On Being a Sandlapper Refugee
No particular reason to initiate this other than a need to get thoughts out of my head. It is a affirmation of the long standing practice of meditations. I make no presumption to match those who memorably engaged in this task from Aurelius to Descartes to Arendt and Russell. So I can drop the names in a humble brag voice, but it is still just for me.
Writing as a Sandlapper refugee I acknowledge my roots and origins from South Carolina, but it is a birthplace I left at 18 in 1983 to go to college and then continued to look for grounding until 1992 when I landed in Denver, CO. I think I understand the Southern heart pretty well as a native son but it was not mine. Refugee is certainly a vain title in this time, when people who truly need refuge and sanctuary from an unforgiving and brutal world are turned away at our doorstep and the president imagines us as some gated community, keeping vigilance against the "shit-hole countries" of the world." I suppose expatriate is more apt, I left by choice, settled in the city that I had imagined from the age of 12 when I first experienced the Mile High city, would the place I would find a home. And so I have building a family and career with all of the various twists and turns those entail.
Being a Sandlapper - I am thoroughly a product of South Carolina. Educated in a public school system starting in 1971 that was recently integrated, (see Article here). That among many things shaped my world view - a study in the conflicts of the region and era. I was one of very few children exempted from the in school bible study, my dad was a university professor of religion / philosophy and faculty sponsor for SDS who the local mechanic sought out for advice on Sunday school lessons. My mom worked to integrate campus/student ministry program, while we had Rosie, an African American woman, as our house keeper/help, I walked door to door for McGovern campaign and remember working in recycling center with first Earth Day, even made the papers if I remember correctly. My grandfather kept loaded rifles behind each bedroom door, and multiple handguns in dresser drawers and car glove boxes; while at the same time forbidding us to even point toy guns at one another during play. He introduced himself to my dad the first time showing him the gun collection and moonshine in back closet - enough said about how to respect his daughter. I learned to shoot by the age of 10, was driving the car around parking lots by 12, ran off to play in the woods in abandoned share-cropper houses through my teens.
I have lived and worked around the country. As a camp counselor for the well heeled and well to do in the Berkshires and for the not so in East Canton, Ohio. I have been a volunteer for the Presbyterian Church in Oregon and a line worker in a paper tube factory in the textile driven south. I have managed the physical plant of a 500 acre campus / camp in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia for a suburban DC school and driven a school bus through the narrow streets of Old town Alexandria. I have helped manage an Ace Hardware in my hometown - later the scene of an attempted murder for hire spousal dispute. Delivered pizza, canvassed SE DC for SANE/Freeze when Mayor Berry was under indictment - fun conversations about anything but nuclear weapons for a white kid from out of town. I've lived in Alphabet City in Manhattan before it was trendy and Prospect Park Brooklyn when three grad students and a Club Kid Clinique department store make-up artist could afford the rent. I've been married divorced, single, a parent of two boys, seen my grand mothers into their 100s, Heimliched a stranger in a vegan restaurant to get him breathing again and failed to resuscitate a man who collapsed at a Denver bus stop. I went to the Soviet Union when it still existed. Met with independence groups in Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Took US teenagers to China on one of the first YMCA camper exchange programs before Tianamen. Interned on Capital Hill for my congress man and got to meet the Nicaraguan Contra leaders lobbying for a few missles and more; and got to read the Congressional report on the Challenger explosion right out of the mail cart.
So what counts as normal I'm not really sure. Everyone has good stories to tell and life is for just that - sharing and living. I suppose ultimately why I settled into being a classroom teacher.
Writing as a Sandlapper refugee I acknowledge my roots and origins from South Carolina, but it is a birthplace I left at 18 in 1983 to go to college and then continued to look for grounding until 1992 when I landed in Denver, CO. I think I understand the Southern heart pretty well as a native son but it was not mine. Refugee is certainly a vain title in this time, when people who truly need refuge and sanctuary from an unforgiving and brutal world are turned away at our doorstep and the president imagines us as some gated community, keeping vigilance against the "shit-hole countries" of the world." I suppose expatriate is more apt, I left by choice, settled in the city that I had imagined from the age of 12 when I first experienced the Mile High city, would the place I would find a home. And so I have building a family and career with all of the various twists and turns those entail.
Being a Sandlapper - I am thoroughly a product of South Carolina. Educated in a public school system starting in 1971 that was recently integrated, (see Article here). That among many things shaped my world view - a study in the conflicts of the region and era. I was one of very few children exempted from the in school bible study, my dad was a university professor of religion / philosophy and faculty sponsor for SDS who the local mechanic sought out for advice on Sunday school lessons. My mom worked to integrate campus/student ministry program, while we had Rosie, an African American woman, as our house keeper/help, I walked door to door for McGovern campaign and remember working in recycling center with first Earth Day, even made the papers if I remember correctly. My grandfather kept loaded rifles behind each bedroom door, and multiple handguns in dresser drawers and car glove boxes; while at the same time forbidding us to even point toy guns at one another during play. He introduced himself to my dad the first time showing him the gun collection and moonshine in back closet - enough said about how to respect his daughter. I learned to shoot by the age of 10, was driving the car around parking lots by 12, ran off to play in the woods in abandoned share-cropper houses through my teens.
I have lived and worked around the country. As a camp counselor for the well heeled and well to do in the Berkshires and for the not so in East Canton, Ohio. I have been a volunteer for the Presbyterian Church in Oregon and a line worker in a paper tube factory in the textile driven south. I have managed the physical plant of a 500 acre campus / camp in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia for a suburban DC school and driven a school bus through the narrow streets of Old town Alexandria. I have helped manage an Ace Hardware in my hometown - later the scene of an attempted murder for hire spousal dispute. Delivered pizza, canvassed SE DC for SANE/Freeze when Mayor Berry was under indictment - fun conversations about anything but nuclear weapons for a white kid from out of town. I've lived in Alphabet City in Manhattan before it was trendy and Prospect Park Brooklyn when three grad students and a Club Kid Clinique department store make-up artist could afford the rent. I've been married divorced, single, a parent of two boys, seen my grand mothers into their 100s, Heimliched a stranger in a vegan restaurant to get him breathing again and failed to resuscitate a man who collapsed at a Denver bus stop. I went to the Soviet Union when it still existed. Met with independence groups in Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Took US teenagers to China on one of the first YMCA camper exchange programs before Tianamen. Interned on Capital Hill for my congress man and got to meet the Nicaraguan Contra leaders lobbying for a few missles and more; and got to read the Congressional report on the Challenger explosion right out of the mail cart.
So what counts as normal I'm not really sure. Everyone has good stories to tell and life is for just that - sharing and living. I suppose ultimately why I settled into being a classroom teacher.
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