Maybe it is that love must be acknowledged.

Alma recently passed on to me a memoir of To Kill a Mockingbird written by Rick Bragg. Harper Lee's great novel tops several lists of contemporary books that changed their world. I read it some time ago and have seen the movie and plays.

The book's realistic representation of the small towns of the old Confederacy resonates with my own experiences of many people I have known who grew up in metaphorical Maycombs. It has been my good fortune that most I have known could have been a character from which Atticus Finch was drawn.

I wonder what spawned such intellect, civility and compassion from a dimming culture of vaporous noble causes, fear and hatred. This Atticus Finch is like a bush of roses in their abundance of beauty, solitary in the desert. Then I wonder why such men and women choose to remain within a such a dark place.

Atticus has become a contemporary American hero.

But is it sufficient to simply know better; to display, or to observe:

"I sometimes think that never so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled" -- Omar Khayyam.

I share with some others, if not criticism, frustration, and still challenge myself, that more is not done by these who know better to confront irrationality and lingering embedded inhumanity unique in the old south. The question is compelling.

As an activist "fixer" I am struggle to be satisfied with the answer to which I believe Atticus came; that being to have faith in conversion through love while not submitting to prevailing evil.

I am deeply moved by the love for family and cultural heritage in the south. It is the most natural thing in the world for all of us. As for parents and family, the land and the culture where one grows up is automatically and unconditionally cherished. When in stress we long to go back. I have those feelings for my childhood in Oklahoma. I do not have them for the old deep south but Harper Lee does as well as anyone in describing those who do

When that heritage was created and nurtured on cruel oppression and exploitation of those made helpless by slavery and poverty what is one to do? I am reminded of those of us in contemporary times who have loved and been betrayed by imperfect family or political cause or figure.

So much love. So much hope. The cries from outside are for shame and remorse, and in the case of the south even reparations for the ways of people long dead. Must we abandon our love?

Perhaps we can learn to celebrate the love while not continuing to tilt at the wraiths of the past and manufacture nobility of cause, which all know was corrupt.