"Needed: Your Memories About Weather in the Upper Cumberland"

 

A Liberal Dose: March 30, 2023

Troy D. Smith

“Needed: Your Memories about Weather in the Upper Cumberland”

The primary purpose of this column has always been to present thoughts from the left side of the political spectrum, in large part to counterbalance the perspectives of several columnists from the right who were regular contributors to this paper when I started. However, there has usually been a secondary, sometimes almost as prominent, purpose: to look at things from a historical perspective, especially things that relate to our town or our region. I’ve written about labor history in Sparta, about the black Union soldiers who had largely been forgotten by history, about Native Americans of the Upper Cumberland, and many more.

This week I am completely focused on history, with no political flavoring.

One year ago this month, with the untimely demise of my dear friend and mentor Michael “Birdie” Birdwell (beloved by many of you), I inherited directorship of the Upper Cumberland Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. My long-term goal was to build on the work the Institute did in the 1980s when they conducted oral history interviews of all the living ex-coal miners from the 1930s they could find. I wanted to do something similar with people who worked in shirt factories and tobacco agriculture -two things that used to be at the heart of our local culture until about the 1990s, but have since moved on from our area. I want to get a record of what life was like for those Upper Cumberland folks who worked in those industries before, like the coal miners, they have all left us. Along the way, at the suggestion of my good friend Nick Blaylock, we added to the mix interviews with military veterans. Between us, Nick and I have conducted several interviews. Mostly, though, the last year has consisted of clearing a path for the Institute to do this work. Very soon, we will learn whether our efforts have resulted in gaining physical work space at the university and additional funding, as well as the development of a website connected to the TTU archives (coming soon) at which anyone can listen to or read the interviews we have conducted.

This spring, I have also been part of a team of TTU faculty who received a “Rural Reimagined” grant to build an archive of Upper Cumberland weather history. The team, led by geology professor Lauren Michel, also includes TTU archivist Megan Atkinson and geography professor Evan Hart. The grant has enabled us to hire seven Tech students part-time to do research. In addition to combing through government records and old newspaper articles, they will be interviewing local folks who have been in the area a long time about their weather-related memories. Do you remember blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts, storms, and so forth that have occurred in the Upper Cumberland in your lifetime? What was it like? Just like the interview for the Institute, these will be stored at the TTU archives and accessible to historians, climate experts, and the general public to listen to and learn from.

Students will be conducting interviews with willing volunteers at the White County Public Library several afternoons per week, starting next week. This project will continue through the end of June. The Institute and the archives will have an additional two student workers continuing through August; the student working directly for the Institute will also, at that time, be conducting interviews about shirt factories and tobacco farming. All told, these projects are going to be extremely valuable for local history, and even for local government and businesses as we produce data that can be used to not only interpret the past but understand the present and work toward the future. We can’t do it, though, without your help.

If you are willing to be interviewed, please contact me at tdsmith@tntech.edu (the best way to reach me) or leave a message on my office phone at 931-372-6297 and we’ll make an appointment.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, March 23, 2023 "Perceptions of Reality Are Defined by Your Perspective- So Widen It"

 

A Liberal Dose

March 23, 2023

Troy D. Smith

“Perceptions of Reality are Defined by Your Perspective -So Widen It”

 

Today (Sunday, March 19), I heard yet another interview with science journalist David McRaney, whose book How Minds Change has been in the news a lot the last couple of years. His book, and his interviews about it, start with the 2015 social media meme called “The Dress.” You probably remember it. It was a photo of a dress… roughly half the people who saw it beheld a white dress with gold trim, while the other half saw a blue dress with black trim. It was not one of those things where if you tilt the picture (or your head) you can see two different things; no, you could only see ONE thing. Different people just saw it differently.

Turns out the photo, taken with a cheap camera, was overexposed- and when that happens, your mind automatically fills in the blanks with what it thinks OUGHT to be there, based on your experiences, and it does so without you even realizing it. People who spend a lot of time in artificial light, or outdoors at night, see the dress as blue; people who spend a lot of time in natural sunlight see it as white.

This is because color itself isn’t “real,” it is an illusion our mind creates. Wavelengths of electromagnetic energy emanating from a heat source (like the sun) hit an object, then bounce off. Depending on the surface texture of that object, it will absorb PART of that wave and bounce back the rest- which enters our pupil, and thence our brain, which translates it into color… what color depends on which parts of the wave get bounced off. BUT, when there is ambiguity or uncertainty, such as in that overexposed photo, your brain constructs a color scheme that is entirely dependent on your own experiences and perception. If you see blue, no amount of arguing from someone else is going to convince you it is white… because that is not what you are experiencing.

That same principle applies to how we see life: we fill in the blanks, our mind automatically interprets things, according to our own experiences and perspective. Someone else could be experiencing the exact same thing, but experience it (and interpret and understand it) completely differently than you do, because their experience (and therefore their worldview) is different. This is why some conservative, middle-class white folks can watch an event and not see the same things as some members of minority groups do. If you have never directly experienced true prejudice, oppression, and injustice -you may not recognize it in the same way as someone who has. They may be telling you it is racism, but you honestly just don’t see it that way. The two of you may argue back and forth, neither giving in, because one of you sees a white dress and one of you sees a blue one.

This ties into concepts called privilege and implicit bias, which the Tennessee state legislature have ruled too dangerous to utter in front of children (or maybe even college students). In effect, they have passed laws saying you HAVE to agree -or at least pretend to agree -that dress is blue, no matter what you see. That, of course, is not a solution.

What is the solution? Well, in the case of the actual photo, if everyone understands HOW the difference occurs, they can understand that their view is not the only completely true one, and try to see from the other person’s point of view. Same with colorblindness- when my wife tells me my brown shirt is red, I realize my own limitations and have to agree that she, and most other people, are not seeing it the way I do.

In other words… communicate. Honestly, sincerely listen to one another. Don’t tell someone their lived experience is inaccurate because it doesn’t match yours, or what you think theirs should be.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

 

"What Is Behind the Rage Against Drag Shows?"

 

A Liberal Dose

March 16, 2023

Troy D. Smith

“What is behind the rage against drag shows?”

 

I recently heard someone say “Tennessee is currently the most anti-gay state in America, as judged by legislative activity.” I’m not sure if that is true, but if not, we have to be up there at the very top. Most of the legislation, and public outrage, has not been directed at gay people in general so much as at the trans community and drag queens. I can’t help but wonder if this is not, in part, because there has been such a swell of public support (even among conservatives) in the last ten or fifteen years for gay people, making it harder to score political points or stir up the base by attacking them, making it necessary to find more specific targets to serve that purpose.

Because make no mistake, that’s what is happening. In the last year or two, a large segment of the public seems to have come to the conclusion that public drag appearances are an imminent threat to their children. People bombarded the TTU website in protest a few months ago when they learned there were public drag performances at the Backdoor Playhouse (which, in reality, had been happening for more than two decades -people “learned” about it through social media posts of an aspiring conservative politician). People feel so strongly that, a few weeks ago, some Cookeville church leaders were willing to stand side-by-side with Nazis to protest it. Now a law has been passed that essentially bans any cross-dressing public event -equating “drag queen story hour” at the library with strip clubs and “cabarets”, as if the same thing happens in both venues.

It does not. Drag performances that are public, especially the ones geared toward kids, are in no way sexualized or “prurient” (a word the law uses, which is essentially defined by the beholder and therefore too broad to be legally meaningful). They are certainly less sexualized than a trip to Hooter’s or the cheerleaders at any sports event. Are drag shows in private spaces sometimes sexualized? Of course, but that is not the same thing at all, nor is it what anyone’s kids are going to be exposed to.

Soon after the law was introduced, a high school photo of Governor Bill Lee in drag was circulated online. He was furious at the implication because “it was obviously not the same thing.” I’ve seen anti-drag-show people saying similar things about Madea, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Tootsie. “It’s not the same thing!” Why isn’t it? According to the law as written, it sure seems to be. Yet still people make a distinction… so what is the difference? If public drag appearances are not sexual or pornographic, which they are not, and if it is okay for comedians or high school groups raising money to perform in public in drag… what IS the distinction? The distinction apparently is, it’s perfectly fine for straight people to do it, it is only dangerous, disgusting, and wrong if it is LGBTQ people doing it. So it really is a (not-so-cleverly-disguised) gay thing.

Many parents fear that drag queens are “grooming” their children, which means preparing them for seduction. I have never even heard of a drag queen sexually abusing a child -I’m sure it happens, but probably no more than with the public in general. What they are really afraid of is that drag queens will somehow make their children gay. Transphobia, homophobia… it’s all about fear. Not fear of a gay person physically harming you, but fear that you, yourself, or your child, actually is gay and exposure to LGBTQ people might bring it out so it must be suppressed.

It’s also fear of change, I think. Society changes, generation by generation, and it is hard for older people to understand or accept.

In this, as in so many things, there are people keeping themselves in office by stoking your fear. Stop falling for it.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

"Let's All Find the Better Angels of Our Nature"

A Liberal Dose

March 9, 2023

Troy D. Smith

“Let’s All Find the Better Angels of Our Nature”

 

I want to begin this column by acknowledging John Gottlied’s statement last week that, despite our many disagreements, he is never attacking me personally because he believes I am a good man (and, in the past, he’s said my heart is usually in the right place). I can say the exact same thing about him. I recommended him for this column because I know he is a man of principle who would never hold back from ardently criticizing my views when he disagrees with them, without resorting to the nastiness that has become so common in our public life today. I am grateful to the Expositor for publishing both our viewpoints, because I think it is good for readers to see that two men, friends since childhood who love each other as brothers and respect one another, can disagree over politics -and even get mad sometimes -without losing sight of each other’s humanity. As I said, that seems to have become a scarce commodity nowadays.

It shouldn’t be like that. It doesn’t have to be like that.

I think frequently about the funeral of Democratic senator Ted Kennedy, the “liberal lion”, in 2009. I was moved by the heartfelt tears of Republican senator Orrin Hatch, one of Kennedy’s best friends. They were not only from different parties, Hatch had campaigned his way into Congress over thirty years earlier expressly on the platform of thwarting the liberal policies of, specifically, Ted Kennedy. Yet they worked together on important legislation through the years, and developed a powerful friendship

I think, too, of the presidential campaign of 1800. Back then, whoever came in second in the election would serve as vice-president to whoever won (what could go wrong?). In 1796 Thomas Jefferson had come in second to John Adams. Jefferson and Adams had been close allies and friends during the Revolution and for several years afterwards, but when our present government was formed as a result of the Constitution the two men found themselves increasingly at odds. By 1796 Jefferson and James Madison had formed a political party, the Republicans -known to historians as the Democratic-Republicans and reorganized in the mid-1820s as the Democratic Party, so not to be confused with the modern Republican Party. Adams, meanwhile, joined the Federalist Party formed by Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson/Madison and Adams/Hamilton had very different ideas about what was best for the country, which sometimes led to animosity.

This was especially true during the Adams-Jefferson administration, as the two men went at each other sometimes viciously, with Jefferson running against Adams again in 1800 and defeating him. To get by the “second-place gets VP” rule, the Democratic-Republicans also ran another candidate, Aaron Burr -all the party delegates were supposed to vote for both (each delegate got two votes) but one was supposed to NOT list Burr, guaranteeing he would come in right behind Jefferson if Jefferson won, and be his VP. But the delegates apparently became confused, because Jefferson and Burr wound up tied (ahead of Adams), which meant the election was sent to the House of Representatives to decide. The House was evenly divided and no clear winner was evident there, either. Hamilton stepped in and urged his party to throw their votes to Jefferson. Despite their differences, Hamilton viewed Jefferson as a good and honorable man, a “lover of liberty,” whereas he called Burr an “embryo Caesar” who loved nothing but himself (Burr later killed Hamilton in a duel). When Jefferson was inaugurated he sought to calm the acrimony of the campaign by saying, famously, “We are all Republicans. We are all Federalists.”   It took another decade, but after Jefferson left office he and John Adams even renewed their close friendship.

Here’s hoping our current season turns out more like that, rather than take the turn things did in the 1850s/1860s. Let’s all return, instead, to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

 

“Two Years After Trump- Where Are We Now?”

 

A Liberal Dose

March 2, 2023

Troy D. Smith

“Two Years After Trump- Where Are We Now?”

 

I am writing this on the second anniversary of my beginning this column. I still have a lot to say, and the world keeps giving me more every week, but I thought this would be an appropriate time to reflect on the past two years. I wrote that first column just a few weeks after the events of January 6, 2021, and that day was very much on my mind. I titled my first installment “History Is the Key to Everything.” I explained why I thought that was true, and then compared January 6 with Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 (a charismatic populist leader born to wealth and privilege stirring up the working poor to attack the capitol). I noted that in the final months of Trump’s presidency he had been “trying to forbid all of America from honestly looking at its past. This came as no surprise, since he daily tried to forbid the world from honestly looking at the present (or anything else).” I concluded that “In my opinion, it is my job as a historian to help people face the past even when they don’t want to, even when it is uncomfortable, in order to better understand the present and to make a better future. Come to think of it, maybe that’s everybody’s job. Let’s start doing it, together.”

I was worried about a lot of things two years ago. I worried that Trump losing the election, while a very good thing, would only further inflame the passions of his most hardcore supporters and potentially lead to even more violence, fueled by a misguided feeling of persecution on their part (because neither they nor he could accept that he lost). I worried that a wave of hardcore Trump politicians would get elected into swing state legislatures or as state attorneys-general, and be in a position to decide which votes “counted” in the next election. I worried that Trump’s base would be more mobilized in 2024 and that he would once more win the Republican nomination, and potentially get back into the White House where he could wreak way more havoc than even before. I also worried that some other politician -more canny, more competent, and less mentally unbalanced than Trump -would use Trump’s methods more effectively and continue to poke at the exposed nerve of aggrieved Trump supporters and thereby be in a position to become, in some ways, more dangerous than Trump himself.

In short, I was worried about the future of our democracy.

Where are we now, two years later?

Trump’s star seems to have waned somewhat with conservatives. In the last month or two, in fact, I have seen the Trump flags -which once seemed to be everywhere around the county -slowly, day-by-day, start to come down. I still would not dream of counting him out, though. Meanwhile, his legacy continues in several ways. Multiple states have passed laws -allegedly as a response to practically nonexistent “voter fraud” -restricting voting opportunities, thus excluding many constituents who would normally vote Democratic. Multiple states have passed draconian laws about how race and gender issues and history can be addressed in the classroom (which is, hardly at all). Roe vs. Wade was overturned, thanks to Trump-appointed Justices. Now states are passing laws against drag shows. I guarantee you that many more children have been sexually abused by pastors, scoutmasters, and teachers than by drag queens, but no one is trying to ban those groups from being near children (well, except maybe for teachers). Meanwhile, racist hate groups have proliferated and hate crimes have increased.

Ron DeSantis is right in the middle of it all, presenting himself as a more palatable, watered down version of Trump; George Santos, at the other extreme, is like the ultimate post-modern interpretation of Trump, for whom “fact” does not even exist as a concept.

And I still have plenty to write about.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE