PROCTOR, ARKANSAS
By Zandria F. Robinson
The Rev. J.L. Whitfield, 69, was baptized in the 15-mile bayou that runs behind True Vine Missionary Baptist Church in 1964, but it took him 35 years to get back to this place where he was first made in the spirit. In the intervening time, he came of age, worked as a contractor, had daughters and sons, built two churches with his own hands and led them, and saw his sons join the ministry and lead their own congregations in other Delta towns.
His return was not a matter of if, but rather when — 19 years ago this month. Like the sanctuaries and daughters and sons and grandchildren, this church has been built up and steadied, under Whitfield’s care ever since.
Perhaps if the measure was the number of people present, about 20 on a humid and thick and rainy Sunday, then True Vine may seem a small church or maybe one approaching an inevitable dissolution. It would seem a convenient example of young people’s exodus from poor, rural communities, like those of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, to cities that seem a world away. Out of the old-time religiosity and into the increasing secularization of late modernity.
But True Vine’s magnitude is as a familial and ancestral home, a congregating place. One by one over the years the Whitfield children and grandchildren have returned, and in due time J.L. intends to see them all, his flesh as well as his community kin, under its roof and in its pews.
On a recent Sunday, two little girls, with deep eyebrows and immaculate pigtails and cornrows with beads, offered a play cast with Barbies who must have been rushed from the house for service without getting the same attention to their hair as their owners. There was Whitfield’s granddaughter, grown Gabrielle from Little Rock, who came over 100 miles west on Interstate 40 to visit her grandfather’s service for the first time. And Meranda, his daughter, who gave the beat and pulse from her station left of the pulpit.
There was Nashaun, who took a break from Fortnite to study Meranda so he can take over the drum kit when he gets grown. There was Brother Stafford, wide smiled and surviving, whose very attendance is a testimonial offering. The Doves, Linnie and Robert, decked in red, being of evangelical service — Robert as the pastor’s right hand and prayer leader and Linnie as the teller of the good news.
Although Whitfield’s wife, Lorene, 62, had been up ill all the previous night, she was there and had brought her sister Debra. When he hears his wife’s voice, Whitfield says, he hears Jesus saying, “I’m with you.”
And so once Sister Jones and Brother Dove had lined the hymns; Meranda’s high-hat had awakened sleepy bones; Whitfield and Brother Dove had given greetings; Sister Furlow had rendered the announcements and used her tambourine to call up ancestors; and everyone had read the 23rd and 91st Psalms, it was time for offerings.
“EXPECT” and “RECEIVE” are mounted on rectangular wood placards on either side of the baptismal, where a painted pastoral of Jesus and John the Baptist promises cleansing in exchange for giving oneself over. Here at the noon hour on State Highway 147, offering is obedience.
Next week is yard-cutting week; remember that the yards of the unable require tending. The servants-in-training at Arkansas Baptist College, new and returning, need hair combs, shampoo, lotions, facial tissues, batteries, pencils, papers, glue, shoes, stockings, hats, dresses (please, no short ones) and all of the other same things they needed when they weren’t grown and away from home.
Free barbecue next Saturday down the road in Anthonyville, so bring the family to the park. Pastor’s Aid Sunday is coming up, and then soon after is Pastor and Wife’s Anniversary. Remember to offer enough so there is enough to offer; to offer enough so that everyone might receive.
Andrielle was singing, “Somehow I Made It,” and the call and response brought the able to their feet and rocked the pews. Meranda had gotten the Pentecost in her foot and was making that kick drum give the business and that high-hat give the pleasure. Linnie Dove soon became a flash of red and silver, and all others shouted and watched and waited and prepared to be chosen, too.
The movable furniture — an oak wood table and two wooden rolling chairs reserved for candidates for baptism — was shifted to make room. The pews contracted themselves because they knew to watch out.
Whitfield’s offering, in the form of the day’s sermon, drew on Chapter 15 of the Gospel according to John. He had to steady himself for the reading of the verses because the Holy Spirit was still busy, and he gingerly blotted the sweat that had inevitably come to his forehead, the white of the handkerchief a wipe of surrender.
There had been prayers to protect children from predators, warnings to women about the coming of daylight saving time and the need to be vigilant at the grocery. These and other threats just beneath Proctor’s surface. The message chosen from John was designed to claim True Vine’s raison d'être as a constant home in a world of change.
The penultimate offering was that of eternal salvation. The two chairs, moved in expectation of the spirit, were moved again to allow its receipt. There were, on that Sunday, no takers of that offer, but it stands, as does the church.
After service the clouds cleared some and offered worshippers a bit of blue sky and a touch of sun, some Delta lagniappe to take them into the week until they gather together to continue and begin again. Whitfield, who took so long to return himself, expected them all back.
GARY, INDIANA
By Donovan X. Ramsey
In a political climate in which the working class is front and center, people like Corey Lackey are often overlooked. Despite living in a Rust Belt city, where unemployment can be high, he has a steady job. His community has seen better days, but he isn’t, as pundits might put it, “disaffected.”
Lackey, 32, a slight guy, owns Lackey’s Barber Shop, where he is also the head barber. It’s the kind of business that does well in any economy.
His clients, men who similarly defy perceptions of who lives in the American heartland, get their hair cut about once a week. They frequent the shop not just for precision cuts but also because it represents what’s still possible in the city.
Lackey’s comes alive around noon, and by 1 p.m. there’s a small queue of men waiting. They pass the time with small talk — jokes, football and family updates. Many are there on lunch breaks. A handful are employees of Gary Works, a steel mill operated by U.S. Steel.
To Lackey, the mill represents much of what’s gone wrong with Gary. “It’s what everybody ends up doing,” he said, securing a cape around the neck of a customer. “When you’re coming up, guys are just like, ‘I’m going to just work at the mill and I’m going to be straight.’ That’s cool. You can make some real money at the mill, but why not do your own thing? Why not create something?”
Lackey turned off his clippers to emphasize the last point, his eyes widening a bit. He asked the question as if it was the most important in the world, the key to unlocking the future of a city whose population has declined by more than half from its peak in 1960 and where residents grapple with unemployment, decaying infrastructure, blight and crime.
Gary’s history, intertwined with the major industry in town, is something Lackey knows intimately. He comes from generations of steelworkers. His father retired after 40 years with U.S. Steel. The job, Lackey said, allowed him to provide for 12 children but took a toll. After retiring, he was found to have Stage 4 colon cancer, the result of decades working around asbestos, Lackey suspects.
Instead of following his father into Gary Works, he decided on barbering. “It’s a service people can’t go without,” he said. “Everybody needs a haircut.”
Lackey started practicing on one of his brothers at age 11 and discovered he was pretty good. He continued to cut hair through high school, earning a little money here and there from guys in his neighborhood until, at 28, he went to barber college. In 2010, he got the idea for Lackey’s.
“It don’t cost much to get started in Gary,” Lackey said. “My daddy and I bought this building and the four lots surrounding it for just $1,500.”
“We remodeled it together and took it from a garage with big garage doors and everything to this,” said Lackey, motioning around the shop with his free hand. “And I got a two-bedroom apartment upstairs.”
Although Lackey’s Barber Shop is a modest business, he has reason to be proud. He has steady income and his own home at a time when other young adults with backgrounds like his, in Gary and elsewhere, are struggling.
Lackey grew reflective as he put the final touches on his client’s shape-up and handed him a mirror. “Gary used to be a nice town at one point in time, but it seems every day like it’s going down,” he said. The room responded with murmurs of agreement. “Having this shop is about the business and making money, yes, but it’s not just that for me. It’s also about creating jobs and being an example.”
Despite benefiting from the new tariffs on imports, U.S. Steel has yet to announce any new jobs at Gary Works, a loud signal that the mill may not be the future of work in the city. Increasingly, residents will have to either move or create a new economy with new industries.
“I tell people to start small and build slowly,” Lackey said, before seating another client in his chair. “It may not be a lot when you get started, but, at the end of the day, at least you can control your own fate.”
LITTLETON, MAINE
By Peter Orner
The sacred fire had been burning since long before dawn. Nearly 3 in the afternoon and Clarissa Sabattis, 41, chief of the Houlton Band of the Maliseet Indians was finally able to catch a breath by the Meduxnekeag River. A beautiful spot, where the light, so relentless all day, had softened to amber.
Tall pines line the riverbank. New Brunswick is just a few miles east. Here, the river meanders slowly. Two teenagers splashed around. Sabattis called out to them and pointed to a Mountain Dew can in the mud.
“Is this your garbage?”
One of the kids said, “It’s was here when we got here.”
“Hmm.” The chief wasn’t convinced. She slipped off her new moccasins, a gift from the community. “They’re a little big but aren’t they gorgeous?” She laughed and paused, sniffed. “There was a skunk outside my house this morning, and I can still smell it on my shirt.” She laughed again, sighed and waded up to her ankles in the river.
The Meduxnekeag is a tributary of the St. John River Basin, and members of the Houlton Band of Maliseets have been living along it, fishing, gathering fiddleheads, for centuries.
“The reality is this,” Sabattis said. “The Maliseets, along with the Micmacs, were the first, quote, ‘foreign powers’ to recognize the sovereignty of the United States by signing the Treaty of Watertown in July 1776, just after the Declaration of Independence. Had it not been for us, we’d be standing in Canada.”
Nearby, on a field where the tribe’s football team practices, the 38th Annual Recognition Day celebration thrummed on. There was fry bread, Indian tacos, hullcorn soup, chili and fiddleheads, picked in the spring and frozen.
There were vendors selling drums, dream catchers and soap made with bear fat. There was a raffle to send elders on a trip to Nova Scotia. (This visitor won a ceramic deer.) Roughly 500 Indian and non-Indian attendees or so, mingling, playing horseshoes, cribbage, bingo and volleyball.
Sabattis had been in the thick of it all morning.
“Wait, where are the flags?” she’d asked as the tribal council and the traditional dancers began to assemble. The flags were quickly found in the trunk of someone’s car, and the flag bearers moved into position. The flags of the United States, Canada and Maine were held aloft as were the official blue flag of the Maliseets and the POW/MIA flag.
Earlier in the day, at tribal headquarters, a log building up the road from the river, Sabattis said that federal recognition, in 1980, “was a big win for us.” A small village was developed, where 240 citizens of the Houlton Band reside in low-income housing. Although most Houlton Band Maliseets live in and around Houlton (the larger town just south of Littleton), others are spread throughout the world.
Sabattis noted that the building we were in came with recognition and that all the offices are here. Before the action by the government, the tribe had about 300 citizens; now the number is close to 2,000.
“On Recognition Day what we are really recognizing is ourselves, our culture and our perseverance,” Sabattis said. “Sometimes I wonder, given our history, how we survived at all. We’ve lost so much.”
A nurse who later worked in public health, she had no intention of entering politics. Her passion was and remains health care. She was already a single mother of two when she went to nursing school in the early 2000s.
“I wanted to be able to provide for my kids,” she sad. “I’d always wanted to be a nurse. My parents took on a lot of the child care, and they were awesome. They got the kids on and off the bus, fed them. On weekends, I worked in the ER.”
Sabattis had good reason to disdain politics. Her father had served as chief throughout her childhood.
“He worked for the railroads, later for the Maine DOT. I remember him just endlessly reading, reading, reading, to do his best to learn about government. You can’t help but pay attention as a child. I’d listen to everything. I traveled with him. And there were some wonderful things. Politics can be brutal. There can be strife, arguments. And this is all small community. So, no, I had zero interest.”
She tried moving away for a while, not far, Portland, but far enough. The aboriginal homeland drew her back. She returned and took a job with Wabanaki Public Health.
Last year, a grassroots movement persuaded her to run. “At first, I was like, yeah, right,” she said. “Me? But I gave it thought.” Once she decided, Sabattis went door to door, talking about the things that mattered most to her: improving health care, creating more opportunities for youth and resurrecting the Maliseet language, which many tribal citizens, including herself, no longer speak fluently.
She won by two votes. After a recount, she won by one.
Asked whether she has ever encountered any other nurses who hold political positions, Sabattis said no. “You know what they say,” she said. “Nursing is the most trusted profession. People always ask me if this job is more stressful than being a nurse, and my answer is always, no. Because no matter what the situation is here, there’s no chance that I’m going to kill someone based on my decision. Worst-case scenario as a nurse!” More laughter.
As part of its recognition act, the U.S. government purchased 1,440 acres of land on the tribe’s behalf, the Meduxnekeag snaking along the eastern edge. During a break from Recognition Day, Sabattis stepped out of the river and gazed up at the pine grove on the riverbank.
Underneath these trees the Houlton Band would soon join for a fast. Citizens build shelters and remain in solitude, although side by side, for up to three days without food or water. “Last year it took a lot of prep,” Sabattis said. “I had to give up coffee ahead of time.”
It was time to return to the party and double-check the preparations for community meal. The trout should be arriving soon. Also, the chief had to run home and grab the moose meat that had been marinating on her stove.
LOS ANGELES
By Brooks Barnes
Yasu Tanida thrust his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and shivered for effect. It was a sunny 74 degrees on the Paramount Pictures lot, but inside Stage 20, where Tanida was working, the air was almost arctic.
Stage 20 contains sets for “This Is Us,” and Tanida, 38, is the cinematographer, which means he oversees the camera and lighting departments. His artistic and technical decisions on matters like brightness and shooting angles help convey the emotion for which the show is known. In television, directors come and go. But the cinematographer works on every episode, ensuring a seamless look.
“My job is easy,” Tanida said with a crooked grin. “The lights don’t talk back to me. The directors are the ones who have it hard. They have to deal with the actors.”
At that very minute, Mandy Moore, whose character moves back and forth in time, was struggling with a scene. What was her line again? Ah, yes. “Quiet all around!” a woman shouted as shooting resumed.
“Cut,” called Ken Olin, who was directing the episode. There was another problem. Tanida, standing beside Olin at a bank of monitors, had pointed out that Camera No. 2 was picking up a glare on Moore’s glasses.
Tanida walked over to where Moore was performing in a pool of golden light meant to simulate the sun streaming through her home office window. (Hence the heavy air-conditioning on the stage.) Crew members scurried around, adjusting the setup to remove the glare.
Tanida returned to his position beside Olin and daintily turned two black dials near the video monitors. “It was getting too much into the shadows, so I brought up the exposure a bit,” Tanida said.
“It’s kind of a boring day,” he added in a whisper as taping resumed. “Standard stuff.”
At about 2 p.m., with Olin reassuring Moore that she had done very good work, the crew went to lunch.
Cinematography was an accidental career for Tanida, who emigrated from Japan with his parents and twin brother in 1983. Growing up in Orange County, he was mostly into water polo. But he thought film school might be fun and enrolled at Chapman University. An internship opened his eyes to lighting and camera work.
Tanida got his break in 2007 with “August Evening,” a drama about a farmworker that received a prize at the 2008 Spirit Awards. Variety magazine included him on a list of cinematographers to watch. Tanida’s credits now include “The Blacklist,” too.
It’s consistent work in a very inconsistent industry. Tanida oversees roughly 40 people on the “This Is Us” set, among them electricians and riggers. “I am technical because I have to be, but it’s the artistic side that really excites me — and then putting all the pieces together to make something,” he said. “It’s like Legos for adults.”
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