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The Betty Blog

May the Goddess Bless Mrs. Audrey Kinzer

September 13, 2007

May the Goddess Save the Queen . . .
Or . . . Bless Today Mrs. Audrey Kinzer & Her Gerbils

There’s really no explanation that fully says it, but I have been less inspired to write . . . or get on the treadmill . . . or run down the road to every event I have an invitation to. I have been depressed. Why? Well, a couple of things, maybe three.

What’s this about? I thought 2007 was going to be “a very good year.” Alas, where I’m from the saying is: “You thought like Moes’asses Dog.” Yeah, that’s a real one from Sullivan’s Holler, Smith County, Mississippi . . . where Mize, Magee and Mendenhall come together and they used to plow the “revenuers” during prohibition.

One of my good friends from childhood, elementary school, high school, and my date to post graduate school high school reunions and such . . . Leon. Dr. Leon says that he likes it best when I write about memories from living in the Deep South . . . make that the Culkin community just outside of that Civil War town called Vicksburg, where the Mississippi Delta running down from Memphis comes to an end and they dug up a Union gunboat called “The Cairo” during my years there, a gunboat still well-preserved by the Mississippi River mud protecting from the swirling waters above. Where the water runs slowly under the bridge, going on down toward Natchez, and eventually, New Orleans.

Dr. Leon likes when I write about how it was to go to Ole Miss, knowing that I really didn’t fit in but was afraid. Back in the early 1970s before gay liberation or feminism had penetrated the veil of moss hanging over the Magnolia State. Back when I was busy knowing I was so very attracted to women, and not able to form the configuration of syllables to say the love that dare not speak its name. You know about that too, do you?

Looking back at “The Betty Blog” entries from 2006, I was on a role and writing so much, so often. This year, things have happened that put me, once again, in the position of not being able to speak the name. But yet, I will speak the name: Infanticide.

Let’s just say the word “debacle” does fit, although I’d use it for a different reason than the reader who wrote in on the comments page to the story last week you can read on sfgate.com.

Read the whole thing and check out what one respondent has to say on about page 5. You’ll see it. I tell you, I’m so glad I can smile and see the humor. That commentary, its writer, you know, it’s so obvious s/he owns an insider view, and doesn’t like it, what’s been swirling around. But there’s so much more to the story. What's been told's only a small piece.

My response? Let’s say it’s about like Natalie’s “F.U.T.K.” on her t-shirt. Time for me to have a new t-shirt too, or a great new pair of red shoes. I do happen to know when I'm doing good work, you see. And my initials are "B.S." so I know it when I see it and have for a long, long time. And further, do not abuse my relationships with others within my family of choice. Do not assume I will sit by quietly and feed the gerbils.

Some have the know how to see what is swirling around them. Others don’t. This one begs a full-fledged analysis, but suffice it to say, intentions may have been good, but in the end, the underlying power dynamics carried the day. Trust me on that.

I have already known the water under the bridge around “power” and it’s usually not pretty when you look beneath the surface -- make that "covers" in this case -- to see what is really going on. Who has it? Who thinks they do but don’t? Who don’t? Miss Louise would turn over in her grave to hear me say, “Who don’t.”

"I have already walked through the waters that appear to be so deep to the schools of top minnows," Chapman decreed.

‘Twas others in our family . . . not Miss Louise . . . who taught these things about power, unknowingly, in their incompetence and ineptitude. This year, I have met “Incompetence” and her sister “Ineptitude.” They were not pretty. Maybe, just maybe Miss Louise taught some of this too, come to think of it. Come to think of how things are so often, usually, other than what they appear to be. Come to think of it, how thankful am I to know to ask these questions.

So, the water-under-the-bridge metaphor is one that came floating at me out the mouth of Sullivan’s Holler more times than I can repeat. A lesson, though, is that with time, one’s eyes may gain the wisdom that schools of top minnows lack, may never gain, or just might, Goddess bless them, with enough trauma to make a good reason for self study, they might. Introspection. Metacognition. All that and such.

Never before have I understood why life brought to me the responsibility of taking care of a dozen or so gerbils in the Biology Lab at Warren Central High School. The lesson is that under stress, the older ones eat the babies. Humans can be like that. Employees of a company can too. My knowledge of it is first hand, thanks to Mrs. Audrey Kinzer’s lab.

That knowledge, gained over three or four years of taking care of the smelly things . . . well, that knowledge came smashing forward when I looked within to my intuition about what went on this year and may still be, for all I know. There are some good people. There are some who aren’t, even though they may think they are. But, I, for one, could not take care of the smelly gerbils this year, even though it was plain to see they were under stress, and when they are, they eat their young.

Too bad this whole story, at this juncture anyway, cannot be told. Maybe so in a few years or ten or more. But, the day will come, and I’ll make clear what I know about infanticide and how it happens even when the brut thinks s/he’s being kind, knowledgeable and protective and how it came to roost in this year of 2007. I do hate masculine generic pronouns, so let’s use s/he.

I shall, in time, stand on top of the roof and shout it out from my blog, as the wise woman said. I shall, in time, tell a tale too brutal to tell in the now.

Until then, as Natalie would say, F.U._._. You don’t see what’s in front of you, and I know too much, having been there on the inside too. Things do work out, don’t they? May the Goddess save the Queen.

(Photos: WLBT-TV Jackson, MS)

____________________________

Look Around Mississippi - Sullivan's Hollow

By Walt Grayson
WLBT-TV, Jackson

It's Friday and Walt Grayson is back to take us looking around Mississippi. And he's probably glad to be back from where he's just been.

There once was a time that would have been true, 70 or 80 years ago. Back then, just mentioning Sullivan's Hollow sent a chill up most folk's spines. But it's not that way today. However, the old stories still hang on.

"We have a picture of Sullivan Hollow in 1921, and it really shows how hard life was. The men were carrying rifles and pistols and cutting big beautiful timber," explains Stanley Sullivan.

It's a picturesque little valley in Smith County near Mize. There's little if anything here now that would even suggest the old reputation attached to Sullivan's Hollow as a place of hard drinking, hard fighting, and uneasiness about outsiders. It's been a long time since there were tales of putting traveling salesmen in the corn crib and plowing him like a mule for a few days, or a fight breaking out at church and a few souls winging their way to eternity before the closing prayer. That was a few generations ago.

"Sullivans shootings Sullivans and killing Sullivans, time was over when I can along. But I am sure all that happened," says Jane Martin.

Jane Martin is a Sullivan descendent and still lives in the hollow.

"Many of the tales are ridiculous. They are added to. But by and large there are a lot of good Sullivan's," she says.

From her childhood, Jane recalls, not meanness, but the pioneer ways of her grandparents.

"They grew their own tobacco, and this is true. They would sit by the fireplace. No television, no radio, smoking their tobacco, and one of my brothers tells this to be comical but declares it's true. He said the cats would be lying by the hearth. No fire of course. And the smoke would be so thick, the cats would get up to go out and they would walk like they were drunk."

Stanley Sullivan's family moved out of the hollow when his dad was a boy.

"With electricity and various things and telephones coming along, it mellowed a lot. But a lot of the old-timers are still, these 70, 80, or 90 year old folks who've been there all their lives, can tell you some tales."