Swallowed and digested

"Years ago I was much entertained by a story told at the Chicago Woman's Club by one of its ablest members in the discussion following a paper of mine on 'The Outgrowths of Toynbee Hall.' She said that when she was a little girl playing in her mother's garden, she one day discovered a small toad who seemed to her very forlorn and lonely, although she did not in the least know how to comfort him, she reluctantly left him to his fate; later in the day, quite at the other end of the garden, she found a large toad, also apparently without family and friends. With a heart full of tender sympathy, she took a stick and by exercising infinite patience and some skill, she finally pushed the little toad through the entire length of the garden into the company of the big toad, when, to her inexpressible horror and surprise, the big toad opened his mouth and swallowed the little one. The moral of the tale was clear applied to people who lived 'where they did not naturally belong,' although I protested that was exactly what we wanted-to be swallowed and digested, to disappear into the bulk of the people." -Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House

Sometimes it seems like Franklinton is swallowing us whole this summer. People are shooting each other. Families are screaming in the streets. Chickens are pecking each other to death. It has been a rough couple of weeks.

I am reading about Jane Addams for the chapter I am working on now. It takes me a long time because I can identify so much with her, a privileged women who loved literature and culture but felt drawn to a life in the slums. A lot of scholars suggest that too close of an identification with your subject leads to bad analysis. I'm sure a lot of scholars would also suggest that constantly stopping your work because kids are knocking on your door leads to bad analysis, too, so I try not to think too much about it.

Here is to disappearing into the bulk of the people!