Report From Humboldt
Just a quick update from a Kinko’s in Jackson, Tennessee. It’s super warm here in the “Sath,” which is nice except for I have to keep short sleeves on so that my grand-cousin (what is the technical term for your parent’s cousin? I have no idea) can’t see my tattoos. I really like Dometria, she’s got a lot of spunk and intellegence, but she’s already compared my hair to cat hairballs (almost–she stopped herself just as the comparison was coming out of her mouth), and I have no plan of letting her see the tattoos.

She’s a neat woman, showing me hundreds of picures of the “homeplace,” the farm that my grandfather and his eight siblings grew up on, as she lamented the loss of “true family ties.” She’s got quite a mouth, and it’s interesting to experience a vocabulary (and attitude) developed before the civil rights movement, and ignorant of political correctness. She’s definitely as much of a racist as my grandmother, but in that “kahnd, jaynt’l suth’n waiy.” “I had a student once run up to me and say ‘teacher, he called me a nlgger!’ I know we’re not supposed to use that word any more, but I though ‘Well, it takes one to know one!’” Reminds me of when my grandmother referred to her downstairs neighbors (who she described as “just so loud“) as “coloreds.” At 8 years old I was totally confused. “Aren’t there black people living downstairs?” Even then I realized that there was something loaded in the an aging southern woman’s speach.

Oh and the FOOD! My father and I are both vegetarians, and it’s simply impossible to eat here. At least, eat with “fam’leh.” Last night we had coleslaw, baked beans (with bacon, which I avoided), and some sort of sloppy joe thing with meat–I don’t even know what it was, and I don’t care really to. It was probably pork. My dad and I choked it down (seriously, YOU try to turn down a 76 year old woman with more hospitality in her little finger than in all of Washington state), but we’re trying to find ways to protect our intestines from the meat assault we’re enduring. We’re going to try with some good cheeses, but realistically I won’t be able to get around eating meat once a day. It’s perfect that I’ve planned to the cleanse again when I get home. Ten days of fruits, veggies, and fasting will be the perfect antidote to all this meat my poor gut is dealing with.

But, don’t you get me wrong: I’m having a good time! The birds down here are AMAZING. Truly cacophanous. Blue birds and mocking birds (I’d never seen a mocking bird!) and cardinals and robins and all singing their little lungs out. Wonderful! And the weather is nice. And Dometria is indeed family. I swelled with pride when she told me how proud she was of my career. It matters, you know? Both my father’s parents were born and raised in Humboldt, Tennesse, and as much of a Pacific Northwest native as I am, I cannot (and would not) deny that half my heritage is right in here Tennessee.