It’s your turn

by Frederick

Miss Caroline printed her name on the blackboard and said, “This says I am Miss Caroline Fisher. I am from North Alabama, from Winston County.” The class murmured apprehensively, should she prove to harbor her share of the peculiarities indigenous to that region. (When Alabama seceded from the Union on January 11, 1861, Winston County secede from Alabama, and every child in Maycomb County knew it.) North Alabama was full of Liquor Interests, Big Mules, steel companies, Republicans, professors, and other persons of no background. – To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee

Before I went down to Southern Alabama, NavySwan asked if I’d read an article by Russ Feingold called “Goin’ south: A driving trip through Alabama reminds a U.S. senator from Wisconsin how radical conservatives are robbing hardworking people of the American dream,” and, as I hadn’t, I took a look.

…and then I really took a look (click on the thumbnails to enlarge):

Butler County is just one County east of Monroe County, the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird, and Greenville, like Monroeville, is the County seat. As I was told to expect, Greenville is not the town portrayed in Harper Lee‘s classic. I’ll let Senator Feingold’s observations stand as they are, without adding, or taking away, (as some have) with my own criticisms.

Bacchus was a gracious host, and I was honored to be taken in as a guest at his humble home, which as it turns out was the home that NavySwan and her sister Hummingbird (Bacchus’s wife) were raised in. We had a night of it and the conversation flowed as naturally, or better even, as one could expect between people who’ve never met in person before. At some point during the night during the night (things were quite hazy by then) NavySwan called and spoke to all of us in turn, and a certain anonymous comment that was left on my blog came up. It went something like this:

On no anonymous comments: everyone on the net is essentially anonymous. Unless you claim to get your mail at Mcss1997, or own a website and someone does a WHOIS – but even there you can be a corporation. So why not permit anonymous comments?

Well this is the reason, meeting like minded people outside of the digital world. Knowing they exist when so many in our everyday lives, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, seem to be nothing more than shells. I say, seems to be, they are not. Knowing there are like minded people about, even in the farthest reaches of Talibama, leads one to believe that the social facade worn by those all around us everyday is there waiting to be broken open.

They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions… but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience. – Atticus