Episode 18, Part 3: No where to lay my head

Welcome to Episode 18, Part 3! If you're listening in the midst of practicing social distancing, either because you're working from home or because your job has been impacted by the outbreak, thanks for making my podcast a part of your survival strategy. If you're in a job that requires you to be out, especially those working in grocery stores and food delivery, thanks for all you're doing to help people cope with closures and staying home. And if you're out there because you're a medical responder... well, you all are just gold as far as I'm concerned. Thanks for helping keep us healthy.

Before I dive in I wanted to be sure and share again that Record of a Well Worn Pair of Travel Boots is now a part of The Cross Pods Tribe! I'm more excited about this collaboration than I can express. Be sure to check out The Cross Pods network for more of the same kind of podcasting you enjoy here. Thanks! And now...


Mother Jones is more than a person. Mother Jones is a spirit that crops up when it's needed. Mother Jones got her name because she fought for, worked to organize, and cared for striking miners. Most people don't know that long before Mother Jones looked what would be considered “matronly” she dressed that way because it was easier to force the grudging respect that a patriarchal society sometimes afford “women of a certain age.”  She lost her family in Yellow Fever outbreak in 1867, and  still went on to become “the miner's angel.”

The woman who gave me a ride to the cemetery was on her way back to her job, and so I didn't hold her up any longer when she offered to take my picture next to the angel's monument.  I didn't need the picture, anyway, to prove to myself that I'd been there. I didn't go to get my picture taken, although I DID take pictures while I was there.  But I didn't want to treat it like some tourist attraction; because that wasn't why I was there. At all.

The music and stories of Utah Phillips was my proper introduction to radical politics and radical history. And if you're unsure of which history you've been taught, pretty much anything that gets put in a public school history book IS NOT radical history. I learned about everything from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire to Big Bill Heywood, the Haymarket Riots, Albert and Lucy Parsons,  and... Mother Jones. I also learned that some of the thoughts I'd been having... thoughts about the inequities I saw working in factories and warehouses, living out of my car, and hanging around on the street with people the citizenry, for the most part, ignore … weren't unique.

And I found great comfort in that.  Of course, that all happened in the late 90's when a friend of mine gave me CD of Utah's The Past Didn't Go Anywhere. But it was all bubbling back up because of some things I experienced teaching in Arizona and because Zuccotti Park had recently been cleared of the Occupy Wall Street encampment... I talk some about that in Episode 17.

There was sort of an unofficial message board there, where others left union solidarity notes, IWW buttons, pamphlets and things.  Until I started traveling in 2012, I hadn't really run into many real radicals... people walk the walk and talk the talk. We often see people like Mother Jones as part of history... that past we insist on believing has nothing to do with us. It's not true, of course. We carry the past in our born in our bones and hardwired into our brains whether we choose to recognize it or not. Which is why the miner's angel is still with us – a spirit that shows up when we need it to remind us that our shoes is where the rubber meets the road.  Even in the midst of the Coronavirus outbreak, there are angels among us... helpers helping. I should know. I'm married to one of them.
As I mentioned in an earlier part of Episode 18, I'd originally planned to stay in Mount Olive, but found that it had no such place. If I'd been smart, I would have asked the nice woman who gave me ride about someplace that might be safe to camp for the night. But I decided to take my chances and hoof on towards Litchfield, which was about 10 miles.

Thanks so much for listening to Episode 18, Part 3 of a Record of a Well Worn Pair of Traveling Boots. Please be sure to show some love by subscribing to this podcast on ITunes, Spotify, or whatever pod catcher you use. Check out the past episodes and look for Episode 20 in two weeks.

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Thanks again for listening. May the road always rise to meet your feet.