Memoirous

I’m highlighting a few random memories this week. President Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. About that time I was a sophomore in high school sitting in a world history class. The teacher was somewhat tired, weary perhaps of the world, the weight of current events. Anyway, he said what we were living through would one day become subject matter, part of the curriculum for future students of history. I had no doubt about that. But what really struck me was how long it would take. I mean it would be part of my story, embedded in my psyche and how I approached government. Feed my mistrust of leaders.— To be clear: I was NEVER a Nixon fan. My parents voted for him and souped up all the bs put out about why Vietnam was important (the Domino Effect) and why so many had to go over and fight and die. We watched the draft lottery on television. My brother had a low number and went off to college. He would be safe. Now, fast forward to JD Vance and his insipid comments about rede...

I sort of hate it when movies, books, media reduce complex issues down into easily digested bites. That’s the trouble with Hillbilly Elegy, the movie now playing on Netflix: distilled into the Hatfield and McCoys. In fact that piece of mountain myth is referenced in the first 15 minutes of the film. My book Cloud of Witnesses and Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance follow the same character arc—sort of. Hillbilly Elegy came out in an election year, 2016, and talk shows turned to it as a way to understand how Trump became President. I’m still not sure how that happened or why still 74 million people voted for him this time. Vance’s memoir served as an in-road to understand people who live paycheck to paycheck in forgotten, dried up manufacturing towns. I guess. I was simply irritated by the book. Because no one story tells the whole story. But from Elegy people (media, Ron Howard) derive memes. The truth depicted just as in Cloud of Witnesses is that Appalachia births resilient peop...