Waiting for something new… For the pandemic to end? …Is the economy to improve? …Social justice at last? ….Climate action that will make a real difference? …An election? …An electoral college certification? …An insurrection? …An inauguration? The dialing down of the great American political feud? ….None of the above. … Instead, two of my grandchildren wait for ice cream.
Drawing by Jennifer Hershey. Follow her work on Instagram at deeofo.
There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.
Frank Herbert
Welcome to another inauguration. Americans are deeply divided right now about where we have arrived and where we should go, and I am hopeful that a new beginning is underway. As challenging as 2020 has been, we may have grown stronger as a nation. Some of us were either privileged or lucky enough to survive the past year without loss of life or the destruction of our livelihoods, while others of us have experienced great hardship. And our public health travails are far from over. At the same time, we’ve watched our economy slow down so much that shuttered buildings and “out of business” signs are now as commonplace in cities as they have been for decades in small towns. We don’t know yet if we have a minor problem with domestic terrorism that will fade away, or a full blown crisis that may destabilize our government and communities in frightening ways. In the meantime, the issues of racial justice and a changing climate hover around us like a dense fog.
A view from Rib Mountain in Marathon County in central Wisconsin, where Jenny and I made a trip to visit my daughter’s family and my son’s family in Milwaukee before beginning our Mississippi River Trail Trip.
Jenny watches while I take a photo of the Mississippi River Trail (MRT ) sign about 20 miles north of Memphis. The Mississippi River Trail (MRT) extends from Elk River, Minnesota to New Orleans, Louisiana. It is a conglomeration of roads that traverses the Mississippi sometimes on both sides, sometimes only on one. We are very impressed by the beauty and peacefulness of the route, which can be found on opencyclemap.org.
For much of the past year I have been preoccupied by how differently our political parties think about freedom. That said, I don’t know any American who wouldn’t fight for the rights so clearly outlined in the Declaration of Independence: … that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
However, I have heard a lot of disagreement over the concept of liberty (and its synonym freedom). Freedom to a conservative seems to means freedom from government intervention, and the freedom to do as one pleases - even if the long term outcomes are not necessarily helpful to others. (Popular examples used at the RNC are the freedom to drive any car you want, or to eat as much meat as you like). In contrast, freedom to a liberal means the freedom to solve shared problems through collective action (such as using a mask during a respiratory based pandemic to protect the health of others). As long as the rights of individuals are not egregiously abused, liberals expect citizens to be mindful of others as a condition of being part of a community.
We began this cycling trip just south of St Louis near a small Missouri town called Ste. Genevieve on the Mississippi River. It was settled in the early 1700’ as part of New France. The post-in-ground style was one of the timber construction methods used for French colonial structures. It was called poteaux-en-terre.
There is much more to write about on this topic, and I hope to follow up in future blogs. To my mind, a workable sense of freedom is neither easy to understand or articulate. Struggling to write about it makes me appreciate our nation’s founding fathers and our historical civil rights leaders more than ever. They seemed to understand the potential interplay between individual and group rights so much better than we do at this moment in our nation’s history. Our most pressing problems - addressing the pandemic effectively, creating equal economic opportunity for all, addressing climate change on a much bolder level than individual consumption - will surely test our ideas about individual liberties. For example, the freedom to go maskless when that action threatens the health of others is not different from a society's choice to use forms of energy that adversely impacts the health of others.
“Lots of people in Missouri believe in freedom so many of them won’t wear masks. I’m mean though. I tell them they can’t stay here unless they wear one.” Dee runs the Triangle Motel in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. Originally from India, Dee immigrated to the states from Zimbabwe with her parents, who live with her at the motel. She is a mother to several boys, and knows a lot of people in her adopted town. A warm and friendly person, she works hard and tries to never miss a town funeral.
Drawing by Jennifer Hershey. Follow her work on Instagram at deeofo.
In spite of the considerable problems we face on both the national and global levels, I am optimistic about the future. Although I certainly don’t expect the divergent political viewpoints among Americans to go away, adversity can bring people together to solve problems. I think that the sobering events of the past few weeks (an insurrection on our nation's Capital) have shocked us into recognizing our discord has gone too far.
…As will COVID-19 after a robust vaccination program. And hopefully the sharp divisions between so many well-meaning Americans will eventually disappear as well.
Like the presidential transition, this blog post is also a form of commencement. Clearly, its been hard to celebrate the extraordinary experience that biking through America (or anywhere else for that matter) can offer. Most of our biking this past year has been closer to home, or tied to several stressful trips to help out a family member. Although we have learned how to use a car to support our biking habits, it took us more time to figure out how to travel while staying socially isolated than we had anticipated. Consequently, Jenny and I have only recently gone looking - once again - for the story of America. And we are finding it.
“Yeah, some parts of Missouri are east of the Mississippi and some parts of Illinois and Kentucky are west of it. People don’t know how much the river has shifted over the years”. Rex has been working hard for years running ferries on the Mississippi and local canals. We talked to him at a ferry crossing at Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, and expressed our puzzlement at noticing that the original Capital of Illinois, Kakaskia, was on the west side of the Mississippi in land we thought belonged to Missouri.
Drawing by Jennifer Hershey. Follow her work on Instagram at deeofo.
Rural America is just as distressed as it has been for the past two or three decades. If anything, economic conditions seem worse. There are plenty of abandoned buildings in the smaller towns, both commercial and residential, and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of activity. We haven’t yet found a motel that was fully booked. We’re cooking our own food in order to isolate ourselves from exposure to Covid, so we have no idea what the local restaurant scenes are like. That said, grocery stores are predictably busy.
An abandoned barn near Blandville in far western Kentucky,
It seems to us that people who might not have connected a few years ago are now more open to talking. We certainly feel that way. We find ourselves trying to engage in conversations with everyone we meet. Because we are traveling largely in what was Trump Country (Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana) we’re slow to reveal how little we trust Trump and believe Biden is a better choice for the nation. However, we are finding that people enjoy talking if we ask questions in an open-ended way.
I worked on this post on our National holiday to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday. Interestingly, while I was sitting in Jenny's car writing, she was on her bike in Memphis, and through an accident of fate rode past the Lorraine Hotel where King was shot, where she took these pictures. The first shot is the marquee of the hotel, and the second is the balcony of the motel where MLK was shot (now part of the National Civil Rights Museum).
We spoke to an 81-year old farmer today named Don who was delighted to chat with us about growing up in Marianna, Arkansas, and his many years working on a farm nearby the town of Helena-West Helena. He told us nostalgically how the local economy in the delta used to be more dynamic - there was a tire and a clothing factory, and a chemical manufacturing plant as well as lots of family farms. The plants left long ago, and now there are fewer family farms. Don voted for Trump twice, believing Trump would make things better. After he talked awhile, Don paused and reflected, “I feel real bad about how things turned out. I really don’t understand what’s going on anymore.”
We met Mike Major in Hickman, Kentucky, while we were eating lunch at a gazebo in a local park (which commemorated construction funding from Mitch McConnell). Mike was a farmer his entire life until his recent retirement. He grew up in Hickman and lives nearby on his farm. Mike is tolerant of McConnel’s stand against Trump in the GOP, and seemed as relieved as we are that Biden will soon replace Trump. It wasn’t lost on us that just across the river in Missouri many citizens are rallying behind a very different senator - Josh Hawley. We learned from Mike that Hickman had a bustling downtown when he was growing up, but the town had fallen on hard times through successive floods on the Mississippi. The most recent floods were in 2011 and 2018. In the 2011 flood, the Army Corps of Engineers blew up a dike in Missouri to provide a spillway for floodwater in order to save what is left of Hicksville. But the flood of 2018 was the final nail in the coffin when all but two of the remaining buildings near the river were abandoned. Below is a picture of one of the remaining occupied buildings and another photo of a workshed in a field in Missouri after the 2011 flood.
Drawing by Jennifer Hershey. Follow her work on Instagram at deeofo.
The mostly abandoned downtown in Hickman, Kentucky.
A Mark Twain mural on one of the few occupied buildings in downtown Hickman, Kentucky.
Remains of a building in Missouri on the other side of the river from Hickman after the 2011 spillway flood.
Like everyone else, I look forward to a time when Covid is behind us and we are able once again to congregate, worship, learn, teach, perform, dance, sing, and celebrate together. And it will be even more joyful when our nation becomes recognizable - when Americans appreciate one another because we share a continent and a unique and durable constitution. And hopefully we will enjoy other things many of us used to take for granted - domestic peace, an enthusiasm for innovation and problem solving, a healthy atmosphere and oceans, clean water, economic opportunity for all, and of course - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I’ve been writing posts on this website for almost five years, and no prior post has been as hard to write as this one. Perhaps it’s covid, perhaps the election, perhaps it’s the sheer overwhelming magnitude of this historical moment. How about you? Do you yearn for reconciliation? Do you want America to get her mojo back? I think the answer is yes. I think we are all aching to connect with each other. I think we want to heal. I think we want to celebrate what unites us. Let's do that. This inauguration is a good place to start.
Stay vigilant! Thanks for reading. More to come.
Taken just below Union City, Tennessee. I’ve seen Confederate flags displayed underneath American flags with Trump/Pence signs, but never before an American and Confederate flag blended together.
All photos, unless credited or otherwise noted, are copyrighted property of the blog post author.