A few thoughts on a lazy Sunday morning, some of which are from a letter I just wrote to a pair of my professors from Brown...

Summer school ended on Friday. Though I am happy I will have a month's respite from getting up at 5:45 AM, I was sad to see the classes end. I felt as if I had only really began to understand my students over the last week of school; they were now comfortable joking around and being honest with me. They seemed to look forward to my lessons and trust that I would not put them to sleep. Though I thought it would be inappropriate for summer school and eventually decided against it, I did want to give my email address to a number of my students - TG, TM, TJ, HS, and CW especially - to keep up with them during the school year. Some of them are basketball players, so perhaps I can read the papers and keep up with them that way. On the last day of school I commented to TM that, although I enjoyed having him in class, I wanted to see him perform well enough so that he would not be in my summer school class next year. "Oh don't worry, Mr. E," he told me, "I'm gonna be in the League next year." I told him I'd send the Mavericks and Celtics scouts advance warning of a hot young prospect coming out of Holly Springs, Mississippi.

Aspects of Mississippi are growing on me, other aspects are beginning to really attack my nerves. The people of this state are very kind, very open, and very welcoming. My summer school students, in particular, were always smiling. Tomorrow evening there will be a 4^th of July square dance in the center of town, with a traditional jug/string band. The area seems to have a certain down-home goodness that brings to mind the music of (Bruce Springsteen's recently released folk album) The Seeger Sessions.

That said, traditionalism has its price. Racial issues remain huge here, perhaps exacerbated by the fact that nobody seems willing to discuss them. A bright pink elephant that stands in every room in the South. Last night I was at a bar, and at closing time (11:45 PM on Saturday night, so that there is absolutely no serving of alcohol on Sunday, God forbid), the bar flashed the lights, rang a bell, and began to play “Dixie,” the nostalgic, slower version that plays during the end of Gone With the Wind. The crowd – 90% white – began to sing along, sway their arms, and perhaps dream of a better time when the other 10% of the bar’s patrons were picking cotton. More fascinating was the fact that “Dixie” immediately turned into “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a song commonly recognized as the North’s counterpoint to “Dixie” during the Civil War. Is there hope yet? Could reconciliation be in sight?!?!

Also maddening, on the topic of the Civil War, is the monument to the Confederate dead that stands in downtown Oxford. “To the Confederate dead,” it reads, “they died for a just and holy cause.” Hmmm, what was that cause again?

Across the entire South, many cars display small bumper stickers that sport a large white “W” atop a black field. Underneath that single letter are printed the words, “THE PRESIDENT.” I am not exactly sure what these bumper stickers are supposed to mean, but to me they seem to say, “George W. Bush is the President and, right or wrong, his decisions are law, so keep your opposition to yourself and respect his authority.” Maybe I am reading too much into this, but the bumper sticker seems to represent a certain mindless subservience and lack of critical reasoning that would allow an individual to support the current administration.

Sorry to inject politics into this discussion, but it is all part of the journey.