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No More Good-byes

/ Darlene Franklin-Campbell / 2 Comments
Photo by Viktor Lundberg on Pexels.com

People are always asking me, “How do you say good-bye in Cherokee?” or “How do you say good-bye in Tla Wilano?”

Here’s the thing.

In many/most Indigenous American cultures there is no concept of “good-bye,” not a temporary one and certainly not a long-term or permanent one.

Good-bye carries the notion that you will not be seeing that person again. In a culture where there is no concept of a permanent departure, there can be no good-byes. There is only, “until we meet again” and “and so,” which is an internally understood concept of continuation.

Imagine you are going on a trip. You make plans. You choose a vehicle, either you rent one, borrow one, or buy one. You choose the vehicle in which you will travel based on the kind of trip you’re taking. You certainly wouldn’t choose a mini-van to cross the ocean or a boat to travel over land!

Your journey begins the moment you get into your vehicle and it ends the moment you get out. However, when you exit the vehicle, YOU do not end. You do not cease to be. You continue to exist outside the vehicle. You’ve reached your destination. You are in some other place and your vehicle stays parked where you left it until some outside force moves it.

Now, think of our lives on earth as vehicles on a road. Think of our bodies as our vehicles. We are each driving our own custom-made vehicle that will only operate for its precise owner. You cannot drive another person’s vehicle and they cannot drive yours! Our vehicles come in all colors, shades, shapes, sizes, makes and models. These vehicles are not really us, but mere descriptors of us, just as our skin color, gender, size, etc., are NOT WHO WE ARE but merely descriptors of our vehicles.

We exist before we ever get in our vehicles and we exist after we get out of them!

It is only in this life that we have a beginning and an ending. Life within the confinements of time and physical space is a journey along the way in our never-ending existence and in order to travel through this life, we need a vehicle–a physical body through which we can interact with the physical world. So, we are spiritual beings traveling through a physical dimension. There’s an old gospel song that says, “This world is not my home, I’m only passing through….” How true that is! We stay here until our spirits are ready to leave, then we go home. Even when our minds compel us to stay, our spirits know when it’s time to go.

Here, there is a beginning and ending of the physical, because we are on a journey. We are spirit beings and even when we leave our earth-traveling vehicles or houses, we are not gone. We just get out of the car. We transcend. We are still very much here and very much alive.

Recently, I’ve seen several friends depart from this world and several more who almost departed and it just keeps coming to me that they are not gone, they have merely parked their cars and gotten out because they reached their destination–home, a place where only spirit travelers can go, a place where you have to park your car before you can enter.

Looking for Pork Chop McQuade

/ Darlene Franklin-Campbell / 2 Comments

Straddled with a ridiculous name that has caused her a lifetime of grief, Cupcake McQuade has spent her whole life taking care of other people. In fact, she has been so concerned about others that she doesn’t really know who she is, but she knows one thing–she loves Bob “Pork Chop” McQuade, a conspiracy theorist whose life is going nowhere. Despite the fact that Bob is disliked by—everybody. Cupcake has always seen the “good” in him, even condoning his eccentricities and supporting his devotion to a group of conspiracy theorists, but when Bob becomes a missing person, she fears his conspiracies may be true and reluctantly accepts help from guilt-laden Sheriff Daniel Ransom. When the two of them take to the trail to discover Bob’s fate, they discover truths they’re not prepared to accept.

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Dreams of a County Poet

/ Darlene Franklin-Campbell / Leave a comment

No dream comes true and thrives unless someone is willing to support it. My friend, Jeanne Lane​ [kinship to the poet, Robert Penn Warren] and her daughter, Dawn Osborne, have had a dream for many years, to keep the oldest country store in America operational. Located in Gravel Switch, Kentucky, in the heart of Kentucky’s Knobs region, at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, is Penn’s Store. It’s a tiny building that sits on the corners of three counties with history dating back to before the 1850s.

101_6754Jeanne Penn Lane, speaking with a guest author.

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Dawn Osborne, Performing.

Jeanne and Dawn haven’t tried to keep the store open to make a profit. No, their desire was to keep something of heritage and tradition and family alive. Jeanne Penn Lane is a true historian, a curator of what made central Kentucky special and unique, a preserver of culture. But she is so much more. Jeanne and Dawn have always had a passion for the arts and for Kentucky. As a part of that, they initiated the Kentucky Writers Day held there each spring, in hopes of giving Kentucky writers, artists and musicians a place to share their voices, to make connections and to remember.

Jeanne’s one desire has been to give something of beauty and value to her community. Kentucky has long been the birth place of world renown artists, novelists, poets, musicians and actors. Jeanne and Dawn want the world to know this, to understand the caliber of people that come out of these hills, hollers, swamps, tobacco patches, saw mills, corn fields, hayfields, coal mines and creek beds. Throughout the years, celebrities have trekked from all over the world to sit around the pot-bellied stove in Penn’s Store and share their music with a receptive audience, even before they shared it with record labels. Prize-winning authors have sat on her porch and eaten a famous “balony sandwich” while bouncing story ideas off each other. Even modern day celebrities have graced the aged porch of Penn’s Store. In 2009, Turtle Man answered the Call of the Wildman and showed up with his Team Turtle to enter the annual Great Outhouse Blowout, a fun event that Jeanne has hosted for years in order to bring in much needed funds in order to keep the store operational. It’s a time when vendors can come and set up and people of all ages from all over the world can watch the outhouses race for the Golden Throne Award.

308719_2170075930448_722707637_n Animal Planet’s Turtle Man and Yours Truly, goofing around.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_the_Wildman

If you don’t live in the state of Kentucky and you are passing through, unless you check out Penn’s Store, you’ve missed a part of what makes Kentucky culture unique. It’s not the kind of thing with buttons, bells, whistles and all kinds of hoop-la, no, it’s real Kentucky, both the way it was and the way it is. It’s a piece of American history that has survived into the New Millennium and it’s a good piece, a piece worth keeping.

101_6807Me, posing for a shot with the timeless poet, H.R. Stoneback, who has worked diligently to keep Kentucky Writer’s Day and Penn’s Store operational. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.R._Stoneback

However, keeping a dream alive isn’t free nor is it cheap. Jeanne’s dream is to give others a piece of heritage, a piece of culture, an outlet for the arts but she needs help. I’m posting a link to Penn’s Store’s website where you can find all of their contact information. Most people could donate a few dollars to the store and help Jeanne and Dawn continue to offer events and opportunities for artists, writers, musicians and actors without it ever making a huge dent, but many small gifts could be the difference in whether the dream continues to live or whether it becomes just another forgotten paragraph of American history. I can’t help but reference Audrey Hepburn who said, “People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.” In this case, the people are those who have come before us in our human family. By preserving this piece of the past and the this hub of community in the present, we preserve something for ourselves and our children. And, she did also say…things. But Penn’s Store is more than a thing. It’s a piece of “life.”

101_6799Sarah Elizabeth Burkey, and I, hanging out at Kentucky Writer’s Day. Sarah is the Assistant Director of Music for the Cherokee Historical Association.

Here’s the link:http://www.pennsstore.com/history/history.htm Help in any way you can. No effort is too small. Sponsor an event, send a gift, go visit the store, be a vendor…anything helps.

Jeanne and Dawn have no idea that I’m writing this article. It was my own idea, but I want people to realize that this precious little gem has been buried in the hills of Kentucky all these years, this little unselfish piece of living history and heritage that seeks to help artist, musicians, writers and actors build a foundation for future endeavors. Let’s not throw it out. Country stores have become a thing of the past in most places, but here is one, still operational, that has existed since the 1850s. That’s living history. I hope some of you who read this will contact Jeanne and Dawn today and become a part of it.

You can contact Jeanne or Dawn via the contact info on their website, on their facebook page Penn’s Store.

101_6752When a person visits Penn’s Store, he or she travels back in time and feels a connection, not only with yesteryears but also with the earth itself.