| Photo courtesy of Bassett Historical Center The creation of the Philpott Dam in the ’50s, a $13 million project that finally kept the Smith River silt out of factory workers’ homes. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks.”Ī rare light moment during the storied 1937 flood that put a hurt on Bassett, Va. I believe Will Durant nailed it when he defined civilization as a stream with banks: “The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues.

I love Anne Lamott’s advice about writing shitty first drafts, and keeping it real, and, above all, if you really want to see your name in print, stop whining and start writing.

I believe what Annie Dillard said when she wrote that: “You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.” I’ve witnessed birth and death and joy and suffering, and there’s pretty much nothing I’d rather do than talk to strangers and then tell other strangers what I’ve witnessed and heard and felt. I’ve eaten ceviche in Sauta, Mexico hung out in trap houses and nursing homes plunked myself on a tenement floor to get a battered African refugee to look me in the eye. Somali Bantu farmers I met when they landed in America in 2003, then re-interviewed eight years later when they began farming again in Virginia.

Author beth macy