Greater Regionalism

I note this week a raging controversy on the letter page of our local rag over the southern boundary of Northern Virginia. Friend Lisa asks, who cares? - yet this issues stokes great passion around here.

Our home is 65 miles south of DC; we don't consider ourselves to be citizens of No VA. When in Lynchburg, two years ago, the good old boys there, including the mayor, adamantly insisted we were Yankees. The letter in the paper last week claims the Mason-Dixon line lies in Quantico about 35 miles south of the city. Does anyone bid fifty?

Cleveland's Harvey Pekar advocates for a Regionalism, technical in nature; the pooling of economic resources for public transportation, sewers, police, etc., to derive the most bang from the buck; this works well where sister cities are co-joined such as Minneapolis and St. Paul. Pekar's concept carries within seeds which may foster cultural connections that supersede traditional prejudices.

Our annual Oriole's weekend is emblematic of a Mid-Atlantic cultural regionalism which exists within the space between Richmond and Baltimore.

Prior to leaving on Friday, I read of a historian's quest to idenitfy the grave of one of Thomas Jefferson's freed slaves in Petersburg - a man who later worked as a blacksmith, tinsmith and glass blower. An interweaved horror and romance permeates all here. It's found in the crumbling ruins of stone chimneys on the outskirts of a farm where we held an annual Hospice camp for grieving children; it's in the cabin in which we stayed for our anniversary last year which was originally the summer kitchen of a plantation. In reply to Friend Lisa's question, it is this volatile mixture which undoubtedly undergirds the borderline controversy.

Once over the Potomac driving north beyond the Harry Nice bridge, Southern Maryland, as seen from Route 301, broadcasts a tranquil 1950 panorama of roadside motels, crab fishermen and cows.

Baltimore, itself, reflects another legacy of unresolved conflict as much as its neighbor to the south. A glossy city magazine touts a residential complex at the corner of St. Paul and 33rd Streets, a neighborhood we'd formerly employed to house kids in town for a rally, cautiously locking them in after 6 p.m. Under a banner invitingly emblazoned "Neighborhood," the ad lists Barnes & Noble, Chipolte, Cold Stone Creamery and Starbucks. In so many Baltimore neighborhoods, I experience the same mix of pleasure, guilt and discomfort as when disembarking from a cruise ship that's landed on a island teeming with Third World poverty. Gentrification hasn't displaced the poor; they skirt, haunt, the periphery, no way in, no way out.

Our Orioles weekend routine remains uniform: catch the water taxi Saturday morning to Fells Point, another melded area of affluence and poverty, visiting an antique shop, a cut-price hoody-sneaker store, a mystery bookshop, a used CD outlet, and an Irish pub for a restful pint before boarding the boat to sail back to the Harbor.

This year, a new sighting: aggressive evangelical Mennonites; not the same kind as those gentle people who sell fresh baked bread at our farmer's market back home.

Saturday evening, at the top knotch Inner Harbor Barnes & Nobles, a former cherished refuge during a week-long office conference when after-hours socializing was otherwise the rule, I found, what else, Pekar's new graphic novel, on the history of the SDS. In one panel, Abbie Hoffman, after attending a debate, says he has no clue what anyone was talking about. These disputes between aging Maoists and New Revolutionaries, once thought vital, are no longer relevant, or even interesting. As Pekar points out, the SDS never found fertile grounds for revolution amongst a US proletariat, who while harboring legitimate labor grievances, still prefers, now and then, to achieve the American dream, not overthrow it.

It's sufficient in Baltimore to celebrate the blue collar Orioles - this season a scrappy bunch of overachievers, progressing, at last, beyond rebuilding years, to overcome a decade of managerial incompetence and no middle-relief.

I note an interview this week of a ballplayer who said, "We have another game, a newer game now. In this game, power has replaced speed and skill. I guess more people would rather see [?] hit one over the fence then see me steal second."

Was a rookie phenom speedster discussing Jose Canseco? Or a veteran base stealer speaking out on steroids or any number of the woes which currently afflict the national pastime?

No, it was Ty Cobb, in 1924, talking about Babe Ruth, in conversation with Grantland Rice, once the premier American sportswriter, now, almost impossible to find on any shelf.

Rice, a companion to immortals, like Ruth, Dempsey and Bobby Jones, dismissed all talk of good old days, writing, "Around each curve in life, I fully expect to meet and to love a great champion. I often find old favorites annoying when they carp and haggle over minute details of events that weren't clear even when they occurred 30 or more years ago. If I didn't look ahead to greater deeds in this speeded up age, I believe I would have withered away long ago."

After reading in the Fredericksburg rag, on Sunday, about a 75-year old farmer, who's donated more than a hundred antique tractors to the new Northern Neck Farm Museum, I knew another year's O's weekend and its new memories was history.

Greater Mid-Atlantic Regionalism, preserving its heritage, building the future, what a kick.

My hometown is 150 miles long.