“Legendborn – Book 1 of 2: The Legendborn Cycle” by Tracy Deonn
Tag Archives: North Carolina
“Faith, Grace and Heresy – The Biography of Rev. Charles M. Jones” by Mark Pryor (2002)
Here I go again, writing about a book I haven’t read. But the story of Charlie Jones (1906 – 1993) is so far under the radar that I feel obliged to write about it now. Charlie (Preacher) Jones was an early participant in the Civil Rights struggles of post-World War II America.
I don’t ever expect to read this book in its entirety, since it includes a detailed discussion of Jones’s (theological?) battle with the Presbyterian Church. But I’m interested in his life for personal reasons as well as concern over current issues of racial justice.
I sometimes describe myself as “Southern by marriage”. Raised in New England, I left home in 1967 with a snobbishly negative attitude about the American South. Eight years in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Europe mellowed me a little, but when I first visited North Carolina, I felt cautious. Gradually, I got to feel comfortable in Chapel Hill and I learned a bit of its history, along with the history of the family I married into.
My husband and his four younger siblings attended an unaffiliated Community Church in which their father held a position of responsibility, as an “elder” or “deacon”. What does it mean for a church to be unaffiliated? Believe it or not, Wikipedia tackles this subject in a short article titled “Nondenominational Christianity”. AFFILIATION means that a church belongs to a recognized denomination, like Baptist or Episcopalian, and gets credentialed ministers from that parent organization. The Community Church had separated from Presbyterianism and “Preacher” Jones was its spiritual leader. It was a completely independent organization.
How did this happen? The long story is recounted in Faith, Grace and Heresy.
Charlie Jones was a radical social reformer inspired by Christian values, and he agitated vigorously for racial justice and women’s rights.
Both the Presbyterian Church and the US War Department considered Jones dangerous, and the Presbyterian Church decided to silence him. Unwilling to admit that Jones’ civil rights activities were the problem, they accused him of HERESY. Eventually, Jones and his congregation turned away from Presbyterianism and the independent Community Church was formed.
I’ve oversimplified this, but it will have to do for now.
Twenty plus years later, in the 1970s, I visited Chapel Hill and learned that the Community Church had a problem. After Charlie Jones retired, they had trouble maintaining membership and finding someone to replace Jones as minister. Affiliation with a recognized protestant denomination was discussed. When my father-in-law learned I had grown up in a Unitarian Universalist Church, he asked me many questions about it. Eventually, the Community Church joined the Unitarian Universalist Association, and there it remains. Memorial services for three beloved members of my family were subsequently held at the Community Church.
Faith, Grace and Heresy was written after Charlie Jones died, by his grandson Mark Pryor. I regret that I can find no further writings by Pryor, and I don’t know what path he may have followed in life.
Charlie Jones exhibited extraordinary leadership, the kind we need in our troubled times.
“Looking for Eagles” (1990) by Janet Lembke
I discovered Janet Lembke when her book River Time (1989) turned up on a relative’s coffee table. I read several more of her books after that, especially enjoying Dangerous Birds (1992) and Despicable Species (1999). Recently, Looking for Eagles turned up on my guest room bookshelf. Very appropriate, as I’ve sighted more eagles in the past four weeks than the previous four years.
Looking for Eagles is subtitled Reflections of a Classical Naturalist. What is a classical naturalist? “The classics” are the ancient Greek and Latin texts that reflect the Greek and Latin worldview, often considered to be the foundation for Western civilization. (No, I’m not getting into the arguments about Western civilization here.)
I’m assuming we can agree on the definition of a naturalist, and to be clear, Lembke is the kind of naturalist who is outside much of the time, wandering in the woods, getting bug bitten and muddy, and sometimes fishing or gardening, but mostly just looking at everything.
In understanding ecology, Lembke depends on the usual academic fields (ornithology, entomology, etc.) but also searches classical mythology to find out what the Greeks and Roman thought about the creatures and ecosystems they observed. (They often got things wrong.) She examines scientific nomenclature, which relies heavily but not exclusively on the Greek and Latin languages.
The result is a book full of interesting observations and comments. I especially like her chapter “The Wind-Egg”, about birds and their eggs and nests. I’ll spend more time looking for nests this Spring. The river in River Time and the location of Looking for Eagles is the Neuse River in the North Carolina coastal plain. The river and its surroundings are threatened by sea level rise and increasing storm activity.
Lembke’s literary output was broad ranging. She produced several important translations from classical Greek and more than a dozen works of non-fiction, including a (soup) cookbook in 2001. I’m particularly curious about The Quality of Life: Living Well, Dying Well (2004) and her last book Chickens: Their Natural and Unnatural Histories (2012).
I really wish Lembke had lived to finish her memoir, I Married an Arsonist.
As climate change presses itself on us more and more intrusively, the reflections of naturalists increase in importance. I recommend Janet Lembke’s books to everyone concerned about the impact of climate change on ecosystems.
“Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy” by David Zucchino
I should read this book. While a close friend was reading it, he disappeared into somber gloom. It’s bad news, fully documented, and way too close to home.
In 1898, the democratically elected city government of Wilmington NC was overthrown and at least 60 African Americans were murdered. Hundreds of families were driven out of Wilmington.
One Amazon reviewer described the events as “an atrocity against God.” Other descriptions included “depraved” and “unsettling”.
In human experience, evil sometimes triumphs. White supremacy came out on top. Perhaps I’ll read this when I feel stronger.
“Son of the Rough South – an Uncivil Memoir” by Karl Fleming
This book was a Christmas gift from my son, who knows what I like. He knows about my desire to understand the history I have lived through, especially the Sixties and the Civil Rights movement, and he knows I like biography and autobiography. He found this paperback in a used bookstore. (Publication date 2005, 418 pages + index, published by Perseus Books Group.)
That said… I had some trouble getting myself to READ this book. I was under the weather after Christmas (the classic Christmas cold) and didn’t feel strong enough to confront in detail the ugly truth about the American battle for desegregation. So I read slowly, taking chapters out of order.
I’m PROFOUNDLY glad I persisted! Son of the Rough South is an amazing piece of first person writing. Karl Fleming worked for Newsweek magazine, hired by their Atlanta bureau in 1961. He was a aggressive reporter, a skilled interviewer and an expert at “setting the scene” in order to catch the reader’s interest.
I’ve long recognized that people like me should be grateful for the adrenaline freaks among us. Who else is going to drive ambulances and work in the ER? I didn’t realize that a journalist may be part of the adrenaline crowd. Fleming covered some of the most appallingly dangerous, violent events of the southern Civil Rights struggle. His sympathies were entirely with the Black communities, but he reported as evenhandedly as he knew how. (Most) southern white police officers and political leaders hated his guts.
When Fleming moved to Los Angeles in 1966, he thought he was leaving the civil rights battle behind. But he wandered into Watts, the Black section of the city that exploded in May of that year, encountered a hostile crowd and was beaten almost to death. His skull was fractured, brain injured, jaws broken, life altered.
In the aftermath, Fleming was surprised to realize he did not feel anger towards the young Black men who assaulted him. To Fleming, IT WAS NOT ABOUT RACE. It was about power. He was always going to side with the underdog.
The account of Fleming’s adventures in the desegregating South would be enough to make this a good book, but he framed it with accounts of his childhood and later adulthood.
Fleming’s childhood was shaped by the awful poverty of the Great Depression. His widowed, ailing mother placed him and his half-sister in the Methodist Orphanage at Raleigh, North Carolina when Fleming was eight. Fleming’s account dissects his experience there, both negative and positive. In some ways, it was a model institution, in other ways a traumatic Dickensian nightmare. Anyone interested in the evolution child welfare policies should read this.
Many public figures of the Civil Rights movement show up in this book. Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael were of particular interest to me, and I was pleased that Fleming mentioned Fannie Lou Hamer and the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, NJ.
All of this leaves me with the question, how did we end up where we are NOW, in 2016? What’s better, what’s worse, and what has been totally unexpected?
One thing that has changed is language. I’ve followed Fleming in using the term “Black”. Perhaps I should have used African American. Fleming quotes his sources saying everything from “colored” and “Negro” to “coon” and worse.
Son of the Rough South is well written, fast paced and highly informative. I recommend it unreservedly.
“Looking for Longleaf – the Fall and Rise of an American Forest” by Lawrence S. Earley
(The University of North Carolina Press, 2004, 272 pages plus notes, bibliography and index. Extensive illustrations.)
This is a “must read” book! It’s a highly enjoyable combination of ecological science and regional history.
The longleaf pine forest of the Southeastern US was an astonishing natural resource. It was never truly “primeval”, being influenced by human activity since the original Americans arrived from Asia. But it was vast and rich in ways we can scarcely imagine.
Longleaf pine is “managed” no matter what is done to it. The range of outcomes (from commercial timbering to bird habitat enhancement) is broad and the time scales (from a few years to over a century) are impressive.
To my surprise, I’m currently following the progress of TWO forest management plans.
One covers the campus where I work, specifying practices for perhaps half of the 1600 acre property. It has two purposes. One is to get the campus out from under a misguided state policy that requires one-to-one replacement of every tree that gets cut for construction or other development (like parking lots). The other purpose to keep the forest healthy and enhance biodiversity. A healthy forest can hardly be taken for granted in New Jersey, battered as we have been by storms and insect infestations. (Remember the gypsy moth?) We also suffer from invasion by non-native plant species. So our woods need careful management. So far, one “prescribed burn” has been conducted and some selective cutting is in progress. This is a wonderful accomplishment! Finally we are done with decades of neglect. Leaving a forest alone is NOT the best way to care for it.
The other forest management plan in my life was developed about five years ago, to protect land in North Carolina owned by my husband’s family. Some timber has been harvested under this plan, and other steps may follow. Will this include reintroduction of longleaf pine? I don’t know, but I’m glad that preservation is being combined with management on this rural property, with its beavers, bears, rice field and aged trees.
The only forest on MY side of the family, a seven acre sliver of New England hillside, was sold about fifteen years ago. It was important to my childhood. I miss it. A peak at GoggleEarth recently showed me that it remains undeveloped. Surprising!
I recommend Looking for Longleaf to anyone interested in the fate of nature in our rapidly changing world.
“Rosemary Cottage” by Colleen Coble
Beach reading… you know, the not-quite-trashy romantic novels you read to relax…
This book had the advantage of a beach setting, a town called Hope Beach, much like Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. A man and a woman have died a few weeks apart, apparently accidentally. But a relative believes there was foul play, and the fun begins. The story pivots around a baby, a pretty year-old girl named Raine, daughter of the deceased woman. Raine is kidnapped, and the tension rises. Ultimately, Raine survives and her uncle/guardian finds the woman of his dreams to complete their family.
If you dislike politicians, you will savor the downfall of the bad guy, who fathered Raine and would not acknowledge her. Add blackmail and the plot thickens.
Good fun, when you are in the right mood.
When I want to read fiction set in North Carolina, I usually turn to Margaret Maron, whose “Bootlegger’s Daughter” series, less “romantic” and more oriented towards criminal mysteries, has kept my attention for years.
AMG Reading Journal 