I think a lot about how to build empathy, tolerance, and general knowledge about social justice issues in rural communities. I spent most of my youth in rural Eastern Oregon. It’s a place that votes red, attends church religiously (no pun intended), and cherishes old-fashioned values. So I’ve started to write about it.
Before you dive in, it’s worth mentioning...
My socially progressive art/work is usually seen by liberals. My work is out there in front of an audience that already agrees with me and will pat me on the back for "doing the work”. So I think a lot about how to get a different audience to engage with what I’m doing. I think about how to get my neighbors who voted for Trump to engage with what I have to say. I’m not looking for praise, I’m looking for change and empathetic listening.
I’ll share my RURAL free write exploration in pieces Update: Part 2 Available!. This isn’t intended to be a final product by any means, but starting inspiration--a way for me to examine my own standpoint before doing anything else. Thanks for reading! :)
We fear what we do not know. You often hear people say, “oh, they wouldn’t hurt me, they know me.” As if knowing someone negates any possible threat they may pose. Actually, if you look at it statistically, we are way more likely to be hurt by someone we know. Like, a rape victim is more likely to be raped by someone she knows than by a total stranger. The math says knowing someone actually increases their threat to you. But then again, I have trust issues.
I have always been an outsider. My background isn’t exactly like anyone else’s. I don’t belong to any particular community. I don’t have a strong cultural heritage to speak of. I’m a mutt. But I’ve been told that makes me American.
So anyways. I grew up on a converted liveaboard school bus with my beatnik/hippie parents. The earliest pictures I have are images of my pretty mama dangling me in a hammock in a mango grove in Mexico. Mind you, this was no resort and we had no money. My parents worked in the back of a restaurant run by Mama Lupe in exchange for room and board. My Dad has always known how to hustle, so we were poor but well kept.
After Mexico, it was a “ranch” in California. We lived in the bus and my Dad ran an autobody out of a barn. We sold beads and jewelry at swap meets. We roasted whole lambs on a nearby commune and watched belly dancers in underground yurts in the forest. We harvested eucalyptus leaves for tea, and one day found a tiny fawn in the woods which we nursed before returning to its mother. There was a huge weeping willow in the field next to us that we would walk the dogs to every day. Later we’d bury our red Chow, Leo, there. I’m still convinced that it was a magical place.
There were road trips, too. The smell of diesel fuel is imprinted in my memory, along with the sound of rain on the metal roof of the bus above my bunk. Sometimes we would stay for a few weeks on a beach, camping with other bus folks and hearing their travel stories.
When I was about 8 my Dad decided to move us to Oregon. We set up shop in Baker City at a friends house and started saving money and looking for property in the rural countryside. You see, my parents both grew up in San Diego. My Mom was a child of the 60’s and my Dad was of the Beatnik generation. They both wanted freedom and a life outside of the mainstream system. They were convinced they could find that way of life first on the road in a bus, and later in the rural mountains of Eastern Oregon.
We ended up purchasing The Keating Store in Keating, OR, a once-upon-a-time mining community. The Keating Store itself has a 125+ year history as a trading post, rural post office, and general store from back in the days when our part of the world bustled with adventurers and pioneers seeking gold and new horizons on the American frontier. The mountain ranges that surround us are scarred with upturned land, testament to humans moving mountains to seek riches in the soil beneath.
By the time we bought it for $60,000, the Store was decrepit. The previous tenants had left the property in a state of ruin. We filled two 5-ton dumpsters with debris when we bought the land, and to this day we still find strange objects like dolls heads, toy guns, and plastic bags filled with bones buried in the yard.
These tenants had also destroyed the house that had been built and attached to the back of the Store. As a child I always felt an eerie presence in that house, the distinct sense of eyes boring into the small of my back. I was glad when we tore it down in 2010 and made the plans to build a new home. The eerie sense still remains in the old part of the building, but I like to think that’s due to the ghosts of miners and traders from a hundred or more years ago still visiting their old haunting grounds.
Hi friend! I’m almost brand-new here, just over a week! I’ll be using steemit to share thoughts on artistic practice, arts opportunities, equity, my personal projects, and other fun things happening in my world (like hiking, check out my recent blog about my adventure to Joffry Lakes in BC, or RURAL, Part Two if you like what you read above. See you around! -- @lilyraabe
