I live in Romney country, a blue dot in a red state. One neighbor down the street has a “Fire Obama” sign; another has a “Obamanation” sticker plastered on the back window of the car. Winding through carpool every morning, I pass a sign that reads: “Fight back. Vote Republican.”

This morning when my daughter noted that today was the day before the election, I found myself telling her not to discuss the election with anyone. It’s like football talk around here I explained. No matter what you say or do, you will not convince an Alabama fan to become an Auburn fan, or vice versa.

I remembered her experience one day last month around the time of presidential the debates when her fourth grade class discussed the upcoming election. Frances and one other boy were the only two who supported Obama. The other nineteen children, astonished and puzzled, asked why. Frances retorted: “Don’t you want women to have rights?” I was proud when she told me this. I was also wary, worried about her speaking her voice, a different voice, in my suburban, well-heeled community.

The mood in this country seems to me as divisive as it must have been during the civil right movement. Just a couple of nights ago, the brand new signs commemorating the Freedom Riders Park in Anniston,  Alabama, were burned.

This year is the first time I haven’t staked my candidate’s sign in my front yard for all the world to see. I don’t trust people’s reactionary rage, even though in 2013, it will be fifty years ago since the beatings, burnings and bombings in Alabama.

Call me paranoid, but tomorrow, I will let my vote speak for itself.

Mentone, a place the Great God built,

Up near the sunlit sky,

There life is new and friends are true

   And days too quickly fly;

Where wearied souls regain their power

              And  sorrows leave in the night.

Where peace is born with each new morn,

       A haven of joy and delight.

                                                            Sidney Lanier

Mentone is one of those special places that if you happen to pass through and stop, you might decide to stay there. Many people have done just that. Over the years,  “Adventurers, poets, crafts-people, musicians, promoters, dreamers, people of religious fervency, farmers, coal miners, sawmillers, educators and a few bootleggers have found this spot” writes Zora Strayhorn In the History of Mentone. Indeed they have.

Today, an eclectic mix of folks call Mentone home: retirees, hippies, mountain mamas, artists of all stripes, shamans, Buddhists monks, entrepreneurs (meth labs don’t count), summer campers, writers, good old boys, hikers, cyclists, biker dudes, herbalists, energy healers—all individuals with an independent spirit, to say the least. Even the black bears have returned to Little River Canyon.

Here are a few of my favorite places and people. This list is by no means a comprehensive list! Just a sampling.

Founded in 1884, Mentone Springs Hotel (www.mentonesprings.com) is the oldest hotel in the state of Alabama. I especially like the hotel restaurant, Alice’s, where you’re guaranteed a good meal and live music on a wraparound porch overlooking town. Rumor has it the mineral springs, home to the healing waters that brought so many people here seeking refuge and rejuvenation in the first place, along the mountainside next to the hotel will re-open one day.

A stone’s throw from the hotel, you can find Jim Marbutt, owner of Kawliga, on the main street in the heart of town. Chainsaw in hand, he’s hard to miss, hanging out with his carved creatures. If you sit a spell, there’s no telling what kind of story he’ll conjure up to entertain you with—headless Hessian horsemen, tales of the war between the states as if it happened yesterday. My favorite piece he’s done lately is a bench with a catfish holding a rod on one side. A honeypot dangles from the end of his pole tantalizing the bear he’s trying to catch on the other side.

After listening to Jim, keep walking and you run into a coffee shop, art gallery and antiques shop all under one roof at Kamama  (www.KamamaMentone.com), owned by Ray and Sandra Padgett, two of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. They first happened upon Mentone in the 1970s, and even owned the hotel for many years, renovating it on the weekends while they worked and lived in Atlanta. They’ve now retired here.

Miracle Pottery (www.miraclepottery.com) is located on Highway 117 on the right as you drive up the mountain into Mentone. You can’t miss the flashing sign. Valinda Miracle’s work is both beautiful and functional.  And, yes, her last name is really “Miracle.” In her new book, The Dead Don’t Bleed, Those Who Are Alive Do, that she also sells in the shop, she describes the many miracles in her life, overcoming one adversity after another, including a flesh-eating disease. This is a woman who will captivate you with her pottery and her stories. Now, my daughter Frances wasn’t so sure what to think the day we watched Valinda throw pots and talk to a group. When Valinda started describing one of the many times she came back from the dead after entering in the inner chamber’s of God’s kingdom, Frances decided it was time to go. Clearly, this is a woman with a powerful faith.

The beauty of Mentone is the abundance of spirituality and healing found here in the “Sedona of the South.” Go down to Valley Head and you can practice your faith in yourself by firewalking at Rock Ridge Retreat. Edwene Gaines, a Unitarian minister and the director, leads prosperity retreats. Who knew? www.edwenegaineseminars.com

The natural beauty of the area is in and of itself a powerful, healing source. The falls at Desoto State Park (www.alapark.com) are stunning, not to mention the great hiking trails and mountain bike paths. Nice cabins and tent camping as well.

Check out One World Adventure Company, for sure, to go canoeing, kayaking, or embarking on other outdoor adventures! www.oneworldadventureco.com

This is just a tiny taste of a what is truly a “haven of joy and delight.” Go to www.mentonealabama.org or www.mymentone.com to discover more.

Obsessive compulsive by nature, I’m the queen of lists. I am so OCD that even when I entertain, my friend’s son remarks as I prepare dinner, fuss over the table and urge him for the fifth time to serve himself plenty of food, “Thank you for being so obsessive compulsive about feeding us.”

But the other day when I got a checklist in the mail from my retirement fund in reference to being my husband’s beneficiary in the event of his death—something that actually hit too close to home recently with his Recession-induced heart palpitations—I was mortified by the oh-so-casual checklist. The only other time I truly feared my husband’s impending demise was when I was still sore from childbirth, holding a newborn, sleep deprived, full of such intense love I could barely breathe, suffocated by the imaginary prospect of raising this child I’d just introduced to the world without a father.

Unsettled, rereading the checklist, I realized even this queen of organization has some limits. I mean I’m all about being prepared, but jeez, are you kidding me? First on the list is the death certificate. Great. Exactly what I have in mind in the throes of grief. I suppose that’s the point, though. Better to know what to expect and have a list filed away so you can go on autopilot.

Okay, so I do get  the point. I’ve even been so bold as to advise someone dealing with a beloved one receiving hospice care to go ahead and write the obituary. Ugh. I actually said that, and they did. So how can I be so repulsed by this checklist? Aren’t I the one who nags my mother about having her affairs in order, asking her over lunch when she’s discussing her lifelong friend’s ailing health, what song she wants played at her funeral?  I have even asked her what she’s going to come back as so I know when she’s around. “A black crow,” she snapped. Hmm. Not the answer I wanted.

Strangely, I’ve always read the obituaries. Now that I’m hitting midlife and funerals are cropping up like mushrooms after a hard rain, I read them daily, that is until our local newspaper is only delivered three times a week. Reading the obituaries is a tactile experience, not an online one. I’ve always assumed studying the obituaries was simply the writer in me, scanning the horizon for a good story, intrigued by how we’ve lived our lives, how you sum it up in a few paragraphs. No, it’s more than that: my interest is partly due to how I, as an American, frame death.

How we do or don’t relate to death makes me think about about the essay, “The American Way of Death,” by Jessica Mitford that I read in my freshman reader in college, in which she describes the sterile business we Americans have made of funerals. We have quite an industry dealing with death after the fact, but we don’t prepare for it beforehand. Checklists notwithstanding.

Americans lack proper respect for death. We lack a unifying mythology of guides to take us across the river Styx and explain the process. We don’t have a Day of the Dead. In fact, it seems we do everything—spend too much, eat too much, drink too much—to numb ourselves to the fact of the matter that we are all on a boat in the ocean headed to that place on the horizon where it suddenly drops off and we’re plunged into the unknown. We acknowledge death only by our frenzied attempts to deny its ultimate power over us.

As my father was struggling with his last breaths, two nurses came in the hospital room to take him to his scheduled afternoon procedure. What that was now I’ve forgotten. My family was huddled around him, overcome with tears and shock, waves of powerlessness washing over us. I’m not a nurse but it was clear what we were experiencing, death rattle and all. However, one nurse kept trying to get him situated and ready to be wheeled down the hall for his procedure. It was time, darn it, and she had a schedule to keep. Death was staring her right in the eye and she didn’t see it. Finally, the other nurse caught this woman’s attention and gestured her hand across her throat. It’s over she signaled frantically before they left us in peace.

Before my father’s death, my greatest lessons about death came from my dogs. Seriously. With Samson, my husband and I were unable to face it and when we finally did, we were so stressed we didn’t create a calm environment for him to go, rushing him to the vet after work one day. When Delilah’s liver shut down, we couldn’t deny it was time, and we knew enough to insist the vet come to our house. Same with Chad who taught us when a dog lacks the will to get up from his bed to  do his business, it’s time. Our dog Max had a strange glint I would catch in his eye sometimes. We discovered he had a brain tumor. I learned then not to dismiss the odd things you notice.

When we first brought Sophie home, a full grown dog who’d lived in a cage her entire two years of life, I thought to myself as I watched her interact with the other dogs, I will have to bury her one day. Then I thought what a strange thought. We lost her a few months ago, but she gave us the gift of a beautiful, peaceful death. She showed us the best way to go: eat  your dinner and then crawl on your dog bed in your favorite spot in the kitchen and go to sleep surrounded by your family going about their evening as usual.

Why do I hate this checklist if I think we need to acknowledge death in a more thoughtful, ritualistic manner? Because it has no heart. It doesn’t reflect the magnitude of accepting the loss of someone we love. It doesn’t include what we will need most: a way to find ourselves again as we’re lost in our grief. When my father died, I tried to find books about grief. I found plenty of clinical studies but not any nonfiction about personal experiences. It’s sort of like childbirth in that way or even miscarriages. So many people go through this, but so few really tell their stories.

One book I read was Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. I’ve recently  read a wonderful memoir, The Long Goodbye by Meghan O’Rourke, with incredible resources listed at the end. Both books are ones I’d recommend at anytime to read. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis is also a beautiful classic about his spiritual  journey following his wife’s tragic death.

Maybe if we are able to acknowledge and honor death in a more mindful, respectful manner that has nothing to do with checklists, we can accept it with more grace when we experience the inevitable losses in our own lives.

The best part about teaching school in my former life is seeing the incredible lives my former students create for themselves. So many have crafted a life dedicated to service, helping communities and individuals in need. Saving children from the sex trade in Thailand, holding citizens and lawmakers accountable for keeping Alabama’s rivers clean and safe, and providing an opportunity for Peruvian women to support themselves are just a few of the noble paths some of my former students have chosen.

Check out what Carrie Campbell is doing with Saucesito Verde, a cooperative of textile artisans made up of 15 women in the northern Peruvian Andes. These women prepare their own natural dyes and hand-craft woven, knitted and crocheted fabrics. Carrie has been working hard to connect these women to a market for their textiles. What began as a small idea to find retailers has grown, and last fall the group had the unique opportunity to make custom bags for a U.S. designer. This year Carrie has been working to grow a sustainable business model, secure supply chains, create and market new designs, and develop business connections. You can read about this cooperative and their progress at http://www.saucesitoverde.org.

Today, one year ago, my family huddled and prayed in the basement as tornadoes ripped across our state and many others throughout the Southeast. We were lucky. Since then, when I walk out the door in the morning, I acknowledge the piece of gray roofing still stuck at the top of our cherry tree, blown by the brutal winds off someone’s house. Below is my journal entry a few days following this epic outbreak last year.

Hundreds of lives have been lost, people are missing, homes destroyed and entire communities gone. Not because we weren’t warned or didn’t heed the sirens. We were helpless in the face of EF5 tornadoes with 166-200 mile per hour winds. The satellite image from space shows the path of an almost two-mile wide twister stretching from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham, AL, a distance of sixty miles, a whisper of a white chalk line from a bird’s eye view. From the ground, utter devastation.

This monster  storm ultimately stretched across Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina. This is our Katrina, and the loss and sadness are overwhelming. Parts of Alabama are now Ground Zero, miles and miles of towns splintered into a million pieces. Reporters weep on TV, surveying  the damage, traumatized as if they are covering a war.

Growing up in tornado alley, I was riveted by The Wizard of Oz, and every time it came on TV, I watched, horrified, as Dorothy and Toto swirled past Aunt M in black and white. As a child, in the middle of a storm we’d measure the wind speed with a funny little instrument hanging on the sunporch wall. The prospect of a real tornado always terrified me and, a naturally anxious child, I often had nightmares about it. (Honestly, I still do.)

Then years later came meteorologist James Spann and the advent of Doppler radar, and I could track and agonize over every possible scenario. I need and want to control this situation or at least be prepared, but as many times as I’ve stared at the map of storms in red moving across the screen each time a warning is issued, I’ve never mastered the art of seeing the strange hooks and bow echoes James targets when he’s on the air during a tornado warning. But that’s the thing. A hurricane gives you enough warning to leave. A tornado warning just means the conditions are ripe for one to form. And even with all of the unbelievable technology, the science still boils down to something as mysterious as reading tea leaves.

As I was reading the weather blog the first time before this historic outbreak, I became alarmed as James pointed out the helicity index (had to look it up) was a ten, a “rare” occurrence. The warm moist jet stream from the Gulf Coast was “shooting like a firehose” above the state as the cold front moved our way. James wrote he’d never heard the forecasters say the things they were predicting in reference to the potential for theses long track tornadoes.

The kids came home early from school, we got our flashlights, took some blankets and camp chairs to the basement, and waited. Then came the sirens again along with the dark clouds streaming across the sky and the trees s bending like rubber limbs on a doll. As we headed to the basement  my son said, “The birds have stopped singing.”

We were more than lucky and escaped any damage as a supercell outbreak  decimated parts of north Birmingham. Now we must help rebuild, but where to start in a process that will take months and even years? Why is it that often the most vulnerable are the storm victims? Some of the places hit hardest in north Birmingham are equivalent to the lower ninth ward in New Orleans. It’s not fair.

I can not imagine my house and life completely being blown away. I can’t fathom holding my child and having her ripped from my arms by 200 mph winds. I cannot imagine finding a rabbit in my yard who has been skinned by the winds. I can’t comprehend a body being blown over 100 miles away form his home. I see the images of destruction as a viewer from the outside looking at the TV, but this scene is another matter altogether for someone standing among the rubble, having crawled out from what was once his or her house. The difference in experience is the difference between reading about childbirth and birthing a child. One is glazed over by distance; the other is the visceral understanding. I am grateful we were lucky this time, saddened by so much loss, and hopeful communities and families can rebuild.