Diversity in Pixieville

Yes, the students are coming back. The U-Hauls, piled high with mattresses, parade their way into town. In their wake come the derelicts: those few extra winos now sitting on the sidewalks, debating matters of great importance to themselves. But these are to be expected, like the draining out of chlorophyll and the revelation of the leaves' underlying yellows and reds.

But this fall, there is a new element, brought in by our own church, which, in the process of reconstructing its buildings, requires the use of laborers. They are imported from working class towns and they drive huge diesel-fueled pick up trucks with bumper stickers that say, "P.E.T.A.--People Eating Tasty Animals," "Gut deer?" and "Welcome to America: Now Speak English." Fortunately, these trucks aren't here on Sundays or our Prius-driving parishioners would be mightily offended, despite our committment to tolerance and diversity. Who knows, they might even threaten to learn how to jackhammer!

More Reading

I guess it's not coincidence that one comes across books that relate in some way to one's current situation. I mean I was browsing through the bookstore, reading the dust jackets, and I saw The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty. I've never read anything by Welty, except for that one short story that made them name the mail program Eudora after her ("Why I Live at the P.O."). This short novel apparently revolved around the protagonist's father just dying. So it had to be read. Very different from my life, not just in its Southerness, but in the fact that the father had married a new, young wife, and much of the book revolved around the two women's interaction. I am really surprised this hasn't been turned into a play or a movie. The struggle between them is dramatic and compelling, although the widow is almost over the top stupid. But not quite beyond believability. I certainly couldn't understand Laurel's decision to burn what remained of her mother's letter. It was like she wanted to keep them from further desecration, but she could have taken them! Okay, this is the view of someone whose house now contains NUMEROUS boxes of papers and letters her parents have written. Not to mention boxes of my own words. I realized today that I have surely got enough material in my reams of diaries to mine for literature for the rest of my life. But I get tired just thinking about opening those boxes.

Reading

I finished Harry Potter, but I promise, this comment contains no spoilers:

As much as he may deny it, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was heavily influenced by the world situation, the Axis gaining control of more and more of Europe, the darkness spreading. It's easy for us from the perspective of victory to forget what that was like, but I saw a contemporary newsreel once, that showed in black the areas that were under Hitler or Mussolini's control and the picture looked very bleak indeed. It was, I guess, that sense of military dominance, rather than Nazi ideology, that compelled Tolkien's pen. Though we know he did disapprove of their racial theories, when he refused to tell them that he had no Jewish blood in him in order to let them publish the Hobbit in German. It is interesting that, half a century later, it is the racial purification/genocidal ideology of the Nazis that Rowling makes much more explicit in her works, which of course borrow so heavily from the Master (JRRT). I suppose it is an indication of the sad fact that this kind of thinking about racial purification did not die out with the Nazis but continues to rear its head, though it seems to me that religious divides are generally more contentious than ethnic ones, these days. Some might say that racism is simply an easy enemy to illustrate, for the same reason that it is always simpler to use Hitler as an example of evil which cannot be tolerated, than Stalin, who some consider responsible for as many as 10 million deaths.

No, this isn't a happy post. How happy can I be when there's no more Harry Potter to read?