Mail misdeliveries in the time of the American uprising: a little story from rural South Carolina.

So, today we received someone else's Rolling Stone magazine. (Same street number, but a different street four miles away -- think Spring Lake vs. Summer Lake.) It's the one with this amazing cover by Kadir Nelson:

As we drove through the gloomy summertime woods to re-deliver, I carefully flipped through. I'm not a proud woman. Great articles, great photography, I'm considering buying a copy of my own. Historical moment and all!

We arrived at the correct address: cutely shabby little mobile home amidst the trees and kudzu, middle-aged white guy out front working on his truck, adult daughter or SO working in their little food garden with a toddler. Classic Southern working-class scene, y'know?

(I am also Southern and working class and have old peanut-oil shipping containers and a salvaged camper in front of my house, so this is recognition, not condescension.)

My wife pulled over at the mailbox. "We got a piece of your mail," I called.

"Bless your heart!" cried the man. "Is it that hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar check I've been waiting on?"

I ostentatiously ruffled the pages before poking the magazine into the box. "Noooo?" I said.

We laughed, he wished me a nice day, I waved, and we pulled away before he came to the box.

When we had turned the car around, he was holding the magazine in one hand, eyes wide, looking at the cover.

I am white and thus in no danger, so I was half-cringe, half-schadenfreude in the expectation of ... well, what one expects in this picture, given U.S. stereotypes.

Instead I saw the man hold the magazine in his left hand and, as he walked back toward the family vegetable garden, half-consciously raise his right fist in solidarity with the painted woman.

I'm a queer woman whose neighbors are pastors. I have to be conscious of the cultural markers of "possible danger" for my own survival. But it's so beautiful to be reminded that those markers also belong to good people, people who support those making this change.

So, hey, fellow white folks? Help South Carolina get un-gerrymandered if you can. There's a community of loving and sensible people here. Even I don't always see it past the trappings of redneckery that have been appropriated by the Tr*mpist culture warriors ... but we're here.

Our Black neighbors are kinda busy. We can't put this on BIPOC. We need white pressure for change in the rural, mostly white areas, where few of us can do more than send a couple-ten bucks to downballot candidates each month ... but #BlackLivesMatter to us, too.