survival road

So I got this awesome piece of art in the mail from Donna Ferrato. She and i came to Missouri together back in, I think, 2001, to do a story about my newspaper pal, lone voice in the Ozarks, Frank Martin, going up against white supremacists/militia/Christian patriots/the Klan etc.  It was published in George magazine, a publication that perished shortly after its founder, JFK Jr., did.

 

Since then, I bought an old gas station and settled into the Ozarks. I am still in touch with some of the white supremacist conspiracy theorists, though one was so maddened by the article that he refused to speak with me for years. We like each other, despite the fact that we utterly disagree about almost everything. Donna, a fighter and raging progressive, and I argue about whether it is even possible to have contact with people with such views. She says that I am weak, and I need to cut such people out of my life.

But I am a professional listener. If I cut people I disagree with out of my life, who would be left? I am trying to braid together all the strands of my life, from childhood in the Ozarks to journalism in New York City to family life in Block Island. All the places and people I have loved. And one of them is Donna, who, struggling to understand me for the past 20-odd years, as I have her, appears to have succeeded.