Brutal South

I’m publishing a new piece of fiction today. The title is “Charity,” and I’m releasing it in three parts. You can read Part 1 via the Wednesday morning newsletter edition, or listen to the audio version here.

Part 2, Part 3, and the full audio edition are available to paying subscribers only. Subscriptions are $5 a month and get you access to exclusive content and subscriber-only podcast episodes.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brutalsouth.substack.com

My guest is the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Rutledge, the minister at Circular Congregational Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Jeremy and I have crossed paths several times over the years. He’s involved with social justice work in Charleston, we have a lot of friends in common, and I’m pretty sure I interviewed him a few times when I worked at the newspaper. I always loved talking with him, and recording this podcast was just an excuse to talk to him again — mostly about dad stuff, actually.

I want to give a quick word of warning: We discuss death and disease and the loss of a child on this episode. If those topics are triggering for you, you might want to skip it.

Also, I’ve got a little song I recorded for the advent season, and I’ve tacked it onto the end of the show just because I can.

The Eugene Debs biography we mentioned at the top of the show is The Bending Cross by Ray Ginger, and it’s available to order via the Brutal South Bookshop page along with a lot of other radical, strange, and beautiful books I’ve mentioned in the newsletter and on the podcast this year. If you want to do some holiday shopping and throw a portion of your purchase my way while supporting independent bookstores and sticking it to Jeff Bezos, check it out at bookshop.org/shop/BrutalSouth.

The episode art is “Winter Landscape” (1909) by Wassily Kandinsky.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brutalsouth.substack.com

My guest is Marvin Pendarvis, my state House representative here in South Carolina. He's about my age, one of a handful of millennials in the legislature, and he's been one of the loudest voices in the state capital on the issues of housing insecurity and evictions.

I wanted to have him on the show because, 1, he's fighting an uphill battle that I think more people should know about, and 2, his hallmark issue is suddenly more important than ever. (And 3, he’s a new dad, so I wanted to talk dad stuff with him.)

Marvin and I live in North Charleston, which had the highest eviction rate of any city in the United States according to a 2018 study by the Princeton University Eviction Lab. This year during the pandemic, we had the tenuous protection of a state eviction moratorium, but that already expired. Now we have a federal eviction moratorium that's set to expire at the end of the calendar year. Just before I got on the call with Marvin, I was in a Zoom meeting with my local DSA chapter talking about what we can do to fight back against the wave of evictions that's about to hit our community.

I hope you enjoy this conversation. If you're looking for a good fight to pursue with your city council or state legislature, housing security is a good choice.

The episode art is “The Blue House” (1917) by Marc Chagall.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brutalsouth.substack.com

This one’s a subscriber-only episode. Paying subscribers to the Brutal South newsletter get today’s full episode and access to all of the archives at brutalsouth.substack.com/archive. It’s $5 a month. Think about it.

My guest is Ian Nix, lead vocalist and songwriter for the South Carolina metal band WVRM.

If you follow heavy music, WVRM probably falls into genre labels like grindcore and death metal. If you don't follow heavy metal, well, it's extreme. It's guttural music played over blast beats. I'll be using clips throughout the show from their latest album Colony Collapse, which came out earlier this year.

Ian is a native of the South Carolina Upstate, which is probably the most culturally conservative part of the state, and he brought a fresh perspective on the history and culture of this place we call home. Also, the album just rips. I'm a fan, y'all.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brutalsouth.substack.com

I wrote in the newsletter a few weeks ago about this thing I saw with my kids when we were camping in the South Carolina Upstate. It was long and yellow and it moved like a slug, but it was shaped like a snake and it had a flattened sort of hammer head. It was horrifying. When we got home I wrote in to Rudy Mancke, who is sort of a legendary naturalist with a show on South Carolina Public Radio, and he informed it was a land planarian, an invasive species that probably got here on plants imported from Malaysia.

I kept reading about this thing online, and every new detail was disturbing. Its mouth is its anus, it eats worms, and if you chop it in half it just becomes two planarians. Really gross stuff.

Anyway it got me thinking about horror and beauty in the natural world, and how there is so much going on out there and there are so many creatures who probably never think about us either unless we happen to cross paths. And it prompted me to send an out-of-the-blue inquiry to Dr. Melissa Hughes, a professor in the biology department at the College of Charleston.

She doesn't study land planarians. She mainly studies song sparrows and snapping shrimp, and she was very gracious with her time explaining these weird animals to an absolute layman. Her research focuses on animal behavior, communication, territorial aggression, and deception.

I'm not a scientist, but I love talking to researchers like Dr. Hughes. I learned a lot, I came away with a new appreciation for animals I never thought much about, and I hope you enjoy this too. Let's talk about birds and shrimp for a little bit.

If you would like to read some of Dr. Hughes’ writing, here are the two pieces we discussed from Scientific American:

The Not-So-Simple Secret World of Song Sparrows

Hopeful Monsters and the Snapping Shrimp

You can find a list of her publications on Google Scholar.

The field recordings in this episode were graciously provided by Dr. Hughes. All of the birdsongs came from a single male song sparrow.

The episode art is a photo of a song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) in Battery Park, Newcastle, Delaware. It was uploaded by Flickr user Keith (Pheanix) with a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brutalsouth.substack.com

My guest on this podcast episode is Kelley Tyler, a trauma nurse working in Asheville, North Carolina. On Sept. 17, Kelley and her fellow nurses at Mission Hospital won a tremendous victory for organized labor when they voted in a landslide to be represented by a union.

It was the largest union victory at a nonunion hospital in the American South since 1975, and it was the first ever private-sector hospital union win in North Carolina history.

I don't want to understate this: That union victory was a big damn deal.

If you want to read some more about the Asheville nurses' landmark victory, here’s a summary from The Intercept and an insightful interview with several of the nurses that was published by Jacobin shortly before the vote. I know there's a lot to despair about right now, but this is cause for rejoicing in my book.

Up the nurses. Up the workers. Solidarity forever, y'all.

If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Regular episodes are free, but for $5 a month you can help support my work and get access to some subscriber-only podcast episodes and newsletter issues.

Right now I've got a big box of 3”x3” vinyl stickers on my desk with the podcast logo on them, and I'd love to mail you a couple. If you're a paying subscriber, you can just reply to this email with your mailing address and I'll send them your way ASAP. They were printed at a union print shop, Dr. Don's in Glendale, Arizona, and they are sure to be the envy of your coworkers and/or housemates.

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Photos courtesy of National Nurses United. Kelley is the one at the top speaking into a megaphone.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brutalsouth.substack.com

Today on the podcast I've got two guests, Lucas Smolcic Larson and Stephen Fastenau. They're both reporters at the Beaufort Gazette and Hilton Head Island Packet, two newspapers in the South Carolina Lowcountry that share a newsroom. Just last week more than 80% of the reporters, photographers, and producers down there signed cards authorizing union representation by the NewsGuild labor union, which is affiliated with the Communication Workers of America.

I don't know how to express how happy this makes me. Local news reporters are some of my favorite people on earth, and, by and large, they deserve much better pay and working conditions than they're getting. I don't know of any other newsrooms in South Carolina that have taken this step toward unionizing, but seeing one notch a decisive victory like this makes me so, so glad. I hope it catches on.

I hope you enjoy this episode of the podcast, and I hope you find it as inspiring as I did. What they did takes a lot of courage.

If you're a working journalist interested in learning more about the unionization effort down in Beaufort, their website, again, is packetguild.org. The national union's website is newsguild.org.

If you enjoyed today's podcast, please say something nice in the Apple Podcast review section. If you haven't already, you can also sign up for the Brutal South newsletter by clicking the Subscribe now button below. The weekly Wednesday newsletter is free, but you can also get access to some subscriber-only newsletters and podcasts as well as the complete archive for just $5 a month.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brutalsouth.substack.com

He’s a frumpy old fart wearing too much bronzer, scowling into the middle distance. He sports a gold lamé robe and wears a gold crown with an ass’s ears. Someone told him this outfit would make him look handsome, or happy, or dignified, but it only took him one glimpse in the mirror to realize they were full of it.

Nevermind the dead worshippers falling from his lap; nevermind the skulls on the back of his throne: Lord Mammon looks like hot garbage. He looks like he never sleeps.

In Christian theology, Mammon means the idol of wealth. Mammon has been personified in texts and paintings since at least the middle ages, and the depictions are never flattering. Here’s John Milton ragging on Mammon in Paradise Lost:

Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fellFrom Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughtsWere always downward bent, admiring moreThe riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,Than aught divine or holy else enjoyedIn vision beatific.

The big guy never looks healthy, but he looks just wretched in George Frederic Watts’ 1885 oil painting Mammon. He appears dead-eyed, gaudy, and glum with sacks of money piled uselessly in his lap.

Watts saw global capitalism in its infancy in 19th-century England. I keep imagining how he would depict Mammon today, striding continents and gobbling up vulnerable workers with help from a worldwide plague.

I’ve been thinking about Mammon because I downloaded a free plugin for my internet browser that swaps out every instance of the phrase “the economy” with the words “Lord Mammon.”

The Lord Mammon plugin for Google Chrome is the creation of an Episcopal priest from Scottsdale, Arizona, the Rev. Robert M. Berra. I emailed Rev. Berra to see if he’d talk about his motivations on the podcast, and he said yes.

The headlines have been especially grotesque this week, and I see the figure of Mammon hovering over the news now. I can only imagine this is what people mean when they say we should have a Christian worldview: The world looks mighty ugly when we see it for what it really is.

Enjoy the podcast. Stay safe.

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I’ll be releasing a podcast for paying subscribers only at the end of the week. It’s an interview with an avant-garde metal guitarist about becoming a dad. Sign up now for $5 a month to get access to that episode as well as other subscriber-only content in the full archives.

If you are going to be in Columbia, South Carolina, this weekend, I encourage you to join some teachers who are staging a motor protest in front of the Statehouse at noon on Saturday, August 15. They’re demanding virtual schooling for all students until the risk for COVID-19 transmission is low. To read more details about the protest and the teachers’ specific demands, check out the event registration page and follow SC Teachers United on Facebook.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brutalsouth.substack.com

It’s been almost 5 months since my daughters went to preschool, and they’ve started getting nostalgic. One of them told me today about a time when a kid hit her with a bike on the playground. I had never heard that before. They’ve both started vividly describing the flavors of popsicles they used to eat in the cafeteria. I got conned into making paper snowflakes this morning because they remembered making winter crafts one time. It’s August.

We live in South Carolina, a state that has done a monumentally bad job containing the COVID-19 pandemic, so I have no idea when it will be safe to send my children back into their school. I don’t know what to tell them, but they miss their friends. They miss their teachers. Most days I feel powerless to do much other than hug my kids and shake my fist at the indifference and incompetence of our state and federal government.

One ray of hope has been watching the activism of public school teachers in my state. They’ve been organized for a few years now, pushing back against decades of defunding, declining pay relative to inflation, and abandonment of poor, rural, and majority-black schools. Now they’re setting their sights on the state’s inept handling of the pandemic, and they’re raising their voices to protect all of us as the governor pushes for the reopening of schools. It’s inspiring to see.

My guests this week are two accomplished teachers from South Carolina who have been on the frontlines pushing for change while working to protect us all.

Chanda Jefferson (@TheRealChandaJ on Twitter and Instagram) is the science department chair at Fairfield Central High School in Winnsboro, and she is the 2020 South Carolina Teacher of the Year. On July 15, after Gov. Henry McMaster publicly pressed schools to reopen during a spike in infections, she captured the frustration of a lot of teachers with a statement titled “Issa No for Me.” You can read it by clicking here.

Steve Nuzum (@Mr_Nuzum on Twitter) is an English teacher at Ridge View High School in Columbia, and he serves as legislative director for the teacher advocacy group SC for Ed.

This is another very South Carolina episode, but I think there are important takeaways for solidarity movements in other states. If you’re interested in learning more about teacher activism, particularly as it plays out in Republican-dominated states like Arizona, West Virginia, and Oklahoma, I highly recommend picking up Eric Blanc’s 2019 book Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics. You can order it via the nonfiction section of the Brutal South storefront on bookshop.org.

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You can sign up for free to receive this email newsletter fresh-baked in your inbox every Wednesday, or if you pitch in $5 a month for a paid subscription, you can get access to subscriber-only content. This week I did a review of alternate designs for the Mississippi flag, and recently I put out an extended podcast episode on the topic of hard seltzer, internet memes, and the violent right-wing boogaloo movement.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brutalsouth.substack.com

My guest this week is Dave Infante, a reporter in Charleston, South Carolina, who recently wrote a piece for Mel Magazine about the curious intersection of White Claw drinking culture and the right-wing militant boogaloo movement. If that sounds bewildering and niche, then strap in.

You might want to hear more from Dave after listening to this episode, in which case I recommend you sign up for Dave's newsletter at fingers.substack.com.

This is a condensed version of Episode 6. Paying subscribers to the Brutal South newsletter get access to the full uncut interview and other subscriber-only content going forward. Hit the Subscribe Now button below to sign up for $5 a month, or click here to read a quick Q&A about how Substack subscriptions work.

The image at the top is Wagtail and Hibiscus (c. 1747 - 1797) by Kano Toshun.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brutalsouth.substack.com