Discuss: One Nation Under Elvis

I don’t know where you would categorize Steve Forbert. He plays Rock and Roll but he hails from Meridian Mississippi. His song, “Baghdad Blues” is terrific.  Similarly, Kate McDonnell’s “Mercy.” Like my song ‘The War of the Wild Goose’ these talk about the war in Iraq and the imperial theocracy in the White House.

Elvis wasn’t country, tho he started out playing bluegrass.  As a matter of fact, so did Jerry Garcia. 

When you think about it, it’s a thin line that separates country, folk, rock.  Take a folk act, swap the acoustic guitar for electric and throw in lead guitar, bass, and drums, and you have rock and roll. Dylan proved that. As did Elvis before him. 

These distinct classifications are useful for musicologists.  As far as I am concerned, the question is do I like the music? And does it mean anything?

i think Solnit is once again repeating herself along the lines of of hope or reconciliation vs. despair-destructive tales along the lines og the never ending and always cogent “Genesis Tale”. I think the main value of her rather boring piece is that a “good tale does not require a beginning middle or ending since these are never factors. It is the telling which sells. Since the storyline is universal it can be tied to anything and everything allowing for depth and subsequent growth,hence learning. The Best Show around.

An intriguing piece that would make three separate pieces (and a little tighter as a result).

I can’t help but be struck by the naivete in the piece despite the very prescient cautions to environmentalists to avoid cultural mocking.  The naivete shows up in the idealized images and fantasies Rebecca holds of rural culture.  Clearly she’s never lived there, I have.  What I lived with the first 18 years of my life, I wouldn’t wish on anyone.  And I hate to rain on the love-gush but you’ll all find out soon enough first few times you try to hang out in a local bar.  “You ain’t from ‘round here.” that’s the opening salvo. The result is if you ain’t from there you don’t belong there and no amount of merit or common sense will convince a local otherwise. But hey, enjoy the idealized notion until the cold bath of reality hits yer face.  I’m redneck enough to know I don’t fit in the city and college eddicated enough to know I surely have no home in the Appalachian mountains where I grew up.  Despite this I agree with Rebecca that a middle ground has to be forged between red and blue but to be honest, I think a lot of people who didn’t grow up rural have got a lot of learning to do before things happen.

TomBombadil said: “What frustrates me about guys like Dick (as mentioned in Solnit’s piece)is that they’re above that. They won’t work with you, or acknowledge that your ideas could have merit, unless you share their whole ideology lock, stock and barrel. That’s where the environmental movement often breaks down—it’s get hamstrung by it rarified ideological zeal.”

Unfortunately the door has another side too; localist culture is every bit as “hamstrung by rarified ideological zeal” mainly defined by “how long have you lived here?” If your grandparents weren’t born here, your ideas need not be voiced, they surely won’t be heard.

What truly frustrates me as rural reject-cum-urban nomad Gen-Xer is that for all the mentions in the piece of projects where coalitions have been forged, I have yet to see a writer accurately describe the effort and emotional work required involved in those efforts.  Either city folk just want the feel-good illusion or the rural folk want to kudos.  It just feels like a con to me without that kind of detail.

I am an Appalachian woman with roots deep in West Virginia. I was allowed to roam the hills and hollows and experience nature in all its glory. I have encountered bear, deer and all other creatures native to those hills. I know where to find the teaberries, black raspberries, mushrooms, sassafras and poke weed growing wild. I have put my hands deep into the West Virginia soil and felt rich loam almost up to my elbows. I have stood in Monongalia Forest and saw ferns and moss covered forest floors for acres.
What really goats me is when someone from a big city comes to tell us what we are doing wrong. How backwards we are. Oh sure, they do not come out and say it, it is implied and hinted at. We mountain folk fight hard to hold onto our natural surroundings. When we do, we are called backwards, and against progress. We don’t need yet another Star Bucks. When my California born husband first introduced me to his parents, he told them that my family were “back to nature” types. I said there was nothing back to about it, my people had never left it in the first place. I am an environmentalist, vegetarian and compassionate human. I grew up on food that my family raised and meat that my father hunted and processed himself. And oh yeah, I also know how to read. Country music is the soul music of Appalachians, it speaks for us, and sometimes we do not always agree. Don’t over think it.

There are some good discussions here, but the title of this one is completely crazy. Elvis was a racist and a biggot. We would be in a much sadder condition if it really were, “One Nation Under Elvis.”

The idea of listening to more country music might be a bit of a problem as well, considering the majority of country music is targeted toward less educated people. I was born and raised in a small town in Washington, and I love rural America, but only a small minority of country music has any place in an open-minded free thinking society. Too often country music appeals to hard line conservative republicans, which are arguably the most destructive sort of people in our society.

Can anyone else see how urgently we as environmentalists need to be able to see eye to eye with rural people? Whatever there is of an ecosystem left on this planet, guess who’s living there? It’s not in the city. We have got to start learning to speak the same language. We all have a lot to lose here.

I am very interested in the farm bills that go through both in my state and nationally. What are these rural families going through, how can we support them more? Right now my perception is that our current system is slowly draining the life out of our rural communities. People think the only citizens that matter live in the city. Rural people are slurred with abandon everywhere in our society. God forbid we use racist or sexist terminology, but “hick” and “hillbilly” flow freely.

How would you feel if you knew your land was being eaten up but corporations were the only people that gave a fuck about you? You might do whatever those corporations said. We need to offer more support for rural families if we expect them to be walking our talk.

Elvis or no.

Rebecca Solnit’s essay just sounds like more delusional white man/woman’s guilt to me. I was born and raised where she attempts to write about, and from her writing, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t. Strangely enough, her buddy “Dick”, whom she ruthlessly disparages, is closer to overall truth than she is.

What interesting times we live in! Here we are in a forum discussing almost everything. If I could say I learned anything from my clod-hoppin’, shit-kickin’ hillbilly upbringing on a truck farm in the rural south, it’s that people are all the same and just like the weather, we’re always changing.

Fifty years ago an old farm hand I was working with one day told me the best thing to know is that “ya don’t know nothin about nobody cause as soon as ya think ya know somthin about anybody yur puttin yurself and the other in a jail.”

Now in my sixties, if I’ve learned, or realized anything about that advice, it’s that I’m not really connecting with anybody if I’m putting them in the jail of my concepts and judgments. I’m finally starting to realize that holding concepts and judgments are like walls made of fear...fear of life and/or death.

Another bit of advice that comes out of these hills is - how you see the outside is a result of what you’re doing on the inside.