Winnie Davis, the daughter of Jeff, prominent at Limestone

      Friends I'll be out front with this one, it will be submitted to the Cherokee History and Preservation Society in Gaffney SC where I graduated Elementary School in 1965 and will soon have a brick in my honor on the Commons trail of honorees and patrons.

    I am dedicating this to Becky Spencer Wolfe, Miss Gaffney of 1961 who is stuck in her ways and a true daughter of the Confederacy whether a card carrying member or not. A product of the Redemption of Reconstruction, her views currently on American politics in the correspondence she has had with me the last couple of years is beyong redemption, and her conversations with Sidney Norton and other Gaffney luminaries will not save her.

    I say that in jest but with some sincerity. If the most intellectual of the Class of 1971 of Gaffney High School didnt know who Winnie Davis of the Winnie Davis Hall of History built in 1907 on the campus of Limestone College was named for, the I doubt 95 percent of the natives and current residents of Cherokee County know either. Would be interesting to see how many current trustees of Limestone know.

    That building is part of my dream world, my personal archaeology as I saw it as early as my ninth year, in 1962 when we moved there. As markers go it is there with the historical marker in Hayesville for George W. Truett, the greatest Baptist of the first half of the 20th Century.

   I was Baptized in Hayesville in 1959.

   Winnie Davis is the daughter of Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederacy. I just read the Virginia encyclopedia entry on Winnie and her Mother Varina. It is fascinating.

   Four years ago I read the historical fiction Varina by E L Doctorow. Ive been a fan of Doctorow for some time and loved his The March, about Sherman from Atlanta to NC. Would be a grand three hour movie but would likely cost 100 million, but a scence of the fifty mile long avalanche of people going through South Georgia to freedom through the swamps of low country SC and Columbia and a river of mule carcasses in the Fayetteville NC River would be something.

    But I wonder if Winnie ever came to Gaffney promoting the Lost Cause with her Father. She became the namesake for the Daughters of the Confederacy and Gaffney was chocked full of that mentality in the sixties.

     Great line in the novel Varina. Varina has fled Richmond in a different Party from Jeff Davis and they had agreed to meet again in Florida and possibly flee to the Caribbean. But they were caught in  Georgia. But a few days out by train Varina's party gets to Charlotte. From there in wagons and on horseback they go into the Carolinas heading for Abbeville. About the second day a scouting party from the group go out.

   Reporting back Varina asks to their situation, whereabouts, the lay of the land.

    Fellow Says, : "We're in South Carolina, who knows their standards."

    Here some 170 years later with the likes of Becky Wolfe, I'm still trying to figure it out. Has been a mystery to the likes of Marshall Frady, Joe Crespino, Vernon Burton and many others.

Billy Ivey has written a book; I have suggestions for him and the Heifners

I was thinking about Billy Ivey and his Heifner fans this morning before it registered with me he has written a book to be released soon. Check the website A Sea Between Us.

    So what follows is coincidental and in no way meant to diminish his moment of first publication. I intend to read the book eventually, the topic is just not at the high end of my interests. From what I have read about the book I do wish he could follow up with as much scrutiny on Alabama, the likes of Will Ainsworth and Katie Britt etc cause Joey Kennedy,John Archibald, Kyle Whitmire  and others need all the help they can get with the ignorance, the fundamentalism the chasm between the Bama Honors program and the mediocrity of the rest of the state where the SEC doesnt mean much at all except for the underbelly of the Trump Base.

   Saban does try on occasion to say something

     Here is why Billy and the Heifner boys entourage are on my mind. Billy's Dad played Baseball at Vanderbilt, and Billy has this napkinism thing going on buttressed by his time with Chic Fil A. I think Billy flew in with Dan Cathy to Jasper Missouri a year after the F 5 tornado eviscerated the town to open a brand new Unit. I always thought that was a high point for Chic Fil A's Americana, a great touch to help revive good American people who had faced tragedy, a God Mom and Apple pie kind of day.

     I am satisfied Billy and the Heifner boys made higher than I did on certified tests along the way from ninth grade assessment to SAT and ACT and tests for Grad school. I am not worried about it and applaud them. Marshall Frady wrote better though all of them write well.

   What I want them to do, where I feel lonely, is talent like this, especially ones who like to pontificate in a playful sort of way need to read better books. Here is a list I don't think they have touched: Denis Johnson, Train Dreams; The Saddest Words , latest on Faulkner; Tyll, novel by Kehlmann with James Wood Review in the Guardian; Azar Nafisi, This Republic of Imagination; Jill Lepore magisterial history of America, These Truths--Todd owns a copy but hasnt read it yet; Joe Crespino's Strom Thurmond's America; Steve Oney, a Man's World, collection of essays of the 70s and 80s. And Frye Gaillard and Cynthia Tucker on The South and American Politics.

    Dan Cathy needs to read the last one especially, come to Samford with Billy and discuss it. God Bless America as a refuge for Cuba and other dark places in the world, but lets see if we can be a little more prophetic with Bama and our back yards.

     Congrats to Billy. I still think his bass fishing eldest ought to go to Charleston in a couple years and have a nice evening with Sarah of Callie's Biscuits third generation. And Billy and Dan come up to Furman for an evening with Billy Graham's Grand daughter and a representative of Trey Gowdy's FBC Spartanburg, maybe Trey himself and lets work on the nuances of the Trump Base. 

   Michael Gorra, The Saddest Words, William Faulkner's Civil War.

Clemson trustee Nikki Haley compared to Rep Boebert; SC House and Abortion

   I doubt if Nikki Haley has much more on the ball than Rep Boebert of Colorado yet her political life that caught fire with an endorsement from Sarah Palin propelled her to the UN and the Clemson Board of Trustees and then she begat Herschel Walker for the Senate in Georgia with the help of Mike Hubbard who flipped Alabama and got his son to the golf team of my alma mater and that of Marshall Frady.

     The state house in SC is holding hearings on abortion. Here are some things they most likely will not consider cause most of their Baptist preachers don't know their hiney from a hole in the ground, and if you start there with the wordagod, it's likely your legislation is not gonna be the best western civilization can produce. And Clarence Thomas is on the Supreme Court.

    Here is the low bar as recently described by a piece at Baptist News Global which is a product of the best and Brightest Baptists in the Southeast. That group does not include Trey Gowdy's FBC Spartanburg.

     Boebert to use George Wallace phrase is not a dimes worth of difference between her and Tim Tebow's Eagle Forum Momma, Nikki Haley, and the Fellow in Horry County who was raised in a cinder block home and took out Trump GOP resistor Rice.

     Here is what us literate Baptists are thinking about the sick, soul molesting, inadequate to the moment GOP

    Quoting:  First, Boebert reminds us that being elected to any public office does not bestow any special knowledge from which the person can draw upon and expound upon.

Second, Boebert inspires us to understand how high someone can rise with a GED education. While one’s education is not the decisive factor in what one can aspire to accomplish and in fact accomplish, unless one continues to grow one’s education by self-study, one can end up with limited knowledge and unlimited influence.

So in the last few weeks, Boebert has shown us how little she understands the faith she professes and, most recently, the Constitution she has sworn to protect and defend.

    So in SC the GOP perfunctorily are holding hearings which amount to some version of I remember the day Uncle Henry tolt me Momma came in all knocked up and said we're gonna have her hell or high water no matter what George did to me that awful day. And everybody is gonna cry cause Lucy Letitia story should be the law for every woman no matter their circumstances or decision making process cause of what Uncle Henry told that day.

    Here are some things for the SC legislature to consider. The Politics of the anti abortion crusade are based on a lie, on Mendacity and there is nothing the Heritage Foundation can do to make it pretty. Randall Balmer has spelled out how Paul Weyrich saw in the late 70s how abortion, guns and later CRT could replace Lee Atwater's Race baiting as the new big pay day politically to get your average white boy to the voting booth. Explain that to the extended families of the mostly people of color who play football for Clemson and South Carolina. Have a town Hall with Nikki Haley on the panel, and Eric Motley of the Aspen Institute moderating.

     A Great South Carolinian, Frank Harrington, longtime trustee of PC in Clinton said the Weight of Protestant Theology comes down on the side of the Mother. Invite his Daughter and Thomas Brittain's Daughter Jan, and other literate Methodist and Baptist ministers to come speak on the Mother's behalf. You can find literate discerning Baptist ministers through the Alliance of Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

    Or just read Baptist News Global, Good Faith Media, and like minded outlets of the Methodists and Episcopalian churches.

   Lowest common denominator politics will eventually get you a lowed common denominator state that even Mississippi can t crawl under or Alabama and the third Quarter Dixie Land Delight. And all the Pat Conroy festivals and Hub City Bookstores and world's largest outdoor BBq whole hog bachnallia and watermellon contest won't be able to Save you cause your Undies will be showing flamboyantly on your Very Shallow mockery of the Vision of Jefferson and Lincoln and Frederick Douglas and Benjamin Mayes.

My Patriotic Sermon for this July Fourth

   I went to Furman University on a Brooks scholarship for church related vocations. Well Everybody knows I never became a Preacher but I hear the voices ever so often. I have no pulpit and what follows is more of an outline, not a finished product, but I think a few preachers will read it and may use a nugget or two next year.

     I was telling a Furman classmate last night about an emotional read in 87 in Collinsville, Alabama as I was reading Taylor Branch first installment of his thousand page trilogy of the Civil Rights movement. This English major who told me John Crabtree would lower your grade by a half for every grammatical error you made in the several assigned essays in his famous Shakespeare course, even disputable commas. But he asked me what I thought of King's famous quote the Moral  Arc of of the Universe is Long, but it Bends toward Justice .

   I told him I thought it was true, especially in the historical context of the mid sixties, which might turn out to have been  the apex of the American Experiment. We have fallen a long way with the Soul Molesting Donald Trump and his lackeys.

    King made the comment in Montgomery in 65 which Marshall Frady and others say mighta been the apotheosis of his Pilgrimage. Just Two years after his I have a Dream Speech, which was within six weeks of Kennedy in Berlin just twenty years after the WW II . The Promise of those two  monumental adjustments , America defeating Communism as it rang true among the hundreds of Thousands in Berlin in 63. Kennedy himself said for a Moment he thought the platform might be crushed by the throngs in the exhuberance and ecstasy of the Moment. And then King on the Washington Mall speaking a hundred years after the Civil War, speaking truth to Power about Slavery and Jim Crow. America hasnt been there since.

   I remember about ten years ago when July 4 fell on a Sunday. I was in the Upstate and went to hear Jeff Rogers at FBC Greenville. First time I heard the story of King beginning to flail around that Grand Day on the Mall and he could hear Mahalia Jackson from Just behind him : "Martin tell them about the Dream, The Dream Martin let the people hear about the Dream".

    Now we have shallow half assed Trustees like Nikki Haley at Clemson abetting the manufactured weaponization of Critical Race theory and William Timmons of Christ Church Episcopal buying in. And the gun runner Jeff Duncan a founding member of the 2nd Amendment caucus and Dabo Swinney's Congressman.

    Ask those folks  who know nothing about Azar Nafisi and Jill Lepore. I asked Bob Jones Grad and likely next School supe of SC Ellen Weaver about it Saturday afternoon at Stax Omega. She didnt know anything. Never heard of the historial Lepore nor read her sterling piece in New Yorker on Parents and History in the Public Schools. Her sister was nice and polite but as ignorant as Ellen.

    And then there is a Miss  Gaffney  Becky or Regina   Wolfe or something  of the GHS class of 61 a year before Joe Wren. She wants to pontificate, refuses to read, but go out of her way to remind me in whatever platform possible she will vote against anybody I vote for no matter Her friend Sidney Norton would vote with me. And sadly like Ellen Weaver, folks like her are the majority of local school boards across the state of South Carolina and in the Southeast.

     Good place to stop for now. If you really love America you will want to make life learning to understand its promise, like Abe and Frank Johnson, Harper Lee and her sister Alice, My Mother and her father, a Lincoln Republican, Barack Obama who unlike Beauty Queen Wolfe has a reading list, On and On.

    So God Bless the America of Obama and Rahul Mehra, Esther Dawkins, Maria Moreno and Luis Segura, Jeff Graves and James Clyburn, J Paul Beam and anybody who has enough sense not to have bought into  MAGA of the last four years and its witless after effect.