Carmen K. Sisson

In the end, Magnolia Springs did not need BP or Mr. Obama or the governor in Montgomery. It needed the grit and determination of the people themselves – people like Hinton, who says he will stand chest-deep in the waters of the bay, linked arm in arm with his neighbors, if that’s what it takes to stop the encroaching oil from despoiling the sublime latticework of bogs and bayous that he calls home.

BP Oil Spill – Dauphin Island, Alabama – Images by Carmen Sisson As the U.S. Army National Guard erected barriers to protect Dauphin Island, Alabama from globs of oil steadily spreading from the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion April 20, 2009, reports rolled in of tar balls sited on the west end [...]

Delays are common, but this may be the first time a football game has pre-empted a trial, says Scott Vowell, presiding judge of the 10th Judicial Circuit for Jefferson County in Alabama. Of course, he’s heard a myriad of other excuses over the years. Funerals. Illnesses. The dog ate my briefcase. The best was the time an attorney asked for a delay so he could join an evangelical rock band and a troupe of Russian ballerinas on a tour of England.

You should probably leave the rocket scientist jokes at home when visiting Huntsville, Ala. The chances are good (1 in 12, in fact) you’ll meet one here. In a state beset with educational challenges, this mid-size city (pop. 396,000) is an anomaly, a figurative brain soup where intellectual capital is a commodity and innovation is the driving force behind economic recovery and future success.

As days grow shorter, my memory lengthens, carrying me back to my youth. Crisp autumn mornings, dawn barely a suggestion, grandpa’s hand tousling my hair, reminding me the fish are waking, and I should be as well.

Swine flu arrived in Macon County, Alabama, last week, showing up in classrooms at all levels and leaving a spate of empty desks in its wake. But authorities are battling the virus on its own turf, using vacant seats as both a map and compass to stem the tide.

And then, suddenly, it all came together – why they’d needed to be here so much, why they’d endured the arduous trek just to squint at a distant screen. As they reached the foot of the Washington Monument, so starkly white against a perfect blue sky, encircled by American flags, another sight resonated even more deeply: a rainbow of people of every size, race, and age standing together.

As one of the adults traveling this week from Selma to the nation’s capital with a group from Knox Elementary School, she brings different emotions and motivations than the idealistic young students, all clad in their new winter clothing and visions of a race-free America. For her and many of the other adults, this is a spiritual journey, both an intensely personal moment and a time to celebrate what they and their forebears suffered and accomplished, as well as to see the opportunities facing a new generation.

Reddick wants the children to see beyond graffiti-strewn walls, beyond limitations, beyond a town where violence is a daily reality. She wants them to witness something people in this racially torn bastion of the civil rights movement never believed was possible. She wants them to see a black man become president of the United States, to hear his voice ring out across the National Mall and know that anything is possible.

Alabama has been particularly aggressive. Since the early 1990s, the state has offered German-based Mercedes, Japan’s Honda and South Korea’s Hyundai a staggering $1 billion in tax incentives, abatements and infrastructure improvements to build plants there. The return on investment has been $7 billion, creating almost 50,000 direct jobs and another 70,000 in sectors like parts suppliers. The population of the town of Vance, where the 4,000-employee Mercedes factory is located, has leapt from 500 to 2,000. Unlike the local sawmill, fertilizer plant or rock quarry, residents feel Mercedes “is going to survive, no matter what,” says one woman who has five family members working there. “That’s what made Vance what it is.”

Underestimate the Alabama School for the Deaf (ASD) if you want. They like it that way. You won’t know what hit you until you’re facedown in the turf, inhaling the scent of fresh-mown grass and Alabama soil, staring at the final scoreboard, which illuminates your flawed logic. ASD, billed as “home of the champions” and winner of four national football titles against hearing and non-hearing teams, is one of only 30 deaf high schools in the US playing 11-man football. The team shows up ready to compete.

Liberty Grove, established in 1835, is the type of church typically associated with Sacred Harp. The church interior is unadorned. Bare pine walls. Plain metal fans and naked bulbs dotting the pine ceiling. Worshippers scattered among straight pine pews in uneven clusters, their hands rising and falling in 4/4 rhythm, down on the first beat, up on the third. Feet keep time as well.

“I call him ‘Super Spann’ because he does his best to protect us,” says Olympia Hewitt, a Tuscaloosa County resident who watched in horror Dec. 6, 2000, as Spann stood on-screen – sleeves rolled up, wearing his ever-present suspenders – and warned residents of Bear Creek Trailer Park to seek shelter from a tornado. Eleven people died that day, but residents believe the toll would have been higher without his coverage. “He talks like he’s right there,” Ms. Hewitt adds, “telling you what’s happening.”

The music is pounding, buffeting the thrashing bodies from every direction as lasers swirl overhead, first red, then green, then melting into a disorienting synesthesia. This is the hottest ticket in Birmingham right now – Tuesday nights at “The Basement.” It draws nearly 5,000 teenagers a week to dance, sing, and pray. That’s right. Pray.

If there was one thing I didn’t have that day, it was time. No time for things to go right, definitely no time for things to go wrong. But things were going to go wrong. Things were going to come to an absolute grinding halt.

It’s a tough crowd, this assembly of silver-haired Southern gentry. But David Pollick surveys his audience coolly, flashes a megawatt smile, and says something you might not expect to a room full of well-heeled college alums: “Anyone who would aspire to be a college president is a lunatic.” No doubt some have wondered about the sanity of Dr. Pollick, the 12th president of Birmingham-Southern College (BSC), who arrived at the school in 2004. Last year, he and the board of trustees decided sports had become too prominent at the private liberal arts college – a controversial stance in a state where people still revere Paul “Bear” Bryant, the legendary University of Alabama football coach, even though he died nearly a quarter century ago.

The war in Iraq may be a half a world away, but in the age of the Internet it’s as close as the flip of a video switch – making it in many ways the most intimate war in history. Using video technology and the Worldwide Web, soldiers are tying into the most private moments back home – weddings, funerals, birthdays. Today’s soldier doesn’t have to wait for a box of brownies: He can see his 4-year-old proudly making them. Some innovative couples have used the technology to get married, renew vows, or choose an insurance carrier. A father saw his daughter learn to tie her shoes. A brother said goodbye to his dying sister. The age of the interlinked war is raising profound questions: Does it boost the morale of soldiers or add to longings for home and divert attention from the task at hand?

Tall reeds line the banks of the Alabama River, swaying lazily in the dark water’s eddies as the wild tenor of crickets and cicadas dips and soars through the October stillness. Fat water moccasins sun themselves on cracked red clay as long-legged egrets snatch greedily from a school of water beetles skimming the surface. A fish jumps once, then twice. A man laughs once, then again as he joins a handful of people boarding the ferry. All God’s creatures are free in Gee’s Bend.

Gone are the sticky, sultry-slick days of white-hot heat. Even the martins can feel it as they wait in the gathering dusk, cock their heads toward the wind and listen for the call. A cool breeze sends them spinning on their perch and they struggle a moment then give way to flight — glorious flight — black dots in the star-heavy sky.

From her perch high atop the factory floor, she pulls red and white stripes through her hands over and over, being careful to keep the seams neat and tidy. Always a perfectionist, she is even more prudent here. This isn’t just any flag – it’s Old Glory. And this isn’t just any version – it’s an interment flag to drape a veteran’s coffin, one last embrace from a grateful country.