Being socially engaged with others is a key to good health and perhaps a longer life. We entertained very good friends recently and I spent several days inhabiting J. D. Vance’s head in his disturbing and engrossing memoir of growing up in Appalachia.
FRIENDS
As is certainly evident in Vance’s memoir (noted below), we don’t get to to choose our parents or our grandparents. Some of us are luckier than others. But, we are able to select our friends. One of the greatest pleasures of retirement is the gift of time and with that the opportunity to spend more time with good friends Last week our good friends, Mary and Joe, came for an overnight visit. We’ve known them probably twenty years and, although we hadn’t seen them since the end of last summer, we picked up where we left off and had an easy, delightful time. We’ve met and are acquainted with each other’s children and grandchildren and we share a common interest in good food, good books, and being by the water. Conversation flowed effortlessly, and we parted knowing more time together awaits us come summer.
FAMILY
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance
This is a remarkable book. Remarkable for its unflinching candor and remarkable for the story it tells. How J.D. Vance was able to escape from his family’s cycle of poverty, violence, and instability is amazing and riveting. He describes hillbilly culture: its mores, values, and attitudes, and both defends it and then holds it accountable for the ongoing problems experienced by this segment of society in Appalachia. What enabled him to succeed at all was the relative stability provided by his grandparents. They were strict and, to some of us, would come across as mean, but they loved him and, his grandmother in particular, instilled in him the value of education. Also key to his survival (and he was surviving rather than thriving) was the protection his older sister Lindsay offered. For a long time, they were a team, and Lindsay more the adult than his drug-addicted mother with her series of live-in boyfriends and, eventually, five husbands. 
Studies have demonstrated and Vance is evidence that constant disruption in childhood and daily exposure to loud arguments and violence leave scars that carry over into adulthood. Vance was not only socially and culturally out of step when he went to college, but he lacked the necessary skills for developing a loving, long-term relationship. He occasionally cites from the literature on poverty, but it offers few solutions. Ultimately, he believes the answer lies not with the government, but with hillbillies themselves re-evaluating their conduct and facing the fact that it is harmful to their children. His is a success story fueled by resentment and anger, but success none the less. He had advantages many children from Jackson, Kentucky and Middletown, Ohio do not.
Published in June 2016, Vance’s memoir has been singled out as describing individuals most likely to be Trump supporters; read with that in mind, it offers an up-close look at lives most of us have little familiarity with. The book jacket states that after law school, Vance became a principal at an investment firm in Silicon Valley and lived in San Francisco. I thought this was one of the unlikeliest milieus for him and was puzzled. My wonderment was partially answered by his op-ed piece in the March 16 New York Times in which he writes about deciding to move back to Ohio, but Columbus, not Middletown.
DIVIDED LOYALTIES
On the small screen, I just finished watching the five-part Netflix series, Rebellion. Set in Dublin, it focuses on the Easter Rising of 1916 and three women who are caught up in the Irish rebels’ fight against the British government. While these young women, a government employee, a doctor in training, and an activist, are all involved, two brothers are fighting on opposite sides while an upper class husband and wife have sharply different views on how they should participate or not. I found it totally engrossing and well done and hope that there will be a second season.
Notes: Header photo and coloring ©JW Farrington; downtown Middletown, Ohio from Pinterest.
