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Also, major kudos to Lauren Tincher, who not only came up with a great post on the closing of the school in Detroit, but also wrote “The New Rage – Chicken Hair,” a post that’s gone viral in the last week!  It’s received over 800 page views.

Yes, the high school designed to help pregnant teenagers learn to farm in order to create a sustainable life for themselves and their babies is being shut down. While I do not condone teenage pregnancy, I am not ignorant enough to think that it will not happen. Therefore, a school with a 90% graduation rate and a 50% college acceptance rate for its pregnant students sounds like a good thing to me. Students are taught to grow their own food, build, and they even have farm animals which they have learned to take care of. Instead of being praised for their actions, the school is being shut down entirely (it’s pretty sketchy if you read the whole article).

After hearing about the school’s apparent closure, the students made signs in support of a peaceful sit-in. Instead of having their voices heard, they were arrested in front of their own children and their voices were drowned out by police sirens. (Really? Arresting them in front of their children and arresting a teacher? How can that be necessary?)

As much as I despise admitting why I think this is happening to the students of Catherine Ferguson, even the principal has her opinions. Being in Detroit, the school naturally has a high rate of African-Americans, which after reading Solnit’s article many people have issues with. These students were trying to better themselves and make a life for themselves and their children, but now they will be forced to go back to the city’s public schools if they even go back. ”If the neighborhood school was a really good option, they’d be at the neighborhood school,” states their principal.

Feel free to leave some comments below regarding your stance on this and your interactions with information in the class.

Must enjoy “relaxing” and the “simpler” things life has to offer, and be free of “complex” drama.

A love of rustic, green pastures, clear, cool brooks and gently, rolling hills is a plus.

“Controlling” women need not reply as I enjoy being “free” spirited.

Respond to: 1-888-EASY-GUY

Any time I get out into the wild, aka the Red River Gorge, I always have to listen to my favorite old country tunes to get myself into the “easy-going, fresh mountain air” mood.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy other types of music, I’m just at a genetic disadvantage being from Kentucky – where the love of country music is inbred into my DNA.  As I listened to the classics of George Jones and the Judds, I couldn’t help but notice, thanks to what I’ve learned from class, that there are many pastoral themes in country music.  Even the genre name, “country” implies to the listener that you might expect to hear about easy going times of a simpler style of living.

Take the song “Grandpa Tell Me About The Good Old Days” by the Judds for example.  The first few lines sing, “grandpa, tell me about the good old days / some times it feels like, this worlds gone crazy / Grandpa, take me back to yesterday / when the lines between right and wrong, didn’t seem so hazy.”  This song is a great example of someone longing to go back to a better, simpler time.  The nostalgic theme suggests the desire to be back at a time when things were much easier and family oriented – when “lovers really fall in love to stay, and stand beside each other come what may.”

It’s not just the classics though.  Even more modern country tunes also have pastoral themes.  Take Mark Chestnut’s “Too Cold at Home” for example.  This melody sings about a man seeking to get away from the “troubles at home” and get in out of the heat and just relax and find a simpler time.  As he pulls up a chair at the bar he notices a baseball game on television stating, “that baseball game on TV, takes me back to when I was a kid / we proudly wore those uniforms, just like the dodgers did.”  Again, we see a nostalgia to return to the past, when times were easier and simpler.

In another excellent Mark Chestnut tune, “I’ll Think of Something.” the author describes a story about how he is having some complex girl-trouble.  His simple solution to his complex relationship troubles are to try and drown them out by drinking enough that he forgets.  Not that I condone excessive drinking, but this song also presents anther great pastoral theme – simple solutions to complex problems.  Singing about a lost love could also be related to the historical definition of pastoral theme, when shepherds also talked about their lands and loves.  “That Summer” by Garth Brooks is another good example of both a longing for the past and a lost love.  In this song, Garth sings about memories of working on a farm, and the feelings that developed for a lady he met while there.  “I often think about that summer, the sweat the moonlight and the lace,” describes the longing desire to be back to a simpler and better time, in the arms of a momentary lust turned love.

Finally, if your not a fan of country music we have Lynard Skynard’s “Simple Man.”  Again this song is littered with the pastoral theme of being “simple” and not complicated – to lead a simple life which will “help you some sunny day.”  “Take your time and don’t live too fast / troubles will come and they will pass” sets the tone at the beginning of the second verse.  Every time I hear this song, I am encouraged to try and slow down, and enjoy life, and not let things get too complicated.

Are we naturally drawn to these songs though or are we sincerely drawn to the pastoral themes which they represent?  Do we listen to these songs and find ourselves immersed into them until we seek to fulfill our own pastoral desires?  Perhaps it is a little of both.  I believe that hearing music which sings of things we all long to do, only reinforces our own pastoral desires for nostalgia and simpler times.  It is much easier to appreciate our own position in life when we hear of others struggles.  The music is what moves us, and allows us to escape our reality, allowing us to be in our own simpler, easier time, even if only for a moment – something I believe we can all appreciate.

’Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean
The children walking two & two in red & blue & green
Grey headed beadles walk’d before with wands as white as snow
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow

O what a multitude they seem’d these flowers of London town
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own
The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands

He uses snow, water, flower and lambs to describe the sweet soft touch of the innocence time, and these elements are very widely known as good pure products of the earth. Snow most times used as a representation of peaceful birth of christ during the festive period of christmas, the flowing waters usually represent eternally refreshment both to plant and to animals, the flowers represent fruitful outcome of the earth and lambs represent peace and serenity. These components of nature helps the author express the peacefulness of innocence and purely connects it closely to the pastoral.

While in the songs of experience he says,

Is this a holy thing to see

(…)And their sun never shine,

And their fields are bleak and bare,

And their ways are fill’d with thorns:

It is eternal winter there.

Blake once again uses nature to describe the complexity of the songs of experience. The sun is known to be the source of heat and energy, without it, life may not be as suitable o earth. Therefore, he uses it to show the intensity of sadness and poverty in this land. He talks about the field on which animals are grazed and crops are grown but unfortunately in this land, it is rather bare and bleak. And he also talks about the presence of thorns on the land which shows lack of water in the land. The use of nature in description of experiences and innocence is very important in distinguishing the simplicity and complexity of the pastoral. So seeing how important nature plays a role in describing a plot in the pastoral, Is a literature without description of nature truly a pastoral? It really goes back to the question in Terry Gilford’s article, Is there pastoral in 20^th century contemporary literature? This question may be partly answered by Philip Roth’s book American pastoral, which does not use nature in its descriptions but still elaborates on simplicity and complexity. But still all these elements seem like if they do not work together, then it may not be achieving the intended goal. What is your take on this?

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I was also reminded of pastoral when I went to my grandfathers veteran’s ceremony on Memorial Day. He proudly marched through a parade with his veteran buddies with a beaming smile on his face. He then played TAPS while they raised the flag. After all was said and done, we stopped at the local diner to eat some of the best pie you have EVER tasted in your life. His buddies were all enjoying their pie and talking about their days of bravery and all the good times they had “raising hell”. They had these looks on their faces as if they were truly thinking back and picturing every little detail of their teen years. It was good to hear their stories and of course, get a good laugh. But again, I thought of pastoral. It seems to me, that in every new memory; like the Memorial Day ceremony, old memories are always brought to the stage and those memories seem to be the ones that we always hold on to and cherish….memories that we wish we could relive, if only for a minute.

Veterans Ceremony

I believe that the Wild West represents perhaps the last true bastion of pastoralism in America, the not-so-distant past of our country when large expanses of the landscape were unsettled except by rough Native American tribes and a man could commune with nature and make his own destiny. In the 1800s, Americans embraced the idea of Manifest Destiny, a concept that played a key role in the expansion of the United States into the Western Territories. This concept was used to justify the United States’ war with Mexico in the 1840s, the Oregon Trail, the California Gold Rush, and the founding of the Transcontinental Railroad. Even after the Civil War, when most of the Midwest and Eastern United States were crisscrossed with infrastructure and railroads, the West was still not won, the Indian Wars raged on, and people clamored to seek their own destiny in the wilderness.

The idea of an untouched landscape rings of pastoralism, and the desire of settlers to make their way into nature reflects the idea of an easier life away from the complexities of the Eastern Seaboard, of government influence and social discord. People could explore these unclaimed lands and mine for silver and gold, raise cattle across vast expanses of terriory, and hunt herds of buffalo one million head strong. Even today, cowboys represent a nostalgic figurehead in this imagery, icons of a simpler time in the United States, when these modern shepherds drove their herds of cattle across the countryside to the nearest city to make money, only to return to their peaceful respite far away from the troubles of urban living.

In 3:10 to Yuma, Dan Evans, portrayed by Christian Bale, is a down-on-his-luck rancher in the middle of a terrible dry spell. He cannot pay the debts he owes, and with no rain in sight, takes an offer to escort a fugitive to a prison train for some gold to help save his farm and his family. Evans represents the last of the cowboys, whom are being encroached on by the railroads and are tied to the cities, where those with money own their land and their very lives. Symbolically, he leaves his pastoral respite, similar to the Eclogues of Virgil, when Mopsus and Menalcus trudge wearily on to town, bereft of their land, to seek fortune in the dangers of society. If you have interest in seeing the movie, which I recommend, this last look into my spoil the ending for you.

Evans, having left his farm to try to earn some gold from the U.S. Marshalls in order to save his family, ends up fatally wounded following a gunfight in the city Yuma, when the posse of the captured outlaw attempts to prevent him being placed on the train. Before this scene, the outlaw looks at Evans, and gesturing to the storm clouds on the horizon, indicates that it appears to be raining on Evans’ land. Evans, in leaving the pastoral countryside where his hardwork for so long tied him to nature and earned a living for his family, loses his life just after discovering that, had he stuck it out a few days longer, his fortunes would have been reversed. THe death of the cowboy represents the death of a way of life, a nostalgic look at a time when man could make his own destiny in the uncharted wilderness of the Wild West. With his demise, so too dies the last pastoral part of America, consumed by the vices and tribulations of society that has finally manifested its destiny and tamed the wild. The last American shepherd, the rugged cowboy of yesteryear, rides off into the sunset no more.

For starters, the whole idea behind my leaving and going home is one of the key ideas of pastoral that I have written about two or three times now.  This idea is to escape to a better place.  This goes along with the form of retreat and return.  This simply means a retreat to the countryside, or place of simplicity, and return to the city, or complexities of life.  My whole reason for going home in the first place was to get away from Lexington and have a relaxing weekend.  I was retreating to Paducah, which is pretty much the same as the countryside, where things would be simple for a few days.  Then after that I would return to Lexington for school and all of my bills, which are still unpaid.  As soon as I realized this, I knew I would be thinking about it the rest of the weekend.

As we have discussed in class, another idea of pastoral is the imagery of pastoral.  When we talked about it in class, there was a large focus on the sheep in the pasture and their shepherd.  The shepherd is suppose to be the person looking out for the sheep and protecting them.  Along with protecting them, the shepherd is suppose to guide the sheep and direct them.  But what we have not discussed is the shepherd’s right hand man.  During my time at home, I went to church with my parents.  As I stepped into the door of the buidling, my old pasture stood in lobby and without hesitation said “The Bell Sheep has returned!”  At that very moment I gave out a little laugh and shook my head as the word “Pastoral” popped back into my mind.

A bell sheep is a sheep in the flock that has a bell around it’s neck.  The bell sheep always follows the shepherd.  Wherever the shepherd goes, the sheep is sure to follow!  It has the bell around its neck so that it can be heard throughout the pasture.  The bell sheep is supposed to be the leader of the flock and lead the other sheep where they are supposed to go.  My pasture called me the bell sheep because he said that I was the leader of all my friends and in the church.  He said that whenever he watched me, whatever I did, the others did too.  I was the bell sheep.  Also, he said that I need to stick close to God who is the shepherd.  This reminds me of the line in  Psalms 23 when it says “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”  God is seen as the ultimate shepherd who looks over his people, who are the sheep, and protects them.

 Over the course of the past few weeks, I have been noticing small things like this.  I can be looking at a yard, a patch of grass, or even my hard wood floor and automatically think of pastoral.  I have learned that it’s literally everywhere.  So no matter where I go, whether its home, church, or here in Lexington, the word “Pastoral” has been imprinted in my mind forever!