A Country Boy Can Surmise

illustration by Gabriela Pesqueira I hope you will have time to read my new essay for the Ideas section of The Atlantic . A brief excerpt: "My own parents...cut corners so that they could help less fortunate kids from my school, or our church. I was taught to sacrifice my own comfort for the good of others, whether it be by volunteering my seat to elders in a crowded waiting room, letting a pregnant woman go in front of me in the grocery line, or giving half of my sandwich to a hungry classmate. I may not have always lived up to these standards, but I was taught to try. I’m sure I’m not alone. Sacrificing for the common good was something most of us were taught when I was growing up. Just a few decades later, I’m seeing people in my hometown, and all over the country, thinking only of themselves. They’re not just unwilling to make sacrifices for others during a pandemic; they’re angry about being asked to."

First in a series of short essays based on photographs. This is my Great Uncle Dave's camping chair. He carried it to Dale Hollow Lake for almost fifty years, from when he first visited there in the late 1940s until shortly before his death in 1996. These types of chairs are still common at some funeral homes in the South but when I was growing up the elders in my family always took the lightweight and sturdy folding seats on camping trips, too. It is still solid as a pine knot and surprisingly comfortable. It folds up smoothly and hooks right across my shoulder for easy carrying. My Great Aunt Mildred gave this chair to me a few years after Uncle Dave passed away.  She's gone now, too, like all of the real elders in my family.   My family only recently rose to solid middle class so we do not inherit expensive antique sideboards or wedding China patterns and silver. Our heirlooms are the smaller things: the dripolator (a stovetop coffee pot) my aunt used every day of her life,...

There's a moment in the new film The Dig that tore me down.  I don't want to give too much away, but it involves a line about a queen sailing through space on a ship.  The scene moved me so much because it so perfectly captured the way I've often felt about death involving my loved ones:  that deep hope and faith that I will see them again, in some form, although most likely in one that our human minds cannot comprehend.  Lately I keep going back again and again to why art matters the way it does: because it works the best when it manages to articulate the abstract notions that seem impossible to articulate.  I had a similar experience earlier this week when I read " A Death in the Family ", a long short story by Billy O'Callaghan that is one of the best pieces of literature I've ever read.  This story manages to capture the way it feels to be at a death bed, how the waiting feels, how the mystery of it all feels.  Anyone who has experienced the l...

"The Dead" by James Joyce is one of my favorite pieces of writing to have ever been written.  A few years ago I was teaching the story in Ireland and it struck me that many of the issues being explored in the short story are still pertinent in my homeland today.  Themes such as the complications of being loyal to your own place in the world, choosing sides, homesickness, and the way a culture can become so immersed in the past that it threatens to impede its own progress.  I do not think there is any way to improve upon Joyce's story but I did think it'd be interesting to pick up the story from early 1900s Ireland and move it to contemporary Appalachia, so that's what I did in this story, "Another Country," which was published in Blackbird .  Today is the Day of Epiphany, or, Old Christmas.  While Joyce's story points to Epiphany several times mine brings up Old Christmas because that is the way the day is thought of in Appalachia still today.  I hop...

This year, especially:   Find a body of water, and be still beside it for a time. Build a fire and watch the flames. Sit on the porch. Lie on the grass. Light candles. Take a deep breath. Write a letter to someone. Discover something new everyday. Learn. Tell stories. Listen to old people. Ask them questions. Do something nice for others when you can and treat yourself occasionally.  Read actual, real books and newspapers. Buy grocery store flowers.  Spend an entire day without looking at your phone. If you feel the urge to post a selfie everyday, take a picture of some other beautiful thing instead.  Remember that there is power in moderation. Learn to cook or bake something new. Enjoy every meal. Savor your food. Drink water. Any chance you get, hold a baby.  Anytime the opportunity arises, dance.  Always swim or wade in the water.  Study leaves. At least once this year, pee outside.  Be completely quiet. Turn your favorite song up as ...

1. Tired and Weary  The fourth Sunday of Advent meditates on peace. This sets me to thinking of all the ways the idea of peace has been given to me through music and literature throughout my life.  When I was a child, few songs at church moved me more than “There Will be Peace in the Valley”.  The image of being in the valley suggests being between high ridges, a familiar setting for me, so I always assumed the song had been written especially for my place and my people.  The moving song that has been recorded by everyone from Mahalia Jackson to Elvis to Loretta Lynn was written by a Black Appalachian evangelist and composer from North Georgia, Thomas Dorsey , who wrote over 3,000 songs including another masterpiece, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”. “Peace in the Valley” spoke perfectly to the working class people of my church who were often fighting their way out of poverty with its opening, fatalistic lines:  Well, I’m tired and so weary but I mu...