In The Shadow of the Slave Pits at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello

In the midst of the Corona Virus epidemic we have, by outward appearances, stumbled into yet another national crisis about race, a matter, a disease of our collective marrow that has never really been addressed. The truth is we have not stumbled into anything. It has always been here, embedded in our collective consciousness, willfully endorsed by our lack of action, our indifference, our silent acquiescence. 

Over the past three years, in our ongoing search for  the truth about American history, my wife Daria and I have visited Harpers Ferry, George Washington's Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, Andrew Jackson's Heritage Plantation in Nashville, Franklin Roosevelt's Presidential library in Hyde Park, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, Harry Truman's Winter White House in Key West, FL, and a host of Civil War battlefield sites during our visits to the East Coast, and to Nashville and Atlanta. It is truly a sobering experience to visit Monticello, in Charlottesville, Virginia. We were there 5 weeks after the riot in August 2017. 

Today I will focus on our visit to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello plantation, which sits high atop a steep hill overlooking Charlottesville below. It is truly an extraordinary piece of property. The Welcome Center, which sits at the base of the hill, not surprisingly, sells a wide variety of books by  and/or about Thomas Jefferson, as well as the usual shot glasses, buttons, and assorted trinkets available at most popular tourist areas. There is a theater there and a museum, in addition to the displays found at Monticello itself. The only way to access the famous structure at the top of the hill is by bus with a carefully controlled and monitored ticketing process that ensures visitor traffic does not overwhelm the guides on the property. The most upsetting feature of our visit to Monticello was the discovery that approximately two hundred yards away from the Welcoming Center is a cordoned-off area under shady trees where Jefferson's slaves were indiscriminately buried. In simple terms, this is a "slave pit" area where dead slaves were laid on top of one another, seemingly without ceremony or afterthought. Today there are some sort of scientific excavation efforts that are ongoing there, though I was unclear what the goals of these projects are. Meanwhile, on the shoulder of the hill known as Monticello sits the Jefferson burial ground. Jefferson desired that his gravestone note his three major accomplishments in life: he was the major author of the Declaration of Independence, the Founder of the University of Virginia, and the Third President of the United States. Jefferson's inner-graveyard guests includes Confederate veterans' markers, which is not surprising. This is Jefferson's history. This is our American history. Some of us today don't wish to visit the awful truth of Jefferson's slave pits, yet at the same time, we have no problem with celebrating Jefferson's genius of the Declaration of Independence, his brilliant design of Monticello, his inventions, his university, and his French wines. 

We fail to connect the slave pit reality and the achievements of the American people, that is, the economic and social progress of this country's past up to the present day is inexorably linked to the deprivation and exploitation of non-whites. Monticello is also making a genuine effort to elevate/illuminate the Sally Hemmings' chapter(s) of Jefferson's legacy. George Washington had his own slave pit(s) at Mt Vernon, the second picture below comes from that plantation. These reflections are not merely the ramblings of a bleeding heart liberal. They are the simple, naked, sometimes ugly truths of American history. I presume these thoughts may be feeding the anger, rage, and disgust of the descendants of Jefferson's slaves and millions of other slaves that followed, but I cannot know for certain. 

I reflect not so much as an apologist for mainstream America because that is not my intent or assigned role. I instead wish to acknowledge that the firm, increasingly vocal rejection of oppression by our fellow citizens and friends in America today--those whose skin color is different than my own--is legitimately, firmly, irrevocably grounded in our country's distant past. Our recent past. Our present.

A SCOTTISH MISSIONARY'S STORY: New Book Now Available at Amazon.com!

I've been away from my blog for many months now, working diligently on my latest release, BEFORE THE SCRAMBLE: A SCOTTISH MISSIONARY'S STORY, which tells the tale of a distant relative and Scottish missionary, James Sutherland, and his adventures in British Central Africa in the early stages of the colonial period in Africa. [Full disclosure: my full name is Roderick Sutherland Haynes] James Sutherland maintained a journal for the first six months of his five years in Africa, detailing the life of an ordinary "artisan" at the Livingstonia mission on Lake Nyasa (today known as Lake Malawi). The artisans were ordinary seamen, engineers, gardeners, teachers, carpenters and other workers at the missions who were not ordained clergy. Livingstonia was a mission sponsored by the Free Church of Scotland. It's present-day location in the African country of Malawi is the third and final spot selected by the missionaries, after the first two locations proved to be disastorous spots due to the constant threat of tropical disease. At the first two mission sites, between 1875 and 1881, the attrition rate of staff (deaths and permanent disability) exceeded 40%. The third and final location of Livingstonia (selected in 1895) was high up in the western hills overlooking Lake Nyasa below, a much healthier place. The idea of this writing project was to transcribe Sutherland's journal (the original is now the property of the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh), preceding the text of the journal itself by providing readers a few informational sections about how I came to write the book, who James Sutherland was, what the situation in southern Africa was when Sutherland arrived there in late 1880, and to also explain the impact of Scottish national hero and medical missionary-explorer David Livingstone, on young missionaries like Sutherland, who set out from Scotland for Africa, India, and China to spread the word of God. Sutherland's journal and three letters home (included in their entirety in the appendix section of the book) chronicle his being forced to undergo witchcraft rituals, some close calls with hostile wildlife, his daily struggles with tropical disease, and his eye-witness encounters with the slave trade in and around Lake Nyasa. Importantly, a number of ordained missionary leaders had their overseas experiences published for profit after returning home from overseas. But Sutherland's purpose in keeping his journal seems much more personal and less focused on sensational story telling. His story is sensational WITHOUT the typical embellishing found in Victorian literature, including many self-serving missionary biographies identified in this book's reference section. Sutherland's story is authentically compelling. It is good primary source material for scholars of the colonial period in Africa, and also fascinating reading for novice historians and descendant members of the Sutherland clan, like me. A SCOTTISH MISSIONARY'S STORY will be available to the public in early September. I invite readers to purchase the book (paper back) at amazon.com or the electronic version (KINDLE). Most importantly, I strongly encourage my readers to write their honest impressions of the book on amazon.com, in the section where the book is being marketed under my name. All critiques, good or bad, are welcome. Please feel free to participate. 

EVERY DAY LIFE AND WRITING

Almost fifteen years ago I was fortunate enough to find FREE RIVER PRESS (FRP) on line. FRP is a small publishing house in the heart of Iowa. I learned some things from that experience that have stuck with me ever since.  Publisher and Executive Director of FRP Bob Wolf's core philosophy is this: as a society Americans have been conditioned to believe that only celebrities have life stories worth telling.  Wolf argues some of the best and most meaningful life stories can be found among everyday, ordinary people.  I'll give you two examples.  Several years ago I conducted two interviews with two elderly persons.  One told me about growing up in the Midwest during World War II and the night her father was murdered on his way home from work, and how after high school she set out for LA from a small prairies town, to find her fame and fortune. Eventually, along the way, she found her husband.  The other story involved a very difficult life lived by the interviewee with a spouse who was alcoholic.  Her life was an admittedly depressing tale, but one I don't regret hearing about. What's the point?  These are opportunities for writers to capture some real stuff from real people everywhere.  One gains a greater appreciation of the pageant of life from everyday "common folk." Again, compelling life stories are everywhere.  You just have to be creative and energized enough to go uncover them. Start by telling the elders in your own family just how much you value their life stories, that those stories should be shared/ captured before too much more time passes.  Please visit http://www.freeriverpress.org to learn more about FREE RIVER PRESS.  In the summer of 2015 Bob Wolf will publish IN SEARCH OF AMERICA, a story about his travels in America when he was a youth, available in paperback and KINDLE format at www.amazon.com. I look forward to reading this book. Rod Haynes

Graduation Day

Excerpt from ZOEY'S TALE & OTHER SHORT FICTION, Highland Press, April 2012:

Upon graduating from Hancock Academy in the spring of 1973, I decided I would not go directly to college in the fall. Planning instead to take a year off and save some money before traveling across America by Greyhound bus, I landed work as an order-filler at Star Foods in South Providence, Rhode Island, on Narragansett Bay.

Star Foods was a distributor of specialty foods like Gefelte fish, Matzoh balls, special candies, and other imported items such as cheese and high-end chocolate. They had a fleet of trucks delivering goods to ALMACS, and STOP & SHOP, and other major supermarkets throughout southern New England. Customers included many mom and pop stores scattered around Rhode Island. The business did quite well in those days, but I haven’t seen them around Providence for years. Given all that I saw going on there I suspect they went bust. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

Each morning I’d grab an order sheet from the bin up front and begin running around the aisles of the warehouse with a hand truck, pulling boxes of goods from shelves, then building properly balanced, six-foot high stacks neatly down each aisle. The shelves I negotiated stood high, at least 25 or 30 feet above the floor below. Climbing way up to grab a container of 16-ounce kosher pickles in glass bottles in one hand, while easing down to the floor with the other, was precarious work. I did this dozens of times each shift, in spite of a serious aversion to heights. It was also exhausting work, even for a healthy young man brimming with energy. After a quick check by the supervisor to ensure the order was accurately filled, the truckers would pack the boxes into the back of their trucks for delivery. Packing the truck took skill, as every box needed to fit tightly to prevent shifting and subsequent breakage during transport. Jamming the boxes together too tightly invited disaster: broken jars of pickled beets splattered onto boxes of Toblerone chocolate did not go over well with the customers. It tended to piss off management something awful, too.

The warehouse was a cold, gloomy environment with filthy, cracked concrete aisles and no heat in the winter time. I quickly discovered the best thing to do, both to avoid boredom and stay warm, was to keep moving until quitting time. It wasn’t hard because every order we handled required our full attention and there always seemed to be orders to fill. It was important to retrieve the right item, flavor, size, and quantity when pulling boxes the first time around, otherwise you wasted precious minutes. Once in a while a box slipped from my cold, dirty hands and came crashing down on the floor below. Larry the supervisor–a mean SOB on a good day–would go berserk, cursing and jumping up and down before viciously hurling a mop and bucket towards me, screaming for me to cleanup my mess. A typical accident resulted in two or three busted bottles out of eight in a box, by no means a nominal cost for the warehouse owner. I knew Larry wanted to haul off and hit me during those obnoxious fits of his, but he never did–a good thing because he was huge and I was only a stick of a kid.

Two months after I began working at Star Foods a new worker showed up one morning. Vinny Pasquale was two years older than me, a short, muscular Italian guy with muscles rippling all over his compact body, with pitch-black long, greasy hair parted down the middle. He came from Johnston, an Italian enclave west of Providence. I disliked Vinny from the moment I first met him, which sometimes happens between me and new people. It was Vinny’s eyes that bothered me most. When I looked into them there was no life there, only pure, concentrated evil. Meeting Vinny was like being one of those unlucky victims in a horror movie when a new character suddenly appears and you immediately sense things are going to get a whole lot worse.

Rod Haynes
Renton, WA

Memorial Day Tribute

A common perspective about this time of year has it that summer officially arrives on Memorial Day weekend. But I don't consider these two events to be one in the same.  As a veteran of the United States Navy, I consider Memoiral Day to be a day of reflection and thanks to all those who have offered the ultimate sacrifice for love of country.  We are currently a nation at war, although one would not know it by reading newspapers and most popular media outlets.  Maybe America is "war weary."  Maybe America is oblivious.  I wish America would offer its thanks just the same.  On the bright side, I have seen instances where the public has approached our men and women in uniform to offer their sincere appreciation for their sacrifices.  There in fact is SOME awareness out there.  To be clear, this posting is not intended to be self-congratulatory.  I am certainly proud to have served and I am grateful that I was not harmed while spending time off the Beirut, Lebanon during the conflict there in 1983.  On October 23, 1983 241 U.S. Marines were killed at the Marine Compound at Beirut Internation Airport when a suicidal bomber penetrated the base and detonated a truck full of TNT in the lobby of the Marine barracks there. Havinng witnessed this first-hand, the men who died there are always in my mind.

This website offers a terrific insight into the origin of Memorial Day:

http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html.

On Monday morning members of Fred Hancock American Legion Post 19 in Renton, WA will gather at the local library alongside the Cedar River to fire a salute to our departed comrades.  We have lost more than a few Legionnaires this year, as many World War II and Korean War veterans continue to pass from the scene.  We will then move up to Olivet Cemetery to pay tribute at Fred Hancock's grave.  Fred was a youngster from Renton who lost his life in a personnel transport ship in the English channel during World War I, when a German submarine deposited a torpedo in the ship's side.  A third, more formal ceremony takes place an hour later at Evergreen Cemetery, when members from all Armed Forces and local police and firemen gather to remember our departed veterans to celebrate our freedom in a more formal affaiir.  Finally, a fourth gathering happens at the downtown Renton military memorial at mid-day.

It's not too much to ask that we all stop and ponder the selfless sacrifice of all those veterans, past and present, who have died for America in the midst of our picnic gatherings. 

That's what Memorial Day means to me.

That's AWESOME!!!

Sometime back I became absolutely fed up with the frequent, repetitive, and insipid use of the word "Awesome" in everyday conversation.  I'm jtired of it.  "Awesome" becoming part of our everyday vernacular is a fairly recent phenomenon.  I don't think the term was used nearly as much ten or fifteen years ago, as it is today.  It's used to describe everything: a soccer game, a new haircut, Uncle Harry and Aunt Julie's new baby, the color of the spring grass just outside your front door, a pay raise, a new song, the dog next door, a writer's blog.  So what's up with "Awesome"?  I think the non-stop use of the word cheapens it, lessens its meaning each time it is invoked.  Now, I grant TV broadcaster Dick Vitale's entitlement to his college basketball signature tagline "It's AWESOME baby!" but outside of hearing it from him every weekend during the basketball season, I just wish people in our culture would develop a broader vocabulary.  And while we are on the subject, is there any reason we insert the word "like" into EVERY sentence we utter these days?  Again I ask, what's up, like, with that?  Surely our life experiences are not all reduceable to exclaiming" that's AWESOME" in every fifth sentence we utter.  Can't we think of any other adjective to describe something that impresses us, something we want someone else to appreciate?  Enough already with "AWESOME."  It just gives me a headache saying it.

Rod Haynes

GOOD WRITING RESOURCES

I have this nagging habit of buying writing self-help books.  My office at home is chock full of them, and hundreds of other non-fiction books I have collected over the years.  There are obviously thousands of resources out there to help fledgling writers find their voice.  Today I want to share a number of books that have proven to be instrumental in helping me along my writing journey.  ON WRITING: A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT by horror writer Stephen King is surprisingly good, and I'm not sure many folks know it exists.  INVENTING THE TRUTH: THE ART AND CRAFT OF THE MEMOIR by William Zinsser is an industry favorite.  Zinsser has been around a long time.  Another good Zinsser book is ON WRITING WELL, one I had in hand very early in my writing career.  BIRD BY BIRD: SOME INSTRUCTIONS ON WRITING AND LIFE by San Francisco writer Annie Lamott is honest, easy to read, and very helpful (I like most of her work).  WRITING LIFE STORIES by Bill Roorbach is another good one.  One handbook I would like to plug is JUMP START: HOW TO WRITE FROM EVERYDAY LIFE by Robert Wolf, President of Free River Press, Lansing, Iowa (disclaimer: Robert gave me my first break when he agreed to take on publishing my ROGUES ISLAND MEMOIR, which debuted way back in 2000).  A really fantastic resource is WRITING TOOLS: 50 ESSENTIAL STRATEGIES FOR EVERY WRITER by Roy Peter Clark.  I strongly recommend grabbing a copy of this book.

Of course, there simply is no substitute for reading as much as you possibly can, among a wide variety of genres, and simply getting down to the task of writing.  The books above are great instruments and motivational tools, but it is still necessary to put down all the "how to do it" guidelines and just get to it.

I hope this is helpful to you.

Happy Writing!

Rod H.