Week 6 Time and Distance Overcome

  For me, this piece was extremely disturbing to read. It didn't start out this way; in fact the  beginning gave absolutely no hints of where this piece would go and how it would turn out. I originally thought that this piece would go into detail about the invention of telephone poles, how and where they were set up, and stories about how they overrode multiple objections. But as I read further into this piece I realized that the author was only preparing us for what was to come. Bliss starts out with the way telephone phone poles came about and then moves on to how they were put up and how much fighting took place over whether or not they should be put up. When she moves into the shocking cruelty brought about by these polls, I started to wonder if they were truly worth it. There were people who never wanted them up to begin with, and they were more often serving the unjust purpose of executions because very few people used telephones. They were used to painfully execute African Americans for no real reasons. They were  undeservedly burned, beaten, cut, electrocuted, and much worse; all they asked for in return was time to pray. This was very hard for me to read and it made me question if we really needed telephone poles. Today they are no longer shaped like a crucifix, but I will never look at a telephone pole the same way. This piece was an eye opener; and though it doesn't show our country in a positive light, I learned more about the past that everyone tries to forget.