Americanism

I’m reading a book right now–The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert–that explores the concept of American masculinity and frontier culture (perfect for me, right?). Right or not, it ascribes much of American culture to the existence of that frontier–and to its ultimate disappearance. That seems to be a common impulse: linking our culture to our geography.  But in an article about the American impulse to murder, Jill Lepore references a more novel explanation of our American idiosyncracies:

By the time European states became democracies, the populace had accepted the authority of the state. But the American Revolution happened before Americans had got used to the idea of a state monopoly on force. Americans therefore preserved for themselves not only the right to bear arms—rather than yielding that right to a strong central government—but also medieval manners: impulsiveness, crudeness, and fidelity to a culture of honor. We’re backward, in other words, because we became free before we learned how to control ourselves.

Mississippian

Today I finally installed my Mississippi license plate to my car. (It’s been sitting in my living room for two weeks. Which is probably illegal.)  It’s with a strange pride that I become an official Mississippian. Which is a great word.

Disturbing

There are eight–eight–little frogs that have suctioned themselves to the exterior of my window. One of them’s not even that little.  One of them is peering through the glass with his little orange eyes, his gullet vibrating furiously. I’ve never seen anything like it.

October’s not so dry anymore, either.

Delta October

In September it rained for days on end. Rain came down in sheets, flooding the road to the house. Once a week a storm would pass through town with rain so thick that cars couldn’t drive.

The rain broke with the changing of the month–it came like spring in reverse, the unbearable heat and humidity of late summer giving way to cool, dry sunshine. Weather to be spent outside. I have friends back north talking about going out for runs in long-sleeves and gloves, but an October spring isn’t so bad–if only I didn’t have a bum leg.

The Greatest Spot in America

Back when I lived in South Dakota, a few of my friends and I looked at a night sky map to determine the darkest spot in America, and determined it was somewhere up in the northwest corner of the state.  So we planned to drive up there, park on the side of some county highway, and see what the sky really looks like.

We never did it, but here’s another map that shows why northwestern South Dakota may be one of the most beautiful spots in America: there’s a spot up there that’s as far as you can get from a McDonalds.

As expected, McDonald’s cluster at the population centers and hug the highway grid.  East of the Mississippi, there’s wall-to-wall coverage, except for a handful of meager gaps centered on the Adirondacks, inland Maine, the Everglades, and outlying West Virginia.

For maximum McSparseness, we look westward, towards the deepest, darkest holes in our map: the barren deserts of central Nevada, the arid hills of southeastern Oregon, the rugged wilderness of Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, and the conspicuous well of blackness on the high plains of northwestern South Dakota.  There, in a patch of rolling grassland, loosely hemmed in by Bismarck, Dickinson, Pierre, and the greater Rapid City-Spearfish-Sturgis metropolitan area, we find our answer.

Between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley lies the McFarthest Spot: 107 miles distant from the nearest McDonald’s, as the crow flies, and 145 miles by car!

The Accident

Two weeks ago I got hit by a car.

It’s part my fault.  I live about two miles out of town, on a road just off the state highway.  It’s out in the country, beautiful for running except the dogs.  But out on the other side of the highway there are dirt roads running through catfish ponds and plantations and bayous. No dogs, no cars. Perfect running.

A Return

I was slow to leave D.C.  The upcoming drive wasn’t so bad–sixteen hours over the next two days–and no matter how many minutes I lingered in my apartment, I was rushing out of the city, leaving just six months after I’d arrived. Still, I ate breakfast slowly and carried my few remaining possessions piece by piece downstairs to the car, and then just sat in the apartment for a few minutes before dropping my keys in an empty bedroom and walking downstairs one last time.

A song I loved but hadn’t heard in months–Califone’s version of “The Orchids”–came on my iPod, warm and familiar, the kind of song that might play over the closing credits of a quirky indie-ish romantic comedy. And as I shifted into drive, the windshield, free still of its current patina of Mississippi insects, formed a movie screen. In time with the music, a pair of men walked out of the streetcorner church, and then a morning jogger chugged rhythmically down the street, and I could imagine a camera panning away above the rooftops, revealing the city waking up to a beautiful morning as the film comes to its close.

Virginia

I’d forgotten what Virginia really looks like. For five months, I’ve worked there every day–I’ll have to pay taxes there–but that’s caused me just to think of the state as a mass of office towers and condos. It’s no wonder Thomas Jefferson envisioned a nation of agrarian individuals: fields look perfect in the Virgina foothills, trimmed and neat and tucked away below the larger mountains. I kept wanting to stop and set up and camp and just stick it out in those hills.

My moving truck comes equipped with a meter that helps you know when you’re heading into even worse-than-usual miles-per-gallon territory. I was fairly entranced with that, so I missed too much of the mountains, out a few miles from the interstate. It would’ve been nice to have gotten off to drive on local roads–but I was waddling up the highway hills at 45 miles an hour as it was, so anything more rugged would have been a struggle.

I’ve now made it to Tennesee, a state which upon first entry seemed over-developed and over-highwayed relative to Virginia. But when I got off the highway to find a hotel, the roads quickly trickled off to quiet country and more mountains. I went for a run over the hills, my best run in weeks, and considered settling down here. Then I found out it’s a dry county (though they’ll still sell me a tallboy at the gas station). To the Delta it is!

The best songs culled from 10 hours of dial surfing:

• “You Belong to Me” – Taylor Swift: Though I listened to it in its entirety three or four times. Then watched the video online. And heard another three or four Taylor Swift songs on the radio.
• “21 Guns” – Green Day: Really I just like the falsetto when Billie Joe Armstrong sings the word “guns.”
• “I Can’t Get Next to You” – The Temptations: This came on just as I started out down 14th Ave. I opened the windows and cranked up the radio. I love being on the road.
• “Magic Carpet Ride” – Steppenwolf: The perfect driving song. Not as effective when you are driving a truck that is maxing out at 50 mph, though.
• “Lousiana Woman, Mississippi Man” – Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty: The highlight of a county oldies lunch-hour special I caught. Here’s to finding a Louisana woman.

The Effects of D.C.

I now find it physically possible–sometimes even enjoyable–to watch C-SPAN.

Prescience

From “The Elusive Green Economy,” in this month’s Atlantic:

[In 1977] Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. “A generation from now,” Carter declared, “this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken—or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people; harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.” . . . .

[I]n one of the great acts of humiliating political symbolism, Ronald Reagan tore down the solar panels, which spent many years in purgatory before eventually finding their way to the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum in Atlanta.