Steve Shanafelt found my little blog just under two years ago, and invited me to be a part of the project that was The Spark, and somehow I found an audience to the things that have rambled around in my brain and put to a word document. I have written anecdotes about my family, personal thoughts and concerns on my life and where it was at the moment, short stories that I just made up, and my feelings about our community and the strange entity we call politics around here. It wasn’t always easy to come up with a topic for every Tuesday, and sometimes the lack of writing quality showed as I rushed to get at least 1000 coherent words in by my deadline, but I think, or at least I hope that the overall quality of my work has improved over time.

I’ve enjoyed working with Steve and Chris George. I learned quite a bit from both, about writing, about Spartanburg, the culture and arts that are found here, and particular about South Carolina politics, which I have discovered is completely fascinating, despite its “watching a train wreck about to happen” tendencies. Being a transplant to this area, I have learned along with many of our readers more about this place I now call home from The Spark, then anywhere else.

Some of the unexpected benefits of my tenure here has been meeting some wonderful people I now consider friends, a greater appreciation for my community and a passion to be a positive impact within that community, even if it just an opinion piece that I write. Miss Mom has also been like a very low cost form of life therapy, as I learned long ago that putting words onto “paper” is very therapeutic. Daring to share those words forces me to take a good hard look at what I am saying and the emotions behind them. It is a wonderful exercise of thinking before one speaks. Considering the major life changes I’ve underwent in just the past year, that exercise has been very much needed.

Miss Mom also has helped me to make some decisions that will prepare me for my next stage in life. It was directly because of two people that I met through The Spark that gave me the final push for the decision to get my butt into college and chase my degree. Tammy Stokes and Phillip Stone have my eternal gratitude, for their words of wisdom and encouragement. Phillip likely doesn’t even know that it was something he said that was the clincher. Well you know now, I couldn’t argue with your amazing logic. If I survive work, school, and creative bill paying, I hope to graduate with a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Converse in a few years. What I’ll do with that degree, which will have a writing focus, I have no idea. Hopefully I will get paid though, and better then what I make now as a follicle artist

So what is a writer without a place to house a column going to do? Why move to another place to house that column. Christopher George has invited me to move Miss Mom over to the “next season” of progressive web-blogging, and I will be posting there beginning next week if all goes well. I could see the direction we were heading as an alternative voice in town, and I am glad that I will be able to continue unabated. With Flying Oskar I think we will be able to do just that.

I will, be continuing to contribute to my blog, Sylvie is a Blogger. It is where I was “discovered” and Miss Mom was simply a carry over from there. I may eventually get that novel out of my head. But first I need to learn how to write past the first chapter, something I’ve yet to achieve. Who am I kidding, I’m clueless, having never written a story longer then a few thousand words in my life.

I still want to be a part of what The Spark began. I still want to be one of the voices that champions what is so great about our community and honestly point out its flaws, all while hoping for a brighter future for all of us. I want to be more active in our community and I want to encourage others to do so. I still want to write about life, kids, cats, the fact that even though my kids are grown, the laundry still won’t end. I want to write about faith, community, some of the great work being done by our unsung heroes around here, of opinions some hold and why I agree or disagree, and I still have a few odd short stories left in me yet. I want to write, pure and simple, so writing is what I will continue to do.

Miss Mom comes to its season finale as The Spark ends its surprisingly successful run, but you aren’t going to be rid of the writer that is Sylvie Galloway any time soon, or apparently Miss Mom either. Miss Mom just moves “down the street” or to a “new channel”, and carries on with a “new season” hopefully better then ever. This actually won’t be the first time I have ended a relationship with a publication. I had a column before when I lived in North Carolina. It just wasn’t near as popular as this one has been. The readership there was smaller and at the time, being a small print publication, there was no online connection. It was there, however, that I discovered my love for writing, and when I moved here, I began looking for another outlet. That led to Sylvie Is A Blogger, which led to Miss Mom. I have been pleasantly surprised more then once when people recognized me because of Miss Mom, and that the recognition was always favorable. I know its silly, but that recognition from my little column has been a boost to my ego, and has made me want to write more and to do so with even greater quality.

I thank all of you for helping make The Spark as successful as it has been. It has because people came and visited our site, read our articles, commented on them and shared what we wrote with others that made The Spark as popular as it has been. I know I have enjoyed every minute of the time I have been a part. Now pardon me while I go climb out that window.

Much like everything else I did in my early twenties though, the political blogging thing didn’t really stick.

Like a tadpole that just sprouted legs, Flying Oskar is ready to start hopping.

That was the beginning of Flying Oskar as a feature on the Spark, and over the last year and eight months since I first starting posting on the site, my commitment to the Spark, and to the local progressive movement it has come to represent, has only deepened. I believe in what Steve and the rest of us have done here, and I don’t want to see it die completely. Steve is moving on, and it would be incredibly petty for anyone to be angry or upset about that. People move on; life goes on. It’s no more complicated than that. What was started with the Spark though, should also go on, and I plan on doing whatever I can to make sure that happens.

In order to do as much of that as possible, I’ve started a new site called—what else—FlyingOskar.com, and I’d like to invite all of you to read it, follow it, and if the spirit moves you, contribute content for it.

If the site looks familiar that’s because it is. I ended up using the same WordPress theme that the Spark used before its most recent upgrade. I didn’t choose the theme because I wanted to highlight the similarities between the two sites. Those similarities will be apparent enough already for anyone who bothers to keep up with the site regularly. I chose that theme because even though WordPress has thousands of themes available, most of them either look terrible or have some other glaring flaw that I didn’t want to deal with. Steve knew what he was doing when he chose that theme, and I don’t mind running the second local alt-media site to use it.

As far as content goes, I plan to do post the regular Monday column the same as I have done on the Spark. I plan to continue posting the agenda for Spartanburg City Council meetings as well as filming those meetings. I also have a couple of other ideas for weekly or bi-weekly content that I’ll get into more as the site moves along. Where the site is really going to fail or succeed though, is based on the content others choose to provide.

I don’t have any intention keeping Flying Oskar a one-person blog. In order for the site to be relevant to the community, it has to include content from as many people as possible from the community. I’m looking for any sort of content you can think of. Whether it’s videos, podcasts, comics, or written content, if it’s locally relevant and locally produced, it will have a home on Flying Oskar. There are, of course, a couple of stipulations.

For starters, as it plainly says right there in the site’s tagline, Flying Oskar is all about “progressive voices for Spartanburg.” What does that mean? Well, it means that if you want to write a political post from a conservative point of view, I’m not going to post it. I know Steve has always left the Spark at least theoretically open to the idea of conservative contributors, but I’m shutting that door and nailing it closed. My reasons for that are fairly simple.

Spartanburg is already stuffed to the gills with conservative voices. Read practically anything over at the Spartanburg Herald-Journal if you don’t believe me. In addition to that, there is at least one prominent conservative blogger already in Spartanburg. The prevailing political conversation in Spartanburg revolves around the battle between the more mainstream conservatives right and the extreme right, and I have no interest in participating in that discussion. Conservatives may be the dominant group in Spartanburg, but Flying Oskar will definitely not be providing yet another media platform for that ideology. My hope is that the site will provide a safe place for new ideas about how we can make our community a just, fair, and equitable place, a place to build an opposition to those who stand against those ideals.

That doesn’t mean you can’t write something I don’t agree with. There’s a lot of flexibility in that progressive definition, and I certainly don’t want to stifle debate. Put in simple terms, that means that if you think Sen. Shane Martin and Sen. Lee Bright do a great job representing the people of Spartanburg, Flying Oskar will not be the site for you. If you’re not one of those people—and you’re not an off the map conspiracy theorist—there’s very likely a place for you if you want it.

Aside from the political side of things, there really aren’t any restrictions as far as local content. Do you want to write, podcast, or vlog about local music, art, nonprofit groups, events, restaurants, or anything else out there in the Spartanburg scene? Great! When can you start?

If that sounds like it’s taking straight from the Spark’s playbook that’s because it is. I believe very deeply in the Spark’s core mission of community created content, and the only real reason I’ve started the new site in the first place is to continue that mission. From the beginning, the Spark has been a site about the community, written by the people in the community who’ve bothered to show up. Flying Oskar will proudly imitate that mission to the letter.

Having written all that, I’m anxious to get started, and I hope you’re anxious to follow the site, and maybe even to get involved. Flying Oskar can never really replace the Spark or what it’s come to mean in the community, but I’m hopeful that it can eventually play its own helpful role in Spartanburg’s progressive movement. I believe in Spartanburg’s ability to move forward and become the place many of us want it to be, and my hope is that Flying Oskar can help in some small way to accomplish that goal.

This piece is cross-posted over at the new Flying Oskar. Be sure to check out the new site!

photo taken by my son Michael King, a braver sushi consumer then me.

To this day there are lots of things I will say no thanks to, including all the above mentioned foods. I have welcomed some new things into my diet, like tofu and a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. It is in the meat category where I am the most timid when it comes to trying for the first time. Seafood I eye even more dubiously because I don’t like how most shellfish looks in its natural state, not seeing how cooking it could improve its palatable qualities.

Which makes finding me in a Sushi restaurant so unexpected. This is a person who has never had Lobster, cringes at the thought of crab legs, and ate a raw oyster once, on a dare…UGH! I have long been an unashamed sushi virgin. The closest I ever came to losing that virginity was at a Chinese buffet back in North Carolina, near . I think I had one of those little rice rolls, but it was dry and tasteless containing only rice and some kind of leaf to wrap things in. I don’t think I even finished it, so I’ve never counted that as actually eating authentic sushi. When my friend suggested we have sushi for dinner, I tried to suggest something else, but she was quite persuasive, promising me that I would only be served things that were delicious and easy to consume.

I arrived before my friend, and upon picking up the menu was immediately overwhelmed with the choices of sushi available. Even if I did want to play it safe choice wise, I didn’t have a clue where to begin, other then the cocktail of the day, which I immediately ordered. Surely some liquid bravery would help get me through the evening. At least I was on fairly familiar territory there although I had never had that particular concoction. It was some kind of raspberry lemony martini thing, not too sweet, not too tart, and I couldn’t taste the alcohol, just how I like it.

My friend arrived and I gave her my “do not even go there rules” no discernible body parts, no tentacles, even chopped up bits of one, nothing chewy, and keep me far away from anything resembling hot and spicy. I figured I could be safe. She ordered our first dish of three for the evening. It was little squares of fish; two types of tuna, imitation crab and Tilapia. None had been deep fried, pan seared, poached, baked or anything resembling cooking, except for the imitation crab which is actually flavored cod. It was cooked but everything else was uncooked. I poured some soy sauce into the little bowl provided and picked up the first square of raw tuna. I had agreed to at least try, so first taking a big gulp of my martini, I dipped the tuna square in the soy sauce and into my anxiously nervous mouth it went.

Have you ever read the story of Green Eggs and Ham? It is a story of this little guy named Sam-I-am, who is trying ever so hard to convince his friend to try green eggs and ham. The friend comes up with all sorts of scenarios where he wouldn’t be found eating a food choice of that odd hue. Finally out of excuses, he agrees to try a bite. To his surprise and delight he discovered that green eggs and ham are not only delicious, but that he’d eat it again, and in any of the situations he had used as an excuse not to eat them. Eating that first bite of sushi made me feel like the character in that children’s book. I was pleasantly surprised by how nice that little square of fish tasted.

That evening I had raw fish, a mussels dish, that was cooked with some kind of oriental mayonnaise and the traditional little rolled up rice and other ingredients that many people recognize. I liked everything but the Tilapia, as the texture was not to my liking. We didn’t even try to cover the exhaustive menu offered, but I do know that I’ll eat sushi again. The same “do not even go there” rules will of course apply. I might be willing to try other forms of food I’ve never considered. I’ll try tobe braver in the wide world of food. I may even be willing to eat those foods with a mouse in a house, on the lake with a rake, or on a train in the rain.

Spartanburg City Council: August 9, 2010 from SpartanburgSpark on Vimeo.

I’m no different really. I can feel the scoffs at that last sentence from across the digital expanse, but honestly, there are a whole lot of wrongs that I’ve let slide without comment. Why? Well, besides the reason I mentioned at the very beginning, there’s also a bit of favoritism going on. I don’t like admitting it, but I’m just as susceptible to it as anyone. If the person or group responsible for the wrong is a group or person I generally respect, I’m much more reluctant than normal to challenge that wrong. That reluctance hasn’t always stopped me, but it has often enough.

The last time that reluctance came into the picture for me was several months ago when I wrote a column about the controversy over the prayer policy at Spartanburg County Council meetings. I don’t disagree with anything I wrote in that piece, but it’s not the piece I should’ve written. In fact, it’s not the piece I really wanted to write. That piece was safe, predictable, and far too easy. I attacked the county policy and the SH-J editorial about it because those were easy targets. County government is dominated by conservative extremists, and the Spartanburg Herald-Journal’s editorial page wouldn’t be less relevant to the local progressive movement in Spartanburg if it didn’t exist at all. I’m not saying that there aren’t times to challenge the county or the SH-J’s editorial staff, but on that particular day I was challenging them out of laziness, and out of a reluctance to take on a city council which often looks so much more reasonable than its counterpart in the county.

What prompted me to revisit the issue was the recent news about Woodruff City Council’s newly enacted prayer policy. It’s wrong for all the reason’s Spartanburg County’s policy is wrong, and though the SH-J predictably went out of their way to praise it, I’m not here to repeat old mistakes. I’m here to talk about the chance the city now has to do the right thing by ending the invocation given at the beginning of each council meeting and instituting a moment of silence to replace it.

After reading about Woodruff’s new policy last week, I contacted Spartanburg City Staff to ask about the city’s invocation policy. It turns out that the city has no written policy when it comes to prayer. What they do have is an unwritten policy dramatically similar to the policy passed last week in Woodruff.

The policy—such as it is—sets up a rotation of local congregations in the city. Staff rotates among various faiths and denominations ensuring that a variety of the city’s religious faiths are represented. Clergy members who volunteer are given the next available meeting slot unless that particular faith has been represented at a recent meeting. Council and staff do not review the invocation beforehand, and neither has any roll in shaping the content. Aside from the fact that the City of Spartanburg has their invocation represented as an agenda item while the new Woodruff policy takes it out of theirs, the policies are practically identical.

I’ve been to almost every city council meeting held in the past year, and I remember hearing more than my fair share of overtly sectarian invocations. Proving once and for all that I am not a journalist, I didn’t really bother to keep track. Fortunately, either Steve or I have filmed about fifteen council meetings going back to November of last year. We didn’t catch the invocation in some of our videos, but of the ones we did, seven had blatant references to a specific Christian deity. Several others stepped mighty close.

I thought for a while about what to make of all this. What does it say that the policies in both Spartanburg County and Woodruff both have people from those communities speaking out against them, but city progressives routinely attend council meetings without making so much as a peep about the same de facto policy being in place there? The city is filled with people who understand the importance of keeping our religious faith separate from our government, but none of them have spoken out. There’s a time set aside for public comment just begging for someone to step up, but no one has. Why?

I could ask the same of myself. I’m not a city resident anymore (though believe me that’s going to change as soon as possible), but I attended several months of city council meetings when I was a resident. For whatever reason though, I said nothing. Why?

I could lean on some journalistic impartiality argument here if I wanted to I suppose. Technically, I was there to cover city council, not to participate. Still, that argument seems a little weak to me. I don’t know exactly why I never said anything, but I think it’s probably got something to do with that whole “picking your battles” thing I wrote about earlier. Whether consciously or unconsciously I decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle. It’s why I didn’t speak out, and it’s why I didn’t write about it before. I was wrong on both counts. Making sure that the public bodies we elect to represent all of us actually do represent all of us is always worth the hassle.

The city policy pulls from local congregations in an attempt to be inclusive, but the truth is that inclusiveness isn’t the problem. The problem is that group prayer has no place in our public institutions. No prayer can be inclusive enough, because there are a great many of us who don’t believe in prayer at all. The people we elect to our public office obviously have their own beliefs, and of course those beliefs will guide their decisions. But the office they hold doesn’t belong to them; it belongs to all of us equally no matter what our religious beliefs are. The offices they hold, and the institutions they are a part of must not show favoritism towards any particular religion, or towards religion in general over non-religion.

Invoking the guidance of a deity that many of Spartanburg’s citizens don’t even believe exists is a slap in the face to those citizens. It says quite literally that their non-belief doesn’t matter, that it is somehow inferior to the beliefs of the religious. A simple moment of silence allowing those who are religious to pray privately according to their faith while respecting the rights of the non-religious to not be subjected to a public prayer at the opening their city’s council meeting would solve all of these problems. So, why haven’t any of us asked for that policy?

I don’t know the answer to that, but when I see people challenging the invocation policies of areas far more conservative than the City of Spartanburg, I’m bothered by it. They face much greater opposition, and have much less support than such a group in the city likely would, and yet they don’t seem afraid to stand up for what’s right. The city’s progressives could learn a lesson from that. Sometimes when we’re busy picking our battles, things slide by that deserve to be fought for.

Christopher George and Daniel Hagerman outside the Hub City Bookshop.

Podcast produced by Steve Shanafelt. This week’s music is “He Did” by Coolzey (via Free Music Archive).

I. Invocation

II. Pledge of Allegiance

III. Approval of Minutes of the July 26, 2010 City Council Meeting

IV. Approval of Agenda of the August 9, 2010 City Council Meeting

V. Public Comment
*Citizen Appearance forms are available at the door and should be submitted to the City Clerk

VI. Public Hearings

A. Resolution in Support of The Issuance by the South Carolina Jobs-Economic
Development Authority of its Economic Development Revenue Bonds (Wofford
College Project) Series 2010, Pursuant to the Provisions of Title41, Chapter 43, of
the Code of Laws of South Carolina 1976, as Amended, in the Aggregate
Principal Amount of Not Exceeding $30,000,000
Presenter: Robert Keasler, Senior VP Operations and Finance, Wofford College

B. Ordinance to Amend the City of Spartanburg, South Carolina Zoning Ordinance,
by Amending Section 206, Changes to District Boundaries, Specifically Parcel 7-
12-08-107.00, Located on 571 East Main Street, Which is Split Zoned B-3 with a
Land Use Designation of General Business District and R-8 with a Land Use
Designation of General Residential District to Zone LOD with a Land Use
Designation of Limited Office District; However, the R-8 with a Land Use
Designation of General Residential District is Not Being Considered for
Rezoning; and Providing for Severability and an Effective Date. James Batchler
and Terry Smith, Owners (First Reading)
Presenters: Stephanie Monroe, Planning Director
Kevin Tolloty, Senior Planner

C. Ordinance to Amend the Text of Section 501, General Regulations, Subsection
501.10, Performance Standards by Amending Section (A) Noise, and Adding (D)
Exemption: The Following Noise Shall be Exempt from the Prohibitions of
Section (A), Above Even When They Cause a Disturbance: Noise Resulting from
School or University Marching Bands, or Marching Band Practices or Marching
Band Competition Provided They are Prohibited After 8:30 p.m. until 8:30 a.m.
(First Reading)
Presenter: Stephanie Monroe, Planning Director

VII. Other Business

A. Update on Downtown Memorial Airport Project – Award of Contract for
Terminal Renovation
Presenter: David Cook, Construction Project Manager
Cullen Pitts, McMillan Pazden Smith Architects

B. Boards and Commissions – Construction Board and Zoning Board
Presenter: Connie McIntyre, City Clerk

C. Biz Camp Recognition
Introduction: Mitch Kennedy, Community Services Director

D. Presentation by Wofford College Institute for Professional Development –
Consulting Project on Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport
Introduction: Chris Story, Assistant City Manager

VIII. City Council Updates

IX. Adjournment

I will go on record first that I believe that abortions should be extremely rare, and that it makes for a very poor method of birth control. The procedure is the most invasive of all methods of birth control, more expensive, offers higher risks for complications, and approaches handling unwanted pregnancies as a reaction, not a prevention matter. To me in a perfect world, all pregnancies would be welcomed, all children would be cherished, all parents willing and able to care for their children. But we don’t live in a perfect world, and the matter of what to do with a pregnancy or a baby that is not welcomed has been a problem for millennium.

I am a person who believes that all life is precious while also believing that all people should be able to make choices, when it came to their bodies, even if they were harmful, knowing that consequences good or bad are always in the mix. I, being more on the side of being pro-life would like to see abortions greatly reduced, or deemed unnecessary. So I can understand others, who are even more pro-life minded then me, when they want to find solutions to ending abortion, even if I have issues with their reasonings. Lane Filler’s op-ed piece attempts to suggest wonderful solutions to this problem. The solutions in the op-ed piece, to me, take a good bit of the matter of human rights and choice right out of the equation. So what are these solutions and what are its problems?

The first two solutions demands that all women of child bearing age be on birth control, or sign a waiver that they desire to become pregnant, and so give up their rights to abortion. It seeks to force insurance companies to supply birth control, or to enact private sector groups to supply birth control. It makes small allowances for women who find themselves on birth control yet pregnant anyway, and for cases of rape or medical emergency.

The next set deals with minors. Parents must put their daughters on birth control. If they opt not to place them thus, they too must sign a waiver. If their daughter becomes pregnant, then they must agree to raise that child themselves. Minors are forbidden from raising their own children. If a minor opts to adopt their own child from the child’s grandparents, once they are old enough, then they must go through a legal process as if it was not their birth child.

There is a short disclaimer admitting that these solutions offer nothing in regards to other contributors to the pregnancies, the fathers. It is instead stated that there is now no forms of contraceptives that works on males as well as they do females. The piece also assumes that adoption will become lucrative as there will be even less babies available to adopt.

After reading these options I have to ask the following questions.

What happens when one’s religion prevents a woman from using contraceptives? When is the right age to give a young teenage girl her first IUD? Why is it assumed that just because someone is under the age of 18, that they are incapable of being a wonderful parent? What happens when a young teenager finds herself pregnant and her parents abandon her because they don’t want to take on the responsibility of another mouth to feed? What are the consequences of such a scenario? What right do we have to demand what is in essence the mass sterilization, albeit temporary, of half of the nation’s population? Who right now doesn’t think that adoption isn’t already a very expensive, often lucrative process? Who isn’t worried that the problem of selling babies could very well skyrocket under this system?

Then there is this. Why do the males in this equation get yet another bye? Why can’t instead of forcing girls to take the pill or insert an IUD, demand that all males of reproductive age undergo a simple reversible vasectomy? Why can’t it be insisted that both people who started a pregnancy be made responsible, and that the male partner be held just as accountable as the female, and that enforcement of that accountability be held? That way it would at least help ensure that the mother would get at least financial support from the other parent in this deal. Girls are starting their periods these days as early as 10 years old. So do we start contraceptives then? And is it to be assumed that most girls from ages ten to 18 are sexually active?

Lane Filler’s disclaimer regarding the male role in all this states. “This plan has the flaw of sexism because it puts the responsibility on females and the parents of females, but that’s where science and history have taken us. We’ve never developed medical male contraception and mothers and their families have traditionally been stuck with the majority of the responsibility when children birth children. We’ll give this plan a few years to work, then address that.” In other words, guys have been off the hook forever. It says “Obviously this works just fine for us guys, so we’ll just keep it that way, until we think of something better, some day, maybe. Sorry, ladies.”

Forcing contraceptives on women and girls is not going to work. It is an Orwellian idea, it infringes on personal rights and is completely prejudiced in whom it targets. It would also not end abortions, but drive them back underground where they were between 1900, when nearly all abortions were outlawed to 1973 when the Roe vs. Wade decision was handed down. It is also notable that the Roe vs. Wade decision took the abortion restrictions back to similar standards that were enacted in 1830, when our seventh president was in office. To save you a google search, it was Andrew Jackson. While you are Googling, look up the Comstock law which was enacted in 1873, and finally overturned in 1938.

What will help reduce abortions in our nation is a combination of several things. Education is of course primary. Education should exist to teach females and males principles on proper respect and preparation when it comes to sex within relationships, and of the responsibilities one faces when engaging in behavior that has certain risks, some of them long term. Another would be to make contraceptives more affordable, requiring insurance companies to cover it. In that Mr. Filler did have a good idea, and the only one I found worthwhile, although I utterly disagreed with the setting. Many states don’t require insurance companies to cover things like the birth control pill, and those pills without prescription coverage are quite expensive. We could ask that insurance companies don’t require women to buy a rider for pregnancy coverage as some have to do. Purchasing coverage after discovering one is pregnant can be impossible, depending on where one lives and the coverage available.

The last requires a change of attitude when it comes to the matter of abortion itself. We don’t have to like abortion, but we certainly could use more compassion, trying to understand what a woman goes through, emotionally to come to the point to arranging for an abortion. We could stop treating women who get abortions and the people who perform them as immoral and unethical people worthy of only our hatred and scorn. We can work to find common ground between those who treat all life as sacred from conception, and those who believe that all people should be in control their bodies, recognizing that both extremes have merit, but that the answer lies in neither extreme. We can also use that common ground to help educate people about sound sexual health practices, and that there are really good solutions to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and the even more undesired and highly more dangerous, sexually related diseases that are still very much a risk in this modern age.

I completely understand that opinion pieces are just that, a person’s opinion on a certain topic. There may be some that completely agree with Lane Filler’s piece and the suggestions that he offered, but I suspect that there are quite a few of us, like myself, who find themselves insulted at the world he proposes; a world were choices and rights are removed from a large segment of the population in order to prevent something that occurs amongst a very small minority of that population segment; a world where accountability and consequences are placed upon a only half of those actually responsible for the issue while giving the other half no accountability at all; and a world conceived by someone who has no idea what it is like to find oneself unexpectedly with child, and therefore seems to have little compassion for those who may find themselves thus. But then, that’s just my opinion.

For a better understanding at the numbers of how things break down population wise when it comes to women, pregnancy, and abortion. I made this handy little fact sheet.
Women’s health document (Word file)

It was so difficult in fact that by Friday, I still had no idea what this week’s post would be about. That’s not to say that I didn’t have some ideas, but for one reason or another, none of them were clicking with me. On Friday afternoon though, I read an excellent blog post over on the Marry Black Foundation’s website called “Questioning Local Narratives.” For those of you who may not be aware, the Mary Black Foundation is a locally based grantmaking organization that focuses on active living and early childhood development as its two primary funding areas. The post in question was written by the organization’s President, Phillip Belcher, and though I had no intention of writing about the post when I first read it, a suggestion from a friend made me reconsider.

I should say first that personally, I think the Mary Black Foundation’s blog may just be the best-kept secret in Spartanburg. Most of the group’s staff posts on the blog, and the pieces there never disappoint. They’re always thought provoking and challenging, asking questions that many people in our community either don’t think to ask or don’t care to ask. As great as most of those posts are, Phillip Belcher’s post on Friday was exceptional.

Belcher’s post, as its title plainly states, was about questioning the assumptions that lead us to construct the story templates that guide and inform most of our ideas and ideals. It’s a bit esoteric I know, but it’s a very important subject to consider. What are the dominant narratives in our community? How are they different from reality? Did those narratives originate within the community, or did they come from some outside influence?

I’m afraid I’m ill equipped to answer those questions in any meaningful way. I’m just a blogger with some rather tenuous connections to the local progressive movement. I’m also not a particularly scholarly person, and I have no relevant formal education to help me answer those questions. The idea that I could even attempt to approach those questions with some sense of academic detachment is laughable. It’s important to know one’s limitations, and providing dispassionate analyses on important community issues is definitely one of mine. Normally that’s not something I’d consider a problem, but deconstructing a community narrative is delicate enough without having to worry that you might be tempted to replace that narrative with one you prefer. In reality, the whole thing is probably better left to people like Phillip Belcher, people much smarter than me.

Still, I do hear certain stories that I don’t think many other people here, at least not many of the people who read this blog.

Most of those stories come from the other working class people I’ve spoken to and gotten to know over the years. I’m reluctant to talk about those stories most of the time, because it’s very difficult to do so without turning the whole thing into an excuse to be patronizing. It’s too easy to slip into an ideology that sees the lower socio-economic classes as a problem that needs fixing, as a group of people to be lifted up magically by the benevolent aristocracy and their sense of noblesse oblige. It’s easy to see it all in economic terms, leaving out the more sticky issues surrounding the whole culture of powerlessness.

With that caveat, let’s talk about my ideas about that underclass narrative a little.

The most prominent emotion out there that I’ve encountered among others in my undereducated, working class world is anger, unfocused anger to be more precise.

Most people that I’ve talked to over the years are either apathetic about our community’s power structure and their place in it, or they’ve bought into the popular conservative narrative about the evils of “big government.” Despite the popular opinion that many people out there among the teeming masses are obsessed with the “big guy vs. little guy” narrative, most of the people I’ve encountered have almost no animosity towards our community’s “big guys.” They’re too busy blaming “big government,” gays, illegal immigrants, and whoever else the GOP has told them to be angry at that week. As much as it pains me personally to write this, even after they’d lost their jobs many of my fellow workers were reluctant to assign any blame at all to the powerful economic interests that had created the collapse responsible for their situation.

I don’t want to imply that most of the working class people are Glenn Beck-worshiping ideologues, far from it in fact. Most fell into that apathetic category I mentioned first. With good reason, many don’t see themselves as important. For a generation now they’ve treaded economic water, wondering how their parents and grandparents were able to make it on one income while they barely scrape by on two. With more than a little statistical evidence to back it up, they see correlations between the extravagant lives of the powerful and their own inability to get ahead. And when the times get tough, they wonder why the lowest people on the company totem are always the most expendable. Among a great many, there is a leveling instinct that would scare the bejesus out of our more economically prosperous citizens if it wasn’t covered over with the crushing weight of powerlessness and hopelessness.

Many working class people are naturally suspicious of anyone who claims to be fighting in their best interest, having heard it all before. They worry very much about their children’s future, and believe wholeheartedly in the importance of a college education, though they fear, with good reason, that they and their children won’t be able to afford it. They’re more class aware than they get credit for, but they’re more apt to see the way up the ladder in individual terms rather than in communal terms. If I had to guess, I’d say that comes mostly from never actually seeing any evidence that the larger group could improve things by banding together. Also, when you get down to it, it’s easier and safer to keep your head down, tell your kids to get good grades in school, and hope for the best.

Then there’s the other group, the ones who’ve bought into the “big government is the problem” story. Rather than go through and point out why I think that story is wrong—thereby inserting my own narrative into a place where it ought not be—it might be better to just talk a bit about why I think that story has such wide acceptance among the working classes.

The biggest reason I can come up with is that however inaccurate the conservative story is, it is a story written specifically for and sold specifically to the working class. Say whatever you will about conservatives, but at least they actually attempt to talk to working class people. Many progressives simply talk about them. This blog post is a perfect example of that actually.

Working class people are people just like anybody else, and people like being able to compartmentalize things. Nothing scratches that itch quite like a good narrative. Modern conservatism provides a simplistic explanation for why the average working class person can’t get ahead in the world. It gives a misguided outlet to an anger that is totally legitimate. It provides the focus for ire that so many downtrodden people need. Things are not fair. Blame must be assigned for this unfairness. Modern conservatism provides a steady stream of different people and things for the angry to blame. It’s a political strategy as old as politics, and as long as it keeps working, we can expect to keep seeing it.

The good news is, I think a competing working class narrative—one based more on facts than on apathy or demagoguery—is definitely possible. But I’m inclined to believe that such a narrative would find more fertile ground to grow among the apathetic rather than among those who’ve already bought into the conservative line. When I’ve talked to people individually about their ideas, I’ve found all sorts of interesting things to build on. In most cases, people are stunningly diverse in their views. Depending on the person and the subject, I’ve heard some conservative views, some liberal ones, and some that were downright radical. Convincing working class people that their views matter is another thing entirely.

From what I can tell that sort of thing has to happen at an individual or very small group level. Encouraging Spartanburg’s working class people to seize control of their own narrative isn’t impossible, but it would be agonizingly slow. Changing a culturally cemented mindset centered almost entirely on apathy and hopelessness is probably the work of a lifetime, if not several lifetimes. Does that make it not worth doing? Hell no!

Of course there I go trying to make my story the only one that matters. I’m just as guilty as anyone of trying to establish my own story as the dominant one, and there’s no reason for you to believe that my narrative is any more valid than anyone else’s. I’m just a guy with a blog, and my story is limited by my experience and worldview. I’m just looking at the big picture through my keyhole like everyone else.

That’s why I think this conversation Phillip Belcher’s post is attempting to start is so important. We’ve all encountered these sorts of community-defining narratives before, and it’s important that we share them with each other. Only in sharing those narratives can we see where our community is, and where it’s headed. Everyone breaks down the complex realities around us into these sorts of manageable bites. That’s what makes our daily lives possible in many ways. It’s important to challenge the validity of that process though, to see if we might have missed something deeper in our rush to oversimplify. It’s only after we’ve examined those tendencies that we can really start to move in a new direction, and as far as I can tell, moving is what it’s all about.

Each week here at the Spark, we pose a simple question to our readers: What are you doing this weekend?

Nothing fancy, and there’s no right answer. The idea is to crowd-source some of the more interesting events taking place this weekend so that we can collectively share ideas and things to do in a town where many people still erroneously claim “There is nothing to do.”

And because I’m writing this, it’s my duty to go first. Which is lucky for you, because I tend to set the bar fairly low.

Let's explore the weekend, what say you?

Thursday: Not much. Dinner at Monsoon, maybe Music On Main if it doesn’t rain, and then home for a nice DVD of some kind.

Friday: Work. Then, maybe something else exciting and out of doors. Or maybe a random show at a random downtown venue. More realistically, however, I’ll be reading a nice book and trying to justify turning on the AC.

Saturday: The Hub City Farmers Market, which I haven’t been to in a few weeks. Then to the downtown Library for a reading by Elizabeth Berg, a writer I’ve never heard of and whose work I’m completely ignorant of. Should be interesting, to say the least. Almost certainly I’ll be looking for something interesting to do Saturday night, and I’m very much open to suggestions.

Sunday: Nada. And I’m not finding what I’d call a flood of local events taking place, so I might just head over to the nearest cinema for a film of some kind.

See what I mean? Dullsville, man, population me. Surely you can do better.

So, let’s hear it!

Fare thee well, HubCityHeadlines.com!

Granted, no one used it. The analytics reports were, from the very start, firmly on the pathetic side of the scale. Then again, in an era of web browsers that act as RSS readers, Google homepages that aggregate news and many, many other options, it really wasn’t needed, or even particularly useful. In fact, I didn’t even use it.

Which is why I’ve decided it’s time to kill off HubCityHeadlines.com, which I pulled from the internet this morning. There are perhaps a dozen Spark-related sub-projects — some well-known, some esoteric and obscure — and it’s high time for some of them to go gracefully into the digital ether.

Do I think a local news and content aggregation site could work? Definitely. In fact, combined with some kind of original content and social networking functions, I think it could be a meaningful addition to the online community. But it would need to be a project a bit less half-assed and neglected than our experimental and long-neglected HubCityHeadlines.com.

Sugar 'n Spice Drive-In

The crux of any quest is your expectation for victory. As an adventurer on this quest for the Holy Hamburger from Spartanburg, I expect to find something delicious in any place we stop to eat. I expect that each drive-in or restaurant will contain the mystical elements necessary to put together the best hamburger. To be succinct, I expect greatness. But all quests also have another key feature: defied expectations. Consider the classics. Odysseus expects to arrive home shortly with the help of Athena, but eventually arrives on Calypso’s island instead of Ithaca and spends seven years there. Even Luke Skywalker thought Yoda would be some awesome warrior and not a little wispy-haired looking booger. Thus, I also thought that the Sugar ‘n Spice Drive-In would provide a great lunch, but my lofty expectations were defied by a sub-par meal. Let’s talk about it.

The Sugar ‘n Spice Drive-In has been a fixture in Spartanburg since the early 60s when Greek immigrant George Harakas decided to set up another diner in town. The menu has changed only slightly over the years with forays made into serving different kinds of fish and chicken, but the drive-in’s mainstay has always been its hamburgers. The undulating metal roof in the parking lot is hard to miss from Pine or Henry streets, providing only a glimpse into the eclectic decoration contained within. The inside of the restaurant contains a bizarre mix of college pennants, glossy photos of Greece, and buck heads strewn on the walls with cobwebs forming between their antlers. It’s very odd, but it definitely provides some much needed character for a place where the food has nearly none.

Grilled Cheese

We started lunch with a grilled cheese plate done a-plenty (which translates to a heaping pile of fries and onion rings similar in style to the Beacon Drive-In) with coleslaw on the side. The sandwich itself was good. There was enough cheese, but not too much to make it greasy and sloppy, and the bread wasn’t burnt or soggy. The bread was similar to Texas Toast, but not as buttery. We then approached a problem that would persist throughout the other dishes we sampled: the onion rings and coleslaw were not what we expected. Instead of crisp rings of onion a la the Nu-Way or Papa Sam’s, Sugar ‘n Spice serves onion rings that are little more than strings or ropes of partially breaded onion. I’ll tell you right out that this is not the onion ring I prefer. They’re messy and don’t contain the crisp crunch that I expect from an onion ring. Our other problem was the coleslaw. The slaw we tasted was bland and flavorless, much like I imagine it is like to eat wet, shredded cardboard. Now I don’t know if this was an “off day” for the slaw (let me know), but it literally tasted like nothing. But don’t worry; the fries at Sugar ‘n Spice are good, crunchy crinkle-cut fries that were satisfying though the rest of our side dishes were not. Alas, only minutes into the meal, our expectations of greatness were being crushed.

Souvlaki

For our non-burger item this week, we chose one of the Greek items on the menu: the small souvlaki plate. The souvlaki plate included a kebob of grilled, peppery meat and grilled onions with a slice of buttery toast, a heap of onion rings and fries, and a side of coleslaw, a lot to eat. Upon sampling the meat, we noticed that it might have been on the grill too long. The meat was tough and chewy and very peppery. It definitely needed some kind of sauce to go with it. The food itself wasn’t that bad, but at $8.95 it’s a bad meal for the price.

But, how did the burgers hold up?

For our hamburger course, we tried a simple cheeseburger and a Jumbo Cheeseburger. The plain cheeseburger included shredded lettuce, lots of pickles, and mustard. The pre-made hamburger patty was very flat and included little added flavor. We decided that the pickles actually added more flavor than the burger. My adventuring companion stated that it was too similar to a 99-cent Wendy’s burger, which raised an important question. What keeps us from just going to a national fast food chain for a hamburger? Shouldn’t these local restaurants provide something special in order to compete? My companion did not find that special “something” in this burger. The Jumbo Cheeseburger fared a little better in my mind.

Cheesburger

So, like any adventuring hero, I asked myself “What went wrong?” The answers were numerous and unsatisfying. Sugar ‘n Spice provides large portion sizes for each plate with a heap of rings and fries (if you want both), and a healthy dollop of coleslaw to attend the filling burgers. Sadly, there are just not enough unique tastes contained in these large plates to make the meal ultimately satisfying on its own. I could see myself coming back to Sugar ‘n Spice if I craved a number of small cheeseburgers, as they would definitely fill up my stomach, but I wouldn’t see myself coming back to sit down and enjoy a plate. There are other places in town that give you more value for your buck.

Jumbo Cheeseburger

Spartanburg City Council for July 26, 2010 from SpartanburgSpark on Vimeo.

Any parent who has spent time in an emergency room, or spent hours and days on uncomfortable recliners while your child is sick and in pain understands the difficulty of it. You wish you could trade places with them, praying that they feel better now. You feel completely helpless having to trust others help that child you love get better, knowing you can’t do a thing other then be there, and help in small ways. You push aside the worst case scenarios in your mind, knowing they would just frighten you and that person in the bed, hooked up to a saline drip.

I have had to do that scary trip to the hospital several times with my kids and three times now, one has had to be hospitalized briefly, for an illness requiring surgery. It doesn’t matter if it is a concussion, a broken bone or a bad appendix, it has been “take care of the emergency situation first, deal with the emotional aspect later”, when I found myself making that trip one of my kids.

This last time took me by surprise, but I was glad that Megan asked me to accompany her to the doctor for the follow up visit that landed her in the hospital. Her primary care physician, the surgeon, and every single nurse and technician did all they could to get Megan’s condition dealt with and home as soon as possible. Her nurses were kind and compassionate and willing to help when needed, although on a few things she preferred my assistance. Her stay, although not how we would have preferred to spend three days was a comfortable as they could make it, and I am personally very grateful for all they did. She is as well.

Medicine is not an easy occupation, nor is it an exact science. People in the field often work long hours assisting people in less then good moods or long patience. They often see us at our physical worst, and sometimes at far less then our emotional best, yet they usually have the ability to look past our moods and look at what ails us, then either instruct us on what to do next, or take more hands on approaches to help us get better. Often those approaches, hurt, a lot, but the short term pain is worth the long term results.

I know I can’t do what these men and women do every single day. I don’t have the patience or skills to diagnose and treat diseases and illnesses. I don’t have the internal fortitude to look at body parts gone awry, or the things that we are capable of emitting from those unhealthy parts. They also have to wade through oceans of paperwork to keep records of patient cases, and to ensure that they are paid for their services via the various insurances available to us.

It is a comfort to know that we have these dedicated people willing to help us when a member of our family becomes injured and ill. We depend on the aid of our medical professionals from paramedics to surgeons, nurses to laboratory technicians, physical therapists to orthodontists, and all others in this valued field. This parent thanks you for what you do for all of us.

The agencies are moving from their current location in the Evans building to make way for the new downtown campus for Spartanburg Community College. The proposal, which was approved by county council at last Monday’s meeting, moves the agencies to an abandoned grocery store on Chesnee Highway north of the city. The plan will cost the county $13.1 million over the next 20 years, while an alternate location in the Business Technology Center downtown would’ve cost $13.8 million, an average difference of $35,000 per year.

That sounds like a lot to most of us I’m sure. To put it in perspective though, consider that Spartanburg County’s Operating Budget expenditures for fiscal year 2010-2011 total $151,216,689 (click here for the PDF). To call the price difference between the two proposed relocation sites a drop in the county’s proverbial bucket is to insult both buckets and drops in equal measure. The difference is insignificant, especially when you consider the benefit of having those offices centrally located.

Moving the Department of Social Services office outside the city is particularly troubling. Many of the people DSS serves are from poor neighborhoods in the city, and though the new location is near a public bus route, it’s nowhere near as conveniently located as it could be. According to county DSS Director Steve Strom, the location also puts a strain on the agency by placing it further away from the agencies with which DSS routinely works, like Social Security, the courthouse, and the Spartanburg Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission.

So, knowing all that, why would county council choose to move DSS to an area that makes it harder for the agency to do its job when the difference needed to keep them in the area was so small?

I don’t have that answer for sure, but my hunch is that it’s a combination of different things. Firstly, moving those government agencies to a depressed area, like the area on Chesnee Highway, makes sense if your goal is to shove government services, and the mostly poor people who use them, to the cheapest possible place regardless of the effect it may have on that agency’s efficiency. To put it another way, county council doesn’t care if they inconvenience poor people.

It’s also true that most businesses don’t want those agencies, and the poor people who frequent them, around. It’s likely true that a fair number of folks downtown are breathing a sigh of relief that DSS isn’t moving to Church Street. Keeping the poor confined to “their part of town” is just sound urban planning. Is that whole idea a tad bit dehumanizing to the poor? Sure it is! But who cares? Those poor schlubs can’t afford to buy anything at the fancy downtown stores, and they drive away the shoppers who can.

The underprivileged groups in our community are easy to forget about, and their issues always seem to come down to plain dollars and cents with little regard for what’s right or wrong. They’re always the first sacrifice on the alter of fiscal responsibility, and this move by county council is a small, but meaningful example of that.

Will this move be anything more than a minor inconvenience to the people who depend on DSS? I have no idea. The whole move could turn out to be of very little consequence, if any at all, but I believe that it says a lot about what priority we place on the services that agency provides to our community. It says to me that Spartanburg County Council would just as soon sweep those people and their concerns under the rug when there’s a little money to be saved by doing so. That sort of thinking bothers me very much, and the fact that the move was passed without any objection from the community says some things about all of us that I’d rather not think about.