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.

October 28, 2024

Habitat has finished building and awarding the first two blocks of homes in a planned development in Nicholtown, a downtown Greenville, S.C., neighborhood. The owners are settled in their modest two- and three-bedroom houses and paying their mortgages.

Work has shifted to West Greenville, a mixed area of old colonials, boxy one-level frame houses, trailer homes ringed by chain-link fences, vacant lots, and industrial facilities. A railroad track runs through the area. A few blocks of Pendleton Street, the main thoroughfare, feature small businesses, cafes, and a coffee shop, conveying a vague upscale look. But around the corner, off Lois Street, the mismash resumes. Appliances and old cars sit in front yards.

Depending on your point of view, the area is depressed or filled with opportunity. For Habitat, the point is that the real estate is affordable for people who qualify for Habitat-built homes. Habitat bought some land on one side of Sturtevant Street. Sites were staked for nine houses.

Since 1985 HabitatGreenville has built more than 400 homes, helping low-income families achieve home ownership. Habitat families escape substandard rental housing, which traps them in crime-ridden areas with poor grocery resources and schools. Residents who live in their own homes, responsible for maintenance and upkeep and for paying mortgages, contribute to neighborhood stability and safety.

Habitat doesn’t give homes away. Applicants must be living and or working in the county for a year; be at or below the regional poverty level; have a minimum annual income of $45,000. The applicant also must be living in substandard or crowded conditions or paying excessive rent in relation to income, and be able to pay the monthly mortgage.

Applicants must be willing to complete at least 200 hours of Habitat volunteer work, what’s called “sweat equity,” labor on Habitat homesites or at Habitat’s thrift stores.

Nationwide, decent housing is unaffordable for low-income people. Property values in Nicholtown have increased, meaning qualifying for a mortgage is harder. Even with Habitat subsidies that limit mortgage payments to around 30 percent of income, the $45,000 income minimum may not be enough.

The Habitat neighborhoods aren’t lovely. One day on a work shift in Nicholtown, we heard gunshots. The supervisor waved the volunteers into a half-finished house. We hung around inside until the excitement was over.

I took a break from volunteering for a couple of months with some health problems aggravated by the summer heat. By July five of the nine planned houses were completed. Since then Habitat teams finished two more and framed two on the last buildable lots.  

I parked and walked past the now-occupied ones, where sod laid by volunteers had grown in thick and green. A few of the new owners had planted shrubs and flowers. The gardening gave the block a cheerful look, although the opposite side of the street was worn and overgrown.

Volunteers were busy on the last two houses. Painting was on the schedule for one, siding for the other. Habitat hires contractors for plumbing, wiring, drywall, and flooring. Volunteers do the grunt work: assembling and raising frames, installing siding, laying roof panels, painting.

Chris, the site supervisor, welcomed me back. He saw I wore painting clothes. A gang of tall young guys, most over six feet, waved brushes. “The Eastside High basketball team is here, I’ve got them painting,” he said. “Instead I need you and Matrice to put up the shutters on 121.” He introduced Matrice, who stood nearby. She smiled. “Thank you for helping me,” she said.

Matrice, the future owner of 121 Sturtevant, was putting in some sweat equity on her own house. She owned up immediately that she had never installed shutters. I recalled some experience, decades ago, putting them up on our Virginia house. It’s not as hard as heaving roof panels, but you have to pay attention.

We hauled the shutters from the truck bed. “Separate ‘em from the frame, oh, an eighth of an inch,” Chris said. He was watching a church group hammering siding next door on 123. “An eighth of an inch—the width of two quarters.”

Matrice’s house had two front windows, meaning four shutters, inexpensive but presentable, needing six screws each. We fitted the first one along the window frame, me on a ladder, she held the shutter in place. With the power drill I got the first screw in at the top edge. We breathed deeply. I finished the second one. We backed away and looked. It showed a full half-inch of separation. The shutter had slipped as I drilled.

Back on the ladder I reversed the drill and removed the screws. We repositioned it, eyeballing the gap. Matrice pressed against the base. The first screw went in, I started on the second then heard that telltale clicking. I stripped the threads. Gritting my teeth, I pulled it out with pliers. On the second try we got it right.

We were more careful on the second shutter, it went up looking okay. We got some water and sat on the steps. She said she had done stints at Habitat’s local thrift store. She talked about her two boys, how thrilled they’ll be to get into their own home after years of occupying crummy, overpriced apartments. “Plus, this is great, I work at St. Francis Hospital, real easy to get to. I know I’ll love living here.”

We stepped back and looked at our work. The shutters were flush with the top of the frame, but I thought the gap was a bit wide, still slightly more than an eighth of an inch. Matrice inspected them. “I think they look great, just right,” she said with a smile.

The early chill had faded, I took off my sweatshirt, she removed her jacket. We picked up the last two shutters. She climbed the ladder. We measured, leveled, then eyeballed the shutter-frame gap. I leaned hard against the base of the shutter. She got the first screw in, then the second. The midlevel and lower screws, reachable without the ladder, were easier.

We had the hang of it now, the last one was easy. The shutters looked right, although I knew they might be a bit off. “I hope you like your new shutters,” I said. She grinned, “I love them!”

Our shoulders ached. The morning shift was wrapping up, the painters washed brushes, the siding team tossed their hammers in boxes. We loaded gear into the Habitat truck. Matrice’s house still needed painting, the power hookups, the appliances. But she had her shutters. She’ll move in in December.