Blue Highways: Learned, Mississippi

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWandering along the Trace, still, past Learned and on our way to the Mississippi River.  Check out the map by clicking the thumbnail at right, and leave a comment with your comments on racism or whatever else you think important.

Book Quote

"I went to the Trace again, following it through pastures and pecan groves and tilled fields; wildflowers and clover pressed in close, and from trees, long purple drupes of wisteria hung like grape clusters; in one pond a colony of muskrats.  I turned off near Learned... "

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 8

Old country store in Learned, Mississippi. Click on image to go to host site.

Learned, Mississippi

Learned, Mississippi is a place where I'd like to think about the nature that LHM describes.  But unfortunately, it is also a place which houses a relic of Mississippi's racist past.  The Nationalist Movement (note: by linking to the Nationalism Movement website, I am not indicating any sympathy or agreement with their position), is located there.  The Movement was until recently run by an attorney named named Richard Barrett, who was stabbed to death in April 2010 by a black man who accused him of making sexual advances and who now faces the death penalty.  This makes the juxtaposition of the beauty of the Natchez Trace described by LHM, and the ugliness of Mississippi's violent racist history, a bit uncomfortable.

I suppose I could have grown up a racist, because I lived in a town that was once a bit more intolerant than it is now, like a lot of places.  My town had various cultural groups, including Italians, Portuguese, Finns, Irish and some Mexicans when I was growing up.  These were not the usual groups you associate with racism, but the feelings expressed were often that way.  Portuguese families were called "Portagees."  Italians were often made fun of - I have an Italian uncle who even made fun of his own ethnic heritage.  There were sections of town where you could find a predominance of one culture over another.

I didn't see black people regularly until we got cable TV and started getting the Bay Area television stations.  I think that was when I was eight or nine.  We only had one black person that I knew of in town when I was growing up, a young girl who would come stay with her white grandparents down the lane and across the road from where I lived.  Later, when I was in high school, a young black woman moved into town, and I watched as all my white male high school classmates fell all over themselves to impress her because she was, I guess, exotic and interesting.

I must say that I feel my town is more tolerant and accepting now, but even today, as more Mexicans move up through California, some illegal working and then going back home, others legal and making their lives in my town, I still hear some racist sentiments.  I cringe when I hear my mom say some less-than-flattering things about Mexicans, and gently scold her (she's 79 and probably won't change too much).  Give us your food; your salsas, tacos and enchiladas.  But don't be too visible, because we'll fear and hate you.

But I always had liberal tendencies and thought that people were people, regardless of their skin color.  When I was in college, I had a friend who was very definitely racist, and I put up with him and even enabled him sometimes rather than fight him until after college I went to volunteer in the inner city.  He called me one night, very intoxicated, and began spouting racist remarks to get a rise out of me.  After working with economically disadvantaged black children in an inner-city Catholic school and having my heart wrung out every day with their stories, I wasn't so forgiving of his views and we didn't talk again for many, many years.

I have recently been rewarded by knowing that I have some African-American blood running through me.  Two years ago I learned about my biological mother and her family, which was from West Virginia, and the fact that this family most likely has some mixed blood.  The last name of my biological mother was enough to mean that her family was one of a half dozen or so that were victims of prejudice for being less than white.  While many members of my biological mother's family want to downplay or deny this connection, others, especially younger ones like myself, are okay.  When I found out that I might be of mixed race, I was happy.  I felt like I suddenly went from being boring to interesting, ethnicity-wise!

So, I take a dim view of people like Richard Barrett and movements like the Nationalist Movement.  I respect people's right to free speech, but their speech calls for an America that is long past.  It calls for an America divided on ethnic lines, where groups of people through no fault other than the color of their skin or their ethnic heritage sit in either a privileged or marginalized place.  It denies certain ethnicities the opportunity or the possibility to participate in the building of America.  It is wrong, and it is fast becoming irrelevant as America becomes more diverse, and whites become a majority minority, outnumbered by blacks, Hispanics and Asians in combination.  This speech is the speech of fear, and rather than fearing my fellow Americans, I choose to embrace them, call them brother and sister, and work with them to keep America a vital and free country.

If you want to know more about Learned

There's not much on Learned, and there's a lot on Richard Barrett since he was murdered.  Here's what little information I could get about Learned and a couple of things about the murder.  At least Learned sits along the Natchez Trace, which looks beautiful!

Murder of Richard Barrett
Wikipedia: Richard Barrett
Wikipedia: Learned

Next up: Vicksburg, Mississippi

Blue Highways: Clinton, Mississippi

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapContinuing through Mississippi, we stop at Clinton for the night.  William Least Heat-Moon camps out in his van on the campus of Mississippi College.  We'll hang out with him, and think about astrology and other tools we can use for guidance.  If you want to know where Clinton sits on our journey, click on the map thumbnail at right.  Leave a comment if you have any thoughts one way or another on astrology, and thanks for reading.

Book Quote

"'You're a Pisces?'

'Would a Sagittarius wear a Pisces necklace?'

'How can you believe in astrology and wear a cross?'

'What a fuddydud!  Who made the stars?  Astrology's just another modality too.'  She took a computer card from her notebook. 'I've got to get to class, but here's one more modality.  In India, people pray when they eat - like each chew is a prayer.  Try it sometime.  Even grumpy fuddyduds like it.'"

Blue Highways: Chapter 3, Part 7

A shop in Clinton, Mississippi. Click on picture to go to host site.

Clinton, Mississippi

Just today, I read my horoscope in the local paper.  I'm a Capricorn.  It said I'd enjoy discussing religious and philosophical matters with my best friend or partner, and that I should understand the steps involved if I'm working out educational or legal pursuits.  This was simply the small horoscope in my local paper.  And it is true in a general way.  I do enjoy discussions with my wife and friends, and though I'm now past educational pursuits, my wife and I are discussing whether we will at least try to adopt a child before we get too old.  So, I guess I can apply this astrological guidance in a very general way to my life - but it isn't very helpful, really.

Another horoscope I like to read appears in our alternative weekly paper.  It's called Free Will Astrology by Rob Brezny, and while i find it to often be general, sometimes it does seem to speak directly to me.  Here's my horoscope for this week:

"It's not that some people have willpower and some don't," said physician James Gordon. "It's that some people are ready to change and others are not." That's why you may soon appear to the casual observer, Capricorn, as someone who's able to call on enormous reserves of willpower. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you are now more amenable to change than you've been in a long time. In fact, I suspect that in the coming weeks you'll be willing and even eager to initiate transformations that seem heroic to people who are addicted to the status quo.

"Take inventory of the extent that "No" dominates your life. Notice how often you say or think: 1. "That's not right." 2. "I don't like that." 3. "I don't agree with that." 4. "They don't like me." 5. "I'm not very good." 6. "That should be different from what it is."

From Free Will Astrology by Rob Brezny
Week of November 25, 2010

This speaks to me because for the past year, or actually two, I had been in a rut.  I got bogged down in regrets over ways my life had turned out, I had gotten myself involved in what I hoped would become a friendship but became very complicated and ultimately hurtful to me, and there were unanswered questions that I had been struggling with about which way to turn in my future.  So, is this horoscope correct?  In a way, it is.  I am trying to transform myself for the next stage of my life, and I am trying in many ways to overcome those demons that whisper such things to me as "They don't like me" and "I'm not very good," and that hold me back from happiness and satisfaction.

But this begs the question.  Do I believe in astrology?  I don't, really.  Like anything else, I can use it as a general guide sometimes to remind me of paths I have chosen or not chosen, but I think it is a mistake to use it as a daily mentor.  It is another tool in my shed.

I have lots of tools.  I have a therapist who has helped me through this rough patch and who has given me more tools to fight the demons of my past.  I have friends who have stuck with me even though I've made mistakes in my life and with them.  I have a spouse who has supported me throughout our marriage.

One of my most ardent supporters has been my sister, who lately has shown a great talent for offering spiritual advice.  She seems to have developed a clairvoyance, where she can look into one's past and future and give advice.  She has astounded people by telling them things out of their past that she cannot have known.  She discovered this talent while learning to read tarot cards, and she still uses that medium to access her knowledge, though she also tells me of spirit guides who aid her.  She's read me both with tarot cards and by intuiting the state of my chakras, and her advice always seems to cut through the clutter of my self-destructive thoughts.

I'm a scientist, trained to be skeptical, so I shouldn't be very accepting of this type of thing.  In addition, I'm a Catholic, and officially, Catholicism looks down on this sort of thing.  But she's my sister and she feels that this power is her gift and calling, and I want to be supportive of her because of all the support she's given me through good times and bad.  So, my sister constitutes another tool that I can draw upon when I need her particular type of advice and spiritual nourishment...and she's always there for me.  And, frankly, her advice has always helped me in one way or another.

When LHM meets the Christian woman in Clinton that he is speaking to in the quote above, she tells him of computerized prayer.  People can have computers pray for them, she says, and the computers can send up thousands more prayers than we humans can in less time.  When he questions the authenticity of such prayer, she tells him that it's just like the rosary or prayer wheels - they are all artificial devices, like machines, that can aid us in praying.  She points out that there are all kinds of ways to pray.

We all seek answers and help, especially when we're faced with times of trouble and our minds are at unease.  Prayer, astrology, tarot, numerology, and any of the new age methods can be found now all over the internet and as accepted parts of our daily lives.  I think all these manifestations of guidance are tools we can use.  Such tools are only as powerful as their appropriateness for the job and the belief that they will work.  I can be a skeptic, but is it hypocritical if I sometimes put aside my skepticism, relax my religious beliefs and open my mind to what my horoscope says to me?

If you want to know more about Clinton

Camp Clinton WWII POW Camp
Clinton city website
Clinton-Mississippi.com
The Clinton News (newspaper)
Mississippi College
Wikipedia: Clinton

Next up:  Learned, Mississippi

Blue Highways: Jackson, Mississippi

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe skirt the environs of Jackson with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) who thinks urban sprawl is like an aneurism.  That's a pretty cool metaphor, in my opinion.  To check out where Jackson is, and even perhaps use Google Maps to look at the urban sprawl thirty years later, click on the thumbnail of the map at the right.  Leave a comment if you've been in Jackson, or just want to say hi.

Book Quote

"Then I went back to the Trace and followed dusk around the spread of Jackson highways that had broken open like aneurisms and leaked out strawberry-syrup pancakes, magic-finger motel beds, and double-cheese pizzas."

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 6

Downtown Jackson, Mississippi. Click on image to go to host site.

Jackson, Mississippi

I've never been to Jackson.  My experience in Mississippi is limited to traveling on I-10 from New Orleans to my wife's parents' home in Sarasota, Florida.  Basically, my experience has been passing by casinos as the interstate bypasses small Gulf cities like Gulfport, Biloxi and Pascagoula.

In one way, I am of two minds about the sprawl and spread of cities.  When I was a child, I used to love when we drove from my small town down to the Bay Area.  When we got close to San Francisco and Oakland, I was fascinated by the urban city-scapes.  The tall buildings with their shapes (the TransAmerica Pyramid was a favorite of mine).  But what I really enjoyed was the freeway over and underpasses, particualarly those "cloverleaf" formations that accompanied interchanges.  The roads wound smoothly in arcing curves, up and over, and then back down - but repeated.  On those curves cars motored along, looking like blood cells in arteries.  To me it looked so futuristic.  I remember the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco that zipped along the waterfront, the buildings so close you could almost touch them.

I still get that feeling.  When I lived in San Antonio we had opportunities to go to Houston often, and way outside the downtown, near the Galleria, at I-10s intersection with one of the loop highways, the ramps towered high above the interstate.  I don't understand anything about engineering and architecture, but I loved the look and the futuristic feel.

Of course, there is the downside of the interstate and interchanges, which LHM refers to in his quotation.  I've written about it before. In San Antonio, urban sprawl, like the "aneurism" that LHM uses as a metaphor, broke out along the loops around the city.  The inner loop was filled with the IHOPs, the Motel 6's and the Super 8's, and the Pizza Huts and every other chain store you can think of, bleeding its residents' business away from the downtown.  The outer loop had not yet developed quite as much, but will probably get there considering that San Antonio is one of the fastest growing urban areas in the country.

To build interstates through cities, it must also be realized that cities often used eminent domain, and many times displaced minority residents, to build these ramps and skyways that so enchanted me as a child.  In Milwaukee, where I lived in the 1990s, a whole swath of housing was cleared along the city's north side.  The planned freeway never happened, and that housing was never recovered.  In New Orleans, the I-10 skyway past the French Quarter was built down what was once a vibrant boulevard live oak-lined boulevard in an African-American neighborhood that was filled with small minority-owned businesses.  In it's place, the skyway looms, but the residents have painted the columns with likenesses of live oaks and each Mardi Gras, families meet and cook-out underneath the roaring skyway.

But sometimes, cities realize their mistakes and reclaim the space once occupied by their freeways.  That Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco that caught my imagination?  It was torn down, and San Francisco developed its waterfront including its ferry building.  The area is now vital, and people come to the Embarcadero for its ambience, its shopping and its food.

If Jackson was as LHM described when he went through thirty years ago, I hope that it hasn't grown too much.  I hope that instead of letting business dollars seep away to the outer sections of the city that Jackson, if it had a Southern charm, retains it in a downtown where residents like to shop, eat and visit.  I hope that if Jackson started down the path of sprawl, that it did something about it.  I'm not too hopeful given how other cities in America have been developing, but hope is always there.

If you want to know more about Jackson

Jackson City Website
Jackson Clarion-Ledger (newspaper)
Jackson Daily Photo (blog)
Jackson Free Press (alternative newspaper)
Jackson Jambalaya (blog)
Jackson, Mississippi Tourism
Official Jackson Website
Wikipedia: Jackson

Next up: Clinton, Mississippi

Blue Highways: Ofahoma, Mississippi

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe travel with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) onto the Natchez Trace at Ofahoma, and once again lament America's obsession with getting there fast on the interstate.  To see where we pick up the Trace, click on the thumbnail of the map at right.  Leave a comment if you have been on the Trace.  I haven't, and want to drive it someday.

Book Quote

"Now new road, opening the woods again, went in among redbuds and white blossoms of dogwood, curving about under a cool evergreen cover.  For miles no powerlines or billboards.  Just tree, rock, water, bush and road.  The new Trace, like a river, followed natural contours and gave focus to the land; it so brought out the beauty that every road commissioner in the nation should drive the Trace to see that highway does not have to outrage landscape."

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 6

Somewhere on the Natchez Trace. Click on image to go to host site.

Ofahoma, Mississippi

One of the reasons I really enjoy Blue Highways is because of William Least Heat-Moon's identification of the two-lane road as an underappreciated treasure on the American landscape.  I grew up having to traverse two-lane highways to get out of my hometown to anywhere of consequence, and while there were, and still remain, some difficulties with two-laners that one does not have to worry about with interstate highways, overall I love taking the back roads when I get a chance.

What were some of the problems, you may ask?  Well, for one, I grew up in a remote area of the Northern California coast.  The only way to get anywhere was to take State Route 20 east 35 miles until we hit the higher speed "freeway" of U.S. 101.  One could also take State Route 1 to State Route 128, but that was 75 miles of two lane roads.  State Route 20 was over twisty roads through the Coast Range, and as a child I was subject to car sickness.  It took me awhile to get over that.

Another drawback to living in a place only accessible by two lane roads was that when weather struck in the winter, the roads were susceptible to flooding and to landslides, and being narrower, that could strand everyone in town until the flooding subsided or the road was cleared.

But positives of two lane roads, our Blue Highways, surely outweighed the negatives.  Traveling on two lane roads meant that we could stop wherever we wanted.  If we spied something that we wanted to explore, we could simply pull off onto the side of the road and explore to our hearts' content.  Travel was slower, by necessity, and therefore encouraged that kind of exploration.

William Least Heat-Moon, later in this chapter, takes advantage of this aspect of two lane roads:

"Northeast of Tougaloo, I stopped to hike a trail into a black-water swamp of tupelo and bald cypress.  The sun couldn't cut through the canopy of buds and branches, and the slow water moved darkly.  In the muck pollywogs were starting to squirm.  It was spring here, and juices were getting up in the stalks; leaves, terribly folded in husks, had begun to let loose and open to the light; stuff was stirring in the rot, water bubbled with the froth of sperm and ova, and the whole bog lay rank and eggy, vaporous and thick with the scent of procreation.  Things once squeezed close, pinched shut, things waiting to become something else, something greater, were about ready."

This kind of exploration would not be possible on an interstate, and I loved this about our two lane roads at home.  Of course, with my dad driving, we didn't explore as much as I would have liked since he usually wanted to get where he was going as fast as possible, but as an adult, I remember my childhood wishes to stop and see things and I indulge that wish now.

The other great thing about two-lane non-interstate roads is that they don't bypass towns, they unashamedly and without fear head right through them.  The cost is in time, because you often have to stop at stoplights.  The advantage is seeing towns as they are meant to be seen, their good and bad sides, and being forced to slow down and look.  I believe that with the growth of interstates, Americans have truly lost touch with America.  We bypass towns on the interstates with nary a glance.  But when you take a two lane highway, you have to notice them and they must register on your conscience in some way.  In doing so, the uniqueness of places throughout America becomes more noticeable - the small cafes and stores, the feel of the town and the people within it, and the unique natural attractions in the area.

I've lamented the growth of interstates before, simply because you can't do these things.  If you see a sight along the side of the road, you can't necessarily stop on an interstate and indulge your curiosity.  Interstates are about speed and getting where you are going in the fastest time possible.  There is a shoulder on an interstate, but with cars going by at 50-85 miles per hour, it is not necessarily a safe place to be.  Exits on the interstate are few and far between, so if you pass a sight that you want to see, it might be a couple of miles before you can get off the interstate and make your way back to it, and by that time you might give up on your quest altogether.  On a two lane road, you make your own exits and you stop where you want.

Americans like to talk about freedom.  But we are remarkably hypocritical about freedom in our practice.  We allow a small group of corporations to shape our consuming habits, which certainly limits our freedom.  And in our need for speed, to get to the next destination as fast as possible, we limit our experiences and ultimately that freedom which we claim to love so much.  That is why, like William Least Heat-Moon, we should indulge our freedom on Blue Highways.

If you want to know more about Ofahoma

Sorry, Ofahoma is just a small place on the map, with little on the web.  But it is an entrance to the Natchez Trace, and the Trace is an important landmark that unfortunately, I have never been on.  Here's some information on that, and hopefully you'll go:

Explore the Natchez Trace
National Scenic Byways Program:  Natchez Trace
National Park Service:  Natchez Trace Parkway
National Park Service:  Natchez Trace Scenic Trail
Natchez Trace State Park (Tennessee)
Wikipedia: Natchez Trace

Next up: Jackson, Mississippi

Blue Highways: Philadelphia, Mississippi

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe stop in Philadelphia.  Not the city of brotherly love, but a city in Mississippi that lies on top of a former Native American village and which has a troubled racial past.  While we reflect, take a peek at where we are by clicking on the map thumbnail located to your right.  Leave a comment if you are so inclined, or like what you see.

Book Quote

"Here, too, the old, sad history.  The town, like others in the area, was built over the site of a Choctaw village.  The Choctaw, whose land once cvered most of Mississippi, earned a name from their skill in horticulture and diplomacy; they were a sensible people whose chieftains attained position through merit.  In the early nineteenth centery, they learned from white men and began building schools and adding livestock to their farms.  Later, whites would refer to them as one of the 'five civilized tribes.'  Nevertheless, as pressure from white settlement increased, the Choctaw had to cede to the government one piece of land (in million-acre increments) after another....With the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, held in the woods northeast of Philadelphia, the Choctaw gave up the last of the land and reluctantly agreed to leave Mississippi forever.  They walked to the arid Indian Territory where they set up their own republic modeled after the government that had just dispossessed them."

Blue Highways: Part 3, Chapter 6

Downtown Philadelphia, Mississippi. Click on photo to go to host site. 

Philadelphia, Mississippi

An age-old story and one that helps define our history as a nation, and in a way, defines European settlement around the globe.  Indigenous peoples face encroachment by alien peoples on their territories.  Some of the indigenous try to accommodate, with disastrous results as agreements are made and then nullified by the encroachers.  Other indigenous peoples turn to war to defend their lands, only to be brought into submission by the superior weaponry of the invaders.  This story is not an isolated one.  It is repeated in histories ranging from Latin America to Australia, Africa to North America.  It coincides politically with the rise of colonialism, and economically with mercantilism and then its successor, capitalism.  Lands outside of Europe were places to be exploited, and indigenous peoples in those lands at best were seen as unenlightened savages who could be "tamed" and "civilized" and "Christianized" in the European manner, turning them into "people of reason" (the Spanish view), or at worst they were seen as annoyances, useful in wars against other colonizing powers but otherwise impediments to expansion (the British and French view).  Either way, the indigenous peoples were less than human unless they could be made human.

I've written in this blog both about the heroism associated with the settlement and taming of the American continent (blogs on Fort Raleigh and the Star Fort), and the dark underside of the colonizing of America (Fort Raleigh).  However, the noble actions and conduct of a few do not diminish the fact that the overall effect of the European colonization of the Americas amounted to a decimation of the peoples and the cultures that were here when the European colonists first arrived.

We see the effects of that decimation to this day.  Native American tribes confined to a fraction of their traditional lands.  Some tribes, like the Oklahoma Choctaws that LHM references, or the Seminoles, on reservations that they were moved to.  In Arizona, the Navajo were removed by the U.S. Army at gunpoint away from their native lands to New Mexico around 1863, only returning to their homes five years later...one of the few instances of the United States allowing a native tribe to return to its own lands with its traditional boundaries.

Many reservations, wholly within the United States, face problems associated with developing countries.  Poverty, as well as educational and social problems like alcoholism and drug abuse sap reservations' ability to develop and to promote traditional lifestyles.  Therefore, many Natives are still dependent on the U.S. government and its social programs.  While many reservations have had economic success by developing casinos, the benefits of these enterprises can lead to corruption.  In any event, development based on gambling, unless the revenues are channeled effectively, do not make a viable long-term growth strategy.

Yet, the vitality of Native American cultures can be seen every day.  In Albuquerque, where I live, The Gathering of Nations brings together thousands of Native Americans from tribes across the United States and Canada for North America's largest powwow in late April.  Native American culture is kept alive and fostered through music, and radio stations that celebrate Native music and creativity.  Native art is kept alive through pottery, jewelry, and painting.  Many people of European descent adopt certain Native customs, buy Native wares, and even try to live through Native tenets.  Despite the best efforts of the European colonizers and their successors, Native American culture lives on.

Philadelphia, Mississippi, LHM informs us, stands on what remains of a Choctaw village.  Many other towns and cities across the United States can probably also claim that they stand on the remains of other Native American villages and settlements.  The inference could be that Native America has been buried under European progress and manifest destiny.  But Native America is not gone but recovering from the blow it was dealt with the arrival of colonization.  The United States should consider itself fortunate that these peoples with their millenia of connection to the land we all now call home recall the best and worst of our collective history.  They are living reminders of how our founding and early history fell short of our ideals, and how we might reach them.

Postscript:  Philadelphia was the site of a notorious killing of three people in 1964.  James Chaney, a black man from Mississippi, was shot to death along with two activists from New York, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.  The killings inspired the movie Mississippi Burning.  In 2009, the town, which is 55% white, elected James Young as the first black mayor by 46 votes.  Young described his election in a town where he grew up in a neighborhood harassed by the Ku Klux Klan as "an atomic bomb of change."  Wounds always leave scars, but they can heal.

If you want to know more about Philadelphia

Neshoba County Fair - Mississippi's Giant Houseparty
The Neshoba Democrat (newspaper)
Philadelphia Community Development Partnership
Wikipedia: Choctaw
Wikipedia: Philadelphia

Next up:  Ofahoma, Mississippi