#southern maryland

[wandering-jana]

Abandoned home. Southern Maryland.

Explore:

[marymagdaleneofthesouth]

went to the creek today

[tcmartinwrites]

beginnings

I want to start at the root of things, which for me often means a poem.

I first read "the killing of the trees" in the fall of 2020. I had just started my MFA program (not in poetry but in nonfiction, my primary genre) when a classmate introduced me to the work of a poet I did not then know.

Lucille Clifton was her name. And imagine my surprise at discovering that she had lived and worked and taught in my home state of Maryland for years – had in fact been our state's poet laureate for a spell (1979-1985). Maryland is not what I would call a literary state. California has Joan Didion, Florida has Karen Russell, Ohio has Toni Morrison, New York has Baldwin and Wharton and Fitzgerald and too many others to count.

And Maryland has – well, just a few names. Edgar Allan Poe, Rachel Carson, Ta-Nehisi Coates. I had read their work (Poe's and Coates's, that is; I still need to acquaint myself with Carson) and enjoyed it, but I never felt "Maryland"-ness in it, if that makes sense. Poe's work was too antique and fantastical, and Coates's was rooted in Baltimore, which Maryland treats more like a tumor than the vital organ it actually is.

After learning of Clifton's poetry, I devoured every volume I could find, including quilting, the collection in which "the killing of the trees" appears. This was when I realized Clifton's unique connection to Southern Maryland, the part of the state where I'm from, a place I had never seen depicted in literature of any sort. Finding her poem felt like catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Who is that? Oh, I realized. It's me. Us.

Anyway, the poem is a knife-sharp dissection of one of our region's main industries: subdivision-building. Not exactly a Romantic subject, but one in which Clifton nevertheless finds meaning. The poem reminds me of my own childhood growing up in Hughesville on a road named after my father's family, a road that used to belong to the farm that my great-great-grandfather had purchased sometime in the early 20th century. Its original shape contained hundreds of acres on either side of the road. But over time it had been chopped up into housing plots for family members, which later sold to people of no relation to us. Still, several of us live on the road: 5 or 6 holdout households on the southern side, all sharing power tools and sugar and muscle as needed.

One winter break home from college, I noticed the tree line in our backyard had suddenly thinned. Through the bare branches I could make out the frames of future homes. Big homes, two or three times the size of ours, in a freshly paved cul-de-sac. The sense was that the subdivisions had circled us. We had always known they were out there: metastasizing, unseen. Now, though, we felt surrounded. Trapped.

It was a feeling shared by many old guard Southern Marylanders, people whose families had lived here for multiple generations. The place was becoming too crowded, too busy, too dense. Logic dictated that this was a good thing: more people arriving meant our home was an attractive place to live, with good jobs and good schools to draw in talented workers. But for long-time locals who were dealing with more traffic, bigger class sizes, and constant construction, the compliment fell flat amidst disruption.

I share this grumpiness, but I also remain skeptical of its origins. Many of the newcomers to our area were Black, Latino, and Asian; many (most) of the curmudgeons like myself were white. I find Clifton’s poem useful for examining where my grievances with our region’s growth begin. Like the speaker in Clifton’s poem, I cringe to watch more woodland forest be cleared for another cookie-cutter development. And yet, the speaker and I can both see our own role in that destructive pattern. Just because we came here earlier doesn’t make us any less complicit. Long-time Southern Marylanders can feel the urge to proclaim: We were here first. But were we?

——————————

the killing of the trees by lucille clifton the third went down with a sound almost like flaking, a soft swish as the left leaves fluttered themselves and died. three of them, four, then five stiffening in the snow as if this hill were Wounded Knee as if the slim feathered branches were bonnets of war as if the pale man seated high in the bulldozer nest his blonde mustache ice-matted was Pahuska come again but stronger now, his long hair wild and unrelenting. remember the photograph, the old warrior, his stiffened arm raised as if in blessing, his frozen eyes open, his bark skin brown and not so much wrinkled as circled with age, and the snow everywhere still falling, covering his one good leg. remember his name was Spotted Tail or Hump or Red Cloud or Geronimo or none of these or all of these. he was a chief. he was a tree falling the way a chief falls, straight, eyes open, arms reaching for his mother ground. so i have come to live among the men who kill the trees, a subdivision, new, in southern Maryland. I have brought my witness eye with me and my two wild hands, the left one sister to the fists, pushing the bulldozer against the old oak, the angry right, brown and hard and spotted as bark. we come in peace, but this morning ponies circle what is left of life and whales and continents and children and ozone and trees huddle in a camp weeping outside my window and i can see it all with that one good eye.

——————————

further reading:

A great essay by Emily Jorgenson about Lucille Clifton's feminist ecopoetics: https://scalar.usc.edu/works/engl205-07h-fall-2017/panel-2-person-2

A video of Lucille Clifton reading "the killing of the trees" at the College of Southern Maryland in 1990: https://youtu.be/Vba8o-7xhU0

[amnglobalmedia]

FYI 📍🌍| Reminder to update your business info with AMNG for 2024. Ensure your phone, website, and category are accurate. Use the provided form or check our IG bio for the link. For assistance, contact our virtual assistant at 410-907-3991 ext 1000 M-S

[thebaddragon]

Volunteering at SOMD Pride 2023 in Lexington Park, Maryland, early tomorrow morning.

Need to be there early (8am) to get set up for the event starting at 11am.

Hopefully, it's a good day, as I literally have only the requested arrival time, name, and the shirt color of the volunteer coordinator to work with at this point... I randomly signed up for it months ago, and only last week received an email about if I still was up to volunteering.

I had to look up the location for the event, myself, it wasn't part of the short follow up email of details....

Not looking forward to being awake so early. Not a morning person here... but I hope the event is fun.

Event Info can be found here:

[alexandraundone]

[genderkoolaid]

fellow usamericans please please please please check your state's COVID wastewaster levels.

as of Aug. 28 2024, here's how the regions look:

in the USA as a whole we are at an 8.68 and trending up

in the Northeast, we're at 6.92 and trending up

in the South, we're at 10.17

in the Midwest, we're at 6.78 and trending up

in the West, we're at 12.28

But these are just averages. It's vital to check YOUR SPECIFIC STATE/TERRITORY, as well as any ones you are planning on traveling too. D.C, for example, is at 15.68.

the reason people are still talking about COVID is not just because of vibes or trauma. we have actual numerical data showing that we are far from over with this disease. wear a mask, get another booster, and bookmark the CDC's website so you can check it weekly.

[honeyrosepetals]

[thatchickwiththecamera]

NEW FISH BOY FOLIO

In his Waders and Fishing Vest!

Source: Reynlord on TikTok

[everypigeondeserveslove]

I can't believe someone on twitter is trying to gatekeep discussing the Temults. What do you mean, I have to answer two (2) questions correctly to even speak on the Temults

This fandoms hottest new club is The Temults. Club promoter, rando Twitter user, is back, and they’ve gone all out. This place has everything, moms in cults, daughters with purple hair, just-a-guy dads, and a-requirement-of-proof-of-residency-bellow-the-mason-dixion-line. Proof-of-residency-below the-mason-dixion-line? You know when you have to prove residency within the southern United States to even gain the access to discuss the Temults. Any found to be from the north, east, west, or middle America will be forced to walk the plank into shark infested waters ⚓️

[gossamersingularity]

swamp country

[wandering-jana]

The oddly laid out Thomas Stone House, in Maryland. Thomas Stone, a lawyer and politician, was one of 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. Now part of the Thomas Stone National Historic Site.

Check out my explorations of Southern Maryland:

[longsword-enjoyer]

I helped CREATE a renfest motherfucker!

[pokemonwearingsportsmerch]

[captwaddledoo]

[Checks local news] Wow!!! Literally my nightmare!!!!

[rebelyells]

Battle of Harpers Ferry- Confederates overtook Maryland Heights September 13, 1862