Note: These comments are a continuation of the HARARI blog

1. Book One

SOUTH TO AMERICA:  A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation. Imani Perry

Author Perry subdivides the South, southern state histories, cities and towns, and geographical areas (Appalachia, the Low Country), citing unique and common behaviors.

“Nevertheless, in this country’s history, Black and White have never been mere adjectives, and Indigenous, a global term, is specific in this nation. These are identity categories that were made by law, custom, policies, protest, economic relations, and perhaps most potently, culture. Politeness, grammar rules, and political ;pieties aside, this strikes me as a simple truth that ought to be acknowledged. I didn’t make the rules. I am trying to tell them to you.”

*******

“Race is at the heart of the South, and at the heart of the nation. Like the conquest of Indigenous people, the creation of racial slavery in the colonies was a gateway to habits and dispositions that ultimately became the commonplace ways of doing things in this country. They came to a head at the dawn of the Civil War, only to settle back into the old routines for a hundred years before reaching a fever pitch again before receding.”

*****

Remember, the Deep South was made at the crossroads between the lust for cotton and the theft of Indigenous land. It was a tandem movement.”

*****

“To be beautiful, it must be truthful. And the truth is often ugly. But it’s funny, too. And strange. Also morbid. This is a collection, but it is also an excision, a pruning like we might do to z plant in order to extend its life Most of all, please remember, while this book is not a history, it is  true story.”

*****

“He (H.L. Mencken)  could not reconcile the creed of the slaveholder with the word of God.”

“North Carolina is in the Bible belt, that region that reaches from the Southeast into the Midwest with a shared Protestant conviction.  Still, Mencken’s warnings encouraged Carolinians to grow beyond evangelical moral certainty and into the curiosity and deliberation of rationalism He wrote:

Helping to get rid of this incubus is the first task of every enlightened Southerner today. It stands in the way of every free functioning of the mind, and is an impediment to all genuine progress, on whatever plane. I’ll begin to believe in the prophets of Regionalism when I hear that they have ceased to fever themselves over the sins of New York, and applied themselves courageously to clearing the ground in their own Region. Let them begin at home.”

*****

“…THE CHANGING SAME.”

“WICKED SILENCE”

“…THE WIND IS BLOWING BUT THE TREES AIN’T MOVING!”

THE MARROW OF TRADITION”

*****

“We have never stopped living the complications  caused by oil complications.”

*****

Julius Shakespeare Carr ( Carboro named for him) I whipped her till her skirt hung in threads.

*****

Wilmington 1988—250 blacks drowned.  Ben Chavis.  Duke lacrosse—Chrystal Gail Davis.

Greensboro massacre, Woolworth sit in.

*****

‘The God of Masters”

“The God of Slaves”

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2. Second Book

AMERICAN MADE (What happens to people when work disappears)  by Farah Stockman  

TP —-labor vs management

I lived in a  mill town.  And a tobacco state.  And a textile area.

“…pussy grabs back.” ((Trump)

“eat steak” or kissing the boss’ ass.

Trump cut corporate taxes from 35% to 21%.  Edged up tax on the middle class,   

CORPORATE REVENUES DROP 40%.  National deficit pushed to “dangerous levels”.