Dirt Drawings

A few weeks ago a frenzied spiral of thinking too many thoughts culminated in making the impulsive decision to spend an hour digging around our property for dirt. Indulging in nostalgia was cathartic and felt like a momentary escape from the chaos of a thinly spread mind.

Serendipitously I recently stumbled upon Margaret Boozer’s work, much of which involves dirt - a material otherwise often overlooked – as her main material source.  What strikes me foremost about Margaret Boozer is the feeling of authenticity embedded within each of her pieces; through sourcing unprocessed clays and soils as her direct medium of use, there is a connectedness to the earth and landscape in her work. Boozer experiments with both raw and fired earth in a variety of ways, one of which involves creating ‘dirt drawings’ (aptly named) on gallery floors and walls, using materials often sourced from the location of her installation. This element of locality urges the viewer to perhaps see their directly surrounding landscape through a different lens – to truly look at the dirt they walk upon daily, yet seldom pause to notice. What I find fascinating about these dirt drawings is their temporary status; each piece exists only for the period of the installation and then subsequently swept away and returned to the earth.

With all of her dirt drawings the unfired soil changes and cracks in unexpected ways throughout the period of the installation. I find this degree of temporality especially intriguing, as the sculptures are not merely a static representation of natural forms, rather, they depict the ever changing relationship between time and earth, with new layers of textures and colors continuously emerging beneath the surface.

more characters

Whether it be fiction, non-fiction, or somewhere in between, I want to invest more characters from my memory bank into writing.

Ian:  A young man who thinks of himself as wise, and maybe he is.  He knows that he wants to be on this piece of land, with these people.  He culls his workforce of those who don't fit.  Off the land, though, he changes his mind frequently: remarrying to old ideas and women of his past.  Standing with every muscle engaged, he dissects a pea shoot that clings to his palm and saves its seed.  When his daughter asks him to brush her hair, he uses the same translucent touch as with the pea shoots.    

Ben: Not only behind a camera, but under it.  The weight of his system bends his shoulders over his rib cage and sloped towards the ground.  He doesn't talk much, only watches.  Maybe he's not even listening.  His camera speaks for him, announces him, and when the red light blinks off, signals his departure.

Dylan: not old enough yet to have lost any part of himself.  He has all of the boyish confidence of a man who has done things right so far.  He smiles to put others at the same ease.

Keith: wanted to leave his town behind, and instead lost all opportunity to leave.  Even the part of him that wishes to abandon his family and work has been closed off, and that reckless abandon has been tabled.  He coaches kids who will get out of here one day, and that's escape enough to tranquilize the instinct to leave.  In his place, he likes to break things in his house to change its domestic landscape: broken lamps and dismembered stairwell handrails.

Ideally, these characters will meet in some form of story.

  

Filling in the Spaces Between Growls/Breathes/Gasps

Listen to the gorgeous song "Uja" by Tanya Tagaq as you read this poem. The music video for this song is also extremely beautiful, in my opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCuayGvy3i8

:00-:06   Like ticking clocks, 

               We gaze at each other, 

               Back and forth.

:07-:16    There is heat rising between us, in this frigid space--

                It is ours to crawl inside, a mutual need.

:17-:23    C'mon, no need to be afraid. 

                I'm waiting. 

:24-:33    Lull into the respite of my tune;

                I'm not trying to seduce you, 

                Since we are one, after all. 

                Don't worry. I know what to do. 

:34-:41    I don't want the beast to become of you

                Any more than you do.

                If you listen to me now,

                Your spirit will know no more fear

                In letting go of its balloon.  

:42-1:06  This charge between us works like lightning.

                You and I can't hear anything else

                Besides the push of predation and the pull 

                Of another body.

1:07-1:13 We are the same; can't you hear it?

                Extracting emotion from sounds and meaning from loss, 

                There is always something to do, 

                 Somewhere to go. 

1:14-1:46 It's easy to drift away to an igloo
                Where your worries can mingle in a cramped body,
                But as the Highway of Tears is no place for an Inuit,
                So is the demon world no place for a seal.
1:47-1:54 Stay here, still, in the sensations of this moment.
1:55-2:02
                This part is over now.
                I will see you again, at the next hunt.
2:03-2:36 You have been so good to me,
                And I will fulfill your sacrifice.
                Uja,
                Means
                More
                Than
                Blood.
2:37-2:43 Though your skin is what makes the earth glow down below,
                Your soul is most precious.
2:44-2:49 Drink snow, you never truly go.
           
___________________________________
 

About my interpretation of the song:
     The song "Uja" doesn't have words, so I decided it would be fun to try to do a close listen of the song to derive a poem from the sounds! "Uja" refers to seal skin, which is a prime source of income among Inuit people. As someone who prefers not to eat the flesh of animals, I wrote this poem to try to understand why people of animist belief systems choose to engage in the killing of other species. Traditionally, Shamans perform specific rituals when hunting. They used charms and dance to communicate with the animal and would make offerings to the spirit. This practice of respect would increase the chances of the spirit returning in the body of another animal who would be willing to sacrifice itself for the hunt again and decrease the chances of the spirit reappearing as a demon. For seals in particular, shamans would feed it melted snow to prevent it from going thirsty. Inuits also believed that the souls of sea mammals resided in their bladder.
      I don't believe that humans can convince any person or animal that their death is justified in the hunting process unless that human and person or animal has an extremely intimate relationship in which the value of one life (the hunter) is understood to be more crucial than the other. However, in aboriginal cultures of colder climates where harvesting plants is difficult, treating the animals that must be hunted for food with such profound respect, even if the animals do not grasp this respect, is especially noble.

Why this song?
     Since stumbling upon the musical tradition last night, I've been obsessed with throat singing, from the Inuit tradition in particular. In aboriginal nations of parts of Canada/Greenland/Iceland, this type of sound making developed as a way for women to pass the time while men were out hunting. Two women would face one another holding each others' arms, one starting out with a rhythmic breathing pattern, and the other improvising over this pattern to produce sound in between the gasps. The first person to lose their breath or start laughing would lose the game or competition.
     Tanya Tagaq is unique in that she is a native Inuit who did not grow up with the throat singing tradition, yet has developed to make a musical career out of her talent. Aboriginal peoples of Canada have only obtained recognition of their rights since Section 35 of the Constitution Act was legalized, and throat singing was banned under Catholic priests for almost a century. Now, throat singing is slowly being revived as a way to honor ancestral culture. Tagaq, while surrounded by Inuit lifestyle in Cambridge Bay of the indigenous territory of Nunavut, Canada, grew up listening to Western rock and punk music, and she discovered throat singing in high school.
     I am so fascinated by the connection between throat singing and nations that experience cold climates (throat singing is characteristic of Mongolia and Siberia as well). During class, the topic of winter and climate has come up numerous times, and I can't help but smirk because I frankly adore winter. Over the past few weeks, I have become so much more enamored with the idea of living in a place where it is cold and snowy all the time. Perhaps it has something to do with the work ethic (as Izzy mentioned) of people who must prepare for a harsh winter. The notion of coping with nature's challenges and the relationship between human and animal spirits is prevalent among Native American and First Nation spiritual accounts, which I have been reading about for my independent project.
               
             

The Sweet Hereafter Setting

Something that struck me from class today was when we were supposed to think if there was something in the Sweet Hereafter that could only have happened in the Adirondacks or if you really got a feel for the unique culture of the park. I've been thinking about it all evening and I still don't think that there is something in the novel that made the setting of the Adirondacks necessary to the story. Although Banks describes the people, the roads, the diners, the mountains, the view, the weather, the economic problems, and the social connections of the community of Sam Dent, the whole novel seems to me that it could be set in any other rural, poor mountain community. I think that the novel could have been set in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, or the Cascades, or northern Idaho , or western Montana. All those places struggle economically, have national forests or state parks and protected waterways, have incredible mountains and views and diners and poor roads, and are made up of small and interconnected communities. I don't know what Banks could have done differently to make the Adirondacks and Sam Dent more unique and important to the story but something that would have done this was missing. Had I not lived here for two months, I would have set the story in Incline Village were the dichotomy between summer people and residents is there, the mountains and water and views are there, and the crash could have happened along the stretch of Highway 50 that runs along the lake and has only a guardrail between the road and a steep cliff.
This question about the importance of the setting being the Adirondacks has made me think more about the settings in novels that I've felt have been more successful. And maybe more detail outside of the accident would have helped, maybe more discussion about a tension other than the immediate social and economic tensions of the town, or maybe someplace unique to the locals would have made it seem more important for the novel to have been set in the park but I don't think any one would have made it more convincing.

Urban Freedom

When we talked about Banks' short story "Snowbirds" today, we touched very briefly on the idea of finding freedom in urban and rural environments. In the story, Jane is intrigued by what Miami begins to represent: escape from a small town, escape from the cold, and escape from a somewhat confined life with her husband. Miami is warm, vibrant, and full of people who could represent a new start--it is easy to connect this image of the city with a kind of freedom. When I think of big cities like NYC or San Francisco, I have an image of walking down a busy sidewalk of faceless people. Everyone has places to go, people to see, and the hundreds and thousands of people surrounding me really don't care about me. Although in some ways that is a very lonely image, the anonymity made possible by urban life does allow a person to invent and reinvent themself as whoever they choose to be. Small, rural communities in the Adirondacks (or anywhere, really) bring a sort of forced openness, without much room for social exploration. In a town where everyone knows everyone else, there is less wiggle room for meeting new people and trying new things. In that sense, small towns can be restrictive as opposed to the freedom of anonymity in urban settings. "Freedom" in the Adirondacks is in a whole different category: it is freedom from overstimulating lights and sounds, freedom from constant human interaction, and freedom to travel the land without direction. Maybe these two types of freedom are desired by two different types of people, in which case everyone can live in a place that does not feel restrictive. More likely, I think, is that everyone needs an outlet: a place to reinvent oneself and meet different people, and a place to explore without the endless stimulation of media and technology. Is there a way to bring these two things together?

My handwriting is a language of its own

Here is a journal entry. I did not like the ending, so I scribbled it out. Maybe I can put it in my drawer for a while and come back to it and make it into something beautiful. 

Farming

We woke up long before the sun did. We drove through darkness and arrived just before 6 am. We packed into the crowded trailer along with close to 15 other “farmers”. The meeting started at exactly 6:01 with introductions and laughter and the happy birthday song and chocolate cupcakes. By 6:07 the fate of Papi, a dairy cow, had been decided. She would be culled, slaughtered, murdered, It would take place this morning. She had only been giving about a pint of milk per day, so little it wasn’t even worth hooking her up to the suctioning, whirring, milking machines one final time. Her life was to be taken before this morning’s 6:30 am milking. She was to be removed from the heard, like her calf had been taken away from her, and shot. I listened for the sound of the gun all morning, but never heard it. I can’t say for sure what happened to Papi this morning, but my intuition tells me that she will be the freshest hamburger meat at distro this Friday.

Our first task of the day was moving chicken tractors. A job that sometimes hurts your heart more than it blisters your hands and makes your back ache. As you yank the heavy and collapsing boxes forward, the weak, sick, and dead chickens become painfully obvious. If you aren’t careful you might run theses chickens right over. Perhaps just a leg, but that’s still enough to evoke a more pained squawk. This morning one chicken that we almost flattened ended up dead. This wasn’t death by chicken tractor, it was at the hands of our mentor Camron. The chicken had a gaping hole in her side, which she was bleeding heavily from. The other chickens took this as their cue to peck at her wound until Cameron came and ended her life.

I have recently become so much more aware of just how brilliant most farmers are. In my experience they have constantly shattered the stereotype of quiet hearted, dull minded, field hands. Being a farmer requires a sharp brain, and the ability to make an array of difficult decisions correctly every single day. Making the right call most of the time is often a combination of a little bit of luck, a lot of experience, and some sheer brilliance. Still, it leaves me breathless that we get to make decisions about the lives of other animals. Today I saw two ends of a wide spectrum of reasons why we take animals’ lives. Mostly, we slaughter animals because their time has come, they have reached our desired size or age, and they can provide us with the end result we have been raising them for, food. Other times we kill them out of compassion, ringing their necks and ripping their heads off in order to set them free from their misery. Sometimes though, we kill them because it is self serving. Four less utters to attend to in the morning, one less cow to heard to pasture each night.

I’m still not totally sure what to make of witnessing these deaths today. I’m hopeful that somehow the different reasons we kill come close to evening each other out and allow us to fall somewhere between exploiter and caretaker. 

Don't Mind Him

To the Store Clerk,

I just wanted to apologize on behalf of my fellow human living on the street near your shop. This man seems to be bothering you. He must really be making people miserable since the woman in line in front of me asked you if there was anything to be done about him. By the looks of her fur coat, designer boots, and frightening amount of makeup, I’m going to assume she doesn’t know how someone might ever find themselves in such an inconvenient situation. I mean really, how could anyone be so inconsiderate as to sit out in the cold asking for change. It’s appalling.

More upsetting though, is that he won’t seem to stop shouting. As you kindly pointed out, he cannot be arrested for simply being a public nuisance. What a shame. It would be much easier for everyone if he was just taken away and out of sight. Besides, he’s hurting business. I’m just so terribly sorry that he chose that spot outside your shop. Of all the perfectly decent curbside real estate, why did he have to go and choose your front door? Now people will be more likely to cross the street (everyone knows that mental illness is contagious). He’s obviously also really dangerous, talking about the government into his cup of pennies, standing in the same spot all afternoon. Like you told the well-heeled woman in front of me, he is gracious enough to leave for the summer months, but comes back in the fall to stand on that street every day. It’s just so inconsiderate of him.

You turn to me and sigh in exasperation at the burden of it all. I truly feel your pain. Your life is just that much more difficult these days. Well, I hate to break it to you, but I will be making my purchase elsewhere.

It’s just that guy outside. He’s making me uncomfortable.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen

Why Not the Adirondacks?

When we met with Russell Banks to talk about The Sweet Hereafter, many of our questions were rooted in the setting of the novel in the Adirondacks and the role that place has in his writing. Reading the novel in the neighborhood it takes place in affected my experience of reading it: seeing the streets and neighborhoods in my head made the scenes in the novel vivid in an entirely new way. Especially after talking with the author, it is impossible to imagine the story any place else. In light of that, the choice of the filmmakers to set the film version in British Columbia seems bizarre to me. Granted, my perspective of living in Keene while reading the novel makes me a little biased. I also have not seen the film yet, just the trailer with a very cheesy voiceover, and Russell Banks did say that he was very happy with the way the film turned out. It earned fantastic reviews and I don't doubt that the movie was very well done, but I do wonder why the filmmakers decided to change the setting of the story. Was the change for financial or logistical reasons (it is often cheaper to film in Canada than the United States), or was the Adirondacks not a desirable setting for another reason?

This train of thought made me wonder what films have been set in the Adirondacks. Obviously there are many documentaries about the Park, but in terms of Hollywood stories, the only three that I can think of are The Last of the Mohicans, Miracle, and the horror film Lake Placid featuring Betty White and killer alligators. Out of those three, I have only seen Miracle which is tangentially related to the Adirondacks, and only takes place in Lake Placid for the last thirty minutes of the film. Besides The Last of the Mohicans which is takes place in the 18th century, none of these films are representations of people who actually live in the area. Perhaps there are some major movies that I am missing, but it seems odd that such a large, visually appealing, and well known place is rarely featured in film.

Compelling Stories about Trials

Last night, I realized just how similar The Sweet Hereafter is to the Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird. Both stories involve incidents that require court examinations, and small town attitudes come to the forefront as characters attempt to draw conclusions about past events. Coincidentally, I saw Bridge of Spies last weekend, a movie revolving around a lawyer from Lake Placid who defends a Soviet Spy during the Cold War. Mitchell Stephens of Banks' novel files a negligence lawsuit regarding bus accident case as an outlet for his personal anger towards his relationship with his daughter, while both James Donovan (Bridge of Spies) and Atticus Finch (To Kill A Mockingbird)s' core values are justice. However, in all three cases, the only way to reach resolution is through compromise and deception.

In Harper Lee's novel, Atticus Finch and the Macomb town investigators simply declare that Bob Ewell, the avenging father of a rape accuser, fell on his own knife, when in fact, the town recluse, Boo Radley, killed him in defense of Atticus' children. In Bridge of Spies, the Soviet Spy is only returned to his home after being denied fair trial by the Supreme Court and used as an object of trade to get an American spy and a captured university student back for the United States. Although the school bus driver, Dolores Driscoll, in The Sweet Hereafter knows that she is wrongly accused of driving over the speed limit, readers can be happy to know that the testifier, Nichole, speaks out in a way that her abusive father never would, and prevents her father from gaining any reward from the lawsuit.

The Sweet Hereafter has the most bittersweet ending of all three examples mentioned here, since innocent Dolores is ostracized from the community for the sake of quelling community drama. I love the ending of Banks' novel because of the way it emphasizes just how easily those people who we know for years can turn against us and how ingrained it is for humans to sacrifice one when a whole community is pent up with anger and blame. Empathy is no match for numbers in reality. Murder for murder, one captive for another, and an innocent victim for a false testimony; too often, two wrongs result in relative peace. This is not the way it should be, but such tension sure keeps audiences on the edge of their seats!

Character drafts

Russel Banks made me think about the difference between caricature and character.  One is, by definition, more nuanced though maybe caricatures can present a mirror in which readers see themselves.  I don't want to write caricatures, but maybe when you're an outsider, you can't help it.

Jacob: A man who lost his brother, the defining factor of his young adult life.  So scarred that it's visible.  He walks as if leaving space for his brother to walk next to him.  He left here but can't help coming back, because his parents are aging and his brother died in their backyard.  There is a place in the woods near him that has renewing ghost pipes, surely a sign of Homer.    

Zac: Motion compels him.  His momentum keeps him from reflecting.  It's almost blissful, to be so occupied and sure of its endurance.  His body is sculpted from perpetual physical activity.  He revisits the river beds he ran across when he was young, and although 20 years later, still carries himself blithely over treacherous rocks and swift waters.  He never puts himself to sleep, only exhaustion can do that for him.

James: moved here from New York to be in love.  His only refuge is Burlington, a sad comparison to the inexhaustible glamor of New York City.  He sits in an art gallery during the day, with people visiting from Manhattan looking down on the paintings on the wall.  His gallery has the white drop down ceilings that he despises for its suburban watermark.

Stephen: What a freak, a total oddity.  He lives in the woods to prove his authority on the place, to earn his ownership.  A romanticist by "trade", he only speaks in antiquated sentences and uses chivalry as his modus operandi.  He talks about his "modern man" past at UPenn, playing for the Philedelphia Eagles, almost winning Nobel Prizes as the easy price to pay for "walking with the bears" during their migration.

More characters to come.  

"Every poem requires a new kind of ignorance." - Chase Twichell

The other day I had the most trouble I've ever had focusing in class. This had nothing to do with the class itself, I think I just needed to sleep or run around or go to Montreal or something. In efforts to make myself pay attention I started writing lines about the men who were speaking. Then this happened:


There is a man here with a rat tail,
golden rimmed John Lennon glasses,
and pants that he grew out of a year ago.
His voice is deep like rivers in circuit.
I hear its vibrations bouncing in the corners
of the room, getting trapped and humming
behind the house plants and herbs under the window.
He’s speaking of Germany and people all over Europe,
“What a great experience, such a wonderful experience.”
He plays with his glasses case
while the bald man in front of him converses.
The bald man talks with his hands and eyes,
stubble decorating his cheek bones,
sometimes meeting his hands mid-sentence.
His knee is crossed over the other
and his fingers intertwine over them
when he finishes his speech.
There is a man dressed in greys
parallel to the bald man
who smiles when he knows
the answer to a question
he’s asked. His elbows are connected
by his fingertips, ready to spark up
his own discussion. He wears my father’s glasses,
black like his digital watch that doesn’t tick.

Koch Brothers and Cults

I lost sleep last night wondering how the Koch brothers sleep at night.

Surely, I wonder, they must have sleepless nights over their overt influence supporting the devastation caused by exponentially rising carbon levels; they must be, at least to some degree, affected by news of villages destroyed by rising waters and humans killed in natural disasters. Are they so deeply brainwashed by their own insular money-god that they experience no remorse? Are they sociopathic and immune to empathy? How could they not only encourage such massive destruction, but continue to promote and profit off of such irreversibly deadly initiatives? To care so little about local communities and, on a far larger scale, the macro level impacts of carbon on the earth, requires a degree of bigotry that is unfathomable to me.

As questioned by Chase Twichell of animal abusers:

What kind of consciousness accommodates their existence?

This question of consciousness has similarly circulated in my mind in reference to the documentary, Prophet’s Prey, which explores Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints and their (now imprisoned) totalitarian leader Warren Jeffs. The film follows the amplified indoctrination techniques and radicalized foundational church practices under Jeffs’ reign. The religion posits their leading prophet as possessing the ability to speak directly with god, granting Jeffs a voice of unique irrefutable authority. Polygamy is foundational to the fundamentalist sect, with some men having as many as 50 wives; women are valued only for their obedience and ability to procreate, married off as early as 12, and, as asserted by the film, often drugged into passivity. All members are isolated from the outside world not only geographically, but through prohibited access to television, books, and all exterior forms of education. 

            What makes Prophets Prey so disconcerting is the awareness within the religious group that Jeffs was raping and sexually assaulting children – many of whom he 'took' as his own wives. This complicates this question of what sort of consciousness accommodates the existence of both the members of the church and Warren Jeffs. Jeffs lead his congregation into a brainwashed state of complicit and mindless consciousness, creating an environment where his word was law, as his status as a representative of God allowed him to act as he did. Perhaps this is too crude a comparison, but just as the Koch Brother’s are ventriloquists dictating a Republican puppet show spouting climate change denial, Jeffs, even while imprisoned, wields an authority over the deceived members of the FLDS church, his voice from jail continuing to indoctrinate the members of his cult.

Where Is Chase When You Need Her

As we have been working on our project for the Adirondack Invasive Plant Program, Annie and I have come face to face with a pretty comprehensive list of waterbodies here in the park, and consequently, just how terrible their names are. Bill McKibben noticed too; he mentions it briefly in Wandering Home. I probably wouldn’t have noticed were it not for this project, but it does actually slow our work down when we have to figure out which pond our spreadsheet is actually referring to (there are often more than one lake with the same name) before collecting data. For example, our data, which consists of the lakes and ponds that have been monitored by APIPP, include two Deer Ponds (different from the Deer River Flow), both a Round Pond and Round Lake, Long Lake, Long Pond, and one of my favorites, Little Long Pond. Apparently this pond defies the physical world by being both long and little.

Another deeply original selection is the Fulton Chain of Lakes. There is First Lake, Second Lake, Third Lake, Fourth Lake and so on until Thirteenth Lake. I could understand if there are a few lakes near one another, but did someone really have to rely on numbering them until thirteen? And then there are the dozens named after animals. While this is probably at the very least accurate (there must have been a bear once at Bear Pond), it implies that going to this place would reward you with sights of nothing but this particular animal. If I went to Beaver Lake would I be surrounded by beavers and only beavers? The same goes for Eagle Pond, Otter Lake, Fish Pond, Siamese Pond (that’s just plain misleading), Bass Lake, Crane Pond, Loon Lake, Moose Pond, Turtle Pond,  and Buck Pond. What further confuses me is Big Moose Lake - are there no small moose allowed there? And what about Little Fish Pond? Do fish get evicted from that pond if they get too fat?

I must say, one of the all-time best categories is the one that names a body of water after a geographic feature that it is not. Mountain Lake and Mountain Pond, for example, are probably not land masses. Blue Mountain Lake is not only not a mountain, but mountains are also not blue. They are probably located near a mountain though - imagine that! Not to mention Bog Pond, which is clearly having some sort of identity crisis. Bogs and ponds are not synonymous. Rainbow Lake most likely does not produce perpetual rainbows.

Finally, there are those names that I just can’t make any sense of. Sucker Lake… Stoner Lake… I have no explanation. If those were people, they probably could have gone for one of the cop-out names like Big Pond or Rock Pond. Although technically, a big pond would be considered a lake. Towards the beginning of our project, I assumed that this must just be how lakes and ponds came to be named at the time. Then I came across the Twelfth Lake however, and realized that just because the easy route was taken the first time doesn’t mean it should stay that way. After all, first thought, worst thought.

http://www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq4120.html

Can't Buy Me Love (Based on a True Story)

Sweet Hereafter has been a great book to read because it tackles ethical and legal issues in a small community like the one we are currently living in. This book is also emotionally very heavy and I wondered what inspired Russel Banks to write about this particular story. The reason I was curious is because Dolores' recollections were so specific; she references roads, trail heads, and peaks. This reminded me of the phrase, "writers write what they know." Obviously, Banks knows this town because he has lived in Upstate New York, but did a terrible accident happen near him in his town too?

 I did some research and found that the novel was based on an actual accident that occurred in Alton, Texas on September 21st 1989.  In this crash 19 students were killed, 64 injured. A coco-cola delivery truck crashed into a school bus which plunged it into a 40 foot deep water chasm. It impossible not to think of the children, not all alive, pulled out of the water in front of their parents' eyes. Both drivers survived the accident, the Coco-Cola truck driver claimed that the truck's brakes failed. Lawyers immediately fled to the scene and advised families to take legal action. If you want to read more on it, here is an article about the event: Alton, Texas Bus Accident

This was a devastating event for the town. Many families lost young loved ones. A loss like this is always difficult to navigate through and impossible to completely comprehend. After the accident, as in Banks' book, lawyers came into the scene advising families to take legal action. This did not allow families to have a decent amount of time to cope with and grasp their loss. Instead they were forced to respond to the situation with anger rather than remorse.  Lawyers acted as if monetary compensation could help them deal with their loss but in the end, after the law suits were closed, the families did not feel closure.

Banks changes the story a by creating the character Nichole who technically ends the case, making monetary compensation an impossible result. In this story, the families are allowed the time to deal with their grief and accept the unchangeable fate of the situation unlike the actual families in Alton.