Odyssey around America shows can-do spirit is alive
The assumption that America is a divided land has been perpetuated so vigorously in the media that most of us have come to believe it. Enter Deborah and James Fallows, and not a moment too soon.
James Fallows, a reporter and editor, notably a correspondent for “The Atlantic” for decades, and Deborah Fallows, an educator, author and linguist, spoke recently at Alphabet City in the Central North Side about their five-year odyssey around America in a single-engine Cirrus aircraft.
They made lengthy visits to towns and cities as small as Spearville, Kan., and as large as Columbus, Ohio, writing articles along the way between 2013 and 2017. They stayed in motels and in people’s homes, attended civic meetings, plays, ball games. They hung out in brewpubs and coffee shops. They visited factories and schools, swam in town pools, ran on high school tracks and interviewed hundreds of people.
The resulting book, “Our Towns: A 100,000-mile Journey into the Heart of America,” wants to convince us that while many places in America are dealing with a lot of awful situations, people are still proprietary and optimistic about their towns and the efforts being made to improve them.
James Fallows said the places he and his wife visited are places to which the media go “only when there was a political race, a tornado, a shooting or a meth story.”
The national political scene is a trainwreck from which towns and cities are working hard to distance themselves. Progress is being made on local levels because people feel commonly connected and have a lot at stake. They are working largely with no politically charged rancor.
The authors said they didn’t ask anyone about their political leanings.
“The answers to questions like those won’t take you beyond what you’ve already heard ad nauseam on TV,” Mr. Fallows wrote in “The Atlantic” last year.
The Fallowses describe towns that are folding immigrants into
their weave calmly, and in some cases with gratitude that these new neighbors are industrious assets. They describe politically conservative towns that voted for tax increases to fund such amenities as libraries.
They visited tiny towns that are “punching above their weight,” as Deborah Fallows described Eastport, Maine, in an article in “The Atlantic.”
“There is a black-andwhite, oil-and-water difference between how people in most of the country felt about the country as a whole and how they felt about their own communities,” James Fallows said.
Their research was not scientific, he said, and left out some constituencies, including religious communities, but the journalist’s first obligation is to listen well.
They did five years’ worth of listening in places as different as Fresno, Calif. — which they said some denizens call “Fres-yes!” — Charleston, W.Va.; Greenville, S.C.; Ajo, Ariz., Holland, Mich.; Chester, Mont.; and Burlington, Vt.
They asked townspeople what makes the town tick and who their leaders are. They cross-referenced, double-checked and often doubled back. They were searching for what Mr. Fallows called “an underappreciated piece of the American process” and found innovation, collaboration and optimism.
In the Maine town of Eastport, population 1,400, artists are the catalysts. The town, directly across from the Canadian province of New Brunswick, has several art galleries, an arts center, a salmon festival, a birding festival, a pirate festival, an Indian Days celebration, a Christmas house tour, an international marathon and 29 buildings on the National Historic Register.
Because it is so small, the ticket-taker at a performance of “The Glass Menagerie” was the town’s newspaper editor. The stage manager was a barista.
Eastport’s website proclaims: “We are a community of dreamers and do’ers. Join us!”
So much about America is not rosy. Many places are decrepit. Many people are resistant to solving problems. Too many are dysfunctional and cannot contribute. But James and Deborah Fallows confirmed what I have been hoping is still true — that America’s spirit of all-for-one-and-one-for-all is intact. It may be frayed in places, but it is alive.
The 24-hour news cycle and its rut of addiction to the national clown car is doing us a disservice. Not only are we not finding out what our countrymen are doing, we don’t know what our connection to them is.
“Our Towns” gives us a glimpse at that connection and the people to see our own reflections in. The bounty of evidence the Fallowses brought on their visit to Pittsburgh was nothing short of therapeutic for this weary optimist.