Appalachia Project: Christy, 1967

Christy, by Catherine Marshall, 1967

In 1912, young Christy Huddleston is inspired by a sermon to move to one of the poorest areas of Appalachia to teach at a mission school. She faces danger, sickness, and ignorance, but also beauty, friendship, and love. The book is a love story, a mystery, a bit of (specious?) anthropology, and a coming-of-age story, but primarily it is the story of Christy's spiritual journey from an other-directed theology to a personal experience of a personal god.

In a way Christy is a classic governess story, in the same vein as "The Sound of Music" or a Phyllis Whitney novel. Ingenue travels to alien place to grow up and find love with the alpha male. Winning the trust of children is always a part of it. Marshall chose an intriguing setting, the fictional mountain area called Cutter Gap, set in the hollers and ridgetops of the Smokies. And she added the depiction of Christy's spiritual growth. Both of these decisions elevated the book above "summer paperback" status.

Christy is set in the fictional Cutter Gap, near the fictional El Plano in East Tennessee. The setting is near the town of Del Rio, Tennessee, which is right on the Tennessee/North Carolina border about 60 miles due east of Knoxville. In the 1930s, as happened in so many Appalachian communities, including the area of Ohio where I live, the federal government bought up land to create the national park system. Many remote communities were virtually dissolved at this time. If you can find the documentary "A Forest Returns," it will tell you this story as an oral history. View a short clip at http://youtu.be/pXNLh1K7Lmw or go to www.ohiolandscape.org.

I own this book and read it from the original paperback I have from 1968. I've read this book three or four times and always liked it. My old copy of it is fingerprinted and dog-eared. I don't think I read Christy until I was in junior high school, though, maybe between 1970 and 1973 or so. Several of my old friends from the "Bloomfield Mafia" Facebook group suggested that this book be put on the list, so many of us must have read it around the same time. My sister Judy Graybill read it, also. The paper was yellowed and the type was fading, so I read all 500+ pages with a magnifying glass--quite a two-handed chore. This is the first time I've had to read this way and it has spurred me to make an eye doctor appointment in the near future. Marshall's tight plotting of the story kept me reading despite the inconvenience.

Marshall's writing is clear and vivid and loving, in that the author is lovingly retelling the story of her mother's early adulthood, events that had taken on legendary prominence in Marshall's childhood. Marshall visited the mountain community and captured lively detail. Christy's sense of smell is almost a featured character in the book and led to the inclusion of odors and scents with almost every scene, which placed me right in the picture. In a grotesque scene in which Christy must change a teenage boy's diaper, which he has soiled with typhoid diarrhea, Christy's decision to put a clothespin on her nose provided just enough humor to get me through.

And, from my own experiences with the poor, I understand the odor thing. Many people I come in contact with have body odor, or the odor of unwashed clothing, or a miasma of cigarette smoke (stale and fresh) hugging them like a fetid cloak. Like Christy, I force myself to put my nose aside while I'm with the person. But I keep a spray can of Fabreeze on my desk and spray away the smell as soon as the person has left the parking lot (if I spray too soon, they always catch me at it).

Besides the smells, Christy must deal with people who speak almost a different language, and who follow a code of behavior that she doesn't understand. She has to conquer her own squeamishness and missishness and is led therefrom to really see the other person, with the veil of self interest drawn back. In other words, Christy grows up.

As soon as the doctor says, "It's typhoid," the book shifts into a higher gear. Christy and the people in her life are fighting death, looking it right in the face. This section of the book is grueling and painful and sad. I agonized over which beloved character was going to be announced next to be ill. Part of this being a great book is this awakening of compassion in the reader, how much I cared. I was right there.

The ending of this novel is masterful, full of impact, stunning, really. If you follow this blog, you know how many times I have felt that the author just didn't know where to end. Not Marshall. Her last sentence is the most exciting one in the whole book. Pow. I was left with a feeling of elation and beauty, even jaded as I am and having read and reread this book. Good job!

The themes in Christy range from the power of love to the need to accept the gifts/trials life gives you. On page 27 in Chapter 1, Marshall describes the wind in the mountains--Christy is on her train trip to the mountains and steps off the train for a minute. "Now the snow was beginning to fall again, with the wind rising. It was a strange wind, a whimpering sobbing wind, with pain in it....But there was something different about this wind. It was not a single note, but many notes playing up and down the scale, harmonizing at one moment, discordant the next, retreating, advancing." This passage is the first real statement of theme, that the book will be about suffering and possibly transcendence and that you can't have one without the other.

In terms of the depiction of Appalachia, I realized that this story is really Christy's and that Appalachia is the backdrop for her growth and development as a person and as a Christian. The Appalachian people played sort of the "noble savage" role, and we did not at all hear their side of the story. Christy could have worked against many an underprivileged background (and has--this book is well-done, but the premise is time-honored). She marvelled at the good qualities, like they were a wonder, against the backdrop of squalor. 

The theme that God's love is personal and transformational was beautifully drawn, but it was the non-Appalachians who got transformed by it. The doctor (who was from Cutter Gap but had been educated out of its backwards ways), Christy, and David the preacher all used the Appalachian people and mountains as sort of (unchanging) catalysts for their own spiritual journeys. The book is an outsider's portrayal of the culture and people.

I think one of the reasons I love this book so much is that it is a true hero journey for Christy and some of the other characters. The classic theme of quest literature is strong here, that you have to lose yourself to find yourself. A strong female hero journey is hard to find. Christy was strong, individualized, self-determining, and brave. She faced the dangers and hazards inside herself as well as the ones outside her. The Gandalf role is played by a woman also, the spiritually attuned Alice Henderson.

This could be (left to right) the doctor, the
preacher, Christy, and Miss Ida (the
preacher's sister in Christy.

The book presents a picture of Appalachia and the picture is not inaccurate. But please keep in mind that it is not a story of Appalachia. You could substitute Middle Earth or Shangri-La or Moonbase Alpha or Camelot or the Land of Oz and tell the same story. The book is unabashedly Christian, and it does it well. I don't know how people from other faiths would feel about the story. You can read the story substituting "love" for the word god, probably, but that kind of awkward translation would probably ruin the experience.

All of the stereotypes of Appalachia are in this book--feuding, ignorance, unwashedness, sourness, frequent pregnancies, hopelessness on the one hand, and on the other the idealization of the musicality, artistic/folk gifts, and elevated Scots-Irish ancestry. The descriptions of landscape are breathtaking. I have not much comment to make on this. But I do look forward to other books in which the Appalachian voice is itself heard. I want to know what that voice has to say.

Peace Poem 4

Peace Breeze

by Joy Dickerson

Peace recedes
Wreathed in weeds
Beaded in seeds
Swathed in sweet
Ebullient breeze
Peace leaves

Peace heeds

Scented sweet peas
Riffling reeds
Veeing geese
Leaves of three
Let it be

Peace sheathes
The honeybees

The gleaming wheat
With rain in sheets
Summer heats
Moonbeams

Peace leaves
Wreathed in weeds
Beaded in seeds
Swathed in sweet
Ebullient breeze

Peace recedes

Appalachia Titles Request

For my next reading project, I would like to develop a list of novels that truly reflect the Appalachian experience in all its glory, vainglory, and ignominy.

Here are some of the books already suggested:

• The Dollmaker
• Prodigal Summer
• Christy
• Out of the Redbrush
• Hunger Games
• The Song Catcher
• Rosewood Casket

I want to know what book titles you would put add to this reading list.

Please respond in the comments section of this blog or message me (Joy Dickerson) on Facebook.

Thanks.

Joy

Peace Poem 3

Dona Nobis Pacem

by Joy E. Dickerson

Darkness lengthens. Shadows
Outline bare branches.
Nest lies broken on the ground
As if birds never again return.

Now the winter peace has come.
Oak leaf shivers brown.
Blackbird caws.
Icicle shimmers like glinted peace.
Snowflake falls crystal-quiet.

Pull down a blanket of silent snow so
All be peaceful on the eastern front and south and north and west.
Capture peace like snowflake on the tongue.
Embrace it as you would a crying child.
Murmur, "peace has come."

Peace Poem 2

Second in a series of poems about peace to celebrate the holiday season.

Peace: A Fantasy  

by Joy E. Dickerson

We cannot find it if we cannot imagine it. 

Here is my imagined gift for you,

For birthday,

Christmas,

Hanukkah,

Anniversary,

For graduating from eighth grade:

You will receive true peace on earth.

All fighting shall cease

All weapons and violent acts will disappear

Coercion and propaganda

Will shimmer like heat over a fire

And vanish.

Love will fill every heart and we will

Weep for all of the potential we have destroyed.

Then through the weeping will come a great quiet

And through the quiet will come a voice singing

And then another, and then a million voices, 8 billion voices.

No more, no more, will be the refrain.

No more Nagasaki, no more My Lai

No more Hitler, no more Charles Manson,

No more bullying,

No more hatred,

No more poisoning of the spirit,

No more, no more.

The singing will swell into a great healing

And eternity will begin.

We cannot find it if we cannot imagine it.

Peace Poem Post 1

This is the first of a series of poems I have written about peace which I dedicate to the solstice time. Most of my writing on peace leans on the lyrics of John Lennon, for whom I am thankful.

Give Peace a Chance

For Linda Donahoe

Peace is the hummingbird at the feeder
Peace is a dog with a stick
          (Which he drops to go digging)
Peace is the first blooms in wintry woods

Peace is the absence of worry
          And the presence of beauty
Peace says, I accept you as you are
          I do not need to change you
          You are beautiful
Peace says I am where I am right now and asks,
          Where are you?

All we are saying, is give peace a chance

Imagine nothing to kill or die for
Imagine everything to sing and shout for
Imagine the poorest and most ill
          Brought to the table and clothed and fed and healed
          The most rejected embraced

Imagine
Envision
Predict
Foresee
Give peace a chance

All I am saying, is give peace a chance.



                                         by Joy E. Dickerson
                                         January 2, 2011

Mentoring: Sing the Song

We pull into the parking lot by the deserted ball fields. “Park closes at dusk,” the sign says, but a tinge of rose still highlights the horizon. Sundown time. Time for babies to fuss, Alzheimer’s patients to wander, animals to seek shelter or leave it, depending on crepuscularity. Time to mentor.

“What do you want to talk about?” I ask cheerily. I start some topics. How was school, how was your week, how was family visit last week… One word answers. Monosyllables. A hint of eye-rolling.

“OK, your turn to pick a topic,” I declare with a hint of frustration. I put the driver’s seat all the way back. “Or, we can just rest,” I add as I lay back with a sigh. She puts her seat back and lays back, too.

A moment. Then, timidly, “Would you sing me that one song, the roads song?”

I’m glad to comply, put my seat back up. Out comes the 1970s melody that seems timeless, like it was born with the birthing of our country, sincere Americana… " Almost heaven, West Virginia. Blue Ridge Mountain, Shenandoah River.”

She sings along a bit, but mostly listens intently. She is trying to learn this song. I told her that you can please almost any American audience with this song—people will always sing along.

“I hear her voice, in the morning hours she calls me…” I finish with an extended ending and she asks me to go through it again, so I do and she sings along with more courage.

When we finish, I try to tell her the song like it is a story…truck driver out on the road thinking about home, about memories and anticipation. It helps me to memorize when I feel the story. Sometimes I pantomime songs. Wait till I teach her the hand motions to the Dead’s “Ripple.”

Next up we sing Christmas songs…she knows “Silent Night” pretty well, and “Jingle Bells,” and “Rudolph,” but has never sung my nameday carol, “Joy to the World.” I switch over then to the “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog” version of “Joy to the World,” thinking maybe she knows that one. Nope. She likes the liveliness of it, though.

We close with the one song we both reliably know—the national anthem. It’s time to drop her off at home.

As we pull out, uh-oh, here comes a police car. It’s dark now and we have caught the attention of the po-po. She tenses up, but I have the middle class assurance that sees law officers as allies rather than enemies.

“Sorry officer, we were just leaving.”

“Park closes at dark,” he grumbles. I apologize again and head on out of there.

This is a detailed description of about one-half hour of mentoring. It’s not events and outings. It’s not gifts and glitz. It’s about sitting with a kid and going with her flow for awhile, respecting the flow. I think most kids want that more than they want planned activities and conscious enrichment.

This girl most often wants to spend time at my house and direct her own self. She plays on the piano, tidies up, we read Silverstein poems to each other. Sometimes I know she is off in an imaginary world out of my sight, and that’s OK. As long as she keeps coming back from it. One time she said, “Can I take the dog outside and run around with her?” Yep. It made me run, too.

People I talk to seem to think mentoring is something far beyond their capabilities, something that is a bit dangerous, that might be risky. I think most of them are most afraid that they might not be liked by the child, and they put all sorts of layers over that fear to keep themselves out of the mentoring soup. They don’t understand the boundaries the parent organization (Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America, in this case) puts around the relationship. We have individual check-ins with social workers and a structure in which to work. BB/BS gives both of us a variety of fall-back positions.

Mentoring supports my deeply held belief that real change can only happen in a one-on-one relationship, or maybe in an intimate small group. Letting a child know you is so special. Letting them glimpse your world and enter it for a bit of time. That’s all it takes.

Vinton County Football: Reflections of a Sports Reporter

On August 30, 2013, I covered the Vinton County High School Vikings football game against Unioto High School's Tanks as a reporter for the Vinton County Courier. My hometown Vikes fought this hard-played game to a 33-20 victory. Here are my reflections on my first experience as a sports reporter.

What is was was football. Huge stands of lights flickering with insects. The smell of hot dogs, popcorn, and mown hay like a taste on the tongue. Wide shoulder pads emphasizing narrow bottoms. Torsos stuffed into cheerleader outfit sausage casings. Dipilatoried legs. The smell of sweat and testosterone. Fans milling around more than sitting, tractor-supply-hatted men leaning on chain link fence. Percussion starting distant and growing louder and louder. Loudening. Oh yes! What it was was football.

The feeling was that NOW had arrived. And NOW was the classic American high school football game.

I got the call on Wednesday--the newspaper needed someone to cover the local high school football game. Would I do it? Fear filled me but I said yes anyway. "We just need column inches--it doesn't have to be good." Why shouldn't it be good? At the very least, it would be grammatical. That would be an improvement on much local sports reporting. In my brief (two-week) career as a stringer for the Vinton County Courier, I had covered a local author, the opening of a tanning salon, and a young woman returned from a mission trip. I was thirsting for something with a bit more wild in it.

I'm still thrilling with adrenalin two days later. I declared myself to be a member of the press and waded right into that football game, camera and notepad in hand. I visited the ticket taking women and the concession stand crew and sniffed out the popcorn popping Mr. Ziegler. I was delaying the moment when I would cross that barrier between regular football game goers and the specially privileged--the chainlink fence dividing the fans from The Game. My heart was racing. I had been invited down to the surface of this alien planet called Sideline. I saw the familiar face of Commoner Journal reporter Paul McManis, and his smile and wave got me through the gate.

Still early, sun broiling, grass glittering green, sky shimmering blue. I was early and the preliminaries took forever. I trolled up and down the sideline getting the feel of it. I found out where not to stand (coach's box). I took pictures. I hoped pictures would fill up column inches if I had nothing to write. I took random shots of light poles, goalposts, cheerleaders--then the team came boiling out onto the field like soda out of a shook bottle. A roar went up. Healthy, helmeted, maroon-clad players crowded into a fist-raised huddle and then migrated to the sidelines in the natural choreography of a hundred wild mustangs on an American prairie.

A revelation to me was referees in shorts. Women, you should all try sports reporting. I was submerged in a tsunami of male energy that exuded even from the well-toned calves of the officials. The refs functioned like cowpokes in this arena, managing the flow, yellow-flagging the over-exuberant and the tardy alike. But it was the coaches who were the alpha males of the herd, the big stallions. (They were also in shorts.) The coaches on my side of the field were directive without being mean and free with praise. Their coaching had been done in the weeks leading up to the game; now it was time to let the players do the work.

As the sky darkened and the lights came up I felt like I was in Oz. How could this stereotype of Americana be real and me in it? I moved with the team as it ebbed and flowed up and down the field, again in natural choreography dictated by the movement of that little oblong pigskin ball. I was inside the energy sphere and submerged in the action. I yelled. Fist-pumped. Woo-hooed. "Go, go, go, go--YES!"

Add caption

I had the time of my life.

I kept thinking of Andy Griffith all evening long, and the comedy routine that made him famous, called "What it was was football." You can find this on YouTube and I recommend it. His description of the game from a novice point of view is priceless. Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I42JIgfnMYE 

This inspiring victory may be the only football game I ever cover. I give thanks for it. And I wonder what it's like to report on a losing effort. What's the energy like for losers? I don't know if I want to know. But, until then, this is sports reporter Joy Dickerson putting this article to bed. Good night.

The Winemaker, by Noah Gordon

The wine cellar in the book
looked nothing like this. It
was in a cave. 

The Winemaker is the second book I've read by Noah Gordon, both at the urging of Jeannie Graetz, who is actually a more-avid reader than me, if you can imagine that. During her recent visit, I most often saw her reclining against a stack of plumped-up throw cushions with a book in her hand--sometimes one I was trying to read. Good books were a bulwark for her as supportive as the throw cushions she leaned on. I could easily see the little girl still residing in her, little Jeannie and adult Jeannie together with the same nose in a book.

Josep planted roses next to his vines--they were
like the canary in the coal mine--they would show
damage before it effected the grapes.

I like The Winemaker much better than The Physician (see previous review). The story was much less epic in scope, allowing me to "drill down" (to use an obnoxious currently popular buzz phrase) rather than spread out. The focus was young Josep Alvarez, who was exiled from his rural Spanish village after witnessing a crime, and on his education in the world of the grape. The exile journey was told mainly in reminiscences--I learned about it through its influence on Josep and his life rather than through tedious narrative (a flaw in Physician). Still, as with any hero journey, Josep gained valuable tools and allies through his exile. When he returned home, he was ready to take up his true inner calling--the making of wine from his own grapes.

Captain Picard in his family's vineyard.

In Josep's village, the entire grape harvest was sold to vinegar makers. A good yield was more important than flavor and the vines were tended carefully, but not expertly. The book tells the story of Josep's struggle to transform his father's neglected vines into fine wine. And, niftily, as Josep transforms the winery, he finds that he has transformed himself into a man. His relationship with a neighbor woman is sweet. His relationship with her son is even sweeter.

A casteller

One of the key images of the book, its scaffolding, is the tradition of the casteller--an acrobatic enterprise engaged in by many of the villages and performed at festivals and fairs. The casteller is a pyramid of men, with, say, eight on the bottom row, six on the second row, four on the third row, and so on. As the rows grow higher, the participants grow smaller, until a young boy finally climbs the whole pyramid and takes his place at the pinnacle. The casteller represents Josep's journey; it represents the vines, which must have sturdy roots to hold the fragile grapes; it represents the tradition of wine growing. It would have been a great title for this book, The Casteller, but I understand why the marketing people maybe wanted something a bit more obvious. (And, the title fits in a long line of Gordon's books with job titles as the title.) The casteller represented physically a multiplicity of key dynamics and served as a unifying element.

As in The Physician, I did not greatly relate to the main characters in this book, although they were much better drawn in The Winemaker. There is a sustained underlying danger in the book, which is very nicely done and made Josep more human, more fragile, than the superhero of The Physician. Good job, Mr. Gordon.

Wine and me...

A glass of wine in college was more
likely served in a red Solo cup, if
they had been invented yet.

OK, I was 20 and almost legal for wine. I was a college junior and tired of beer, which I never acquired a taste for, although I would drink it for the effect and to fit in socially. (I learned to like beer between my junior and senior years of college, when I spent several weeks in England--yum Guinness stout.) I was invited to a wine party by a guy in an English class. Well, wine certainly tasted better than beer! It was like juice, but rich and dark (I was on red--it seemed fruitier). I drank and drank and drank and then...oh, no...I could hardly stand up. I was in this guy's house and he took me up to his room to chill out (thank god he was gentlemanly) and I threw up all over his stuff. And I remember laughing and laughing. No shame whatsoever. And I remember talking extravagantly in an English accent, alternating with third-year German--as he walked me home and somehow I woke up in my own bed, still fully clothed, and with a headache unbelievably hideous and then the shame hit me. (Although I can still giggle about this story to this very day.) It was a long time before I had wine after that.

Now I appreciate a good wine. I also appreciate a bad wine and a cheap wine. My friends the Wallaces have great wines at their table (and in the middle of the afternoon as well). In honor of The Winemaker, I recently picked up a bottle of screw top at Walmart (vintner to the masses) for $5.65. And it was wonderful--a sweet wine made supposedly with blueberries! Finally, a wine that really did taste like juice. I have been quite juice-dicious in drinking it.

I guess everyone is due one or two incredible hangovers. During my time at Ohio State, it was a badge of honor. And, I learned that the alcoholism gene passed over me. If I was going to have developed a dependency, that would have been the time. Most of the time, I found that drinking and trouble were closely linked in my life and as I set out to survive my own experiences, I became more and more abstemious (been looking for an opportunity to use that word). I didn't have enough resources to keep squandering them in recovering from drinking-related incidents!