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Also- to reply to the conversation starter (rather than where did you go to HS that I too found odd when I lived in KY), how about "Hi, nice to meet you, did you grow up here?...what area? (or, if they're not from Louisville and maybe you don't want to get into where they were from)...what brought you to Louisville and take it from there.
I remember when we first moved there, I had a woman say to me "Don't think we're a bunch of losers when everyone talks about where they went to HS and still relive those days". Don't get me wrong, I actually loved HS, but rarely talk about it!!
I do agree w/the post about St. X & Trinity-that stands for more than where you actually got your college degree-never have seen anything like it & if that's what you're banking on, then you better hope you get a job in Louisville!!
I wonder: wouldn't an attitude of acceptance of the other, whoever that other is, as long as they're hurting no one, actually be a progressive thing in this world?
I, too, have some of these family members in WV--talk about hillbillies! The stereotypes grow out of some truth. But they don't get the whole truth about how these same "backward" people would go out of their way to see to it that you were welcome and fed even if it meant they missed a few meals that week as a result. They'd entertain you with rollicking good stories and perhaps a song or two and little kids dancing with the older folks. These are life's little joys that I, in my more progressive enlightened world, have little time for these days, leaving me to wonder who's more civilized.
How true! Thank you for that post. It seems it is us who needs to slow down, not them speed up.
VERY VERY good post. I am not a native Louisvillian and I find the opinions of Dowdy and RNC to be way off...I immediately saw the question of where you went to HS in a different light. To me, it was Louisvillians trying to connect with me. It was actually their personal attempt to get to know me better or something about me. I certainly do not have a problem with that, and it is sure better than the people in Chicago who turn their nose and walk away from you when you even say hi.
But since you did go to high school in Louisville, that question would make more sense to you than someone who transplants to the area - in your case it would be an instant conversation starter. I agree that many people I've encountered in the state and cities in the state are more friendly, talkative, outgoing. It isn't unusual for a complete stranger to strike up a conversation at a club or bar, even if they do start out with "So where'd you go to high school?" And if you say, "Rochester, NY", then that is usually followed up with a friendly question about your background.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Windwalker
I wonder: wouldn't an attitude of acceptance of the other, whoever that other is, as long as they're hurting no one, actually be a progressive thing in this world?
I, too, have some of these family members in WV--talk about hillbillies! The stereotypes grow out of some truth. But they don't get the whole truth about how these same "backward" people would go out of their way to see to it that you were welcome and fed even if it meant they missed a few meals that week as a result. They'd entertain you with rollicking good stories and perhaps a song or two and little kids dancing with the older folks. These are life's little joys that I, in my more progressive enlightened world, have little time for these days, leaving me to wonder who's more civilized.
Reminds me of some of the work that Ruby Payne has done, controversial as it may be. She basically said that the habit of a working class or farming family is to place a big emphasis on families, on communities, on relationships, and on keeping each other company ...whereas she finds the middle class to place much more emphasis on personal success and their immediate family's success over more thought to extended families and neighbors.
Quote:
Originally Posted by schools
Excellent response! The difference too is people up north aren't "afraid" or defensive about calling a spade a spade. Don't be so defensive KY and get over that this is how it is there!!
That is true to a degree, but at the same time unfair stereotypes abound. Certainly there is poverty and rural isolation, and driving through the state you will find lots of things that lend itself to the KY steretype. But if you're proud of your town, warts and all, you tend to get defensive if outsiders bash it without knowing or understanding it. I think that's true for most people I've encountered here - Kyians are a proud bunch, whether you're talking about Pikeville or Louisville!
Reminds me of some of the work that Ruby Payne has done, controversial as it may be. She basically said that the habit of a working class or farming family is to place a big emphasis on families, on communities, on relationships, and on keeping each other company ...whereas she finds the middle class to place much more emphasis on personal success and their immediate family's success over more thought to extended families and neighbors.
Ruby Payne? Who is she? I'd like to know more. From my experience, this is true . . . unless there's dysfunction due to alcohol, drugs, or chronic sickness of other kinds. Then the family system breaks down and folks have to fend for themselves like middle class--without having received the knowledge about how to do this.
I have still been thinking a good deal about the issues raised here. I know the participants of this forum tend to be feet-on-the-ground, stats and graphs and facts folks and not given to flights of the poetic and psychological. But I'm an old English teacher and still believe that a literary and artistic vision is as necessary as the literal and concrete...
Most would agree that New York City would not be our cultural capital if it were not for the marginal, the outsiders, the other, the shadow. The Bright Lights of the Big City are dim without darkness. We have learned to listen to Langston Hughes' Simple stories, to the Howl of Allen Ginsberg, to the tawdry songs of the world of the Velvet Underground. We see New York in the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, in the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe. It's in Philip Roth and Frank O'Hara...
In the same way, Kentucky's soul is in its own kind of outsiders and marginalized, and Kentucky lurks inside Louisville, making it darkly beautiful. Kentucky is in the stories of the lost, displaced figures of Bobbie Ann Mason; it is in the Appalachian visions of Silas House and Frank X. Walker; it is in the photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard and Shelby Lee Adams; it is in the songs of Will Oldham and Loretta Lynn and Nappy Roots and Bill Monroe. Within every dismissed and scorned community are seeds that can grow in that thin soil. They know how to use the nutrients at hand, and we need that tough creativity. No, I don't want to replace all these trashy folks and their ways with 'progressives.' I want to listen to them and hope they can listen to me.
The tendency to want to clean up and throw out and avoid our shadows - from Jim Crow to Urban Renewal to the flight to the suburbs - and then to Oldh..., oops, the exurbs... that denial of the shadow and the other never means the shadow is gone: it pops up anyway, in a bigger, uglier madness, rather than in art. Columbine was our wake-up call that the suppressed, denied shadow in here is more dangerous than the obvious one out there.
I had an uncle who lived all his life on Trottin' Ridge, on my Pepaw's old, sparse land. He sold vegetables all over Estill County from his wildly decorated pick-up trucks. Those trucks were 'art cars' before the term existed: crazy collages of shellacked-on pictures from National Geographics, cheap figurines and horses bolted all over the fenders, red and green sheet metal rickrack trimming the edges of the vegetable bins. Uncle Don wore yellow shirts and pink pants and bolo ties, and he would burst suddenly into song or into a wild ***. He was orn'ry and funny as hell.
When he was old and dying of cancer after a lifetime of moonshine and handrolled cigarettes, lying in a hospital in Irvine, he suddenly couldn't take it any more. He jerked out his IVs, jumped out his window and walked back to his log house on Trottin' Ridge.
The last time I saw him he took us to a new outbuilding he had constructed to house an old upright piano he had begged, or stolen, or found. He sat at the keyboard and reeled into an improvisation of crazy chords and wiggling riffs that sounded like Keith Jarrett playing for a Zydeco band. He had never had a lesson in his life...
He stopped suddenly and said, "I don't know what the hell I'm doin' " and laughed.
That unschooled Kentucky creativity and curiosity is in me - all citified, scrubbed, educated. I'm just a generation away from those hills. Who knows what is a generation away from a handful of poor white trash, poor ghetto kids, fat toothless slackers?
What a fantastic post, lorouclou! (From another old English teacher).
Quote:
Most would agree that New York City would not be our cultural capital if it were not for the marginal, the outsiders, the other, the shadow. . . . In the same way, Kentucky's soul is in its own kind of outsiders and marginalized, and Kentucky lurks inside Louisville, making it darkly beautiful. . . . The tendency to want to clean up and throw out and avoid our shadows - from Jim Crow to Urban Renewal to the flight to the suburbs - and then to Oldh..., oops, the exurbs... that denial of the shadow and the other never means the shadow is gone: it pops up anyway, in a bigger, uglier madness, rather than in art. Columbine was our wake-up call that the suppressed, denied shadow in here is more dangerous than the obvious one out there.
This is so, so true. We need the other, however the other is defined for us. We were created to live in communion with the other. All the forces in the universe seem to reflect this. So why not learn to love and embrace the other than ridicule and reject?
I know folks like your uncle. They're the best, most free spirits, who, despite their problems, may have it more together than we'd like to admit. Literary types try to call southern writers gothic because they don't understand how real these characters are!
It took me going away to the bright lights of the big city to begin to appreciate what I'd become ashamed of--my Appalachian heritage. But after spending almost 3 decades in the thin soil of sophistication, I have a much greater appreciation for the hillbilly in me.
Many Appalachian folks spend time getting to really know folks in all their odd and contradictory complexities instead of classifying them immediately as "poor white trash," "ghetto snipes," or even sophisticated "citified Artists." Sure, they'll talk about 'em behind their back, sharing all kinds of stories (mostly based in some kind of reality), but when push comes to shove, they're "family" and deserving of care when they need it. They may be nuts, but they're our nuts, and it's our bounden duty to help them. I don't find that kind of care among most of the "enlightened" intelligentsia, who, at the end of the day, are more sheeplike in their thoughts, than the wild creativity of folks like lou's uncle.
I have still been thinking a good deal about the issues raised here. I know the participants of this forum tend to be feet-on-the-ground, stats and graphs and facts folks and not given to flights of the poetic and psychological. But I'm an old English teacher and still believe that a literary and artistic vision is as necessary as the literal and concrete...
Most would agree that New York City would not be our cultural capital if it were not for the marginal, the outsiders, the other, the shadow. The Bright Lights of the Big City are dim without darkness. We have learned to listen to Langston Hughes' Simple stories, to the Howl of Allen Ginsberg, to the tawdry songs of the world of the Velvet Underground. We see New York in the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, in the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe. It's in Philip Roth and Frank O'Hara...
In the same way, Kentucky's soul is in its own kind of outsiders and marginalized, and Kentucky lurks inside Louisville, making it darkly beautiful. Kentucky is in the stories of the lost, displaced figures of Bobbie Ann Mason; it is in the Appalachian visions of Silas House and Frank X. Walker; it is in the photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard and Shelby Lee Adams; it is in the songs of Will Oldham and Loretta Lynn and Nappy Roots and Bill Monroe. Within every dismissed and scorned community are seeds that can grow in that thin soil. They know how to use the nutrients at hand, and we need that tough creativity. No, I don't want to replace all these trashy folks and their ways with 'progressives.' I want to listen to them and hope they can listen to me.
The tendency to want to clean up and throw out and avoid our shadows - from Jim Crow to Urban Renewal to the flight to the suburbs - and then to Oldh..., oops, the exurbs... that denial of the shadow and the other never means the shadow is gone: it pops up anyway, in a bigger, uglier madness, rather than in art. Columbine was our wake-up call that the suppressed, denied shadow in here is more dangerous than the obvious one out there.
I had an uncle who lived all his life on Trottin' Ridge, on my Pepaw's old, sparse land. He sold vegetables all over Estill County from his wildly decorated pick-up trucks. Those trucks were 'art cars' before the term existed: crazy collages of shellacked-on pictures from National Geographics, cheap figurines and horses bolted all over the fenders, red and green sheet metal rickrack trimming the edges of the vegetable bins. Uncle Don wore yellow shirts and pink pants and bolo ties, and he would burst suddenly into song or into a wild ***. He was orn'ry and funny as hell.
When he was old and dying of cancer after a lifetime of moonshine and handrolled cigarettes, lying in a hospital in Irvine, he suddenly couldn't take it any more. He jerked out his IVs, jumped out his window and walked back to his log house on Trottin' Ridge.
The last time I saw him he took us to a new outbuilding he had constructed to house an old upright piano he had begged, or stolen, or found. He sat at the keyboard and reeled into an improvisation of crazy chords and wiggling riffs that sounded like Keith Jarrett playing for a Zydeco band. He had never had a lesson in his life...
He stopped suddenly and said, "I don't know what the hell I'm doin' " and laughed.
That unschooled Kentucky creativity and curiosity is in me - all citified, scrubbed, educated. I'm just a generation away from those hills. Who knows what is a generation away from a handful of poor white trash, poor ghetto kids, fat toothless slackers?
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And if you say, "Rochester, NY", then that is usually followed up with a friendly question about your background.
