Sherry Chandler

Mud Mothers

This morning, Allison Hedge Coke posted to the Wom-Po list a poem by Lenelle Moïse, “Mud Mothers,” which begins like this:

Mud Mothers

the children of haiti
are not mythological
we are starving
or eating salty cakes
made of clay

because in 1804 we felled
our former slave captors
the graceless losers sunk
vindictive yellow
teeth into our forests

what was green is now
dust & everyone knows
trees unleash oxygen
(another humble word
for life)

This poem reminded me that back on December 2, I mentioned Margaretta Mason Brown, wife of Kentucky’s first U.S. Senator, who wrote,to her husband that

the Monster Slavery may destroy the people of Kentucky before long [p. 57]

As I wrote then, Margaretta Brown was an emancipationist, one who favored a gradual freeing of the slaves. She made this statement because she was afraid of an uprising like that in Santo Domingo. She was afraid that the incendiary language of abolitionists would incite such a rebellion.

Once upon a time evangelicals were on the side of the angels, and in 1834, a particularly fiery abolitionist sermon by “a young Presbyterian minister, Mr. Davidson” in a church “to Galleries overflowing with Negroes,” caused Mrs. Brown to write to her niece:

The cause of gradual emancipation is gaining ground daily in the West, but these premature and violent measures, will have a tendency to create such a spirit of insubordination amongst the slaves, as will render it necessary to rivet their chains more closely in order to our self preservation, or they will be stimulated to take their cause in their own hands and the tragedy of St. Domingo may indeed be reacted here.

The passage above is from Helen Deiss Irvin’s Women in Kentucky. The paternalism of it makes me cringe, but it illustrates how the institution of slavery enslaved a whole culture. Look at this story from Irvin:

. . . Kentucky owners dreaded slave uprisings. Like other slaveholders, they feared poisonings and the hand raised against an owner that might begin some frightful massacre. [john W.] Coleman [author of Slavery Times in Kentucky] tells of a Lexington woman from Massachusetts, Caroline Turner, despised by whites for her insanely sadistic treatment of slaves. While she was whipping a young coachman in chains early one morning, he broke free and strangled her. Sympathetic as they had previously been toward the Turner slaves, Lexington citizens quickly closed ranks to hunt the young slave down and have him hanged. [p. 57]

It pains me to believe that the people of Haiti are still suffering because once they took their fates in their own hands. And yet, here is Pat Robertson illustrating that the memory of ignorant whites is long. If there is a devil involved here, I would say it has a white skin. How did such a man as this become the voice of evangelism, evangelism that once was on the side of freedom for all? I wonder how Mr. Robertson would react to being whipped in chains.

To learn more about the Haitian Revolution and how Robertson got it all wrong, see Juan Cole who reminds us that these things are never simple:

As Charles Tilly pointed out, all revolutions are multiple revolutions

Read more about the deforestation of Haiti here at the Alicia Patterson Foundation:

No matter how many environmental, agriculture and forestry experts in American and international aid agencies one talks with, there are no illusions that even the best techniques available today can save Haiti. It will never be restored to the richest jewel that adorned France’s colonial crown in the 18th century. The French brought a million African slaves to clear the forests for sugar and coffee. As a result, a huge part of Haiti’s precious woods were felled. This was followed by a procession of lumber companies in the 19th century that paid large sums to landowners and corrupt government officials for access to the forests. The Haitian peasantry also was in need of fuel, building materials and crop lands. They cut down more forests and ended up being blamed for the devastation, now in epic proportions.

(My emphasis)

To read more of Lenelle Moïse at her blog, where you will find links to donate to the Haiti earthquake fund.

__________
Added: Another good explanation of how Haiti came to be where it is today from The Guardian:

As Stephen Keppel of the Economist Intelligence Unit puts it, Haiti’s revolution may have brought it independence but it also “ended up destroying the country’s infrastructure and most of its plantations. It wasn’t the best of starts for a fledgling republic.” Moreover, in exchange for diplomatic recognition from France, the new republic was forced to pay enormous reparations: some 150m francs, in gold. It was an immense sum, and even reduced by more than half in 1830, far more than Haiti could afford.

“The long and the short of it is that Haiti was paying reparations to France from 1825 until 1947,” says Von Tunzelmann. “To come up with the money, it took out huge loans from American, German and French banks, at exorbitant rates of interest. By 1900, Haiti was spending about 80% of its national budget on loan repayments. It ­completely wrecked their economy. By the time the original reparations and interest were paid off, the place was basically destitute and trapped in a ­spiral of debt. Plus, a succession of leaders had more or less given up on trying to resolve Haiti’s problems, and started looting it instead.”

Forest as commodity revisited

Back in August, I did a post on forest as commodity. At that time, my friend Jeff Hess of Have Coffee, Will Write sent me a link to this article in the Washington Post about the struggles of a small independent logger in Alabama. Called Waiting for Work in the Silent Woods, the article shows another side to logging and to the farming of trees:

Everyone concedes that the days they’ve gone without work in May, June and July have been difficult.

“I thought I was gonna starve to death,” says Davis.

“I got a wife,” says Holloway. “I got a brand-new truck. And when we have to stay off a week at a time, I’m telling you, it hurts.”

“I got four young kids,” says Neal, digging his heels into the soft dirt.

“These last two to three weeks been rough,” adds Davis.

“You mean months!” Neal pipes in.

“Shoot, go back to Christmas,” says Benjamin. “Wouldn’t have been for Sunnyman, we wouldn’t have had any Christmas.”

“He put a turkey on the table and a couple dollars in our pockets,” says Neal.

Sunnyman slouches off toward a big tractor, checking its wheels.

“Wasn’t for Sunnyman,” Neal goes on, “whew, I’m telling you. We didn’t have but two days’ work last week and he still paid us.” For the whole week.

. . .

Experts say the downturn in the industry is cyclical, that it will come back around. It has been estimated that since the 1990s, this region has lost upward of 10,000 jobs in textiles and manufacturing to cheaper sites in Mexico. Unemployment in this area hovers at 22.5 percent. Alabama is the second-largest commercial wood-producing state in the nation, next to Georgia. The mills typically employ foresters who find landowners who want timber cut from their woods. Then the mill hires a logger such as Sunnyman, who is now saying, “I like being outdoors,” the Alabama wind on his face.

“I used to sell timber to six mills within a 100-mile radius of here,” he says. “But in the past year, three of those mills have closed. Harrigan Lumber, Browder Veneer and Weyerhaeuser. All those places took wood from me. It’s put the squeeze on me, I’m telling you.”

I wonder how many of those plants re-opened in China.

The last several months of 2009 were just a confusion of events for me and I lost track of this article. I found it while clearing things up in this quiet time between the Christmas celebration and the New Year — which will bring it’s own business.

I thought I’d just go on and share it with you.

It’s interesting to read the comments to this article. As one points out, these are not wild forest preserves, like the Daniel Boone National Forest, but managed pine plantations. On the other hand, I don’t think Weyerhauser was/is the most environmentally friendly of companies. Maybe an argument for online publication.

I wonder how things are for Sunnyman and his crew this Christmas.

Okay, I give

It’s John Cleese’s 70th birthday and this sketch seems to be more relevant than I’d thought:

In the jury pool for a capital trial

Photograph by W. Marsh

So a couple of weeks ago I was cutting up rather large because I had been called into the jury pool for a capital trial in my little home town. I found the whole episode very upsetting, even though my friends kept assuring me that there was no way a person as publicly and loudly against the death penalty as I would ever make the cut for this jury.

For one thing, my friends were not making the jury selection.

As it turned out, it took the Circuit Court two days to decide they wouldn’t be able to seat a jury in the town where this crime was committed and I was only involved one of those days.

Still, it was enough for me. You all may find this way over sensitive of me, but I found it upsetting to be in the room, even in a crowded room, with a man the state may very well kill, a man who sat to the left of the judge’s bench chatting with one of his lawyers as though this were just some ordinary gathering of townspeople — a school board meeting, maybe, or a high school ball game.

The whole experience was both very mundane and very nerveracking.

The judge began by telling us we were convening in the courtroom of the historic County Courthouse, the one built in 1906, because of the majesty of the building and the solemnity of the occasion.

But a mischievous little voice in my head wondered if it might just be because there were so many of us, more than might comfortably fit into the newer courtrooms in the newer Circuit Courthouse across the street.

It is true that the old county court is a majestic room, sitting as it does on the second floor of a building on a hill, under the copper-plated dome with paintings of the four seasons around its inner walls. One of those seasons shows the cutting of hemp, once a major money crop here. But it was also bloody uncomfortable for old joints, the seats wooden, the rows close together.

And there were a lot of us. I had received a letter assigning me a juror number of 410. But I thought maybe their numbering system began, like checks, at 100 or something. Then I got a letter saying that, because there were so many of us, we were asked to park at the fairgrounds and ride shuttles in to the courthouse.

We were also asked, for security’s sake, to bring nothing with us but our car keys and our drivers’ licenses.

And so we filed off the big yellow schoolbuses, up the grand staircase, and through the metal detectors into the courtroom. There was not an empty seat.

The Circuit Clerk began to call the roll, “Juror Number 1.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Soupy Sales (1926 – 2009)

My husband told me this morning that Soupy Sales had died and I could only say “No. No.”

I loved Soupy Sales in sort of the same way the I loved Rocky and Bullwinkle. They were just so sort of deconstructed.

The Longest Short Story Ever Written in Lexington

There’s still time to participate in this activity in celebration of the National Day on Writing. Lexington author Ed McClanahan (O The Clear Moment) will write the starting paragraph. Between 7 AM -5 PM, add 1-250 words at one of the sites listed below:

7 AM- 9 AM
Starbucks – Chevy Chase

9 AM-11 AM
Starbucks-downtown
Third Street Stuff and Coffee
Eagle Creek Library
The Carnegie Center

11 AM- 1 PM
Barnes and Noble- Hamburg
Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Carnegie Center

1 PM-3 PM
The Morris Book Shop- Southland Drive
Waldenbooks- Fayette Mall
Northside Library
The Carnegie Center

3 PM- 5 PM
Village Branch Library
Central Library
Common Grounds Coffee
The Carnegie Center

The Longest Short Story Ever Written in Lexington, which will be authored by numerous people on National Day on Writing, will share a snapshot of Lexington and people’s lives on this day. Join the stellar line-up of local celebrities contributing to the community piece, including Ed McClanahan, Bobbie Ann Mason, Marcia Hurlow, Leatha Kendrick, Milton Toby, Steve Vest, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Kirby Gann, Rena Baer, Neil Chethik and Jan Isenhour, with many more literary icons sure to make their mark.

The story will be written on butcher paper and segments of Lexington’s Longest Short Story will be taped up inside the Carnegie Center to create an official Learning Zone. Excerpts of the completed work will be published online in the National Gallery of Writing and other sources.

At 5:30 PM, the day-long events will culminate with a CELEBRATION at the Carnegie Center and the public is invited to attend this free event. First Lady Beshear will serve as our keynote speaker.

“A flawed man with a very big heart”

Bill Clinton got an honorary degree from McGill and Beth Adams was there:

“What I think has persisted in Canada but been lost in my country, until the past ten years or so, when it’s slowly started to come back,” he said, “is a spirit of communalism – a sense that we need each other, and we need to move forward together.” That’s what his speech was about, at heart, and it was one of the best I’ve ever heard him give. I wish the religions could do as well as this at touching that flame of love and hope that, I believe, burns within each of us. Bill Clinton didn’t mention God, but it was a deeply spiritual speech, and I was not the only one with tears in my eyes as we stood to applaud at the end of it.

You should read the rest of this portrait of this “flawed man with a very big heart.” I, too, have been in a fairly small auditorium with Bill Clinton and I can tell you that the man is electrifying. And very well beloved.