80. Rednecks

            The United States is a vast country with a variety of people and types of people.  I love that about this country and through the years I’ve learned to code switch all right but I would have to say I’m really in love with the people who call themselves Rednecks.  Rednecks are presumed to be stupid and unrefined, knowing only the locale of their residency and its back woods ways. By that definition, though, we all can feel free to be categorized as such. Of course the simpler life of the rural parts of our country would stereo-typically mean that the people of that area would by its very nature be Rednecks.  But there are plenty of urbanely “refined” people who are as ignorant or more ignorant of the rural areas of our vast country and quite stupid concerning those things, therefore fitting that definition of Redneck—except they might spend enough time in a tanning booth to be more evenly “reddened.”

            For me, Redneck is a term of endearment.  I love the loggers, ranchers and cowboys I’ve always lived with along with the blue collar workers of the cities. Those people make sense to me. They enjoy life as much as anyone. I can say this freely because I consider myself to be a Redneck.  Sure, I can code-switch and enjoy a conversation about plays and books because I love those things too. Bu I also love trees, making things with my hands, cattle and riding horses or riding four wheelers or snowmobiles.  The divide we speak of in our country is stupid. People are people and when we don’t agree and allow ourselves to be polarized because of it we are refusing to understand each other.  I think the very idea of a Redneck is beautiful. To be able to peacefully live with beauty around you enjoying a beer while the rest of the world haggles over a painting of that same beauty seems to be the best thing a person could have.  Who needs a Picasso and a Chardonnay when you’ve got a sunset over the plains and a Budweiser? That’s a Redneck. I’m a Redneck.

My family and the places I love

 This is a draft of a poem that I would like to have some conversation about. I think it might be theologically divisive for some and I'd like discussion. I like debate and conversation, so here it is:

My family and the places I love

hang on that tree

as sacrifice.

Burning in the streets of Oxford,

drowning in the Salmon, Pacific, River Exe,

or shining angelic in a tear drop,

painted on the globe of our existence.

Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Florida,

Alaska, England, Libya, Canada,

Germany, Italy—all of them hanging

on that evergreen tree.

Even my sons through all their years

sacrificed for eternity

living ever in that ultimate

sacrifice that we might live.

All of us together jeering

while shepherds watched,

angels sang and He cried,

“My God, my God, why

hast Thou forsaken me?”

Swaddled in rags and laid

in a manger with a stone rolled over

it all for you and me.

79. Religious Freedom

            Americans (and I’m no exception) love the constitution—even when we really don’t know much about it. Those first ten amendments make us practically giddy and we fight to uphold them in any way we know how. There is no doubt that there are millions of people who came to this country for religious freedom, for the safety to worship as they choose. They didn’t come here because they would suddenly become a majority, they came here because they wouldn’t be persecuted or fear death because their religious beliefs didn’t fit in with their countrymen who were anything but tolerant. Here, for the most part, that’s not true. Here you can worship how you feel lead and you might be looked at as odd but you are legally protected under the constitution. That has made our country extremely diverse. While there is no doubt that we are a predominantly Christian country, we have always had a variety of religious groups who aren’t Christian at all. These people have come from all over the world and they have been given the freedom to worship openly as they feel lead and they have been protected.

            I, for one, cherish this freedom and the diversity that it has brought to my country. I love the exchange of ideas that people have when they come from different backgrounds, when they have new and different ways of expressing their devotion to a deity that has given them life and provided the sustenance and the means to obtain it. I love the freedom of religious beliefs that we have in this country and the inherent diversity that that freedom through has brought to my American home.

78. Root Beer

           

           Typically I don’t drink much soda pop. There are all the sugars that are not good for you and the carbonation takes away calcium, decreasing bone strength. There are lots of reasons not to drink it, so I seldom do. In my family as a kid a pop was a treat, so I still drink it as such: a rarity but something I enjoy on occasion. I think pop in general is originally an American thing and, although I don’t know that for sure, the raging cola wars would indicate that to be the case. We all know that Coke and Pepsi are American from way back but I know that you can get those sodas pretty much anywhere in the world.

            What I didn’t know until I lived in England for a while is how distinctively American root beer is. Apparently the flavor is associated with being sick and the flavor of some medicine that has been forced upon children over the ages. You can’t even find good old American Root Beer anywhere. I remember the distinct disappointment that all of our family had when we tasted a Sainsbury’s knock off of “American Style Root Beer.” It had a bitterness that we soon associated with anything labeled “American Style” in the UK. That’s one of those things on the American palate that the rest of the world doesn’t seem to comprehend. All those little candy root beer barrels would go to complete unappreciated waste in a British Sweet Shop.

When we flew from London to Vancouver, British Columbia after a year in the UK, my wife and I dragged our boys down to a Costco very near the airport, our heads swimming in the visual delights of our home away from home in the Northwest with its snowcapped mountains and friendly accents and totem poles. It was a quick, easy meal that we could get before we crashed for the night and then continued our journey the next day. What do you think we all chose to drink? Barq’s Root Beer. That bubbly American delight so available on this continent. We were so thankful for that cool drink on a hot August afternoon and we knew we were as good as home.

77. Cookies

           

            American food is hard to define because there aren’t a lot of foods that are distinctly ours. And most of the foods that are distinctly ours have some origin in a European and American ingenuity that adapted something to our new land or something native to the land’s new people. I don’t know where the cookie actually came from but I do know that it is one of those foods that reinvents itself with every passing year and every returning holiday.

            I love cookies. In another life I must have been the cookie monster. I did not realize how American cookies are until I went and lived in England. There they have biscuits—hard little sweet crackers like our graham crackers or Oreos without the filling. When we made brownies for people they were confused about what they were. Was it fudge? Was it an undercooked biscuit? The neighborhood children fell in love with our chocolate chip cookies, but we were on a budget so first finding chocolate chips (only in specialty shops) and then buying them (small fortune) along with a terrible oven deterred us from making too many chocolate chip cookies. We did find “American Style” cookies at a bakery, but somehow the “style” lacked American flavor and we resigned ourselves to Chocolate Digestive biscuits (not a bad cookie substitute). At home we began our no-bake cookies pursuit, but I’ve always wondered if that wasn’t a cross between cookies and candy. And that pursuit was also for naught because corn syrup was impossible to find where we lived and Golden Syrup just seemed too sweet (who knew you could be sweeter than high fructose corn syrup?) so we delayed our pursuit of cookie happiness until we returned to the home of the free.

            So I’m certain that cookies—snickerdoodles, chocolate chip, oatmeal, peanut butter, etc.—are a clear representation of my American pursuit of happiness.

76. Libraries

           

           I’m not going to lie to you, my library card has lapsed. In fact, I don’t think I have checked a book out of our public library in a good five years. I have this tendency to buy books and then when I’m done with them I give them away or donate them to my school or classroom library. But that doesn’t mean I don’t go to my library. The public library in every town I’ve ever lived or gone to has been a gathering for the community to discuss ideas, politics, music, etc.  I love public libraries and even as I write this I think about how I need to renew my library card and maybe check out an audio book. That would be a new experience for me.

            I used to work for the Idaho State library traveling around to various communities lecturing about books and authors that I had researched and that the groups had read and we gathered to discuss them. The program was called “Let’s Talk About It.”  I discussed books in libraries in Malad, Preston, Pocatello, Peck, Orofino, Potlatch, Grangeville and a few other places I’ve forgotten now. The program has now been discontinued, but when I was doing it I loved meeting people, discussing books and ideas and seeing more of their communities. Those libraries gave me that.

            Now I still go to meetings at the library, join the friends of the library (don’t know why they don’t require a library card) and do things as various as talk to political candidates, organize community events and hear local authors talk about their latest work.

            I live in a really small town but we still have a library. That’s a great thing about this country. We have this constant conflict between left and right, but we have the free expression of ideas. If you doubt that, take a trip to your local public library and check out their calendar of events. Get to know the librarian, get your library card and check out a book. I love libraries and I’ve just made myself feel guilty that I haven’t renewed my library card.

75. The Internet

           

     As a high school teacher I work with kids who don’t really even understand what life would be like without having instant access to their friends and the information of the world. Anything you want to know you can almost instantly find within a few seconds of asking. There are all kinds of complaints I have about that, but in the end I’m really thankful for the internet.

            Of course my students often look at me as someone might look at a display in a museum, perhaps an interactive museum where the dinosaurs will carry out requests. I still remember (probably because I still have one in my closet) the typewriter. Now, when I type and hit the e before the I when I mean it to be the other way around, my word processing program automatically fixes it for me and I can then store the file, along with photographs that I took with my iPhone, on the very web log (blog) where people like you, perhaps complete strangers or perhaps good friends—these days perhaps both in one person—can read it within seconds or days of when I posted it. Now I can pull out my phone like a miniature version of George Jetson’s clunky desk-top like phone and speak to my friends across the planet (if I can get the time zones right). And we can see each other as well, even give tours of where we are at the time.

            It’s funny that we’re all enchanted by the magical world of Harry Potter while in reality we’re all a bit wizard like with our internet connections through those little wands we call phones. The rapid changes in the world come about through our interconnectedness across the planet through the ages. As an English teacher I’ve always loved the connections I’ve made with people through the centuries. With the internet I’m able to do that even more and I can share it with you. That’s why, as an American, I am thankful for the internet.