Curtain Call

I think this is it, everyone! The last posts are up. I still have papers to write for class, but the blog is complete.
There is so much more to talk about, and I have so many stories, but if I do decide to keep writing about them, it will be with a different site. Belmont was kind enough to let us use personal blogs for the trip, but I don't want to put them or myself in an uncomfortable position by continuing to use this blog personally.

So if you want to keep in touch, let me know, and I'll get you my contact information, if you don't already have it.

Quick thank yous:

To my family for supporting me, both emotionally and financially through this trip, and through life. I don't know where I would be without you, let alone how to thank you, but I'm so lucky I have you.

To my friends and roommates for putting up with months of me jabbering about this. I promise to return your phone calls soon!

To Belmont Administration, particularly Marcia McDonald, for believing this was worth it.

To the Marketing and Tech support, particularly Paul Chenoweth, Pamela Johnson, and their teams for all of their work in keeping us media-ready.

To Maria Allen, for being the most organized and level headed person I've ever met, even when the details were making all of us dizzy. And for the gift bag. :)

To Matt Burchett, for having that conversation with Ken two years ago and showing up in his office with tour books a week later. (And for the Dr Pepper!)

To Bonnie, for being my home base professor and cheerleader.

To Andi, for trading your cats and your sabbatical for ducks and your Minnie Driver impression. It wouldn't have been the same without you.

To Reuben, for picking us over Lil' Wayne. And for your advice on marriage.

To Cory, Rashina, Chris, Elisabeth, Emma, Pierce, Emily, Shirah, and Jenni for being my makeshift family, for making me think, but especially making me laugh.

To Ken, for being wise enough to run with idea and completely insane for letting me tag along.

And to everyone we met along the way. The Silversmiths, the Bhulas, Aunt Lounell, Thomas, Steve (get well soon!), Sherry, Mike, every server who split up 12 checks for us, every person with we met on the street with the courage to answer our questions, every car Emma and I stopped in D.C. while Reuben tried to back into the parking lot, and every person we met who went out of their way to help us, to talk to us, and to make this trip unforgettable. If I didn't mention you by name above, this is for you. You are loved.

And so it is

If you’ve been following the other blogs, you know that our last day did not go as planned. What was going to be a final wrap up in Montgomery before heading home ended abruptly on the side of the road outside of Tallahassee. Big Mama had done pretty well through the whole trip, but as we left St. Augustine, a bearing came loose in her fan and our journey with her and Reuben came to an end. Around 1pm a charter bus from Atlanta met us on the highway, and we loaded all of our luggage onto the new bus, waving at Reuben as we drove away from what had become our home for 39 ½ days.

As the news sunk in that we wouldn’t be going to Montgomery at all, I felt remorse, for Emma, the day’s ambassador, and for all of us missing out on the experience. But as I settled into my seat on the new bus and breathed a heavy sigh, I realized it wasn’t the only one I had missed.

As we left Washington D.C. and moved south to Williamsburg, Charleston, and St. Augustine, I have to be honest, the trip became more about trying to find a balance, and less about the experience. I was starting to get sick, and was dealing with stress from home. The drain of the heat, emotional overload, and complete exhaustion were finally starting to take effect. Not to mention the realization that in a few days, this would all be over, and I would have to begin to emotionally and mentally unpack everything I’d kept mostly inside.

I regret that I wasn’t present in the Southeast the way I had been in the early days of the trip. I can give you a list of excuses, and I doubt many would blame me for being exhausted by the last leg, but still, I failed to keep the promise I made myself in South Dakota, to appreciate every experience and do my best to remember each day. I’d failed to keep the promise I had made myself on the street in D.C. after passing the wealthy man with issues of both décor and decorum. I was too tired.

So the final push into Nashville was bittersweet. Glad as I was to be in a town I knew, with people I had missed, I wasn’t ready to be done. I wanted to turn around and go back. To pick up Reuben in Tallahassee and make a loop back the way we came, paying attention to all the spots I’d missed and checking to see if the others had changed at all. I wanted to sleep, and shower, and then start moving again. An apologetic pilgrimage to all the cities I didn’t give my level best.

But that didn’t happen. I spent a couple days in Nashville saying goodbye to the friends I’d made and spending some time with friends I’ve known for years, now. I had one last class, and then I packed up my car to drive the 500 miles back to my parents home, where a bed, and a shower, and family waited.

As I pulled out onto Wedgwood, a road I’d driven down countless times in my years at Belmont, I noticed an old man pushing a woman in a wheelchair, outside of a large, brown complex. I glanced at the sign outside the building and realized it was a nursing home. A home I’d never even noticed before that day. If it wasn’t for the couple outside I might not have noticed it then.

I shook my head at my own blindness and realized that I might make that pilgrimage after all. The way I see cities, even Nashville, a town I’ve lived in for two years now, has changed, because now I’m actually looking. I’m honestly asking people how they’re doing, and getting to know their stories. I’m letting my blinders drop and seeing more than just the road in front of my car.

I might not have the answer to “what it means to be an American” just yet. I doubt I’ll have a concrete answer. But as Ken said on the last day of class, it’s important that we’re asking. So in the end, I don’t know if I “rediscovered America”. But I think I learned how to. And I’m not done looking.

Color Coordination

Walking towards the National Mall in D.C., I found myself eavesdropping on a conversation taking place next to me. A man and his assistant were walking towards Folders Shakespearean library, and with smug posturing he was sharing the trials of leasing a home, now that he had moved back to the States.

“Well, the lease is manageable…$250,000 per year…but we’re having such trouble with the decor. All of my art and furniture is Renaissance era, which just won’t work in such a rustic log cabin, like ours…and the real tragedy is I have $2 million in books just sitting in storage.”

The assistant nodded solemnly, sympathizing with his plight. I bit my tongue and kept walking, reminding myself that I was an ambassador of Belmont, and now was not the time to wage a class war. Still, I was greatly tempted to kick him in the shin until he volunteered to loan his millions in books to any one of the local libraries while he remodeled his home, purchase a new home that matched his decor, or at the very least, quit complaining about it.

I mean, here I am, about to graduate into a terrible economy with little to no job prospects of value, a sizable amount of student debt, and this guy is complaining that his books don’t match his chalet? Didn’t he realize how fortunate he is? Hire me! I’ll read your books so they don’t go to waste! I’m scrambling for a job, and you’re finding it difficult to live without color coordinated decadence?

Never have I been more inspired to engage in civil disobedience, just to call attention to a glaring class divide.
And there I was, a middle class white woman, on a trip around the country on a luxury tour bus, being taught at a graduate level by brilliant professors, complaining that he didn’t realize how lucky he was.

I Remember it Well

I remember we were in the van in Minneapolis when we found out that Michael Jackson had died. The radio chirped with rumors that he was still alive…no, dead…no, he’s alive…and now, not alive. We all received text messages from friends, voice-mails listing all of the bulleted information they had received, and phone calls from family members urging us to get to a television soon.

I’ll admit, my mind was elsewhere when we heard the news. And when I did zone back in to the news, I was fairly apathetic. It sounds terrible, but I was never a fan of his music, even as a child star, I didn’t respect many of the decisions he had made in this life, and I wasn’t looking forward to the next three weeks of “continuing coverage regarding Michael Jackson’s sudden death”. I may be going to the special hell for being so…unsympathetic, but at least I’m honest.

It did get me thinking, despite my lack of sadness over Jackson’s death. How we commemorate history, and figures long past. From Graceland and back to Nashville, where Steve McNair’s death still hit hard for so many people, celebrities were hard to ignore. They were featured on t-shirts, shot glasses, and cardboard cutouts. I can honestly think of only three cities where I saw no evidence of Elvis (I thank you for that, Seattle, San Francisco, and El Paso). Not a day went by without some reference to canceled sitcoms and old Disney films.

It was impossible to escape celebrity, especially after the death of Jackson. Every aspect of his life was exposed on twenty-foot screens with looped archival footage, broadcast on the sides of buildings in Chicago, scrolling at the bottom of every newscast, featured front and center in every publication. The dark side of celebrity is that there is no end to the publicity. Every corner of life is thrown up in the air for anyone to grab.

Historical figures are treated slightly differently. If they were minor characters in American history, they get a reenactment. A history buff adopts their costume and portrays their culture at public events, such as the reading of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. As a man read the Declaration aloud, men and women dressed in timely garb and dispersed themselves throughout the crowd of onlookers, hurling cries either for or against the document. Some cried “Treason! Long Live the King!” Still others threw their hats and shouted “Huzzah!” as the crier’s voice raised to announce, “We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America…solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States”.

If they are major characters, we get a puzzling number of plaques announcing that a major person lived there, or visited it, or passed by on their way elsewhere, or mentioned it once in a speech. Boston and Philadelphia were both riddled with historical markers for founding fathers, giving you a haphazard quilt of their lives…and offering you a t-shirt to accompany and commemorate your visit.

If they were important enough figures, we built huge neoclassical temples to commemorate their greatness. Abraham Lincoln draped in Grecian robes…Washington’s obelisk…Jefferson’s Corinthian pillars. They are linked in imagery and architecture to the founders of civilization and made to look like gods. After seeing the Lincoln Memorial, it’s odd to consider the tiny plaque in my hometown’s square commemorating his great debate with Stephen Douglas. A man carved to emulate the temples of Zeus couldn’t have fit into my town square…

But if they were of no importance…just immigrants, slaves, and poor workers who actually built this country…we barely remember them at all. At Ellis Island you can have your face photo-shopped into historical shots of immigrants who passed through the island, superimposing your own face over an unimportant Polish farmer, an Italian seamstress, or a group of young Irish girls.

Soldiers who died serving their government are marked only by their names. Their lives, their families, their faces don’t matter, unless they were generals, or well known for later careers. The great tragedy now is that so many soldiers have died, there’s no room for their individual stories and faces. There’s barely room for their names.

In Boston and Philadelphia you can see the grave markers of slaves, known only by their first names. They’re right next to the massive, ornate markers of their famous owners, buried with the family, like a pet.

In Charleston they’re not even marked by their names, but by a square divot in the ground and a few personal items laid as markers.

They say history is written by the winners, and judging by the way we treat our dead, we have a very skewed definition of success. When Michael Jackson gets a $4.8 million funeral and a century’s worth of fame, but the soldiers who died in Afghanistan on the same day get no mention at all, we’ve taken a wrong step somewhere along the way.

So I wonder about our memorials. I wonder who, and what, and how we will remember the great minds of my own generation. I wonder what our achievements and losses will say about us when tourists come to buy our t-shirts. When every memorial built in the last ten years (that I can think of, at least) has been built to mark a great tragedy, is it because we are getting better at honoring our dead? Or is it because we have no great successes to commemorate next to them?

I wonder if I will be a part of something worth commemorating, and if not, who will be remembered. I wonder where they are right now, and how they feel about Michael Jackson.

In New York, Freedom Looks Like too Many Choices...

In New York you can forget, forget how to sit still
Tell yourself you will stay in
But it's down to Alphaville…
-“New York” by U2


With every stop of the subway I could hear the words of Bono start to make sense. One passenger described her relationship with NYC as “love/hate” and I can completely understand. When I first talked to my roommate about the trip last fall, I remember her frowning and saying, “It seems like it’s a mile wide and an inch deep.” And it was. This trip wasn’t designed to give us a comprehensive view of every city, and some sites had to be skipped in favor of the class. But nowhere was that more obvious than in New York.


So often we had to choose between ten different options. Forty minutes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is just a sick joke, but do I miss out on the opportunity to see a Broadway show? Or a hip-hop concert in the Bronx? How is it possible that I managed to miss the MoMA? The Museum of Natural History? The Naked Cowboy?


The constant rush to be somewhere else, the sense of guilt that we weren’t taking full advantage of this city persisted throughout the three days we spent there. The thirty-minute drive from our Jersey parking lot to the Port Authority left me feeling antsy, as though I’d missed another great event while I waited for my bus to emerge from the Lincoln Tunnel. The pressure to choose between too much usually resulted in too much time on the subway and not enough time enjoying the city. A classic rookie mistake, I’d say.


By the time the way was over, I had seen hundreds of moments and signs and events and places that I wanted to write about. But I was so exhausted by that point that I’d fall asleep in my bunk, my laptop balancing on my stomach, and empty Word document open, waiting to be filled (really, ask anyone on the bus).


And yet…even as my body won the battle over creative expression, I would feel guilty that I wasn’t out exploring, getting to know the city. Even if that was just sitting in those tacky lawn chairs in Times Square and watching people pass by. As vital as sleep was at that point, I mentally kicked myself for missing out.


But that’s true for most of the trip, I guess. I just felt it more acutely in New York City, for some reason. Maybe because it is the city people think of when they think of America. There’s no other city quite like it. Chicago feels like a series of neighborhoods, so vastly different from each other that you can forget you’re in a metropolitan area. New York never lets you forget where you are.

Maybe it’s because New York is such a center for so many American fields. Finance, film, theatre, higher education, politics, media, religion, sports…New York is a major player in almost every field. It crams so much American culture into such a tiny area that it feels like a twisted, Tim Burton version of Disneyland’s Main Street U.S.A., a glaring representation of what is both good and terrible about America.


No matter the reason, all of the feelings of “missing out” along the trip came to a head in New York. It really felt like a mile wide and an inch deep, when there were so many areas to delve into. I can only imagine what it must be like for a new immigrant to the country, leaving Ellis Island and trying to navigate new-found freedom in a place with so many choices.


Still, overwhelming as it was, with that sense of missing out is the desire to keep looking. Like New York, I want to go back to almost every city we’ve visited. I want to look at new cities that weren’t on the trip with a similar eye. I can no longer be content with sitting still.

Rediscovering the Elephant

Author Note: I am sorry about the lack of updates! The last couple weeks of the trip became hectic and exhausting, so the blogs took a backseat to the experience. I wrote bits and pieces of these blogs on the trip, but it took getting home to finally finishing them. I hope you enjoy!
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Day one in Boston, we took advantage of the Institute of Contemporary Art’s “Free Admission Thursday”, which turned out to be a great experience for all of us, whether we are art lovers or not. The main gallery featured the work of Shepard Fairey, a contemporary artist best known for his “HOPE” portrait of Barak Obama during the presidential campaign, but a smaller installation, focused on short films, really caught my eye.



A film by Javier Tellez called “Letter on the Blind, for the Use of Those Who See” featured six individuals with severe visual impairment, each taking turns touching a live elephant for the first time. A whistle would blow, and one by one they would approach the creature, running their hands over its skin, gauging its size, getting to know its personality through touch.

The cinematography was quiet, poignant in stark black and white with close ups of the elephant’s rough skin undulating with each breath, but the true beauty was in their commentary. Each person approached the elephant and came away with a different impression. One was amazed, whispering over and over “you are beautiful…” as he circled the creature. One was more timid, describing the elephants rippling ears as “like curtains to a mansion” but admitting he was afraid of it, afraid it might trample him. One man was nearly silent as he traced his fingers around its belly, but said afterward, “I wouldn’t do it again.” A woman giggled with nervous glee as she curled her hands down his trunk. “It’s like an ocean in here….you can feel the power and the strength, but you can also feel the tenderness.”

It struck me as I watched the film that this is what we are doing on this trip. Each of us approaches this country without any idea of what we’ll find. We have some of our own experiences, and we each see through our own lenses, but ultimately we’ll see different parts of the same cities.

This seemed obvious as we spent our time in Boston for the Fourth of July. Such a quintessential American holiday in such a cornerstone of American history was sure to bring out some mixed opinions from within the group.

We’ll each come away with different impressions of what we liked and disliked. Some of us might want to keep searching. Others might want to leave. But hopefully between the 12 of us we’ll find something that looks like an elephant.

Cleveland Rock.

What is the worst thing to get on the day the group tours the House of Blues, visits the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and goes to a Roots concert?

A migraine.

Sorry, Cleveland, I think I'm going to have to pass on this one.

I will post the video we've been watching since April to get us amped up for Cleveland. Even the locals think it's funny, and it was stuck in my head all day.

The Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video (Second Attempt)

Built Ford Tough.

I was going to write about hopelessness in Detroit.

After 23 days of unified hope throughout the U.S. we hit a city that looks like this. Houses in total decay, factory after factory left empty, entire neighborhoods silent. I had images of Haz-Mat suits walking down the main streets after deadly virus had run its course, scenes from zombie films and that old "Twilight Zone" episode where the soldier walks into a completely desolate town and everywhere he goes it looks like someone just left. Post-industrial wasteland is the perfect setting for a film.

It was hard to see, really. Detroit, birthplace of modern America, icon of car culture and industrialization...so quiet. Wiped out by corporate greed and economic recession. A city supported by a single industry can't stand when the industry collapses. The economy in the area crumbled to the point that people were forced to just walk away from their homes because it would cost them more to try and sell it.

The result is a city that isn't likely to come back. Gentrification isn't going to take place the way it has in Chicago, New York, and Nashville. A small group of artists and investors aren't going to fix up on neighborhood to its full bourgeoisie potential. There's not a strong enough economy to support it. Unless the American car industry has a huge resurgence, or multiple industries invest in the people of Detroit, the current trend of urban decay will probably continue. And it's hard to find hope in that.

That feeling came to a head for me when we visited The Heidelberg Project, a community arts project using objects found within the abandoned homes in the area. Tyree Guyton started the project with his grandfather and former wife in the 1980's and the project has grown to encompass a city block with found art sculptures, social commentary pieces, and powerful testaments to the racial and economic issues in Detroit's neighborhoods. As beautiful as it was to see a sign of life, the sign felt so small after driving through the city, and so sad after seeing entire houses covered with the stuffed animals children were forced to leave behind when their families moved to new jobs in other cities.

So I was going to write about the great irony of Detroit, iconic and essential to the modern American spirit, being the only place along our path thus far that has been without hope. But it isn't true. We saw hope at the Henry Ford Museum in Deerborn, MI (HUGE recommendation by the way. Easily one of the best museums I've ever been to.) A museum all of us had written off as just a car place, a testament to American capitalism turned out to be a refreshingly accurate look at American history and daily life. All because of people like Greg, our tour guide for the day and PR rep for the museum, who grew up in Detroit, and came back to work when he graduated from college. He has such a passion for his museum and his hometown and he doesn't want to leave.

We saw it in Hamtramck, where the kindness of friends and family still holds strong, as we were treated to an enormous Polish/Ukranian meal made with care by a slew of workers. The traditions, the history, and the passion behind the food they gave us was much appreciated and well received, if the food coma we all found ourselves in afterward is any indication.

We saw it in Rossford, where Ken showed us his old neighborhood where everyone still walks together down to the park to watch baseball games and the kids all stop and wave when you drive past. And we saw it in Toledo, where the arts are loved and respected. They're striving to replace the failing industrial economy with a creative economy, and it's working wonders. All thanks to people like Mark Folk, who work with local artists and at risk kids to build the programs necessary to sustain a creative economy.

It's beautiful and powerful to see that happening, and I have to admit, it's hopeful. In an area struggling to make it into a new era, they are finding their way. And as Emma told me, there is something uniquely American about hope and ingenuity combined. Even to be able to pack up and move elsewhere and succeed in a new town or new career is an opportunity some never get.

So I can't write about the hopelessness of Detroit. It's going to a hard time, yes. It may never be the booming factory town it was, yes. But it will find its way. It just needs time.

And on the 22nd Day,

Indianapolis was a quiet day for us as a group. The time changes and late nights in Chicago brought on some heavy exhaustion, so we opted for a lax day in Indianapolis. Most of the group slept in a little later than usual, and had plenty of time to get ready before our tour of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

After the tour we grabbed a bite to eat and headed to Butler University for showers, then out to the Broad Ripple area to do some laundry and have dinner before heading back to the bus.

I wish we could've had more time in Indy, more of a picture of the city culture, but in a way, we really did. Indianapolis is a larger city in the scope of Midwestern America, but it's still a city in the Midwest on a Sunday. There's a huge tradition to Sundays, especially in the Midwest. The morning church service, the big family dinner, the family nap in front of the chosen sports event, the evening chores and miscellaneous errands needed to be done to prepare for the week. It's how I spent my Midwestern childhood, and how most people I know spent theirs.

That's not to say that people in California don't watch football, and goodness knows that people in the South go to church, but there's a privacy to Midwestern Sundays. You don't often see people out and about in the afternoon, because they're all at home, with their families. The institution of family plays a huge role in American culture, but it's especially true when combined with other institutions like media, the economy and religion.

Of course, all of those institutions combined could be called The Indy 500. This became apparent when we toured the racetrack and discovered just how much of a "everyman" sport Nascar racing is. Even as we approached the Motorway, we didn't pass bars and tourist traps and pirates dressed as prostitutes like we did in Las Vegas. Instead we found family homes and hardware stores. When we toured the track, our guide pointed out the RV parks where drivers and spectators alike keep their mobile homes, so they can spend time with their families. He showed us the main back lot where drivers struggle to get through the crowds of spectators and to the racetrack because there is no physical barrier keeping the crowds back from their path.

He told us about his own stories, growing up at the track, and the times he's spent with his wife at different races. He even talked about the families who have switched brands of coffee because their favorite driver is sponsored by that brand. There's a huge sense of family to the whole sport. Part of that is constructed as a marketing strategy, but part of that is just because the race (for reasons unknown to me) appeals to a wide range of people, and families in particular. Maybe it appeals more to men, and the "family appeal" speaks more to the patriarchal family structure that is much more traditionally practiced in the Midwest.

But there is something sweet about the culture to Indianapolis. We took part by taking a "Chill Day" by catching up on chores, sleep, and our group relationship. By week three, we've become a family of our own. We even took in some Nascar.

Nighthawks

Before we left on the trip, Bonnie asked us to be sure and visit Marc Chagall's American Windows when we visited the Art Institute of Chicago. Chagall's windows, commissioned to celebrate the United States bicentennial, portray his sense of gratitude for the tolerance and liberty he found in America during World War II. It's a beautiful piece of blue stained glass, inlaid with greens and yellow, and would've been a great example of American identity portrayed in art...but it wasn't on display.

The recent remodel and new addition to the Art Institute has sent some of the more delicate pieces into storage until the dust has settled and it's safe to come out. The new Millennium Entrance is looking shiny, so hopefully it will be up soon for everyone to enjoy.

I've been to the Institute a few times in my life, and it's like coming home for me. The collection feels so familiar anymore, I can walk the halls and visit my favorite pieces just like I would old relatives. One such piece is Hopper's Nighthawks



To me...this may not be American culture portrayed, but it is definitely Chicago. Although Hopper swore up and down that he never meant for Nighthawks to have any kind of symbolism, he did admit that consciously or unconsciously, he was portraying the loneliness of the city. Three lone figures idling around coffee mugs and cigarettes, the city bustle slowing to heavy, tired sighs in the fluorescent lights of the diner, the short-order cook behind the counter working to scrape together the last few dollars of the night. It's quiet, it's still, and it's the exact opposite of what most people see in Chicago, or any city for that matter.

Chicago is constantly moving, constantly breathing with the push and pull of people scurrying about. You can feel it in the heat of the sidewalks and in the constant white noise of people and cars and food stands and music playing on every corner. It has a pulse to it, a vibe that is alive and beautiful. You really need to stand still at a bus stop and watch the city blur past to fully understand that in all of that movement it's easy to leave some things behind. Like connection.

My favorite part of Nighthawks is the man and woman sitting at the counter, their hands so close they are almost touching. I used to stare at those hands and wonder if they were at the diner together, if they were sharing a cigarette, if they were holding hands, or if their fingers reached for each other simply because they needed to feel someone's hand in theirs.

I love Chicago, don't get me wrong. My time in the city has almost always been amazing. But sometimes it feels like I'm completely alone, even in that sea of movement. It's not until the night come and the city quiets down and people tuck themselves into bed when you can really see the difference.

I thought about Nighthawks as a group of us walked along the deserted tracks of the Metra towards Big Mama. It was late and the city was finally coming to a rest. Even in the station, amongst all the concrete and stairs, it felt like there wasn't another human being around for miles. It wasn't until the noise fell away that we could really tell just how heavy silence can be.

I think Hopper understood that...the loneliness that covers you. Like a warm blanket. But I also think we've seen that kind of need for connection everywhere we've gone. So many people are connecting with our group as we travel on, even when their lives are busy enough. So often we'll approach strangers and ask them questions about their lives and their beliefs, and so often they are willing to sit down and explain their views. It makes me wonder if we're all kind of like the couple at the counter, almost touching hands. Maybe they're helping us out because we seem like nice people and they're curious about the trip. Or maybe they are just looking for the connection they've been missing, even in sea of faces. I know I am.