from Record of a Pair of Well-Worn Traveling Boots: Be Safe Out There [a brief ethnography]

The middle-aged black man was wearing a blue suit coat that was too big for him, worn around the cuffs, and missing a couple of buttons. It was October, and after dark, which meant it was a little chilly. His clothes under the blue coat were rattier than the coat. Tired flipflops left his feet exposed. In his hands, he held an empty baby bottle. He approached me after I finished pumping gas. Debit cards weren't a thing in those days, and neither were card readers on gas pumps. But in that part of the city, near the university and Short Vine -- another area I ended up spending a lot of time -- you walked in and paid before you pumped. And I've always preferred cash transactions, anyway --chalk that up to my small towniness. 

The town where I'm from isn't remote or isolated in a geographic sense, but I learned early there are other kinds of distance, other types of geography that are difficult to cross -- especially when it's crossed under duress. And truthfully, crossing the distance between where I'm from and where I have ended up wasn't so much a problem for me. But it took me a long time to figure out that there's no going back. Not really.

Cincinnati was the first place I escaped to when I got my driver's license. It was the closest city, and the nearest place of any size. And though I didn't mean to end up there, necessarily, I ended up in a part of town that I would, and do, return to: Over the Rhine. In those days, Vine Street was still an open market for pretty much any illicit thing you could want. Not that I tried any of it; I still had a healthy dose of small town naivete that, for good or bad, managed to save me. But I did witness my first drug deal and accidentally walk up on a sex trade transaction. All the parties involved were amused by my small town whiteness -- amused and too busy to punish me for it. Because while Cincinnati was a dangerous place, and while OTR was probably the place furthest from where I lived -- for a whole host of reasons -- it never once occurred to me that I might have been in danger. I explored it with an anthropologist's curiosity -- and detachment -- that has served me well over the years, no matter how deep I dived or how close to the bottom I got.

He started in by telling me he wasn't just panhandling. He was passing through, he said, pointing directionlessly towards the interstate. His car broke down and his wife and baby daughter stayed with the car because it was chilly out. He waved the baby bottle at me as proof that his story was true. In the moment it didn't occur to me that he might just be hustling for drug money; it did occur to me that he sounded too practiced to be in moment. Growing up as I did around a few truly ineffective liars, I had started to pick up an ear for that sort of thing.  But also, in that moment, I didn't care. I don't know if it was the dedication to his story, or the flip flops. But I gave him a few dollars, wished him luck.

- Be safe out there, I said. And then I got in my car and left, traversing the various geographies back to my hometown, where panhandlers were prime time television extras, where the poverty was just as palpable, but somehow different. A place I would not be able to look at in the same way, or ever really be able to stay -- though at the time I wasn't aware that anything in me had shifted.

I think about him often and wonder whatever happened to him. I see him in every face I've met doing outreach. I've revisited that moment hundreds, maybe thousands of times over the years. And while I don't know if that was when it all changed or when it first occured to me that something had, I'm forever grateful that he crossed my path.

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Habitat For Humanity, Part 2

The church sanctuary reminded me of my old middle school gymnasium: high ceiling, stage, backboards at the long ends of the space, hardwood floor. Rows of chairs instead of pews. Also on the walls -- banners depicting preferred values like Compassion, Faith, Devotion rather than celebrating past years of sports championships. In fact, the word "sanctuary" was never used to describe the space. My Dear Sweet Ma called it a "multi-purpose room."

[This is the younger face of the old Protestant church, of course... the non-Catholic version of Buddy Christ (for those of you who are Dogma fans.) The move towards the attempt to be tragically hip started in the early 1990's when it suddenly occurred to churchy folk that their grandkids weren't connecting with that Old Time Religion and were, instead, plugging into video games and other technological demons... probably because of those Satanic role playing games their older cousins played in the 1980's, or the back-masked subliminal messages on heavy metal records in the 1970's.]

And while I don't buy into the new packaging, or into the central premise of Christianity, I have come to understand that while I reject the metaphor that religion... with it's many political foibles, flaws, and unnecessary tragedies... is humanity's attempt to explain things we don't yet understand, and to describe subjective experiences that cannot be empirically studied and smacks of something more than coincidence.

I also believe that the good work of the world can happen where ever the intention to do good exists along with the will to take action.

So I can tolerate a little religiosity. Right?

I showed up the second day because the first day had gone fairly well. Eight or ten of us cut, piled, and organized the lumber to build to house frames.

[Ok. I hauled lumber and let other, more experienced people handle the power tools. But still... I did sweat some. Really.

The morning of the build I showed up not knowing what to expect. The church had advertised the Habitat project for anyone in the area to come help, so I figured there would be anywhere from eight or ten people to maybe 100 or so. There ended up being around 160 people... an increase from the previous year. After I signed up and filled out a brief and scantily worded medical release, I wandered into the sanctuary, -- I mean the multi-purpose room -- where I was to wait for further instructions.

As people gathered I thought about the last time I sat in a church. More specifically, I thought about going to church when I was a kid, and how seriously I took the whole endeavor. There had been a time when the move towards tragic coolness would have appealed to me. That, in part, is the reason I'm skeptical of such marketing attempts. But I am willing to accept that while I am not especially religious, that there are people who are that have good intentions and want to do good things. Every mindset has it's kooks, crazies, and wingnuts. And there's very little to confuse about helping to build a house for people who don't have one.

Right?

At some point the minister, Bart, took to the stage. In his opening remarks, he told us that while the purpose of our being there was to build two house frames, that our focus should be to bring glory to God.


I tend to ignore the rhetoric, but it I have to confess that similar statements have vexed me for some time. Christians glorify their god because that, along with baptism, is how you prove your faith. And while there's quite the division over whether faith requires works ... and for some sects, whether the humanity of Jesus is even important... it always struck me that whatever the metaphysical nature of the thing referred to as God, Allah, Zeus, Shiva as well as a thousand other names from as many cultural constructs) happens to be, I find it hard to believe that it/he/she/they NEED us to adulate all over it/him/her/them.



Then again,I have to remember that the only intentions I can control are my own. And even that is a struggle at times.

What I liked about the experience was that at the end of the day, the frames for two houses were built. Whether this winter proves to be a cold one, a wet one, or a warm and mild one, the fact remains that two families have homes to protect them from it. And while I may not have wielded any power tools....and while I may be the most ineffectual mock carpenter around... I felt like I was doing a little of the good work of the world.

And so I'll close the blog with a question that sums up not only my views on Christianity, but organized religion in general:

Do you think that Jesus, ever once, would have rather someone ask him the proper way to build a door jam?

Location:Willow Creek, KY United States

Death Head Cheerleaders

They marched into the room one at a time

shadows from the valley of death

every long hair atop their heads wound

tight and high and kept in place

with heavy duty hair lacquer –

the kind marketed only

to Southern Baptists and Drag Queens –

their faces dried out

their eyes full of recently applied tears

legs swishing under the layers of clothes

and ankle length denim skirts

hands shaking from years of clutching bibles

and fresh from the freezer casserole dishes

murmuring the prayers taught to them by elders

who, too, were afraid of the dark. Leaning over

carefully, each one whispering only

so everyone could hear, asked

the only question they knew to ask:

                                                         Are You Right With God?

Accepting the dying woman's moans

for the answer they were looking for,

they shuffled out and back into the shadows

in the manner that they shuffled in –

shaking heads made heavy with hair pins

and fearful restraint ,silent as the grave

they try to hold at bay

using wooden crosses, family hymnals,

and worn out bibles listing the names

of the dead in the front and back cover

like a list of pious all-stars who,

like the savior whose name

they have all laid claim to

was revised over countless years

of enforced transubstantiation

in a way that in no way

contradicts the fire and brimstone preview

their pastor gives them each

and every Sunday.