Thoughts from Places: Small Town America
2011-02-18 · documentary visit · John · 2:50 · watch on YouTube
Topic: History & curiosities (also: Philosophy & meaning, Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: recurring series, on location
Visiting Knightstown, Indiana and its cemetery, John reflects that small towns and people have futures no one can predict, as with a young widow's headstone, so all we can really do is be kind to each other.
What is said
The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).
00:00:00 — Driving with the Yeti to Knightstown, Indiana, to help two Swedish architects buy a tree
- ★★ John and the Yeti drove east past endless cornfields to Knightstown, Indiana, to help two Swedish architects buy a tree: the life of the museum curator's husband. — 00:00:00 · Sarah Urist Green
00:00:29 — The Knightstown cemetery: names useful to a writer and the stories tombstones let you imagine
- ★★ Bored, John walks to the huge Knightstown cemetery; he loves cemeteries partly because their many names help a writer, reading out names such as Walter Manlove and founder Waitsell Cary. — 00:00:29
- ★★ John also loves cemeteries for the stories they let you imagine, from the Union dead and the town's first marriage to losing a child or a 61-year marriage. — 00:00:44
- ★ Unsure which of Valva or Mona was the man in a 61-year marriage, John wonders whether it was Knightstown's first same-sex marriage: probably not, but he hopes so. (playful, speculative) — 00:01:00
00:01:18 — Downtown Knightstown, a shrinking Midwest town that has a present and future as well as a past
- ★★ John says Knightstown is a small place and, like many Midwest towns, is shrinking. — 00:01:18
- ★ Downtown, among '57 Chevys, ice cream joints and a closed bookstore, John buys something at Bittersweet Memories for Henry's room, calling it the best advice for a child and an adult. — 00:01:18 · Henry Green
- ★★★ It is easy to feel nostalgic in Knightstown, John says, but it has a present and a future as well as a past, which people forget about small towns in America. — 00:01:38
- ★★ A little girl will someday decide whether to be part of the town's future or light out for the territories; no one yet knows what she will decide or what it will mean. — 00:01:51
00:02:06 — Walter Manlove's widow Gussie did not know her future; so all we can do is be kind to each other; sign-off
- ★★★ Walter Manlove's wife Gussie was 28 when he died; John imagines her committing to a plot beside him without knowing her future, and pictures that she might have lived to 113 or, likelier, remarried. — 00:02:06
- ★★★ John says that is why, in the end, all we can really do is be kind to each other: we do not know what is ahead for us or for our places. — 00:02:37
Threads in this video
- proposed · Nerdfighters research the life of Gussie Manlove in Your Pants (2011) — Walter Manlove's wife Gussie was 28 when he died; John imagines her committing to a plot beside him without knowing her future, and pictures that she might have lived to 113 or, likelier, remarried. (00:02:06)
Where the stories that moved here went next
- Nerdfighters research the life of Gussie Manlove in Your Pants (2011) — completed; last: looked back, 2011-03-18
Mentioned
Central: Gussie · Knightstown cemetery · Knightstown, Indiana
Also: American Civil War · Henry Green · Midwestern United States · nostalgia · same-sex marriage · Sarah Urist Green · Waitsell Cary · Walter Manlove
Only in the description or credits: Thoughts from Places
Also centred on Gussie: Gussie Manlove UNCOVERED!
Later videos replying to this one
- 2011-02-21 · Hank Interviews His Mayor (Hank) — answers — “Your "Thoughts from Places" video on Friday was absolutely” (00:00:00)