Well, chat, I finally did it. I deleted my damn Facebook. For real this time, I think.
It’s wild to think about how Facebook has existed for more than half of my life. I was an early adopter back in the salad days when you had to have a college email address to join. In those days we posted blurry night-out pictures from our digital cameras, (innocently?) poked each other, made silly groups with inside jokes that quoted Anchorman, and used it essentially as a group text before group texts were a thing.
Then we grew up. The social network opened up to everyone, which was in some ways exciting but in other ways limited our freedom on the site. We found respite in Instagram, a new hip place to post our blurry night out photos, only now they came from our phones and we could put filters on them to make them look cooler.
Then Mark Zuckerberg bought it, and now you have to scroll through a bunch of shit you didn’t ask for to see a picture of your friend’s avocado toast.
Nowadays, people my age use social media not only to share photos of our kids but also to keep up with what’s happening at our kids’ schools and in our real life communities. Social media has become so ingrained into our daily lives that what was once a fun distraction is now an annoying necessity.
Over the past year or so, I have been consciously reducing my own social media usage. When I saw those nerds at Old Boy’s inauguration looking like the four horsemen but less cool, I knew it was time.
I want to give all of them a wedgie.
At that point, I had three Instagram pages: my OG private one, a public one for writing/teaching/professional stuff, and one for my flower pictures. I deleted the public pages first, and shortly after that I deleted the private one as well. I haven’t missed it much.
Just remembered that I was supposed to do more garden blogging here. My bad. Here, have a monarch on a cosmos. I accidentally made it a sticker because I am apparently becoming a luddite.
Likewise, I recently deleted my TikTok account over new privacy concerns, and I haven’t missed it much, either. I used it to turn my brain off at the end of the day, but fortunately my exit from TikTok coincided with the newest episodes of Bridgerton. Netflix has its own problems, but there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, right? Ugh, just let me have this, for the love.
"This author knows best that a small amount of make-believe often has the power to remake reality, to lift us up from the drudgery of a humdrum existence."
While Facebook has been my least favorite social network for a while now, it has been the most useful to me for a number of reasons. But now they have messed with Stockton, and that just hits different.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, built a data center in Montgomery, which is bad enough. Data centers are popping up all over Alabama, and much to my surprise and horror, there’s even one called Lumen.
Take me back to Mayfair, this is getting too real.
But the tech bros who are constantly pushing AI in our faces have realized that some of us don’t take too kindly to the environmental destruction caused by these data centers, so they’ve started seeking out green alternatives to power them. Which is great, right? Don’t we all want to make guilt-free caricatures of ourselves at work?
Meta plans to be at 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, an admirable goal if done correctly. But renewable doesn’t always mean green, especially if you’re destroying natural resources to achieve it.
Enter Silicon Ranch, a Nashville-based company that is 43.83% owned by Shell and cofounded by a former governor of Tennessee. They plan to build a “solar fa
rm” over 4500 acres in Stockton with the assistance and blessing of Alabama Power, the same company who for years has made it difficult for individual citizens to install solar panels on their own property.
The move to renewable energy I think proves what we hippie environmentalist Chicken Littles have been screaming for years–that fossil fuels are a finite resource. If Shell, Alabama Power, Zuckerberg, and Musk are turning to renewable energy, then they’re doing so out of necessity, not out of some moral obligation. We should view these efforts with a healthy level of skepticism, and the citizens of Stockton are doing just that.
I have always suspected that Stockton was special. When people introduce me and say I’m from Mobile or Bay Minette, I quickly let them know that I’m from that glorious, historic, unincorporated town up the road. Haven’t heard of it? Good. We like it that way.
I moved to Stockton in 1992 at the end of my first grade year, but for my parents, it was moving “back home.” My family has lived in north Baldwin County for over 200 years. I recently learned that my great grandfather, a dentist, was one of the first people in Stockton to have a telephone. His phone number was 28. Seriously.
I haven’t lived in Stockton since I moved to Tuscaloosa for college, but I do visit a lot. It’s where my roots are, and it’s a place I plan to return to one day. I love showing my daughter its natural beauty, but I think one thing I appreciate more than anything is the community.
When I went to the Olde Time Days Festival at the Bicentennial Park last fall, I decided to use the event as an opportunity to practice taking field notes for a research class that I was taking. As I attempted to view this event as both an insider and an outsider, what I found was this overwhelming sense of pride and love for the community that built me.
I have been teaching early American literature for the past 12 years. I was reluctant to enter this field, but it was always inevitable. I used to be president of the Red Eagle Chapter of the Children of the American Revolution, after all, and the legendary Phil Beidler used to call me “The Princess of Fort Mims.” I am actively in the planning stages of getting William Bartram’s evening primrose, which he discovered in Stockton, tattooed on my leg.
Sorry, Mom. Unfortunately, I just keep getting cooler.
The people of Stockton are deeply connected to history and the land, and being rooted in those values informs a lot of my practice as an educator and a researcher. So when I heard about this plan to build solar fields that will not benefit my hometown in any way, my immediate response was disgust. As I learned more about the 800 acres of wetlands on the property, my second response was horror. As someone who grew up in the swamps of North Baldwin, I know how important the wetlands in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta watershed are, but I don’t know if you do.
Do you live anywhere on this map? If so, welcome to my swamp.
Water connects us all, but the Mobile-Tensaw Delta watershed connects four states. What’s happening in Stockton is bigger than Stockton. It’s bigger than Alabama Power or Shell or even Meta. Destruction of these wetlands would result in the loss of habitat for several protected species, including gopher tortoises and migratory birds.
One glimmer of hope in all of this is that companies have tried to develop this property twice and failed both times due to the presence of these wetlands. That said, Old Boy and his friends have recently dismantled some of those protections, so I’m having a really hard time trusting the process this time around.
One thing I do know is that people from Stockton are not going down without a fight. And we can fight. My grandma and uncle and I recently shared with my daughter our memories of fights on the school bus on that long ride to Bay Minette. She looked on, wide-eyed, while we gleefully described wooden hairbrushes and metal lunchboxes that doubled as weapons.
Trust me, I just made an A in stats.
That side of the family is from just up Highway 59 in Tensaw, which we learned is facing their own 2,900 acre solar project by Walden Renewables, a company based out of New Hampshire. As an early Americanist, my initial response was that Thoreau would roll over in his grave at the name of this company. Upon further reflection, Thoreau really did love the sun, and also one time he set 300 acres of woods on fire.
My bad
I grew up swimming in Majors Creek and Pine Log Creek, which both run through the land on this proposed “farm.” The property is owned by David Zook, a guy who has been recently involved in a $700 million ATM Ponzi scheme in Texas. I would like to officially challenge David Zook, Mark Zuckerberg, and anyone else pushing this project who knows nothing about Stockton to see who can swim in Pine Log Creek the longest. If I win, they have to get out of my swamp. It’s been a long time, but as Toby Keith once said, “I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was.”
According to organizers, about 500 people showed up to a town hall to speak out against these projects. Before I left Facebook, over 3,000 folks from all walks of life and all political affiliations had joined Stop Solar in Stockton. North Baldwin County is a very conservative area, but conservative in the true sense of the word: they wish to conserve a way of life that has existed for hundreds of years, one that even pre-dates European colonization.
So I encourage you to join this fight with us by signing up for our newsletter, but I also encourage you to drop by and sit for a spell the next time you head down to Mobile or Gulf Shores. Stop in the Stagecoach Cafe and get the best buttermilk pie you’ve ever put in your mouth. Read the historical markers about William Bartram and The Mound Line. Most importantly, check out one of our many beautiful landings and see what we’re fighting for.
Live Oak Landing, about five miles from the proposed solar fields in Stockton
The Delta is meant for all of us to enjoy, but we need to protect it, too. For my friends in Stockton and Tensaw, keep fighting the good fight and following the money. I will keep doing what I can from St. Clair County. If you’d like to support me in writing more about this here, consider making a donation to this fine website here.