in it?  Why is it ignored or disbelieved and contorted by the likes of Fox and Breitbart?

Now you have a better idea of who I was and who you are because of the news.  We are news because news is communal.

Sheryl Tharpe’s eulogy included a report of Peggy’s love of television.  Sheryl and Peggy liked watching Poldark.  I liked hearing that because it bound me to the two of them.  By the way, I do not like that PBS series but Nita does.  My connection to that broadcast is small news but a way of understanding who Peggy was.  I end with that news that somehow soothes me a bit.

 

 

Today a jury is being convened in Denver to make a decision about whether Taylor Swift was inappropriately touched on her butt a few years ago.  President Donald Trump is hold up at one of his golf resorts sending out nasty Tweets about a Missouri Senator Roy Blount who has joined a bi-partisan effort to make sure the Special Prosecutor for the Russian investigation, Robert Mueller, is not fired for trying to produce a factual record of Trump’s association with Russia.

Then there is James Gorman, science reporter for The New York Times, and Lauren Esposito.  She is a scorpion expert from California whom Gorman interviewed at length for a written story via a twenty-five minute video that featured her showing three scorpions and sharing her research from the last ten years into a creature who preceded the dinosaurs on planet Earth.

Straight up reporting.  Arachnology  Fascinating.  The essence of The New York Times.

My first heroes were mainly Yankee players like Mickey Mantle and NBA stars like Bill Russell.  My first legitimate hero was Martin Luther King.  I came to him at the transition from boyhood into manhood just as has he was leading the most profound change in American life in the twentieth century.  He remains a pivotal figure in my life.

In my less emotional and more cynical years I still find enough wetness in my soul to keep the moist youthful dewy idea of hero alive.  About two weeks ago I watched Judy Woodruff’s extended interview of Warren Buffett on The Newshour.  A couple of days ago I finished my latest book, Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet by Carl Pope and Michael Bloomberg.

Buffett, Pope, and Bloomberg are heroes of mine.  What makes Buffett larger than ordinary to me is his ordinariness.  The interview was conducted in the world’s largest furniture store.  Buffett admired the Belarus immigrant lady who founded it and backed the  Nebraska store in the middle of Nebraska because he liked her philosophy: tell the truth and sell cheap.  Rose Blumkin’s original store sits on 70 acres of land and occupies  420,000 square feet.  The place has a real plain Buffett ambiance.

Were you to look up the interview(s), you would not be impressed by Buffett’s squeaky voice, appearance, and clothes sitting in a warehouse story in the middle of a mainly empty state.  You would likely come to be charmed by how very ordinary one of the richest men in the world is.  He still lives in the same modest house as he has for half a century.  He answers questions directly, avoids sharp criticisms, fails to preach, and speaks directly from his heart without deception.  His unaffected ordinariness and belief in fairness for all is what draws me to him.

Michael Bloomberg is among the planet’s richest billionaires himself, but his passion is the environment.  Cities are inherently superior places environmentally because of the their density.  Bloomberg harvests that idea through smart buildings, transportation systems and public policy initiatives.  He gives his money and expertise to city planners across the world who wish to emulate NYC’s reputation for saving the planet while improving life for its citizens.

Carl Pope, like many people’s heroes, represents an alternate self or version of me, a person close to my age I might have become if I had joined the Peace Corps and committed myself to the Sierra Club.  His fingerprints are all over big issues from saving the Grand Canyon to the shift away from coal as a primary energy source.  He led the organization that helped the environment more than any other.  The chapters of Climate of Hope alternate between the two but the tone of each man is the same.  Both project passion and idealism that is bound up in pragmatism.

I still have heroes.

 

 

Muslims follow the tradition of visiting the Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Mohammed and site of the revelation of the Quran, once in their lives.  It is a duty filled with spiritual meaning.  On Saturday, May 6, 2017, I went on my third Hajj, a site by the reservoir on Bonham Road.

Sixty-nine of us graduated from the Saluda High School Class of 1967.  Over forty showed up.  Nine are deceased, including my best friend Nathan Powell.  Some like my old buddy Johnny Wheeler could not attend.  Multiple sclerosis prevented him, big strong Johnny, excellent ball player, owner of the 1966 Chevy SS from attending.  Elliot Dominick, perhaps the wittiest and most self-aware of us all, was long dead having paid Nita and I visit out of the blue years ago.  I still see him standing on the porch of my first home in the Lakewood subdivision of Rock Hill about six years after our parting.

The visiting ceremony known as a class reunion has some of the trappings of the holy Islamic hajj.  The site is multiple and, as I am sure in the case of travelers to Mecca, not just a place and a date but an interaction with a collection of humanity.  To look into the eyes of someone, say Bonnie Boland, whom I had not seen in fifty years, and listen and talk is spiritual.  I saw her present form, the retired special education teacher, but simultaneously I saw her past presence, the girl who inhabited a house on the street behind mine.  Her father’s oil business came to mind along with vague thoughts of her mother and brother.  The carport on the left side of her house and my bicycle circling the pavement in front because it was wider than the rest and smooth and overhung with shade trees and far enough from my street to be somewhere else.

In the spring of 1967 my Wofford roommate was picked out and I had made preliminary plans for orientation for my pending life with Smith Holmes.  I backtracked on that plan to marry Jeanita May Pow on August 4 but Smith did not go away.  For the first or second time in fifty years I stared across at his visage.

His wispy flattop has given way to a modern cut it all off approach.  No wrinkles.  The young man was still very evident in the old man who was to be my closest associate post-high school.  Shaking hands with his wife, the study habits demanded words.  “I know I am going to fail.  I studied but enough.”  Those and other nearly exact fifty-year-old words of his jumped from my mouth as I made conversation with his wife.  Claiming to be underprepared, Smith was always prepared.  He was a diligent serious student.  I can almost see him taking a last look at his book and putting his extensive notes away at the last moment to nervously begin a test.  She smiles at me and says something to let me know that she, too, knows his careful ways well.

I would like to track each one of them down so that I could have a conversation that had a chance to go somewhere: a cup of coffee or a beer and words that flow back and to without a script in mind.  I am at the stage of my life when I would rather hear what each of them has to say rather than give a rundown of my life or share my perspective.  I would like capture some of who I was in the interchange by seeing who they have become.

 

Stay curious.  Why exactly did your car fail to start?  How much do know about anything?  Who made the clothes you are wearing?  If you are not curious, you are not really alive.  Curiosity engenders enthusiasm for living and makes each day more fun.The older I get, the more I know, the more I know how little I really know.

Be an active citizen.  You can vote.  Your female ancestors could not.  Your dark-skinned friends could not even have used the same public bathrooms you do when I was young.  Who changed that?  Why do the cars you ride in have shoulder harnesses?  Does your drinking water have harmful chemicals in it?  Why are U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan ready to die for you?  Who controls that?  A person who does not vote endangers life for all of us.  Government is the “we the people” of the Declaration of Independence.  It is our collective whole and more precious than any single commercial activity.   Citizen participation in our democracy gives us a chance to express a humanitarian good that benefits mankind.

Work hard. Working earns you money but more than anything it allows you to become a full person.  When you are working, you are part of something bigger than you are.  You are expressing who are by the way you work.  Every worker is important and deserves respect.  All work, especially blue collar work, should be dignified.

Engage your fellow your human beings in a positive way.  Push the up button on the personal relationship elevator.  How you act affects others.  You have an obligation to do no harm in contact with others.  Every small human contact is a chance to help someone even if all you do is act pleasant.

Realize your lucky circumstances.  Americans are a small fraction of all the people in the world.  We are lucky citizens in a country that was formed in a favorable geographical region in the Age of Reason.  By virtue of being born in this country we have natural advantages that few other people in the world have.

Be a good steward of the planet.  What right do you have to buy something and discard it in a landfill?  Why should your house be cool or warm if the energy demanded for your comfort damages the environment?  What do you recycle?  How efficient is your transportation?  We all need to breathe air.  Earth has just one atmosphere.

Seek common ground.  Conversation is an art and within the art you have an obligation to give the person you are speaking to a way to talk back.  Listen more than you talk.   In any controversial area look for some middle ground.

Change your mind.  Nothing and no one is constant.  Keep Emerson in mind: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds adored by philosophers and divines.”

Be comfortable with who you are.  Study the world and apply what you learn to yourself.  After you come to know who you are, be yourself.  If you are odd or out of step by nature in one way or another, live with the rhythm that you find within yourself over time.

Know history.  It is a tool that allows us to live better.  We all stand on the shoulders of others.  How did you get to be where you are now in your time?  What social actions, events, and inventions created the society you live in?

 

 

 

 

 

After five p.m. on a Saturday is not the best time to float a kayak at River Walk Park.  The Pump House Restaurant near the launch ramp was beyond packed because it was prom night.  The traffic on both the I-77 and U.S. 21 bridges was disturbing.  Somewhere in the background a voice from microphone at a nearby event made the irritating breathy sound I associate with certain ministers on local cable television.  I was exactly in the middle of the Catawba River that runs through the fastest growing county (2016) in the United States.

I gave up on casting around the big rocks near the launch ramp and headed a half mile down river toward Spratt Island and swung left into the flooded channel on the Fort Mill side of the river.  I found some noise relief and the privacy that comes from a canopy that encloses the waterway.

Just around the second bend I took my eye off the current and traced the flashing bright white of the bald eagle that took off aloft hard enough to rock the limb it was perched on just before I saw it.

Slightly right and then mostly up in it circled above the giant steel power transmission towers looking back toward the spot it had left.  I stared at to for awhile and left it perched again on one of the power lines to find my way into a more overgrown smaller branch of the Catawba River.

Ever seen an old photo of a well-dressed man from the 1950s wearing two-toned dress shoes?  The white tail feathers and white head bring that unexpected two at once experience to mind.  Nothing neutral there.  It is meant to stick out.

(April 23, 2017)