I took some photos at yesterday's rally here for Beto O'Rourke, candidate for US Senate. I used three rolls of film in a medium format camera, so about thirty-six frames. There has only been time to develop one roll, but this, I think, is the best frame off that roll. For photographer friends, this was tricky. There was probably three f-stops difference in the light across the image, and I was not able to use a high-speed capture. I waited for clouds to roll through and then tried to quickly check my focus. But I think the medium format suits Beto, kind of a throwback candidate. The message? Carefully spoken, not dwelling much on negatives but, for the most part, emphasizing the positives of what unites people, reaching across the aisles as much as possible while keeping his central base. And look at the young girl on the lower left, who kept by the stage, sometimes leaning on the edge, soaking in the speech and the crowd.
Dante and listening to each other
What does literary theory have to do with the way we treat one another? Dante's fourfold theory of interpretation came up this morning in a symposium on education I joined in. It is a schema Dante borrowed from theologians who had applied it to the study of scriptures. Dante dared to apply it to literature. As the theory goes, stories begin on a literal level, then are perhaps read on an allegorical or historical level. But the best stories can also be read on a moral level as well as, finally, an anagogical level. The last is the most difficult to grasp, something like a spiritual understanding of ultimate meanings. I first was introduced to this in college and use it regularly in helping my own students with texts. I get it. Maybe that was why my mind was wandering this morning. I know that some students struggle with going past a literal level in their reading. For some people, it is equally difficult to understand others. Some people simply cannot understand others on the higher levels. Perhaps that is why they react to others with gossip or recriminations (or insulting memes). It is too difficult to do the necessary work to understand the different sides of another person, the insecurities, nuances, or contradictions. And what that person could ultimately be.
Seek good, not evil.
MLK Day is one of my favorite times of the year. Since returning to Denton, each year I've made a point to participate in MLK Day remembrances. There is a community parade to the MLK Center, then a program of dance, music, history, and inspirational preaching. Our local councilman reminded us to work locally for change. And in stirring preaching, Reverend B. W. McClendon reminded us of the prophetic words of Amos 5:14: "Seek good, not evil, that you may live." Good words to remember for the next year and next four years. (I took a few quick photos, then joined in the march.)
The original farm-to-table
“The Bible declares that on the sixth day God created man. Right then and there, God should have demanded a damage deposit.”
Thirty-six years ago, I sat in Ray's Cafe in Bastrop, Texas along with Jim Hightower and Jim Rockwell, the latter a former UPI photographer who had moved to the Hill Country and contributed photos to our paper, way overqualified for the position, doing his work as more of a gift to us as anything else. (I would learn about technique from Jim Rockwell but as much about how to stop and listen to people.) I was a young journalist on one of my first stories, and Hightower made it easy with his witty repartee. Ray's Cafe is no longer there. My standing joke is that Ray's was the original farm-to-table concept. At one end was a tank full of minnows for fishermen to scoop up. At the other end were tables where diners would sit and be served up fried catfish.
Hightower would later be two-time state Agriculture Commissioner, fostering in our state's organic program and farm-to-table concept. This past weekend, I talked some with Jim as he came through town speaking for the Sanders campaign, whose rally I was attending along with my daughter, who would be voting in her first election. Waiting to take the stage to speak, Jim had been looking down at the folded sheets of paper that were his notes, but I asked Jim to look up for a moment for a photo.
Emily Dickinson and Roger Lundin
I'm sure overlooked with the news of terrible atrocities in France, Lebanon, Iraq, and too many other places, but the literary scholar Roger Lundin passed away Friday. I had the occasion to visit with him over the years, when we would be together at conferences. Maybe fifteen years ago, we talked late into the night in the kitchen of Jim Barcus, then the chairman of the English department at Baylor University. Also involved in our conversations that evening was Joe Barnhart. Joe, who then taught at the same university where I taught but in another department, has written several books on matters of religion from his respectful but skeptical perspective, and I think maybe he had presented on Jonathan Edwards. I had given an overview of Bakhtin's ideas, suggesting an application of heteroglossia to Jesus's discourses in the gospel of John, and Joe was interested in how a Bakhtinian application could work. It was a lovely, spirited exchange of ideas into the late hours, with everyone respectful of the other and curious about the knowledge and studies each brought to the conversation.
Lundin, long-time professor at Wheaton, was one of the foremost scholars on religion and literature, especially known for his work with American literature, and he had been a keynote speaker. I think his treatise on Emily Dickinson's poetry, Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief, is especially sensitive to that poet's spiritual rawness. This weekend, I have been thinking especially of one of Dickinson's poem, on visiting a field where a year before men had been slaughtered in battle, bothered at the cheerfulness of the chirping of birds she now hears, a seeming disregard for those who had fallen as people now go about their business.
Guy Carawan and remembering friends ...
With the passing this past weekend of one of my closest, long-time friends, Joh, to seeing news in the Times and Guardian of the passing of Guy Carawan, and other losses friends have faced this past week, I am feeling the passage of time. Here is a photo I took of Guy and Candy Carawan years ago. He is best known for helping adapt an African-American gospel hymn to become the Civil Rights anthem "We Shall Overcome." Later he would become music director at Highlander Center, work with groups to improve mine conditions in the Appalachians, and collect folk music in the southeast. It all mixes together. A lesson to me is to make good use of one's time. In recent months, I had spoken regularly with Joh, talking on serious topics of faith, the passing of his mother years before, and his pride in his son. The last two times we talked, I made a point to tell him how much he meant to me. Tomorrow, while remembering my friend, I'll also be playing some vinyls of Carawan's music.