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Drop Zone |
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Grady Clay
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Destination |
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That's where we're all going. SOMEPLACE. Nobody moves just to be moving. Even people going around the track, around the block, using up gas, taking up time, they're all going SOMEPLACE. Call it "around," call it a target, call it a goal, a rest stop. "Over to Joe's Video." Call it destination --or even Destiny. To get THERE from HERE, to arrive at SOMEPLACE-ELSE, you've still gotta go SOMEPLACE and stop SOMEPLACE. It may turn out to be a restaurant called SOMEPLACE ELSE, or a corner bar called THE OTHER PLACE. Every trip needs a destination, even if you're only cruising, joy-riding, bugging-out, or doing that in-definable, un-decipherable thing called "making the scene." Because when you're passing through out there, what we're all part of out there--like it or not--is a goal-oriented society, watching to see where YOU'RE going. Every place is a place to go, a place to stop, pause, and reconsider, a place for making, buying, selling, negotiating; a point-of-no-return, a DESTINATION. And if you've really and truly got NO PLACE TO GO, you are--I don't need to tell you-- in deep trouble. If somebody tells YOU "You got no place to go but OUT," that's a challenge, or an insult. If somebody asks you "Where are you from?" that's looking backwards, to yesterdays maybe better left forgotten. And maybe none of your business buster! But to ask "Where are you going?"--that's exploratory, anticipatory, forward looking. And even if, by chance you are, actually, going NO PLACE at all, "getting THERE may be more than half the fun." I do hope you make it. |
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Arrest House |
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Could ARREST HOUSE really be the newest sign-of-the-times, when HOMEPLACE has been remodeled into that modern substitute for overcrowded jails or prisons? The ARREST HOUSE of the 1990's can be any house. No sign visible from the street reveals its grip. No neighbors are visibly alerted to the fact that a convicted felon, rapist, mugger of drug dealer has been moved indoors, a detainee, a parolee-in-residence. Nobody would know, from the outside, that the man-in-the-house is linked electronically to police headquarters, where his every move can be tracked. Or that the detainee must report regularly by telephone to distant keepers who can scan his or her personal voiceprint by electronics down at Headquarters. Such an ARREST HOUSE has peculiar assets. It can be a rented, non-public dwelling in which to stash prisoners. Plain-and-simple, it does not require a construction bond issue. It has precedents, for already in the 1980's we began to get privately-run jailhouses that operate under contracts in converted motels, sanitaria, or apartments. ARREST HOUSE does not lack for other precedents. A one-time owner of the famous Longfellow House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was Andrew Craigie. After he declared bankruptcy--a serious offense in those days--Craigie was confined for the rest of his life, except for Sundays "when he had indemnity from arrest." It's a beautiful Tourist Attraction on historic Brattle Street today--not a bad place, if you choose to spend your declining years in a genteel HOUSE ARREST. |
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Out There |
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"Out"--as in O-U-T--comes in many forms and guises: OUT THERE, as in out-of-bounds, out-of-town, out-of-state, Out West, out-of-the-way, out-of-reach. It can leave us out-of-breath or out-of-sorts. The view from the center is what determines OUT-ness. If you go OUTSIDE to buy parts and supplies, that's called OUT-sourcing. If you get OUT of touch, or OUT of reach, or OUT of your GOURD, you're plainly OUT-of-it--out of THE CENTER of things. Westbrook Pegler, that eternally angry columnist, had a term for uppity words he didn't like. called them "OUT-of-town words". Let's face it: OUT-ness surrounds us. Who decides what's IN and what's OUT? Why ,of course, the so-called "We" who decide things, generally located in that place called THE CENTER. It's been forever like that. Places like DOWNTOWN, THE HEART OF THE CITY, FINANCIAL DISTRICT and METROCENTER keep their power by performing so-called "central place functions". They aren't about to surrender to OUT THERE. That's what "DOWN TOWN DAYS" are all about--bringing people back from OUT THERE. It's the eternal struggle between those who've got power, and those on the OUTSIDE. We've become deeply divided...rich versus poor, powerful versus powerless, druggies versus enforcers, homefolks versus strangers from OUT THERE. And especially urban versus non-urban. We are now, un-comfortably, an urban nation. The last Census identified 75 percent of us as "urban". That leaves OUT THERE inhabited by a minority of "OUTS". And the struggle continues between so-called "Users" and "Exploiters", between those who live and use OUT THERE for domestic and local purposes, and others who want it as an OPPORTUNITY SITE--for purposes of "exchange"--for speculation, "development", profit. As it turns out, neither can get along without the other...They're all in the same boat. And it's badly in need of repairs. This is no time to be OUT TO LUNCH. |
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Nostalgia Farm |
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You see 'em, strung out on highways and byways, proclaiming their presence with cutesy, folksy artsy crafty whimsy, loosey-goosey-gander pandering to all the nostalgia let loose in the land when the last real honest-to-God dirt farm disappeared out yonder-way. These are the new NOSTALGIA FARMS. you see 'em, down at the crossroads, by the inter change. Billboards entice you to take a trip Down Home, Back on the Farm, brunch at the Mom and Pop Homestead. Just like it Usta be?--with a parking lot for tour buses from the Big City? Welcome to NOSTALGIA FARM the made-over model for leaf-watchers in the fall, sleigh-riders at the first snow. Welcome to the Welcome Wagon out front, where you sign-in and sign-up for pick-your own-pumpkins, and, if you'da come a few weeks sooner, you'da been pulling your own sweet corn on your own sweet time. Welcome to NOSTALGIA FARM where Old MacDonald's picked up ideas fron the new MacDonald's--and sells...Atmosphere: Smell the pigs! Don't step in the poke. Sniff the cow! Pet the goat! Stroke the shoat! Pick the Pumpkin! No, put that one back, it's too big! Spend time and money at NOSTALGIA FARM. It's the latest "transitional-land-use" as they call it down at the Tax Assessor's office. And at the next zoning commission meeting, the neighbors say: "Next thing you know, Old MacDonald will want a shopping center"...Welcome to NOSTALGIA FARM... |
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The Kudzu |
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One of my Early Crossings.. I was a teenage accomplice to the introduction of Kudzu vine--yes K-U-D-Z-U--into the midst of the old Cotton Belt of Middle Georgia. Kudzu was just what the Kudzu King ordered; he was a popular agricultural columnist on The Atlanta Constitution, the other Bible of the Bible Belt. Kudzu rootlets were easy to plant. They grew quickly. The vine stabilized the red clay soil. And it fed the cattle. They stood in it belly-deep and they got fat. Little did WE know--Back when I was a kid on a Kudzu planting crew-- that, soon enough, Kudzu would climb the tallest pinetree, jump the wildest gulley, follow destiny across the south, and even leap the Ohio River into the North By now, KUDZU has become the butt of TV jokesters, the object of scorn among folks who like countryside neat and unfestooned. It touches a deep vein of nativistic suspicion against anything Oriental--for Kudzu did, after all Originate in China and flourish in Korea. Before it too imported to the US as a decorative porch vine. That was in 1876 at the Philadelphia Exposition. Before the Kudzu vine escaped and became a threat to careless farmers and landowners. But now KUDZU has made another leap. No longer just a plant. Nor just a field of plants. "OUT-IN-THE-KUDZU," is now an identifiable, generic place in the geography of these United States. It's got language, as well as history on its side. OUT IN THE KUDZU is established in the American scene. If some herbicider should make it disappear, we'd have to find yet another magic plant to fill that ecological niche so well occupied by THE KUDZU. |