Stories of the builders
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Stories of the builders
A new feature here on Border Stalkers
Hello friends,
Last April, an old friend of mine sent me a note, after I'd quoted from a somewhat double-minded David Brooks column. Brooks expressed hope for a "renewal period" in American life, but also anxiety that such a revival would be "killed in its crib by the intractable forces of cynicism and withdrawal."
"My fear is that we’ve entered a distrust doom loop: People are so untrusting of their institutions and their neighbors that they are unwilling to reach out, to actively renew their communities and their country, and so the dysfunction will continue, and the distrust will increase, and so on and so on," Brooks wrote.
My friend, Joy Moore, responded in an e-mail.
I wanted to give a few thoughts from your recent writing on David Brooks and community-building and trust. You are of course preaching to the choir here, but I do think it's good to seek feedback from those of us on the ground, in the Vast Middle.
I spent 2015-2021 living in urban South Bend, Indiana in a mixed-race and mixed-socioeconomic neighborhood. Black neighbors were the majority; followed by White and then Hispanic and Asian. We had a very active neighborhood association that facilitated neighborhood clean-ups, a pay-it-forward community coffee house, conversation circles about race, potluck suppers in homes ... I could go on. It was called the Near Northwest Neighborhood; we were gratefully supported by Pete Buttegieg in many efforts to help repair homes and remediate lead exposure to residents.
I was asked to serve on a steering committee to lead neighborhood organizing efforts; it was intentionally mixed-race and mixed-faith. We had some powerful conversations together; there were often tears and confessions. Of course there were pains and tensions in our neighborhood, but there was truly meaningful collaboration and communion that happened among neighbors with diverse backgrounds because we were dealing with gun violence (and smaller issues) together. Our neighborhood association exec director, Kathy Schuth, would be an incredible person to highlight. She dealt with political tensions with grace and empathy — all the while overseeing 4-6 new house rehabs per year.
Okay, if you're still with me, I'll write a bit more about what life is like now on the ground in Vermillion, SD. We have less diversity in our town and we now live in a rural, affluent subdivision surrounded by crops and cows. However, there are ways to love people here ... imagine that? A primary way Tyler and I are doing that is through loving our students and colleagues at the law school — treating them as humans; honoring their perspectives and limits. I know that students have taken Constitutional Law with Tyler and have been challenged to think differently or appreciate the nuance of another point of view. I know my Immigration Law students received my gift of presence and my words that let them be a human and not just a harried pre-attorney. (A male student today said going to my class was like having free therapy).
Some of the beautiful things that happen here among creatives: our town, with a population of less than 11,000 has an active non-profit dance org providing high-quality dance instruction for little kids up to adults, and has a special class for developmentally disabled adults (who get to perform in the annual recital). We have beautiful Native American art across campus and in murals downtown, due to the richness of the heritage of Native peoples in this state. My dear friend Molly Fulton and I are putting together an exhibit for the Fall at a downtown art gallery, featuring her visual art and my poetry; our theme is: "Exploring Landscape and Home." My poet-pastor and his poet-wife and I put on a poetry night at our church in February where we read our poems and had my brother-in-law sing gorgeous acoustic songs as a gift to Vermillion-ites.
Our downtown events have incredible community participation — and believe me, shoulders are rubbed among those with vastly different political commitments. We have one school district, so, again, everyone is thrown into that pot. Of course, lines get drawn between liberals and Trumpian conservatives, but I am largely out of the loop of the disputes. Part of that is being new, part of that is me longing to stay a bridge-builder, border-stalker. I lead with love and trust — I do think the force of love is stronger than the reciting of talking-points.
I would be honored if you highlighted anything about my South Bend experience or in Vermillion. I don't know how to say this lightly but I will say this: I think the Coasts could use more voices of nuance in the Middle. Let's not let the narrative take hold that division is SO BAD. We are living incredibly lovely lives here as moderates — but we do recognize that it's somewhat rare . As an aside, also pretty hilarious and wonderful that our law school has a rodeo club and Tyler got to take his Agricultural Law class on a field trip to his hometown butchering facility last week, then took them around his farm on tractors and 4-wheelers.
I am procrastinating from grading papers, but I did want to give you some community thoughts. I hope they help!!
I was deeply moved by Joy's e-mail. Alison and I have known Joy and Tyler for roughly 15 years. We met them in D.C. at a church we briefly attended together, and have stayed in touch ever since. They're special folks, as you can probably tell from Joy's e-mail.
Incidentally, Joy just published a book of poems which I was happy to endorse.
With echoes of Wendell Berry, Moore delivers tributes to plain-spoken, hard-working Americans and searches for her ancestors: who they were, how they shaped her, and what her inheritance is.
The heartbeat of Moore’s poems are her experience as a mother. It is a moving glimpse into the interior life of parenthood, amid the joys and pains. Moore seeks to hold on to beauty and make sense of the darkness. And it is a prayer for revelation and meaning amid the defeats and triumphs of everyday life.
Joy In the Middle is an inspiration, a gift from a writer whose talents serve to magnify her own exemplary soul.
You can buy Joy's book Joy in the Middle, here on Amazon.
I was inspired by Joy's e-mail to start doing what she suggested: highlighting the work of people who are not just getting on with their lives — although that is heroic in and of itself — but who are also building and renewing in tangible ways, often in very localized contexts.
So my hope is that in the coming weeks and months, I'll highlight these builders once a month, interviewing them on my podcast and writing about that conversation here. I've got a few people in mind, but I'd love to get your suggestions as well.
And if you want to write in and tell this community of readers about the life-giving work going on in your community, send me a note here.
Blake Mills' music
I was turned on to Blake Mills on our drive home from Maine by Apple's algorithm. Apple’s artificial intelligence combined with the data they've gathered about me to create what they call a "Discovery Playlist" to bring me music in my taste wheelhouse, but which I haven't heard before.
The first song up was "History of My Life" by Blake Mills. I was turned off by the cover art, and wasn't sure about the song at first. But I stopped myself from skipping the song, and stuck with it a few moments. Then I caught something in the song that was unique, different. By the time the song was over, I was intrigued.
Since then, I've gone down a Blake Mills rabbit hole. I've been as absorbed in and inspired by his music as any artist in a good while. His latest album, Jelly Road, came out in July. And it turns out he's been a session musician in recent years for Bob Dylan, played lead guitar with Joni Mitchell, produced numerous big artists, and has been releasing solo stuff for over a decade.
From Uproxx:
This is how Mills’ world tends to work. He appeared on stage with Joni Mitchell at her concert at The Gorge Amphitheater in Washington, her first ticketed concert in over two decades. When Bob Dylan got ready to record Rough And Rowdy Ways, he recruited Mills to play guitar. Many of these connections come from Mills helming the boards at the studio he co-runs with Tony Berg called Sound City Studios in the San Fernando Valley. There, he’s become one of the most celebrated producers in rock. His credits include co-producing Feist’s Multitudes from this year, and producing Marcus Mumford’s Self-Titled and Jack Johnson’s Meet The Moonlight from 2022, Perfume Genius’ Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, and more. Mills has very quietly become a defining voice in rock and rock-adjacent music, attracting artists from all across the industry to his studio; as such, the world of left-of-center music sounds increasingly like the music Blake Mills loves to create.
I liked the way he described his process here:
In his spare time, he plays host to session staples like Sam Gendel and Abe Rounds. He’s built a community that is quickly expanding by the day, featuring any artist who wants to work with him and comes in with an open mind and willingness to experiment. As Blake Mills explains to UPROXX a few days before the release of Jelly Road (out today, July 14), recording with him is “more like a conversation and catch up, and almost invariably something wonderful comes from it.”
I hope some of these podcast conversations with builders can work the same way.
Interesting Reads
Why Americans are Stuck With Biden vs. Trump (For Now) by Jon Ward (me) for Yahoo News
“Voters have power, we tell ourselves, because voters ultimately make the choices. But who chooses the choices?” Drutman wrote. “Opening up the process is one thing. The power to shape the alternatives is always more consequential. Individual voters can decide among alternatives, but only organized groups can shape alternatives.”
The way Americans think about parties — and power — has to shift. In Drutman’s view, we are unbalanced: too focused on individuals.
Our dominant mental model as Americans is to hope for individual politicians to swoop in and save the day, and to rely on the wisdom and discernment of individual voters to combine in a hive mind of righteous judgment.
We also tend to “distrust organized power,” Drutman writes in his recent study. He says this is a key mistake.
“Somebody has to have power,” he writes. Drutman documents how the three major political reform periods in American history have all “appeared to put voters ‘first’” but “only made it harder for individual voters to coordinate collectively.”
“Ultimately, small but well-organized interests triumphed because politics always rewards coordination and collective action,” Drutman said. “Decentralizing power does not equalize power. It just moves it elsewhere, where only the most engaged and well-connected can access it.”
If we don’t make parties stronger, in fact, we are making it more likely that American democracy will fracture, he said. “The solution is the hard work of building political parties, which are the essential institutions of modern representative democracy.”
American democracy is cracking. These forces help explain why by Dan Balz and Clara Ence Morse for The Washington Post
Americans are more dissatisfied with their government than are citizens in almost every other democracy, according to polling.
Henry Brady, professor of political science and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, has been studying these issues for many years. As he surveys the current state of the United States’ democracy, he comes away deeply pessimistic. “I’m terrified,” he said. “I think we are in bad shape, and I don’t know a way out.”
Vivek Ramaswamy had a good debate. But can he survive the spotlight? by Jon Ward (again me) for Yahoo News
In that same 2022 book, Ramaswamy condemned Jan. 6 as a “dark day for democracy” and dismissed Trump’s lies that the election had been stolen or rigged. He also called Trump a “sore loser.”
Now that he is running for president, Ramaswamy has flip-flopped and says he does think the election was “stolen in a limited sense.” During the debate he called Trump the “best president of the 21st century.”
The “2020 election would have been different if the Hunter Biden laptop story had not been suppressed,” he told ABC News. (This is a dubious argument. At least one study has shown that Twitter’s decision to briefly prohibit the sharing of the New York Post’s October 2020 scoop on Hunter Biden’s laptop inadvertently gave the story a tremendous amount of free publicity.)
Jimmy Carter, 6 Months Into Hospice, Is Still ‘Very Much’ Himself, Grandson Says by Anushka Patil for The New York Times
Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, are still holding hands and making memories together in their Georgia home six months after he entered hospice care there, one of the couple’s grandsons said on Monday.
His family is making plans for his 99th birthday on Oct. 1, and are “surprised and thankful” that it appears they will have the chance to celebrate it, Josh Carter said.
Mrs. Carter marked a milestone of her own on Friday when she turned 96. The Carter Center, which announced in May that she had dementia, said her birthday celebration with loved ones at home included peanut butter ice cream.
And despite her condition, Mrs. Carter has never forgotten who her husband is. The couple, who have known each other almost since birth and have been married 77 years, are “still holding hands,” Josh Carter said. “They still sit on the couch together, in the same place they’ve always sat.”
His grandparents have done “everything in the human experience” together, and seeing them in the closing chapter of their lives has been bittersweet, Josh Carter added. But they are doing as well as one can expect for their ages, he said.
“They still have a house full of love, and a house full of family,” he said. “And that’s how they wanted it to be.”
That’s it for this week. Hope you have a great weekend!