Blue Highways: Wellesley, Massachusetts

Unfolding the Map

As we leave the madness of Boston, we find walls in Wellesley.  Why do we need fences, walls and barriers?  It is the subject for a nice reflection on my part, as William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) heads southwest again through Massachusetts.  Linger here and reflect with me, or hang out with the accomplished women of Wellesley College.  Here is Wellesley on the map.

Book Quote

"...I found Massachusetts 16, a quiet road out of Wellesley, that ran down through stands of maple, birch, and pine, down along brooks, across fens, down miles of stone walls covered with lichens.

"Many New England stone fences built between 1700 and 1875 were laid by gangs of workers who piled stone at the rate of so much a rod.  Edwin Way Teale says that in the latter years of the past century, before economic and social developments began obliterating some of the walls, there were a hundred thousand miles of stone fences in New England.  Even today, for many of them, the only change has been the size of the lichens, those delicate rock eating algae that can live nine hundred years."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 4

Downtown Wellesley, with the Boston Marathon passing through. Photo by "redjar" and hosted at Nabewise. Click on photo to go to host page.

Wellesley, Massachusetts

One of my favorite cartoon strips in the 80s and 90s was The Far Side by Gary Larson, and one of my favorite cartoons in that strip showed a man pointing out the secrets of nature to his son.  "And now, Randy," the father says, "by use of song, the male sparrow will stake out his territory...an instinct common in the lower animals."  The pair are standing in their back yard, looking a sparrow in a tree in a neighboring yard separated by fences.

What is in a fence or a wall?  A lot, I think.  I have been pondering this question recently as I have watched our (as in society) collective efforts to individually and in groups define our territory and establish and maintain boundaries.  While I understand this need and I know that reasonable boundaries are not only good but healthy, I find myself increasingly troubled.

I grew up in a world of fences.  My parents' property was fenced off from the neighbors and, while my father was alive, was well maintained.  There was a sense that this was OUR property, as opposed to our neighbors.   Yet there weren't many prohibitions.  We often walked through our neighbor's property and down their road as a shortcut to my grandmother's house. People walked through ours too on the way to someplace or another.

Yet, despite fences, my father was notoriously dismissive of others boundaries and fences.  He was a poacher, and would often go under or around a fence that was meant to keep him from hunting deer on other's land.  He was never caught, but he had a close scrape or two.  However, that was his modus operandi.  His personal fences were meant to keep people out but he was very good at crossing knocking down others' fences and disregarding their boundaries.  That's part of the reason why, at age 48, I am still in therapy.

As I get older, this conundrum of fences, barriers, walls, boundaries and borders becomes more fascinating and more troubling to me, especially the clash between our desire to mark off what's "ours" and provide us with privacy and protection and the insistence upon personal freedom regardless of whether it affects others or not.  We extol the virtues of the United States as if it still is a land where anything is possible, where free and open space is a resource to be exploited, and where anyone can do whatever they want.  Yet, we wall, fence, make boundaries and borders, and put up signs warning people off with the promise of deadly force if they don't comply.  I wonder if, in a land where once promise and reality were almost equal and where now promise and reality have a wide gulf between them, the freedom that we extol needs to be tempered or reimagined.

A few examples.  I grew up in the era of the Berlin Wall, a large barrier meant to not only keep the West out of Soviet-controlled East Germany, but even more so to keep the East Germans in.  Even as we exert our freedom to own property by fencing it off, East Germany used walls and fences to curtail freedom and limit their peoples' access to anything non-Communist.

Just down the street our neighbors fenced off their property in front with a large steel wall, about six feet high, that obscures a view of their house and front yard.  Certainly it's their freedom to do so, but what does such a fence say?  To me, it says "keep out."  It says "we don't want to know you."  To others it might say "we have something here that we want to protect." Or, "hey potential thieves, something valuable is here."  I know the couple, who are very nice and very introverted.  In reality, they probably just want their privacy.  But the fence is a message, and that message can be interpreted in many difference ways.

In the past couple of days, this article was forwarded to me which frankly made me angry.  The author argues that museums should not try to cater to young people's tastes because it is a waste of time.  Older people with, what I assume at least, an appreciation for the "right" kind of art are more important.  She is literally arguing for a kind of fence to be built that keeps young people away from the "good stuff," while not even deigning to think that perhaps young people are innovating and creating art of their own.  I know older people who are patrons of classical music that find nothing worthwhile in newer musical forms.  I know serious aficionados of certain types of jazz that are unwilling to give more than a passing nod to other forms, and God help you if you don't know what you are talking about with them.  I know people who collect art and keep it in their homes, unavailable to the outside world unless they decide to lend it somewhere.  Generationally, we all think that the ones behind us don't know anything, yet the vibrancy and the innovation of each generation is constantly recorded in history: a Warhol, pooh-poohed by the "serious" art lovers in the sixties are now almost priceless today among modern art aficionados; early recordings by The Beatles, considered "noise" by many music lovers of the time, are considered most valuable treasures today even as new forms of music are derided now though one day, they too may be considered classics.  It's all fences and walls, put up by one generation against the "garbage" of those behind them, yet many times that garbage becomes pearls and jewels over time.

Different types of fences, two physical and one virtual.  Two you can see before your eyes, and one you can feel in words and meaning.  Yet, in my mind, they equally send a message.  This is mine, keep out, you're not wanted unless I invite you in, whatever is in here stays in here.

The not-very-well-told and therefore unknown history of the western part of the United States has been one of fences, of free ranges divided and sectioned and protected by barbed wire.  In west Texas, a war over fencing developed in the 1880s as "gypsy ranchers," who owned lots of cattle but no land, found their grazing ranges and watering holes cut off by barbed wire.  Barbed wire went up with little thought to property rights and whole towns found themselves surrounded by barbed wire.  A pseudo-war erupted, with vigilantes cutting barbed wire right and left.  The "war" ended with the Texas legislature declaring fence cutting a felony, but it also meant the end of the gypsy ranchers and the idea of the free range so celebrated in American history.  And, it further constricted the freedom of movement of Native Americans, who considered it "devil's rope."

Fences that were prevalent in the east, in areas like Wellesley, were low stone walls which demarcated property lines and whose use was imported from England and Ireland.  I'll admit, there is something pleasing about the stone walls which make a statement of ownership and yet invite communication across them.  Yet even these walls have had their critics.  Robert Frost, in his famous poem Mending Wall, writes "Something there is that doesn't love a wall..."  He also addresses the conundrum that puzzles me when he writes:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

In essence, fences and walls may keep things out, but they also keep things in.  At what cost do we fence and wall?  Do "Good fences make good neighbors," as Frost quotes his neighbor in the poem, or do they deny us connection?  Are they neutral or do they rebuke or provoke?  I have no answers, just questions, even though I am just as prone, in times of stress or in response to perceived slights or danger, to put up boundaries, fences and walls.  I just question whether it is always the right thing to do.

Since my father died, much of the fences at our property are in disrepair.  It's a good reminder that fences only last as long as they are maintained.  Once someone stops caring for them or about them, they disintegrate.  As history shows, over and over again, everything, including fences, are temporary.

Musical Interlude

I found two songs for this post's interlude, one about fencing oneself in, and one asking for freedom from being fenced in.

This was the first song I thought of - Roy Rogers with Dale Evans and the Sons of the Pioneers singing Don't Fence Me In.

Then I went looking, and found this modern pop song by Paramore called Fences, about trying to keep the public out by fencing oneself in.

If you want to know more about Wellesley

The Swellesley Report (blog)
Town of Wellesley
Wellesley College
Wellesley Patch (news)
Wicked Local Wellesley (news)
Wikipedia: Wellesley

Next up:  Holliston, Massachusetts

Blue Highways: Kalispell, Montana

Unfolding the Map

We drop off Arthur O. Bakke in Kalispell, leaving him to go where his Lord takes him.  We're about to cross the Rockies and then head into the endless plains of the Northern United States.  As we head into a state where the concept of freedom is hotly defended and where the wide-open spaces make it seem almost tangible, I'll reflect a little, based on William Least Heat-Moon's quote below, on freedom and its effects generally and on me personally.  To locate Kalispell, exercise your freedom to look at the map!

Book Quote

"We rode on in silence to Kalispell, and Bakke dozed off again.....

"....the word he carried to me wasn't of the City of God; it was of simplicity, spareness, courage, directness, trust and 'charity' in Paul's sense.  He lived clean: mind, body, way of life.  Hegel believed that freedom is knowledge of one's necessity, and Arthur O. Bakke, I.M.V., was a free man hindered only by his love and conviction.  And that was just as he wanted it.  I don't know whether he had been chosen to beat the highways and hedges, but clearly he had chosen to.  Despite doctrinal differences, he reminded me of a Trappist monk or a Hopi shaman.  I liked Arthur.  I liked him very much."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 3

Downtown Kalispell. Photo by Flathead Convention and Visitors Bureau and seen at the Tripadvisor website. Clidk on photo to go to site.

Kalispell, Montana

In my last post, I wrote about my search for and need for simplicity, and also how I find it so difficult to implement in my life.  This post is not very well-thought out, but I'm going to throw and idea encompassing all kinds of different things that I've been thinking about past you.

In America, we pride ourselves on being "the land of the free."  The American Constitution takes great pains to lay out certain freedoms that are guaranteed to all citizens, enshrined in our Bill of Rights.  Some are defined as liberties, or those freedoms that existed prior to the advent of governments.  Freedom of speech, religion, assembly and the press are such liberties that according to our constitution cannot be taken away from us.  Others are considered rights, which are granted us by government but once instilled, must be protected.  Such rights are the rights to bear arms, and to due process.

Over the centuries, what constitutes the boundaries of freedoms and rights have been debated.  These arguments are still at the base of almost all political disputes today.  U.S. citizens demand and expect freedoms and rights, but nobody can truly be completely free to exercise their freedoms and rights.  Why?  Because an excess of freedom for some people has the potential to trample on the rights of others, and on the ability of governments to maintain societal order.  In order to minimize these difficulties, governments create laws which are, in effect, a relinquishment of freedom by the citizenry in exchange for order.  In the U.S., we consent to giving up some freedom in order that we can live relatively safely and securely.

An example is fitting.  We have laws against murder.  The act of murder, freely by one person, is the ultimate denial of another's freedom and rights through the taking of that person's life.  It is also a violation of public order.  The laws state that we are not free to murder, and if we do, we will lose even more of our rights and freedoms by going to jail, or in many cases, losing our life through execution.

However, in the late 20th century and the early 21st century, the idea of freedom is being pushed to the brink.  In particular, excess economic freedom has been touted and is being justified politically.  Economic freedom can be as benign as allowing people the right and freedom to exchange goods and services.  This freedom to interact economically allows for individuals to build up capital and property.  Government, to maintain public order, is tasked with defending the property we gain through our economic freedoms.  However, if we keep in mind that more freedoms impinge on an ability to maintain order, then it is easy to see that the accumulation of property (I'm using the general sense of the term here: property is stuff, whether it be little knicknacks one buys to the ownership of large tracts of land) can impede on all types of freedoms.

Politically, we have arguments about whether, in their accumulation of wealth, corporations should be regulated and taxed and how much.  Giving corporations carte blanch to do whatever they want may allow them to run roughshod over potential freedoms to work, to live in healthy environments, and to guarantee our access to things we need.  We debate, in the current popular terminology, whether the 1% should have so much and continue to gain at the expense of the 99% who seem to be losing more and more.  The freedom of the 1% to continue to accumulate takes away from the freedom of the 99% to move upward economically.

But it's not just these big picture questions that economic freedom touches, but also individual lives.  To use myself as an example, my steadily increasing income over the past three decades may have increased by ability to get the stuff that I like and want, but that stuff has also contributed to the increased disorder in my life.  My wallet may have allowed me to spend anywhere from 6-7 evenings out, but it also took away from my ability to look at big questions of family and stability and led to some decision-making at times that may have not been well thought out.

I don't want it to seem like I'm complaining.  My life as an adult has mostly been happy and full of wonderful things.  But there have been important deficits that are now begging for my attention, brought about by the freedoms I allowed myself in the past.

Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize winning economist, has argued that the concept of freedom has to be expanded beyond life, liberty and property.  Governments that are the most free, he argues, are the ones that guarantee their citizens the freedom, the access and the means to pursue the life that makes them happy.  In that way, his concept of freedom encompasses both the political and the economic.

I am in favor of this, even if it means regulating the freedoms of some to guarantee a decent level of freedoms for all.  But as I apply his argument to all levels of life, I particularly focus on regulation.  Regulation is important.  If an economic market cannot self-regulate and fails, and we've seen signs in the past that sometimes it can't, the outcomes may be dangerous for society as a whole.  I can also see how this works on an individual level.  If a person has no capacity for self-regulation, we consider them at best a "bit off," and at worst dangerous to themselves and others.

My personal quest right now is for more regulation in my own life.  By regulation I mean curtailing some of my personal freedom to accumulate, to consume, and to lose myself in distractions in order to focus more discipline on my desire for personal growth and growth in my relationships.  Regulation, to me, brings about discipline and entails a willingness to give up some freedoms in order to achieve what one wants.  Even as LHM, in his quote above, extols the freedom of Arthur O. Bakke (and this post is the last Bakke will appear in), he writes that even Bakke is limited by his "love and conviction."  In other words, Bakke is free to wander the roads but his faith, mission and purpose regulates his freedom in many other ways.  And that's not a bad thing, especially if it allows him to pursue what he desires, and to strive for that which makes him happy.

*****

Arthur O. Bakke is let off by LHM at Kalispell.  Bakke offers to ride with LHM to North Dakota, but LHM tells him he has to go alone, though he says at times he will miss Bakke's company.  As he lets him out into a strong wind, LHM asks Bakke if he will be okay, and Bakke replies with a biblical verse, Philippians 4:11: "For I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content."  He adds, "Hardships are good. They prepare a man."  Another lesson I've learned only recently, and which has set my mind toward more positive things for my future.

Musical Interlude

I've been waiting for a reason to play this song.  Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb was a gospel song from the 1950s, rendered here by Arnold McCuller (website) with Ry Cooder.  I didn't use the conversion story of Arthur Bakke in these posts, but revelation can literally hit with a huge explosive force on the lives of the individuals that experience it.  Needless to say, it hasn't happened to me.  My insights have always been slow trickles.

If you want to learn more about Kalispell

City of Kalispell
Daily Inter Lake (newspaper)
Flathead Beacon (newspaper)
Flathead Convention and Visitors Bureau
GoNorthwest.com: Kalispell
Kalispell Chamber of Commerce
Wikipedia: Kalispell

Next up: Hungry Horse, Montana

Blue Highways: Jonesboro (Jonesborough), Tennessee

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapIt's amazing the little facts of history learned when reading this book.  First we learn of a secret Tennessee city.  Now we learn of the lost state of Franklin.  Click on the map thumbnail to see the location of this important town in the establishment of a forgotten American state.

Book Quote

"The 14th state in the Union, the first formed after the original thirteen, was Franklin and its capital Jonesboro....But history is a fickle thing, and now Jonesboro, two centures old, is only the seat of Washington County, which also was once something else - the entire state of Tennessee....

"Main Street in Jonesboro, solid with step-gabled antebellum buildings, ran into a dell to parallel a stream; houses and steeples rose from encircling hills.  After breakfast, I walked snowy Main to the Chester Inn, a wooden building with an arched double gallery, where Andrew Jackson almost got tarred and feathered, for what I don't know.  Charles Dickens spent the night here as did Andrew Johnson, James Polk, and Martin Van Buren (whose autobiography never mentions his wife)."

Blue Highways: Part 1, Chapter 19

Jonesborough as William Least-Heat Moon might have walked it

Jonesboro (Jonesborough), Tennessee

Tennessee is full of secrets.  That's the conclusion I'm coming to as we make this last stop in the state with William Least-Heat Moon (LHM).  I know that in the heady days after the Revolutionary War, nothing was completely settled and the United States had some precarious moments.  Lest we think that the new American country was in a love fest with each other and completely united, remember that the new country was rife with divisions.  Slavery was an issue that was beginning to be recognized as a major divide between states.  The new U.S. government, now faced with responsibilities of running a country, had to now impose its own taxes, and taxes were just as popular then as they are now, which is to say not very popular.

The State of Franklin was born out of confusion and frustration with the new federal government of the Thirteen States and anger at the government of North Carolina.  The federal government was deeply in debt, so North Carolina ceded 29 million acres of its territory in what is now Tennessee to the federal government to help out.  The people living in this area were deeply fearful that Congress would become desperate and sell the land to France or Spain.  When Congress didn't act on the North Carolina gift, North Carolina took back its territory a few weeks later.  However, the damage was done, and a group of counties got together and declared self-government.

They named their state Frankland, and petitioned the Congress to grant them statehood.  Seven of the thirteen colonies supported their petition.  However, they needed the support of nine.  The Frankland legislature then changed the name to Franklin, in order to hopefully draw the support of Benjamin Franklin, but this did not work.  North Carolina sent in troops and established a territorial government, and for a time two governments worked independently of each other.  Finally, the arrest of the leader of Franklin, John Sevier, and increasing attacks by Indians on area settlements led to a reunification with North Carolina, who could send troops to aid in defense, and the pardon of Sevier.  North Carolina later ceded the territory again to the U.S. government, and it eventually became the eastern part of Tennessee, of which Sevier was the first governor.

One person of later historical importance born in Franklin while it was a state was pioneer and participant at the Alamo, Davy Crockett.

I find it very interesting that a group of people, right after our country became independent, decided to secede from North Carolina and join the United States in the name of protecting their interests and freedoms.  Lest we think that the fledging U.S. was living high on the euphoria of defeating the British and becoming its own country, it is good to remember that we had our own problems and divisions.  The debt from the war was very high, leaving the new U.S. government in a position of having to impose its own taxes on the citizenry, who just finished fighting a war in part because of taxes.  Taxes were just as popular then as they are today, which is to say not very popular.

Freedom is an ideal with many consequences.  As a professor teaching American government, I constantly lectured on the balancing act between freedom and other ideals, such as order and equality.  The more freedom one wants, the less order can be maintained.  The more freedom one wants, the less equality can be achieved.  The more order one wants, the more freedoms will be taken away.  The more equality one wants, the more freedom is impinged upon.  This is the crux of our political battles today.  American conservatives cry out for more order.  They fund the military to protect the U.S.'s place in the world order.  They decry social freedoms as undermining the moral order.  Liberals demand more equality as the basis of freedoms.  They argue for raising the welfare of the poor and disadvantaged.  They push for equal opportunities for disadvantaged minority populations.  Demands for order and demands for equality both entail government interference in ordinary lives, and curtail freedoms.  Libertarians want to scale government back to its bare essentials, so that freedoms are maximized.  However, a country with many freedoms and little order or equality may lead to class warfare and/or a more dangerous, defend yourself world.  Government does many good things, and provides us with many services and protections that we take for granted.  Thus, maintaining the dream that is the United States of America involves a delicate balancing act.  The State of Franklin could not maintain that balance.  Seceding from North Carolina may have bought them freedom for a time, but they could not maintain order when the US Congress rejected their petition and then Indians began to attack their settlements.  Ultimately, they saw a better mix of freedom and order back under the jurisdiction of North Carolina, and eventually, the State of Tennessee.

The history of Franklin also reminds me of the impermanence of human institutions.  Sometimes this notion can be frightening or depressing.  Franklin didn't last very long, but it is part of a United States that has lasted for about 235 years.  Americans tend to see the United States as a permanent fixture, that we will always be a great nation, but this is not guaranteed.  The entirety of world history indicates that we will wax and wane, and one day disappear.  The Romans had a great empire for nearly 1000 years, yet today their cities are either crumbling away into oblivion or are living museums of impermanence.  In a 1000 years, the United States may not exist anymore, done in by war, pestilence, dwindling natural resources, climate change, or the breakdown of our political system.  Who knows what country or countries, if any, will occupy the geography we now claim as ours?  Perhaps the United States, like Franklin, will be forgotten except by a few - our passage marked by a faded plaque outside a crumbling capitol building in an ancient and deserted city once called Washington.

Yet I also find hope in our impermanence.  The idea that we can leave something that aids or advances humanity, and the potential that our screw-ups will be heeded or perhaps even be fixed after we are gone, makes me believe that there is some sense of cosmic justice.  It's not that what we do now doesn't matter.  It does to us, and perhaps it will to the next generations.  But in the end and on a universal scale, it probably doesn't matter that much, and in the end, as Julian of Norwich once said, all will be well.

If you want to know more about Jonesborough or Franklin

Franklin: The Lost State of America
Historic Jonesborough
History of Western North Carolina: The State of Franklin
Jonesborough Herald and Tribune (newspaper)
Jonesborough Online
State of Franklin History
Town of Jonesborough
Wikipedia: State of Franklin
Wikipedia: Jonesborough

Next up: Winston-Salem and Greensboro, North Carolina