Country girls have their ways of retiring from the fold into a seclusion that affords them visibility and access to their roots. It is always something to fall back on. There are the Appalachian mountains, and the skid row bottomed out uncles and nephews who couldn't escape the grinding poverty, or make it into the military. Those who escaped the hopelessness, or the firestorms of regret found niches in cities. Some, in the old days in particular, hired people to train their Southern accents out and away from them to get the jobs and the pensions. There is a desire and a longing expressed in the songs of the hills, and valleys, and mountains of the South that rings with the sounds of Scotland, the plaintive tones of Choctaw, Notowa, and other tribes, and the blues and African musics long forgotten by bluegrass and country singers, and enthusiastic fans who couldn't handle the circular history of their music.
There are long songs and stories in the deep South about the things that marked their women Northerners don't like to talk about if they remember as far back as the 1870's. After the Civil War Southern white men returned home, rich and poor, to a new South decimated by war. Their wealth, and position were gone. The illusion of superiority was shattered by defeat, and jobs once scorned by whites as work for their niggers were held by their nigger slaves, and many unskilled white men, with no proficiency in carpentry, masonry, and such were bitter and bewildered and unemployed. White women had to make adjustments to the psychological damage war sickness left upon white men. Men came home with limbs missing, teeth gone, and sunken eyes and sunken chests filled with grief and humiliated. Food was not easy to come by, and the sight of Black folk walking freely about was unbearable. Over night it seemed Blacks were holding jobs white men weren't trained for.
There were freed Negroes getting jobs and starting businesses who did not have to hid their literacy anymore. Political offices were filled by Blacks. Schools for Colored children were opening up, and to every Black person's pride and delight and the bane of every white man's existence Blacks were opening colleges and universities, and churches! Children of white men and slave women were adjusting to life in the new South too! White women who'd had secret liaisons with Black men were full of emotions we will never know, and Black men who'd secretly had affairs with white women were adjusting to emotions they couldn't express aloud. There was much to think about and feel in those times.
It was a complex time to be alive in the United States. There were many things to adjust to that today are hard to imagine, and even harder to feel. Slavery was embedded in a slaves' being. Many didn't know what free meant and stayed on with their masters. The rules changed. They were no longer slaves. They could make deals, and get paid for labor, but they couldn't leave their homes. It was all they knew. The Black men and women who were never caught for killing whites during the slave years could step a bit livelier. Many Blacks packed up and got the hell up outa there and headed up North, and West. Testing the new laws Blacks would congregate on street corners, or hold all night dances, or church services. Court houses were busy legally marrying Black couples who'd been in slave marriages.
Today, this understanding is not readily acknowledged by the newer generations. Freedom concepts have changed, not necessarily evolved, over the past two centuries.
Betsy Smith, by Ed Wilson Photography
In the illusion of the present is the notion that the glamour of a modern Western city is the epitome of sophistication, and fun had by a button push makes youth fabulous. But the enablers of this ideology keep countless young men and women in the dark about the sustaining forces of the civilization at present in command of the world's resources. In a culture out of sync with the natural rhythms of Life, and divorced from the primal forces of Nature there is a tendency to escape from a vague numbing pain that is just out of reach of comprehension. The education of people gropes, by design, in murky territory, and in the end people graduate from universities, for the most part, disconnected from the myriad worlds of yesterday, the present, tomorrow, and the undertones of the spiritual legacy of knowledge and spirituality from the worlds beyond and within!
Glamour glosses over the passage of mystery and keeps a multitude of brilliant souls from gazing into the hand of Time with deep knowledge, and from 'seeing' into the Crystals of Knowing... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 8.24.12
 |
| Vote |
There are long songs and stories in the deep South about the things that marked their women Northerners don't like to talk about if they remember as far back as the 1870's. After the Civil War Southern white men returned home, rich and poor, to a new South decimated by war. Their wealth, and position were gone. The illusion of superiority was shattered by defeat, and jobs once scorned by whites as work for their niggers were held by their nigger slaves, and many unskilled white men, with no proficiency in carpentry, masonry, and such were bitter and bewildered and unemployed. White women had to make adjustments to the psychological damage war sickness left upon white men. Men came home with limbs missing, teeth gone, and sunken eyes and sunken chests filled with grief and humiliated. Food was not easy to come by, and the sight of Black folk walking freely about was unbearable. Over night it seemed Blacks were holding jobs white men weren't trained for.
There were freed Negroes getting jobs and starting businesses who did not have to hid their literacy anymore. Political offices were filled by Blacks. Schools for Colored children were opening up, and to every Black person's pride and delight and the bane of every white man's existence Blacks were opening colleges and universities, and churches! Children of white men and slave women were adjusting to life in the new South too! White women who'd had secret liaisons with Black men were full of emotions we will never know, and Black men who'd secretly had affairs with white women were adjusting to emotions they couldn't express aloud. There was much to think about and feel in those times.
It was a complex time to be alive in the United States. There were many things to adjust to that today are hard to imagine, and even harder to feel. Slavery was embedded in a slaves' being. Many didn't know what free meant and stayed on with their masters. The rules changed. They were no longer slaves. They could make deals, and get paid for labor, but they couldn't leave their homes. It was all they knew. The Black men and women who were never caught for killing whites during the slave years could step a bit livelier. Many Blacks packed up and got the hell up outa there and headed up North, and West. Testing the new laws Blacks would congregate on street corners, or hold all night dances, or church services. Court houses were busy legally marrying Black couples who'd been in slave marriages.
Today, this understanding is not readily acknowledged by the newer generations. Freedom concepts have changed, not necessarily evolved, over the past two centuries.
Betsy Smith, by Ed Wilson Photography
 |
| Betsy Smith |
 |
| Betsy Smith, model |
In the illusion of the present is the notion that the glamour of a modern Western city is the epitome of sophistication, and fun had by a button push makes youth fabulous. But the enablers of this ideology keep countless young men and women in the dark about the sustaining forces of the civilization at present in command of the world's resources. In a culture out of sync with the natural rhythms of Life, and divorced from the primal forces of Nature there is a tendency to escape from a vague numbing pain that is just out of reach of comprehension. The education of people gropes, by design, in murky territory, and in the end people graduate from universities, for the most part, disconnected from the myriad worlds of yesterday, the present, tomorrow, and the undertones of the spiritual legacy of knowledge and spirituality from the worlds beyond and within!
Glamour glosses over the passage of mystery and keeps a multitude of brilliant souls from gazing into the hand of Time with deep knowledge, and from 'seeing' into the Crystals of Knowing... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 8.24.12
No comments:
Post a Comment