CBreaux Speaks

Well the gloom didn't last long ... .

Before the tears dried up I was in the advanced stages of absolute delight! Manic? Maybe, but I doubt it.

Two things happened to change the mood and sweep me up in the next wave of experience. First, a message came from Martha, our superintendent, who is at this very moment in New Orleans sitting in a jazz concert at the Louis Armstrong National Park there.

The first message said a simple, "...wish you were here!," and was written from her Blackberry. In a short time the second message arrived and I could read her excitement over the miles. She was charged up from watching a fantastic music program being conducted there that brings together older jazz musicians with young kids to learn and to play the songbook from old New Orleans.

And second; I then did something I rarely ever do. I looked up at the search bar on this journal (just above my picture over the archives) and entered the word "Jazz." Up came several posts that dated from around 2006, and that I'd totally forgotten about. I loved them! It was like rediscovering an old friend -- someone I've known but had let slip away. I felt all of the passion of the subject, and found little that I would not have written today.

It was cause to wonder if I've stopped growing, or, if this means that I've found a consistency that is at the foundation of a philosophy that I hadn't realized I'd adopted? Am I now drawing conclusions? Is this the place in life where I begin to summarize? Are there still areas of discovery open to me, or, am I closing down new avenues of personal development as the years pile on? I think that might be worse than death.

But there was such pleasure in reading my own words that it must be a good thing ... hopefully.

When she returns mid-week, we'll begin to scope out how we might bring such a program to Richmond -- a part of the Home Front story and WWII. This was where jazz and blues were transplanted to the West Coast as the historic African American migration swept musicians in and as the shipyard workers, and the City of Richmond and the Greater Bay Area began to develop new and reclaimed old sounds that today's young are probably totally unaware of.

A new edge to explore; and those earlier writings about jazz may provide the way in. I'll print them out and share them with our interpreters.

So many pieces coming together -- I'm hoping there will continue to be the time and the necessary energy ...

O what I would give for a Faustian bargain ... just another decade or two!

I would hate having to leave in the middle of this movie!

I should never have read them ...

Out of curiosity, I just went back to the Peter Fimright article in today's S.F. Chronicle to read the comments from the readers. I wasn't prepared for what was there. Within the first few minutes I was sobbing. Unsympathetic and vicious racist comments dominated the column -- and I couldn't stop reading. I clicked the forwarding numbers at the bottom of the screen 1, 2, but didn't have the courage to click 3. By that time I'd become completely unstrung. The emotions were coming from somewhere deep inside, and were beyond my control.

I don't feel prepared to explain it now -- maybe later -- but the disappointment was more than was bearable tonight, but I do understand the feelings. I've been here before. And in the past I've always been able to transform those destructive feelings into something positive in some way. I suppose I'm still doing so with each day, but there is a cost; one that I've always been willing to pay.

Maybe I'm simply tired tonight ... and disillusioned.

I guess I'd begun to believe that we'd come further than we have.

Maybe ... .

Photo: Click to enlarge.

Veteran's Day at Port Chicago ... .

I knew during the photo shoot yesterday that these were going to be spectacular photographs. The man behind the camera, the Chronicle's Lance Iversen, captured so much with such a sense of composition that I could hardly wait to get a look at what he'd seen through his lens. These pictures are classics, and I feel so honored to have been invited to be a part of his imagery.

The most dramatic of these, for me, shows the shadow of my fellow ranger, Thaddeus Shay, captured with the dummy torpedoes that are a part of the monument. He is a stand-in for those who are gone -- but whose presence is still felt so powerfully at the site.The story was written by Peter Fimright, and can be accessed online at today's S.F. Chronicle, Bay Area section (D1), lead story. Title: Port Chicago a national park.

There are 5 photographs with the story. These are my favorites. The reflection of the flag captured by the marble monument against the names of the fallen men excited Lance. On the ride back in the van at the end of the shoot, he was reviewing what he'd photographed -- this was the photo that he seemed particularly excited by.

The magic of being able to see with the photographer's eye is something that I envy. Artists like Iversen undoubtedly see so much more than ordinary people do. Before he clicks the camera, he has already seen his picture. And I'm not talking about what is seen in the camera's window -- but before he even sets it up.


I could see his excitement grow as he worked yesterday, and knew in advance that this would be no ordinary shoot. I knew that I'd be grateful for having been invited into his art.


It has been a day of thoughtful quiet.


I worked for a few hours with my friend, Careth "Diddy" Reid, on the E.F. Joseph collection (an almost overwhelming job that neither of us will live to see the end of); painfully, ever-so carefully, separating the thousands of ancient negatives -- is becoming more and more intriguing. Careth's living room has long since become a laboratory of sorts, with packets of once manila packets now stained brown by time -- strewn about. They date from the late 20's through 1979 at the time of this prolific photographer's death.

There is an infinite number of school graduations, Lodge gatherings, church doings, weddings and baptisms, political rallies, sports and entertainment figures, and individual portraits of old friends and strangers who look vaguely familiar but who defy identification. There are the once famous indiscriminately tossed in with the ordinary folks -- but who knew at that time which of these would figure prominently in history? It's one of the joys of age -- the ability to connect our youth with the nation's important stories as they evolved over the decades. It's a bit like glimpsing one's life in reruns.

Then, every now and then, a treasure. This week it was a complete collection of eleven perfect negatives taken at the launching of the SS John Hope at Richmond's Kaiser Shipyard #2 in 1943. Hope was an educator and co-founder of Seneca with W.E.B. DeBois many years ago. Not only are the negatives clear, but we both recognized the participants -- we believe we have Walter and Elizabeth Gordon doing the honors -- he, who later became the Governor of the Virgin Islands.

This has been a week worthy of having yielded at least 10 days within the 7 it was responsible for.

Recently I boasted that the value of my work lies in the fact that I'm old enough to know how all the stories turned out ...

Not so. Not completely. Not even close.

On Wednesday, October 28th, at the same hour -- eleven o'clock -- that I was standing beside the SS Red Oak Victory with the NIAD artists, the president was signing the legislation that brought the Port Chicago Naval Weapons Station into the National Park System system as the 392nd national park. I was keenly aware of the ceremonies going on in Washington, D.C. and mentioned to Chris Treadway of the Contra Costa Times that there was another story happening at that very moment, and that it was an important one. We stopped long enough in his covering of the NIAD story so that I could catch him up on what would be coming out of the Capitol. I promised to forward the essential contact numbers when I got back to my office so that he could follow the story. He told me that his father had lived in the little town of Port Chicago at that time and has memories of the blast. Then I put it away.

It was a few days later that a call came to my desk from the San Francisco Chronicle. The reporter had been sent by my supervisor who knew this story meant much to me. The paper wanted an interview about that day long ago when my young husband, Mel, and I had held an afternoon lemonade and hot dogs party at our little duplex in Berkeley where a dozen or so young servicemen from Port Chicago were present. It was the practice in our community to entertain servicemen and women on weekends (though I can't recall ever having an Africa American servicewomen in the mix) because the USO was not racially integrated at that time. We were living under a strict rule of segregation in most facets of our lives during WWII; something that we'd not known a lot about here in the Bay Area until the war came. We were aware of racial prejudice but it was mostly embedded in custom but not codified into law.

That was the Saturday afternoon of July 17, 2004. That very evening the tragic explosion occurred and 320 men were lost, 202 or whom were black. The white men who survived were given 30 days off to recover from the trauma. The black men were ordered back to work immediately, cleaning up the debris and collecting body parts. Their refusal to do so brought 50 of them under court martial and imprisonment. Public response to those events brought about the desegregation of the armed forces under an Executive Order by President Harry Truman. That process took 5 years to complete, but it changed the course of military history.

I'd never met those young men before so there has never been any way to learn if any who'd been with us that day had survived. I'm assuming not. Since becoming a park ranger, each Day of Remembrance when I've participated in the ceremony at the memorial, I look carefully at the 302 names and wonder ... feeling haunted by the sharp memory of those young faces. The only fragment that remains is the name Richert. As I recall, he was only 16 years-old, having lied about his age to enlist to fight for his country. I'm not even sure that that name is the correct one since it is not among those carved into the marble of the memorial plaque.

Last Friday the Chronicle called to ask if I would be willing to be photographed at the memorial for the story which will probably appear in next Sunday's edition. Having relived the story again and again over the years, I was surprised at how much I'm still haunted by this unfinished story even after all the years since. It's freshened again and the feelings of never having known the ending will return in sharp focus tomorrow as the cameraman does his work. He'll never know how little of the trauma will show in his print -- and how deeply-etched are those memories still.

We were all so young ...

...and their lives ended so abruptly. Gone -- with no warning. And they were too young to have left survivors. I cannot recall that any of those youngsters were of an age to have been married.

They continue to live only in the minds of those of us who remember them ...

Again, tomorrow morning, I'll stand at those plaques and try hard to do just that. This is a story that needs desperately to be held in the collective memories of the nation. Now, with thanks to the hard work of Rep. George Miller and Sen. Barbara Boxer, Dr. Robert Allen, Rev. Diana McDaniel, and all the others who have worked so hard and so long to make this a place to be honored and revered. It is now designated as a National Park that will one day have full staffing and a Visitor's Center. Another of the sites that tells the story of our nation.

A story we dare not forget, but one I'm unable to fully remember --

... and I'm still haunted by it.

Photo: Betty at about the age of most of those lost in the Port Chicago explosion. This gives a sense of just how young those young men were.

Here 'tis! Ten feet of imagination and love -- in a direct line from the heart ... .

It's all there; the bridge, the ship, the people, the shoreline, the trains, the birds -- all of the essence of the city -- and, a ranger who shall be nameless.

Can't wait to see it installed in the waiting room of the Richmond Police Department. Should be quite a ceremony with everyone in attendance, including the mayor.

If you'll look carefully at the right side of the painting -- in right center, you'll see what is clearly a park ranger under a gigantic yellow hat. That's me -- just past that line of green trees. And all of the elements are there, hat, glasses, and, no, that's not a cigar growing out the left side of my head, it's my ponytail with nowhere to else to go but essential to my identify; clearly.

Oh to be immortalized in such a Picasso-esque fashion! Picasso, who took the essential elements of his subject and re-arranged them to his own liking and sense of art -- and the world said a resounding "yes!"

Dr. Elias Katz and his artist wife, Florence, believed that art was something buried deep in each of us; not dependent upon talent or education; simply lying dormant waiting to be released. Their aim was to open studios where people of any capacity or disability -- could find materials of every possible kind; clay, paint, needles and thread, rags, chalks, brushes, etc., and through which a staff of sensitive artists ... capable of resisting the temptation to "teach" but could help to open Aldous Huxley's "Doors of Perception" and bring into the world work of meaning and joy through people like my daughter, Dorian, and her community of "disabled" fellow artists.

Dr. Katz developed three such studios, I believe; N.I.A.D. in Richmond, Creative Growth in Berkeley, and another in San Francisco (though I'm not sure about the last one).


Dr. Katz is now in his 90's and rarely turns up at the arts openings anymore; in addition, I believe he is now blind. Mrs. Katz died some years ago, but her work is being featured this month in a special exhibit at the Richmond NIAD studio. Their gift to a population of artists who are finding themselves appreciated and celebrated through colorful and delightful work that is satisfying and which adds to their incomes through a 50% split on all sales of their pieces is a resounding endorsement of their worth.

Thank you, Dr. Katz, for your firm belief in the capacity of all human beings to be capable of expressing their internal spiritual lives in all of its forms -- if encouraged to. Through those beliefs, you've enriched us all.

Photo: click to enlarge thumbnails to view details. For more information on NIAD, check out their website online.

Field trip with the artists from National Institute for Artists and Disabilities ... .

A few months ago the Richmond Police Department commissioned a mural for the wall of their waiting room from the artists of NIAD. There was such excitement! And -- there has been growing interest at the studio in the Rosie the Riveter national park that is becoming more and more of a presence in the city. The fact that Dorian's mother is a ranger and often picks her up at the end of the day in full uniform has sparked additional interest.

Since the handicaps and physical and mental challenges of this community are varied and -- in some instances -- profound, there is little knowledge of the themes the park inspires. For the most part, there is little sense of past or future; most live completely in the moment. That means that WWII or Rosie the Riveter or the significance of the home front mobilization so central to our work has little relevance in their world.

However, when work on the mural began, bits and pieces of the surrounding civic environment gradually made their way into the work; and someone brought in the SS Red Oak Victory ship. And -- Dorian had mentioned in passing one day that I was also in the mural. I later saw a small figure in a far right upper section standing proudly under a huge yellow hat that was instantly recognizable as that of a park ranger. The proportions are interesting. The hat was equal in size to everything under it, so that my body takes up only about a third of the image. And -- that's about right in the scheme of things.

The staff of teaching artists whose dedicated work with these clients so enriches their daily lives, seized upon the inspiration bubbling up from their students -- went to the library for photos of the SS Red Oak Victory for them to see and work from.

After visiting over lunch at Ford Point recently with NIAD staffers Belinda and her co-worker, Brian, it was decided that it could be very exciting if we could arrange a field trip to the actual victory ship moored in the Kaiser Shipyard less than 3 miles away. Within a week, I'd received permission from my supervisor and plans were quickly completed. Our NPS bus and driver, Don Holmes, were available for the trip. It would involve 3 members of staff (2 of whom followed by car), 14 artists, plus two in wheelchairs; all excited and inspired and ready to even tackle the scary gangplank to be on deck of the historic ship for the first time. I'd not envisioned our actually boarding, but once there it seemed reasonable to make the attempt. Almost everyone rose to the occasion, though coming back down posed problems for at least one -- but we made a game of it and she prevailed in the end.

It was a delightful excursion!

The police chief was invited to meet us at the ship for a photo-op, but he had been up-ended by the awful situation at the high school that was suddenly drawing national media attention to Richmond and long hours defending the department and meetings with school officials and irate and frightened parents were making his joining our adventure impossible. However, the West County Times columnist and a photographer answered the call to cover the story despite the sensational goings-on across town -- and this weekend there will be a story out of Richmond, California, that will be ignored by that same national press, but that will include photographs of the mural as well as the field trip. It will also have brought together the National Park Service, the Richmond Police Department, and the Richmond Museum of History with the National Institute for Artists and Disabilities.

That's surely not an insignificant day's work, right?

Will post the mural when I receive the photographs in a few days.

Photo: And that would be my daughter, Dorian, in red.

I've been side-tracked ever since entering the lyrics to Ebony more than a week ago ... .

It occurred to me that somewhere in the blogger help feature I'd seen the instructions for adding audio to a blog. Suppose I could fix it so that the song begins as the button(?) is pressed. I happen to have in my I-Tunes library several songs I've written -- sung at different times under differing circumstances more than 40 years ago. I stopped long enough to listen to myself singing.

I've captured an online MP3 player and added it to my desktop along with the song I'd stashed in I-Tunes - but that's as far as I've managed to get in the process.

If you can dwell for just a minute on the pure magic of being able to listen to one's (much younger) self singing before an audience with the applause in the background as the song ends -- to drop back into your own history to such a moment ... well. It was something I'll not forget soon. I was mesmerized by my own voice. I felt no particular relationship to this young voice, though I knew it was mine. I was moved by my own singing ... how strange. There was no ego. I judged "her" not, but found myself able to just listen and be caught up in her music without the need to either cringe or exalt. Just to be with my younger self. What a rare experience to live myself into.

Then the frustration set in as I tried to figure out how in the world I could add that music to the blog entry so that you could hear it, too. The instructions were simply beyond me. The technical words meant nothing; it was about then that I realized how far out of my generation I've been living and working.

I flunked geek!

I then got lost for days and days in trying to decipher the language of the audio instructions, and nothing else mattered. If I continue to record my thoughts, that particular entry will move down the page and get lost in the archives before I figure out how to bring the song to life with sound. The little poem holds little meaning to me without the voice and the music, and all of the color drains away from the empty words on the screen.

Meanwhile, if you can help ... .

(Use the link on the left just under my photo where it says, "email me.")


Photo: Taken in concert in Cleveland (circa 1965).

An evening at the California College of the Arts -- a panel experience ... .

Some weeks ago a call came from a faculty member from the college asking if I'd participate in a panel before their students in Community Arts. The subject of the evening would be "Are we living in a post-racial era?" This sounded like a reasonable request, but first we needed to determine whether this was something being asked of me as an employee of the National Park Service, or whether (in this case) it was an invitation to my personal self? Being firmly identified in both worlds after all these years and in many roles, I don't always know. It's an important question in some instances, since without establishing the context in which I'm functioning at any given (public) moment -- quite rightfully -- I may not feel free to express opinions that might be seen as "political;" not permitted when in uniform. It was clear in this instance, that the persona being called upon here was Betty, a private citizen in simple black suit, with no need to be circumspect, but full-voiced and unrestrained.

Upon entering the building where the panel was to take place I was immediately faced with a two huge blowups of a familiar photo of President Obama and his family, set apart by some 12' feet but on the same wall was another of Prof. Henry Louis Gates handcuffed on his front porch surrounded by police in the now-famous incident of his being charged with breaking and entering his own home. These photos set the stage for the evening which was to deal with the subject of whether we were now in a post-racial era. No problem, right? This would be a cake walk. Or would it? Where on earth was the argument? There could be but one answer.

Dr. Chiang, the psychologist who was the other panelist, was new to the faculty, a member of another minority, and someone who would be working from a professional position; from an acquired store of knowledge and a distinguished academic record. This is always a little scary since I'm always working off life experiences with all the biases and the limitations that so often come with the lack of academic credentials. There is no way to prepare for this since I'm always speaking from life experience and what I've gleaned from them, and often with not much more. I tend to simply show up and depend upon an ability to listen closely then draw my presentation from whatever precedes "my turn" at the lectern. Risky, but it seems to work. It's probably an extension of the candor I work with each time I enter anything into this blog.

After an introduction by the school's president, Dr. Chiang rose to speak. We'd each been given 20 minutes -- then would entertain questions from those gathered. I'd learned from his bio that he'd recently published a book on hate crimes in America, and had joined the faculty after teaching for some years at the University of Iowa. (Would I be able to live up to expectations again by the skin of my teeth, or would this be the night that I bombed disgracefully?) What on earth was there to draw from except age, experience, and goodwill extended by the community?

Dr. Chiang rose to stand at the lectern with his briefcase close by, his notes nicely organized, the little gadget in hand with which to move through his well-prepared PowerPoint presentation. He started his talk with the large white screen behind him suddenly coming to life with a large "NO!" and we were off. This was his answer to the question of the day, and he would spend his next 20 minutes very effectively justifying that powerful graphic.

I listened closely; trying to form my response. Working hard to figure out just what on earth I could possibly say that would not simply be "ditto!," "me, too!" But as he spoke I found that I really didn't feel in total agreement with his presentation. In listening intently, I found myself not nearly as certain as he, about where we were/are in history.

As he ended, having made his case, it slowly dawned that my answer had to be "Yes, no, and, maybe." I realized that the experience of the Inauguration last January held the answer. That being that all of those states of being exist simultaneously -- perhaps each in its own dimension -- out of which I'd always had to find my way in order to create my own reality depending upon which dimension was dominating my life at any given moment in time.

Case in point: After several days of moving about Washington, D.C., walking the Capitol Mall among 2 million people of like mind, it felt as though I could have started a conversation in the middle of the 5th paragraph with anyone within arm's reach. And I did. I recall walking up to a total stranger, a woman in an ankle-length silver fox coat (it was 17 degrees!), asking if she would take a picture with me? Her arm quickly wrapped around my shoulder and we embraced as old friends while Martha snapped the photo.

We remained for a couple of days after the ceremonies in order to visit the museums, the galleries, the Department of Interior, and the National Park Service -- and over that time all of my new "very best friends," the revelers, boarded planes and buses; climbed back into their cars, and left the Capitol. Their places were now taken over by an estimated 20,000 Americans who had come to Washington on the occasion of the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade to demonstrate for their cause. It was as though a genie had swooped in during the night and transformed "Yes we can!" into "Oh no you don't!". There were signs and posters everywhere with bloody fetuses and shoutouts of angry rage at anyone supporting a woman's right to choose. They'd been there all the time. These realities exist as powerfully as all others, and with just as strong a sense of the "rightness" of those beliefs. We returned to the airport in a completely different dimension than the one that had brought us into town only a few days before -- at a time when -- upon landing -- the pilot welcomed the planeload to Washington and everyone on the plane applauded!

• So, yes, we have entered a post-racial America -- if we choose to see only those positive aspects of how far we've come without recognition of what is still left undone.
• No, we have a long distance still to go before post-racialism is fully realized, despite great strides achieved over the recent past. And,
  
• maybe, since our place on the trajectory of change could suddenly shift into a future not yet defined, and cynically conceived.

Which dimension we choose to inhabit is still dependent upon our capacity to trust and to love. And it's quite possible that the dynamism of our Democracy is driven by the constant clashing of realities; the waxing and waning of all of those social forces that constantly redefine who we are and what kind of future we're forging every moment of our existence, and out of which comes the vitality that stokes the fires of our passions. Maybe the secret is to make the most of those times when we're delivering on our best hopes, and pray that we'll be allowed enough time to create a mutually beneficial reality that most of us can share. Perhaps the opposition is necessary to keep us honest and ever-reaching toward the forming of that "... more perfect Union."

This Democracy is still a work in progress. Perhaps it must always be; each succeeding generation with the mission to rise to the task of nation-building, based upon our founding documents, traditions, and dedicated to the common good.

So these thoughts and words formed the gist of my presentation (though I never remember the exact words), and it felt right for the moment. But then that was the dimension in which I was living in that hour in that place.



Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I need to say that my presentation wasn't nearly as coherent as it appears to be here. I'm sure that I struggled with it on my feet; finding the right words at the right time to make my case. In the days that followed I've had time to clarify for myself and come to a fuller understanding. But the feelings are real, and were I to have a second run at the subject -- I'm more than ready.