In fact, the name of the tiny rural place in Georgia where Jimmy Carter grew up, where his family farmed, was Archery. The town - it wasn't even quite a town - no longer exists. Jimmy was born in Plains, and he and Rosslyn returned there after his presidential term and still live there.
Just watched the Jonathan Demme bio-documentary on Carter. It's a good one, I recommend. Demme is a fan, of the man and the President, which comes through. Talk about a country boy making his way to the big city; and yet never losing the country in him. Carter is nothing if not a man of place and land, which of course explains his tireless and unapologetic compassion (which has gotten him into trouble) for the Palestinian cause.
It occurs to me that, in this modern world, either you are a person of place, or you aren't. The dividing line between those two ways of existing on the planet is stark. We city people are nomadic, our fidelity is to things abstract. Seems to me Carter's relationship to place and land might be the most defining and driving force of his character, and thus his leadership and legacy.
I'm reading one of his memoirs now and looking forward to Peter Bourne's biography.
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