PBS POV Almost American Doc indicts Trump Venal Border Policies

    I lived in Collinsville Alabama, my mother's hometown for Thirty years from Dec of 86 to Jan 30 , 2020.  In this most ethnically diverse town in the state I got to know the Padilla's from Elsalvador. We often talked about Oscar Romero. Tony the father as a boy on different occasions saw Jesse Helms friend Roberto Daubuisson and on another occasion Oscar Romero.

     Romero with Martin Luther King Jr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer are in bust in Westminster Abbey in London as the three great Christian martyrs of the 20th Century.

     Daubuisson boasted of drawing straws for he considered the privilege of assassinating Romero.

      Watch this documentary if you have any idea of what it means to be a Christian who will cast a vote in November. Friends the jig is up. I told staffers for Bama Senator Katie Britt, a product of the FUMC of Montgomery Al as much this morning, and Congresswoman Bull Shit Nancy Mace of the Seacoast mega church of Mt Pleasant. You cannot square Jesus Christ and the legacies of King, Romero and Bonhoeffer  with Trump and his venal Borders policies and strategies. The Doc is clear on that.

    Marina was in a 92 doc on Collinsville Alabama, Blessings of Liberty whose director got a six minute standing ovation in Cannes two years ago for his doc on David Bowie. Brett Morgen has also produced and directed docs on Jane Goodall, and Crossfire Hurricane on the Rolling Stone.

    Ten years later Marina and her story were featured in a doc shown statewide on Collinsville produced by the University of Alabama.

     From the Catholic Student Ministry at St Francis in Tuscaloosa underwritten by Nick Saban, to the Collinsville Historical Association, to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Alliance of Baptists to the Auburn Democracy Project, Informed discerning Christians are on notice and invited to watch this doc in earnest and See Something, Say Something

     https://www.pbs.org/video/almost-american-x9dboi/

Breeze Pancake on Hometowns

This  post will not make much sense unless you google and read the phenomenal article on Breeze Pancake of last year in Oxford American. Or copy and link this URL :    https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-114-fall-2021/something-deeply-rooted

   Ive had similar thoughts about the ghosts and landmarks of my personal archaeological site in Gaffney and my Dad and Uncle Fremont had about Rome Georgia.

     Just today in the Post and Courier freely distributed in Upstate SC Libraries is a picture of the Renovated Historic T Bridge which I marched across in a zoot suit in July 1978 with Strom Thurmond and Billy Shatner in the inaugural Peach Festival Parade. Started out on the Interstate where Chic Fil A is now and marched three Miles downtown to the T Bridge and Piedmont Federal and then Down Limestone Main Street passed the community Cash and FBC to Hamrick's Big Mill.

     It was in Gaffney in sixth grade John Greene collected bottle caps all over the SE end of town. I found a gold mine in a neighborhood one room store where you could get moon pies and a coke without having to walk several miles if you were out at the house. 

     I think it was possible to get a leather football if you collected enough caps with NFL players inscribed

  About two weeks earlier a school board member came looking for me at Lynn's Diner about a half mile from my house, the church pastorium, which is another site in my Pancake History, great resonance. Fellow said he would stand on my toes and beat my ass into the ground.

     Up the road from the diner on a better day I donned my Lime Green Three piece suit and walked across the hwy to Sullivan Montgomery's Jet Cleaners. His wife said Stephen, You need that suit, you need that suit.

      So I bought it and went juking to Spartanburg and to my cousins wedding at Darlington in Rome Ga. One Juking night had big conversation with Clark Price at Thompson Park overheard by Mrs Reaves just up the Hill. Her son was a 69 casualty of Vietname. The Widow married David Wilkins one of the Most Powerful Bush Republicans in the State of SC.

      Then there was the Peach shed where I friended Roger Milliken Jr. and had good view of some of the prettiest girls of GHS that year.

     And the front steps of the church where I looked at the future.

      Central School where I still see some folks I met in the mid sixties and in whose fifth grade I was the Day Kennedy was assassinated.

     Remember clearly some bike rides on Anthony street and one chilly Saturday morning where time first registered with me.

     Google the Pancake article. Again it is magnificent.

Pickens county in MAGA land

     Kudos to the Post and Courier for shedding a little light on the underbelly of MAGA Land in Pickens County. But its just the tip of the iceberg. These folks are not Republicanss, certainly not Eisenhower, Lincoln and Alabama's Judge Frank Johnson Republican. 

    The following was submitted as an Opinion piece to the Post Courier in the wake of their June issue front page headline article on the MAGA takeover of the Pickens Co. SC GOP

     My maternal grandfather was of that stripe and a hundred years ago ran for school superintendent in NE Alabama and was soundly defeated. The good ole boys in dowtown Collinsville Alabama would brush their lapels when they passed him on the street on Saturdays and say "you can smell it on him, can't you".

     Charlottle Observer's Frye Gaillard and AJC Cynthia Tucker explain how the Dems and GOP flipped in the last 50 years, with an emphasis on Lee Atwater's famous NWord memo.

    The MAGA s are more like the Know Nothing party that Lincoln faced. Look them up on Wiki pedia and for further context read with meditation Jill Lepore's grand recent History of America These Truths.

      There are products of Pickesn Country who I imagine are embarred and ashamed on these Know Nothings who made the front page page of the Post and Courier. Among them Shannon Vickery of NC PBS, Joni Tevis who has written beautifully about the end of the textile era in Easley, Dr. Batson longtime pastor of FBC Pickens, and Dr. Gravely the Wofford grad who wrote the definitive book on the lynching of Willie Earle.

    Sadly Clemson Trustee Nikki Haley has more in common with these Pickens County Retrogrades than she does with David Wilkins brand of Bush family Republicans. Haley embraced Charlie Kirks poisonous brand of MAGA Turning Point USA politics November 29 2022 at Clemson. She had public interview with TPUSA president Taylor Rogers who comes from the Southlake region of the Dallas Suburbs which is subject of the New Book by Hixenbaugh, They Came for Our Schools. Dabo Swinney and Clemson administration ought to call Haley on the carpet for this entanglement.

     In  nearby Wahalla, favorite son Mark Powell, a grad of the Citadel and Yale Divinity School explores the same world as JD Vance but has much more Moral Fiber--see Oh Brother Where Art Thou--not warping his his insights for political expediency.

      Furman recently boasted of its Riley Institutes summer program for teachers to enhance civics education. Pickens County public schools should reach out to them to tour the system and shine the light on Johnelle Raines and her misguided zealots.

     At Furman I was introduced to a great Baptist of the Civil Rights era, Will D. Campbell banned from Ole Miss in the early sixties for playing ping pong with a black exchange student. Now there is a plaza outside the Chaplain's office there in his honor.

     He called the fundamentalist leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention "soul molesters" And that is what this group of MAGA activists are in Pickens County. Lacking moral fiber and shamefully ignorant, they are shallow and should be shown the off ramp.

       

On August 5 Eva Said Spartanburg

  Eva is my brother's grand daughter. For more than a year Ive been teasing, prompting her to say Spartanburg. I ask her where she lives Greer or Spartanburg. Yesterday first time she said, I live in Green, I do not live in Spartanburg.

     Said it clear as a bell perfectly enunciated before the turn four in a couple months. I think next step is to go to the Beacon to reify the word.

    She said there is a horse on Stone Mountain which she visited recently. I told her the horse name is Traveler but she forgets. Pretty soon Traveler will be in her working conversational knowledge like Spartanburg and strawberry ice cream and her favorite colors Blue and Pink.

    She doesnt know the difference between Duke Blue and North Carolina Blue

     It was her Dad's Birthday and the 25 anniversary of the funeral of my Dad and her Great Grandfather Billy Fox, a Baptist preacher.

     I gave a eulogy later reprinted in the Gaffney Ledger and linked at Baptists Today. I think President Carter read it. I quoted William Blake and the Great Hymn For All the Saints.

    My neighbor in Alabama died ten days ago. His son a reticent young man spoke and gave some humanity to the fellow.

      We All got to Go  

The sordid world of Trump most of my friends can not admit

  This is for my classmates at Gaffney High, the boys at the Shed in Collinsville, some family members and 85 percent of the white deacons in Southern Baptist churches  of which my father was once a pastor. And the School board members in Gaffney South Carolina.

    And Ciff Simms and Yellowhammer News in Bama

     This election is not a reality show. It matters. Fox News is poison and PBS, NBC and NPR will 99 percent of the time tell you the truth and have their facts to substantiate it.

     Some of you are scared because a Black woman will be the next president just eight years after OBAMA. Hillary shoulda won in 2016 ; In fact she did win by 2 million votes but the electoral college fell to the Bastard Trump and his surprise.

        The election is not so much about personalities, even the price of gas which easily googled Forbes article will make the case except to the most literacy challenged, is a non starter to begin with.

      The election is about an administration the President will bring to govern Harris will bring wise people to the Cabinet and she will listen to their counsel. She have a middle of the Road vice President and will listen closely to that person. Roy Cooper, and the governors of Penn and Kentucky and the Senator from Arizona are not off the rail radical leftists. I doubt your competency for the school board lets say in Gaffney SC if you don't get that point.

     Trump will bring punk asses like Steve Bannon, or RicknBubba from Alabama, Robert Jeffress of FBC Dallas,  Tommy Tuberville, Stephen Miller and others in the project 2025 network. Listen to NPR On Point of July 31, JD Vance wrote the introduction to the new book Dawn's Early Light

     Upstate Media in SC Should talk to Mark Powell of App State, an Appalachian novelist who I have reported earlier has Mah Fybah. Talk to him and Ron Rash and David Joy.

     More later but the country can't take another term of God Damn Soul Molesters like Donald Trump and his minions in the "leadership" team