December 2, 2024

Thanksgiving arrived with early rain, but also gladness and friends, younger folks who reached out to us when we were strangers in this town. We joined them for Thanksgiving breakfast. We followed an old recipe and baked my mom’s famous coffee cake.

Together we thanked the Lord for his blessings, and asked his protection for all of us, and others.

Blessings aren’t enough for all Americans. Three weeks earlier a bulky package arrived from St. Joseph’s Indian School in Chamberlain, South Dakota. It came via bulk mail, typical of requests for donations. Along with the fervent “ask” letter, the package contained a small blanket, address labels, a colorful canvas shopping bag, a tiny flashlight. 

We had never heard of St. Joseph’s. They found our name and address the way dozens of other charities find them: through the vast digital roster of millions of donors that resides on a powerful computer server in a windowless data farm, which could be anywhere.

The brochure describes St. Joseph’s as a home for 200 children of the Lakota-Sioux tribe. A website explains that “since 1927 the school’s mission has been to educate Native American children and their families for life—mind, body, heart, and spirit.” It features videos of cute children singing. But the website is a hardball pitch for donations. 

Solicitations arrive almost daily, from the AARP Foundation, Wounded Warrior, Doctors Without Borders, Second Harvest Bank of Metrolina, Catholic Relief Services. Then the local PBS station, my high school, my daughter’s alma mater.    

The AARP Foundation offers a LED lantern in exchange of a gift of $12. The lamp is “long-lasting, bright, and dimmable, a small token of our deep appreciation …” Wounded Warrior sends quarters pasted to a card.

Many pitches are powerful. Catholic Relief calls on us to “change a life this Christmas.” AARP: “Seniors are struggling to make ends meet.” Second Harvest Bank asks donors to “help neighbors facing hunger this Holiday Season.” Some are not. I still get dunning letters from my private, well-heeled high school, to which over 57 years I’ve not given a nickel.

A second letter arrived from St. Joseph’s, a “friendly reminder … to brighten a Lakota child’s Christmas.” It requested $25 toward Christmas dinners, $35 for gifts, $50 for winter clothing, or larger amounts, and added Philamayaye, Lakota for “thank you.” 

For many Americans the statistics showing a booming economy are a mirage. In September the Census Bureau reported that more than 36 million Americans, 11 percent of the population, are at or below the federal poverty level. These people need food, medical care, shelter.  Big cities have their pockets of poverty. In many rural places the side roads and alleys are lined with ramshackle buildings—shacks—that pass for homes.

Healthcare is out of reach for many Americans. Food pantries everywhere exhaust their stocks. Schools in poor communities struggle to secure books and supplies.

Americas are generous. The National Philanthropic Trust reports that Americans donated $557.2 billion in 2023, about a two percent increase over 2022 but less than the 4.1 percent inflation rate. Most of that, $347.4 billion, was given by individuals. Foundations donated $105.3 billion and private companies $36.5 billion.

The Trust says that 24 percent of charitable giving went to religious organizations. Education received 14 percent, foundations 13 percent and “public-society benefit” 10 percent.

The IRS reports 1.5 million tax-exempt 501(c)3 tax-exempt organizations operate in the U.S. These are religious, charitable, scientific, literary, and educational organizations. The solicitations you get in the mail or online almost certainly are tax-exempt. If you itemize your tax return you can claim your contributions as deductions.

The outfits that ask you to give are competing with each other for your dollars. Their solicitations try to persuade you that they are doing work you want to support.

Some charities, like the American Cancer Society and American Heart Foundation, are fundraising machines. But then, cancer and heart disease are killers. The big charities fund big research. They need the money.

We gave a few dollars to the Neighborhood Cancer Connection of Greenville, a tiny outfit that supports cancer victims and family members. The NCC provides counseling and donates wheelchairs, bedding, walkers, breast prostheses, and other items. It pays for prescriptions, transportation, and household bills for financially stressed patients.

We got a thank-you for our NCC donation, but no follow-up request. The letters keep coming from others, the brochures, the formulaic presentations of urgent need. The need is real, so is the marketing.

There should be a payback for checkwriting, an authentic sense of answering need. When we feel it, we’ll know it.  

Then too: “Giving Day” is tomorrow, December 2, following Cyber Monday, the big online shopping day. A lady named Celeste Flores directs GivingTuesday/United States and Canada. Other continents have their own teams.

Yes, there is a website, filled with enthusiasm: It calls for giving, financially or however you want to: volunteer to foster or walk dogs; beautify your neighborhood; buy someone a cup of coffee. Shovel snow for a senior, bring popsicles to a park to share. You might “visit a new neighborhood and strike up a conversation with someone different from you.” And so on.

People do these things even without looking at websites. You can write checks and send them to charities in their business reply envelopes. You’ll get a thank-you. Christmas is coming, after all. Spread the goodness around. Then buy someone a cup of coffee.

November 25, 2024

It was time to go up to Tennessee again, although it had just been four months. The idea came up mid-week, following the election hangover. We found a two-day rental in Sewanee, fifty miles west of Chattanooga, on Sewanee Mountain, a steep climb from the flatlands of Franklin County. It was as good a time as any. The year is ending, the evenings darkening.

In normal times, the route from Upstate South Carolina is one of two interstate angles: either north to Asheville, west on I-40, south on I-75 to Chattanooga, west on I-24 to the Monteagle Mountain. Or south: I-85 to Atlanta, north on I-75 to Chattanooga then pick up I-24. These days the northern angle is out: I-40 west is still closed or one lane only, part of the lingering nightmare of Helene.

The remaining route is the odd one, state roads through four states: west out of Greenville to Westminster, across the Chattooga River on U.S. 76 into Georgia, through Clayton, Hiwassee, and Blairsville. Then north into North Carolina to Murphy on U.S. 19, east to Cleveland, Tenn., on 74 to I-75 just north of Chattanooga, pick up I-24 to Monteagle.

No one we know goes that way, actually no one we know travels to Sewanee, home of the University of the South, the respected Episcopal Church-affiliated school founded 167 years ago. The school isn’t well known in our parts, where Clemson is the big draw.

A bridge out west of Westminster, S.C., drew us into a spooky 30-mile detour, a spider’s web of back roads that ended at a general store at a spot called Long Creek. We stumbled inside, the lady at the counter reassured us, “You’re almost to Clayton.” The S.C.-GA state line is the Chattooga, a national scenic river.

We stopped at the Clayton Café for breakfast. The well-kept town is decked out for Christmas, folks wished each other “Happy Thanksgiving.”

We pushed on, crossing the Appalachian Trail, through Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, represented by Andrew Clyde, a gun store owner whose campaign ads feature a drawing of an AR-15 automatic weapon. In 2023 he introduced a bill to designate the AR-15 as the “national gun of the United States.”

We crossed into North Carolina and hit the final turn west to Tennessee, U.S. 64/74 past the magical Ocoee, the world-famous white-water kayaking stream and the spectacular mountain lake. Then we were in Cleveland, Chattanooga, and chugging up the mountain to Sewanee, 300 miles, six hours total.

Winter had arrived on the mountain, the rental was small and chilly, but okay. In the morning we browsed through Sewanee’s majestic Gothic campus. The place, a setting of tragic and heroic Southern history and rich with memories of our Tennessee years, still calls us back.

Sandy grew up in Cowan, just below Sewanee Mountain. It’s a small place near the south edge of Franklin County, which before the Civil War threatened to secede from Tennessee and join Alabama unless the state seceded from the Union, which it did in June 1861.

From Sewanee to Cowan U.S. 41A descends sharply to pastureland for a couple of miles, then passes old neighborhoods of one-level homes. There’s an elementary school and a library, a post office, a couple of curiosity/antique shops. The Chattanooga-Nashville and St. Louis track crosses the town center, the railroad museum is a tourist stop.

The Genesco shoe factory and Marquette Cement and Stone shut down decades ago, throwing about one hundred men out of work. Even earlier, the lumber mill burned to the ground. The dime store, the insurance company, a laundromat, a café, all are closed.  Brown’s Diner, where Sandy served chicken and burgers as a teenager, now is something else.

Franklin County schools were segregated until 1964, nine years after Brown vs. Board of Education, when the County lost a lawsuit filed in Sewanee.  Until the early 1970s Franklin County High School required girls to wear dresses and skirts.  

Cowan was for generations a typical small Southern place. Whites lived on the north side of 41A and a block or two of large homes along the highway, Blacks stayed on the south side of the CN&St.L track.

Winchester, the county seat six miles west of Cowan, was built with the usual town square set off by a courthouse, some retail, law firms, a few restaurants. The Oldham movie theater, the “walk-in” (to distinguish it from the “drive-in”) across from the courthouse, is still open.

Now 41A north of downtown is a car-choked fast-food and retail strip leading to a Walmart. Sandy’s tiny Catholic elementary school is long closed. Her eighth-grade class graduated eight students. 

We slogged the four miles of descending switchbacks to Cowan. The fields were brown with the season. The cemetery was deserted, dozens of family members comfortably at peace, we guessed. A block or so from her old homestead Sandy spotted a first cousin blowing leaves from family property. We visited for a bit.

Cowan’s business block was quiet, not a pedestrian in sight. Eighteen-wheelers rumbled past on 41A. We stopped in front of Franklin House, formerly the Franklin-Pearson Hotel, a stately, gorgeous place. We had stayed ten years ago, then the only guests. I wondered about the business prospects.  

The owner, Rachel, who bought the hotel in 2020 and decorated the rooms with the work of local artists, was hanging Christmas lights. She introduced us to her great aunt, Polly Hughes, 105 years-young, gracious and gentle. Polly, it turned out, had lived long ago on the same Cowan street as Sandy. Rachel lived for years in New York and Florida. Cowan drew her back.

“The hotel is lovely,” Polly advised. “Stay here with Rachel next time you come.” Rachel gave us a tour of the tasteful rooms, set off by oil landscapes and abstracts, and the large event venue. “We have church here Sundays,” she said.

We said goodbye, promising to return. Rachel smiled and went back to her lights. We headed back to Sewanee, to our chilly rental, and turned up the heat.

November 18, 2024

On Veterans Day last week, restaurants offered discounts to vets, barbershops gave free haircuts. I got my free coffee at Starbucks. Lowes, Home Depot, and other retailers offer standing discounts to veterans. Former enlisted Marine Thomas Brennan, who fought at Fallujah in Iraq in 2004, has a better idea.

Brennan, who visited talk-show host Jon Stewart last week, left the service and earned a degree at Columbia’s School of Journalism. In 2013 he wrote an article about the Defense Department’s plan to cut funding for programs devoted to suicide prevention for active-duty personnel.

“Within three days,” Brennan said, “the Secretary of Defense restored mental healthcare to full capacity. It was a moment in my career where I felt I really saved a life. So I asked myself, how can there be a national newsroom that focuses on these topics, and help increase awareness among the American public of issues that veterans and military families face.”

Brennan created a non-profit organization called The War Horse to accomplish that mission. In 2016 he recruited supporters who helped fund the group. The War Horse staff of seven recruits journalists who report on the impact of military life, and on Defense Department and service policies. The intent is to support the service community, but then also to educate the 99 percent of Americans who know nothing about military life.

The War Horse, Brennan says, “is a nonprofit newsroom that holds power to account, strengthens our democracy, and improves understanding of the true cost of military service.”

The uncompromising baseline for active service members, their families, and veterans, is war.  Another milestone passed last week: November 7, the 20th anniversary of the start of the Second Battle of Fallujah.

The Iraq War began in March 2003 when U.S. and allied forces invaded Iraq on the pretext that Saddam Hussein’s regime was stockpiling materials that could be used to build “weapons of mass destruction,” although no evidence of them had been found. Baghdad was captured in early April. On May 1 President George Bush declared the war over.

Occupation, the hard part, then began. Iraq was filled with extremist Muslim insurgents, who operated out of Fallujah, a city of about 300,000. In March 2004 the Marines launched Operation Vigilant Resolve to expel them. The operation, the First Battle of Fallujah, ended in late April with an agreement with local citizens to prevent the insurgents from returning. But they did return.

The Second Battle, in which Brennan and his Marine unit fought, started November 7 and lasted through December. Some 6,500 Marines and 1,500 soldiers fought in Operation Phantom Fury—Fallujah Two, along with British and Iraqi troops. The allies faced 2,000 or 3,000 insurgents in the city.

The allies came down hard on the insurgents, with Navy and Air Force aircraft and Army Special Forces as well as the ground troops, who fought building to building. Fallujah was the bloodiest battle of the war. More than 100 Americans were killed. Ten enlisted Marines were awarded the Navy Cross.

In November 2004 Brennan was a 19-year-old lance corporal serving with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment at al-Asad, Iraq. His platoon got on trucks and drove to Camp Fallujah. On November 10 they attacked the city. Lance Corporal Bradley Faircloth was killed by insurgent fire.

Brennan confronted survivor’s guilt. He wrote, “For 20 years I wished I had fired a rocket into an enemy stronghold instead of letting [Faircloth] kick in that door.” As the 20th anniversary of the battle approached he arranged a reunion of members of his platoon. They talked and shared emotions. The platoon’s Navy corpsman suffered an intense sense of guilt because he was unable to save Faircloth’s life. He was comforted by Faircloth’s mother, who attended the reunion.

Their meeting inspired production of a 25-minute film, Shadows of Fallujah, that integrates platoon members’ accounts with BBC footage. The film is one response to the Marines’ questions. How do they respond to the intensity and savagery of combat? How can other Americans understand what they experienced?

The Iraq War was and is an American nightmare. American troops remained in Fallujah on a pacification mission. But by 2006 Al-Anbar province, which includes Fallujah, was again filled with insurgents.

In the interview Stewart said that Veterans Day observances he saw at Sunday football games resembled a kind of “numbing patriotism … the disparity between what the soldiers are experiencing, what the families are experiencing, and this rah-rah it’s Veterans Day, come to Denny’s for 10 percent off—it’s jarring.”

Brennan explained that service members need more than the Veterans Day rituals. “The performative ‘thank you for your service,’ where somebody just continues walking and continues their day—I’d rather not get that.

“What I want from the American public on Veterans Day and every other day is for them to actually care about the policies … that are going to affect veterans and military families and active-duty service members.”

The War Horse has taken on more than 100 writing projects. Its teams investigated an online sexual harassment scandal in the Marine Corps that led to a Congressional investigation and  policy changes. It covered the stories of women veterans and their successful reentry in academics, business, and social work. The organization has conducted writing seminars for military spouses, and for medics and corpsmen.

The War Horse, Brennan tells us, is built for action. It also is built on memories. One memory: in the early 1970s I was assigned as a second lieutenant to Headquarters Marine Corps in Washington. Marines were directed to wear civilian clothes to work three days each week, to lower the military profile in the D.C. area to avoid antagonizing the antiwar locals.

The no-uniform gesture was stupid and futile. In 1973 a smart, brave outfit like The War Horse could have explained to politicians that the anti-war movement was the whole country. The War Horse was needed then, as it’s needed today.      

November 4, 2024

Around a half-million people voted at the first opportunity in South Carolina two weeks ago. At Greenville Tech folks waited 40 minutes to get into the polling place in order to avoid going on Election Day. It was a weekday, most of the voters were oldsters. We heard no political talk. No need for it, the state will go lockstep Republican.

The next day I drove past Tech. The lines of voters wound around the parking lot into the building, cars were backed up along the driveway. Democrat Kathryn Harvey is running for Congress against the incumbent, Republican William Timmons. Harvey has run TV ads. Timmons doesn’t see the need.

From 2008 to 2020 in Northern Virginia, Election Day was ten hours of tension. In 2008 we stood in line in the early morning darkness and freezing rain. Political signs were stuck in the lawn along the sidewalk into the polling place, a Baptist church. Under their umbrellas voters waited and argued, McCain versus Obama.                             

It was the same in 2012, 2016, 2020. Political energy flowed in the Old Dominion. In 2020 we voted early for the first time. The crowd surged, excited and loud. We waited two hours. Biden won the state with 54 percent of the vote to Trump’s 44 percent.

Last week two Harris-Walz signs appeared on a front lawn nearby, then a third behind a chain-link fence in a low-income neighborhood. Trump signs are scattered. On a rural road I spied a Confederate flag with a Trump banner stitched to it. But the signs you see are mainly for candidates for state senate, local supervisors, and sheriff, all Republicans, nearly all unopposed.

Meanwhile, across the street from our house a neighbor has finished cutting away two fallen trees and piled the stumps and branches six feet high along the curb. Most streets are lined with tree-trunk and shrubbery remains, along with the crumpled sticks of broken fences. Roofs are caved in.

Still, schools are back in session, first-term report cards handed out. Kids’ soccer leagues are playing. Nearby state parks are reopening. The YMCA lobby is lined with stacks of bottled water, quilts, tarps, and canned goods to be delivered to devastated western North Carolina. Local men are gathering at churches to carpool to the mountains to clear blowdowns.

We may be led in other directions. Over two weekends the city put on festivals along Main Street where vendors offer their artwork, crafts, and so on. A local guy displayed his canvases. He had tried for the look of French Impressionism, paying homage to Claude Monet with a seascape, the canvas maybe three feet square. He had worked to capture Monet’s attention to light, his extravagant colors.

In the second half of the 19th century the Impressionists painted the richness of life: nature, peasants and aristocrats in ordinary moments, dancers, couples in love, the sea, meadows and forests flamboyant with color, dappled in sunlight, azure and darkened skies, cities, villages. They painted the world. Today they lift us above the darkness of today’s political frenzy: the crudeness, the timidity, the hypocrisy, the lies and threats, the hollow promises, the glibness and contrived sincerity.

Then too, they transport us at this moment away from the ravages of nature in this corner of the country: shattered trees still blocking roads, crushed houses, washed-out roads, reality of loss, nightmares of shattered dreams, anger, acrimony, despair.

The term “Impressionist” was adopted by a group of French artists, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne, Manet, Pissarro, Sisley and 24 others when they exhibited their work together in Paris in April 1874. Their work was blasted by critics. Monet’s Impression, Soleil Levant, his portrait of the Le Havre harbor bathed in mist, gave the movement its name, as it captured the theme: everyday life in its variety, grace, and pathos.

(Right now Washington’s National Gallery of Art, the Musee d’Orsay, and the Musee de l’Orangerie are collaborating in presenting “Inventing Impressionism” at the National Gallery. The exhibit runs through January 20. Reservations are required.)

The Impressionists were prolific. They painted and painted, portraits, landscapes, people sitting in bars and cafes, beautiful women, capturing the sublime textures and lavish colors of the world. The local artist who showed his work at the street booth understood as best he could what he was doing, seeking to replicate the subtlety of Monet, while knowing he fell short.

After browsing at the artist’s booth we moved on down the street, looking at the jewelry, pottery, homemade quilts, and clothing without much interest. The crowd flowed along, women examining the offerings, some purchasing items, chatting with the vendors, all happy to be out in the sunshine. Lines formed at the food trucks and beer booths. Folks munched sandwiches on shady benches.

The scene of bustling humanity, the bright summer shirts, sundresses, and funny hats reminded me again of Monet and the Impressionists. The vividness of local life unfolded before us in variety, joy, even mystery. The savagery of the election season and the hurricane recovery are behind us. We can take pleasure again in our humanity, and our ordinariness.

We ducked into a coffee shop and sipped an Americano. The place was packed with festival visitors resting their aching legs. Servers rushed about, taking orders, serving snacks, coffee, beer, wine. Folks at a nearby table shared laughter and raised glasses in toasts. I looked around, enjoying the raucous goodness of the place and the people. Monet should see this, I thought.