Appalachian History

"Why--it's taken for granted that women are gossips by nature, by instinct and by training," said the Sparrow.

"Women ought to deny that charge every time they hear it, too!" she exclaimed. "It's just one of the many accusations men have repeated over and over until they have come to believe it."

The birds are used to hearing warm debates spring up between the Sparrows, shriek and flutter and prance for a while, and die amicably away. Their part is usually to provide a fair field and no favor, but when it comes up they sometimes listen, knowing that no marital infelicities can be brought about among settled Bird couples.

"If you would listen better to street conversations," the Sparrow declared, "you would have found out long ago that it's the women who talk scandal and start idle rumors."

"They're not a bit worse than men! I tell you more than half the mischievous talk is retailed by some married woman, who heard it from her husband, who got it, of course, at his club."

"Nonsense! Men talk politics and business; it's the women who are always saying to each other, 'Now don't you ever tell I told you this,' and 'Isn't it terrible about Mrs. Wood Knott Wearen,' and 'Have you heard the story they are telling about Miss Geewotta Peeche'--huh! you can't deny it, women will gossip! Mind must have something mischievous to take up when they are idle."

"Then the thing to do is to give 'em something better to think about," said the arch-peacemaker, the White Pigeon. "Maybe the movies--"

Her little attempt was foredoomed to failure; the Sparrows were facing each other with open beaks and wings.

"I'll bet you a flaxseed there isn't a married man between here and the river that isn't full of exclusive information about his neighbors, unless his wife is deaf and dumb."

"How do you know that, I wonder! If their minds are so full of the weighty affairs of the city and the nation that they never gossip, how do you find out that they are full of scandalous information received from their wives?"

"Well----" The Sparrow was somewhat disconcerted. "They may occasionally help to spread a rumor, but --"

"They start them, too--by a turn of expression or a change of countenance; by a sneer or a gesture. And the man-gossip does vastly more harm than the woman; the malice of his tales is accented because it sounds smart."

The Sparrow seemed at last to have run out of replies, and the Gray Pigeon commented: "It is said that Wisconsin has a law against gossiping. Offenses are punishable with a fine of not more than $250, or imprisonment not to exceed a year in jail."

"All gossips ought to be jailed," said the Sparrow, perking up. "The everlasting 'Now don't you ever tell I told you this' ought to place the speaker on a level with a fellow that carries brass knucks or a sling-shot."

*****

From April - June 1924 The Chattanooga News paid Emma Bell Miles $9.00 a week to write "Fountain Square Conversations." The "Conversations" cleverly combined her naturalist's knowledge and her social commentary. They featured birds and other creatures on the square conversing under the shadows of the human statues. Miles (1879-1919) is remembered primarily for "The Spirit of the Mountains" (1905), the first comprehensive study of Southern Appalachian culture.





sources: www.phoebeclaire.com/miles/fsc20.htm
http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/documents/pdf/fall_2005/emmabell_miles.pdf


Emma+B.+Miles Chattanooga+TN appalachia appalachian+mountains+history appalachian+history

“Look at the city--at any city built by man! They, the great last word of the century, a tremendous expression of the human intellect, grow up wild, according to no plan or intention, allowing nothing for expansion, discommoding everybody, causing intolerable civic growing-pains, and utterly upsetting any adventitious efforts toward beauty or dignity of proportion in the whole."

"They might, at least," agreed the White Pigeon, "take advantage of facilities close at hand for their own comfort. I see every day the waste of material and of opportunity in this ramshackle, helter-skelter civilization of theirs. It disturbs my rest at night when I think of the hundreds sweltering in trap-like rooms where the air is utterly still and seems to burn. They add to the heat of their closed-in dwellings by fires for cooking. How they must suffer!"

"Some of them go out in autos to cool off," said the Sparrow.

"How many can do so?--one in fifty?--and how much intelligence do they display in joy-riding? Gliding through the open country, breathing the sweet evening scents from the fields, is one good way of resting the overstrained system; but a mad rush is another thing--the unrestrained impulse to speed that rests nobody, and leads to fearful calamities."

"If more autos traveled tortoise," said the Sparrow, "there wouldn't be so many turning turtle. But let me tell you that some folks have learned how to sleep. More and more beds are made in the open air as old superstitions are overcome, superstitions about malaria and night air no less than about ghosts and wild beasts that might get you if you don't watch out. There are families in the suburbs who eat on one porch and sleep on another almost year round."

"There ought to be plenty of such families right in town, too," said the White Pigeon.

"Oh, yes; that proves what I said, or began to say," declared the Gray Pigeon. "That Man is capable of planning well enough for his own individual needs, but has never learnt to think collectively; for the good of all. Now, above these same sleepers, just over their heads, in fact, there are acres and acres of cool open space where hundreds might sleep in comfort under the stars if they only would, lifted clear of the noise and dust of the streets, continually filling their lungs with a sleeper's deep draughts of life-giving oxygen, and never missing the lightest breeze that stirs the night.

"But these broad roof spaces that might be such a blessing every night through the hot months to tired throngs of toilers, remain an undiscovered country, an utter desert. No one ever makes the slightest use of them, except when I walk across the gravel with which they are covered and choose a few for my crop."

"Not all cities so neglect this opportunity," said the White Pigeon. "The Swallow tells of splendid roof developments in some parts of the country. There are roof gardens, and hospital tents, and even schools for anemic or tubercular children of rich and poor who would perish in the ordinary confined schoolroom."

"Well, sometime it will be so here," said the Gray Pigeon. "Sometime when property becomes too valuable to let an inch of space go to waste. Overcrowding will go on as it has elsewhere, till the growing pressures causes an upward burst, and then the Overhead Country will be discovered, utilized, improved, and made the most of in all sorts of ways, to the benefit of everybody who lives or works in the crowded portion of the city."

*****

From April - June 1924 The Chattanooga News paid Emma Bell Miles $9.00 a week to write "Fountain Square Conversations." The "Conversations" cleverly combined her naturalist's knowledge and her social commentary. They featured birds and other creatures on the square conversing under the shadows of the human statues. Miles (1879-1919) is remembered primarily for "The Spirit of the Mountains" (1905), the first comprehensive study of Southern Appalachian culture.


sources: www.phoebeclaire.com/miles/fsc20.htm
http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/documents/pdf/fall_2005/emmabell_miles.pdf