The Disappearing Views of my Culpeper Childhood by Raymond Mills, Jr.

Martha note: It's WMRA Civic Soapbox Friday ...

View from Stony Man Mountain

 I recently visited Shenandoah National Park to explore the history of the park for a research paper. I found the park’s views and trails to be incredibly beautiful. The view from Stony Man Mountain was the most stunning I have ever seen in Virginia. The park’s beauty even captured the attention of my fourteen year old little cousin who forgot about his cell phone and iPod during his visit to the park. He happily hiked a number of trails with me, eager to explore what was around every bend. I have been to the park many times, but on this occasion something was different. I felt proud to live in a country that protects it most important landscapes.

Culpepper  area farmland

Americans live in society that focuses more and more on wealth and material objects. We are spending much more time on our computers or in front of our flat screen televisions and much less time exploring and experiencing our country. Instead of taking in the United State’s breathtaking landscapes, many of us are choosing to update our Facebook pages or surf the internet. More personally alarming to me, is the continued disappearance of America’s small farms and landscapes.

I grew up a small cattle farm in Culpeper, Virginia. I enjoyed living on this farm throughout my youth, but today things in Culpeper have changed. The county has developed from a small rural community into one of the fasting growing places in the United States. As a child I remember passing wooded areas and pasture land on my way to school. Now the trees have been replaced with row after row of houses and the pastures filled with asphalt.

For many years I thought my small community would avoid development. Surely my neighbors would preserve what I loved. Unfortunately, even the farm next to ours has recently been sold and subsequently subdivided. I watched the bulldozers cleared the landscape that I had enjoyed so much. Soon the cattle that once grazed there will be replaced with homes. I guess I will have to learn to enjoy what modern America has to offer, but some how I do not think that will compare to the sight of cattle in an open pasture on a sunny day.

Recently my family sold most of our cattle operation and in hopes of relocating the farm to a rural community in Southern Virginia. We kept a small number of cattle in hopes of rebuilding our herd. In addition, my family is running a small swine operation. Although we still have some animals my siblings and I miss our cattle herds and look forward to farming in the future. It is likely that my family’s small piece of land in Culpeper will be sold and developed. Hopefully the properties new owners will enjoy the views of the Blue Ridge Mountains that I enjoyed during my childhood. I only hope that development does not destroy these views and that future generations will have the opportunity to appreciate them.

                 --Raymond Mills Jr. is a Senior at Longwood University

Of Tea and Taxes . . .

I am on everyone's e-mail list. I've been made well aware that today is not only tax day, it is also the day of the Richmond Tea Party's 2nd Annual Tax Day Rally.

 

"The day has finally arrived!" the organization's website announces. "We hope you are coming and bringing all your friends, neighbors and co-workers. Please don't miss this amazing event. Don't let Congress think you have given up after 12 months of fighting. Let's show every politician we are committed for the long haul! Come hear what we are about, what we have accomplished, and what we have planned for 2010!"

There is a list of speakers of whom I've never heard, but then I don't live in Richmond. The headliner appears to be Charles Payne, of Fox Business News, who has as unusual a resume for a journalist as I do. If custom prevails, I'm sure by the time those speakers get through, the crowd of Richmond Tea Partiers will be even angrier at the government than they were when they arrived. 

Today is also the Thursday after last weekend's quadrennially held Southern Republican Leadership Conference. As Don Gonyea, NPR's National Political Reporter, put it yesterday on Talk of the Nation . . .

It was a very conservative conference. And it seemed every speaker - save Ron Paul and Rick Perry, the Texas governor - spent a good bit of time talking about President Obama as a socialist. And about - I mean, Newt Gingrich used the phrase over and over and over, that the president is running a secular socialist machine; and Sarah Palin, certainly, goes there. So the rhetoric was very, very much red meat and kind of aimed at keeping the anger up, and doing that to kind of fuel the energy that they see out there. But when you get down to debating health care, if it's going to live in the details, it's harder to portray things that way.

So who are these extremely conservative, extremely angry people? There's a fascinating new poll reported today in the The New York Times that addresses just that question. The front page (as of this moment) article begins this way:

Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.

They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”

And while most Republicans say they are “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.”

What, I'd like to know, what does all this anger accomplish? Where are all these angry peoples' ideas for productive policies and solutions to the difficult problems facing us? And I'd really like to know what those speakers who work so hard at keeping  other peoples' anger aroused think they are accomplishing toward the greater good?

I spent yesterday at Longwood University, sitting in on 5 sections of students studying effective ways to participate as citizens of communities, states, and this country. Our conversation focused on how to have productive conversations among people who don't agree. We talked about the difference between civil discourse, where a person wants to engage others' minds; and inflammatory discourse, which aims at provoking an emotional response. And, by golly, those students seemed to really get it!

Perhaps it's a course more of us should look into.

On the road again . . .

Yesterday afternoon I drove from Harrisonburg to Farmville -- via Gordonsville and Dillwyn and points in between. It was over the mountains and through the woods of springtime Virginia, on the bluest of blue-line highways. There was not a McDonald's or a Wal-Mart or a mall around for mile after mile after mile.

My mission? To sit in on 5 classes on essay writing at Longwood University today beginning at 8 AM, so all I have time to do in this short, very early-morning post is wonder at the beauty of yesterday's getting from there to here.

It always seems to me that there is one day every spring when the new leaves are there, yet not fully out. On that one day, Virginia's trees are decked out in every imaginable shade of green. On that day, to my way of being, all we have to do to feel lucky to be alive is open our eyes.

Yesterday was that day--the annual celebration of springtime green. And, in my opinion, there was no luckier person in the world than this one who had to drive from Harrisonburg to Farmville through Virginia's springtime woods.