The universality of fear ...

Came to terms with this just before becoming fully awake this morning. I'll no longer concern myself with re-locating. It was in that split second of clarity that I knew that the fear that I'm feeling has by now become my constant state of being. It attaches itself momentarily to the sound of sirens as the refineries set off their monthly test blasts promptly at eleven o'clock on the first Wednesday; it surfaces again when the traffic helicopters fly low overhead. It's now become my "normal." It has little to do with this beleaguered city. It may have more to do with Washington, D.C., and with the machinations of K Street, or, New York and the board rooms of Wall Street. I don't know. What I do know is that it has less to do with where I am than with what I'm feeling.

Those feelings were strong earlier this week as I watched CSPAN's coverage of the Rep. John Conyers forum on the Downing Memo -- with 32 Democrats squeezing in and out of that tiny room in a Washington basement -- looking impotent and defiant in the face of the most frightening display of power by the administration yet seen. For the first time I found myself able to understand the frailty of the Progressive side of the political equation. I felt it again the next day when Durbin apologized for his remarks instead of holding to his truths under the barrage of Republican criticism. My fears have more to do with lack of empowerment than of finding myself in the crossfire of a gang-related gun fight. Such a fear is far less likely to be realized.

Last night the Richmond city council chamber was crowded with 600 community people in a room meant to hold 200, maybe, in response to the news that they might be proclaiming a State of Emergency in light of the string of violent deaths experienced over the past two weeks. To my surprise and pleasure -- the vote was to not do so, but to look for other ways to respond to what has become a truly frightening climate of terror for many families.

What we have forgotten is the fact that this was surely predictable in light of the budget cuts that removed all services to young people in this town, leaving them with few supervised activities and little hope except for escape into military service and the killing fields of the Middle East. Controlling gun possession has proven to be impossible given the persistent idiocy of the NRA. With the proliferation of illegal drugs rampant and most funds for programs now buried in police budgets instead of recreation departments, what did we expect? We left young black youth with no alternatives other than the armed services or prison. We'd forgotten how dangerous it is to leave the young with high energy and intiative but no hope for a viable future. Left to their own devices, they've created a world of their own; one that mimicked ours, but with fewer safeguards or sense of morality; since ours have become invisible of late -- with the signposts buried behind caveats and false diplomacy; lies, murder, and mayhem without cause. What on earth did we expect?

The fears that have taken up permanent space in my psyche attached to the local body count, but even when I woke this morning with a sense that we'd reached the other side in the Richmond crisis -- the disembodied fear was and is still present.

Find myself wondering if we're all not feeling it -- as if we've hit some tipping point with triggers now touching off panic at the slightest provocation? It has to do with the sense that the nation (the world?) is out of control and that we're all players in the coming self-inflicted nuclear destruction -- be it worldwide catastrophes from global warming, weapons of mass destruction, avian flu, or, being slain on the streets of Richmond. Maybe we'll simply die of over- consumption of breaking news headlines! Dead is dead.

Maybe all I need by way of coping mechanisms is to not give the media access to my panic buttons. No easy task, but my sanity may be dependent upon doing just that.

There is no safe place on the planet to run to. Moving back to Berkeley will accomplish nothing. I'm precisely where I need to be -- and where I want to be at this point in my life. There's work to be done -- more things are possible here -- ways to make a difference in my own life and in the lives of those around me.

I'll drive in to look over the bulletin boards around town to see if there's some place where I can volunteer to work with kids in some way that's meaningful. I know that it's not children that I'm fearful of. Maybe they're fearful, too. It might be important to learn if that's true... .

Nowhere to hide ... .

It surely isn't all sack cloth and ashes ... there are new challenges ahead.

While I was sneezin' and snufflin' over the past few days -- trying to throw off a cold -- there were two interesting new developments on the career front.

• It's now official. I'll enter a new contract with the National Park Service on July 26th in the Rosie the Riveter National Homefront Historical Park in Richmond. They've apparently found the funding to bring me on to staff. It's only a short contract, but then so am I! It will be good to be back at work again. Never did get the hang of this retirement business ... .
• Also received a telephone call from a very interesting charter school in Oakland called The Lighthouse. Last year when I was working for the NPS, I was a lecturer for a workshop staged for a national group of young teachers who visited the park to study the untold stories of World War II. It was an really fascinating day.
• They are coming back with another group on Tuesday of next week for an encore performance. We will meet in The Hold of the SS Red Oak Victory where I will do a hour's presentation on the role of African Americans in the Good War ( or at least this one). I'm much better prepared this time, and am looking forward to meeting with these young teachers and their new crop of educators.

They announced that a group of 150 teachers from across the nation will come to the park in March of next year and -- having had wind of my unique presentations have signed on for a session of "Betty and the Big War." Never knew it would come to this (smile) but I'm more than ready and by that time will have had an additional period of exposure to the artifacts and oral histories of others now available in the archives of the Rosie Park to add to my own experiences.

Now to try to envision ways to combine my NPS work with my dissonant black history into something that just might ignite some interest in this important new national park here in this community where so much of it was lived. There is some really proud African American history here -- there just may be some way to bring that to life for some of the troubled kids now wandering these streets ... maybe. Lots of food for thought ... and much to try to recapture for young minds so bereft of meaningful connections with the greater community. It must be dreadful to feel homesick -- when you're at home. There may be something here to draw from across the generations and the wars of their times.

What may be important about this -- or where the connection are -- remain unclear as I write, but time will take care of that. And, ironically, time is what I have the least of right now. But of what there remains must be shared with a new generation struggling with their destiny in a time when our institutions are in a shambles and new outrages must be lived through... .

But then most of the young have known little else.

Maybe we lived out all of the good years.

Breakthrough!

I've spent the entire morning in tears. This is the worst kind of depression. I hadn't the foggiest notion of why I've been so down over the past week. Couldn't write. Could hardly make it through the days without the most awesome panic attacks. Not that there wasn't good reason, of course. The headlines are enough to bury the best of us in hopelessness. My inability to get myself out of bed each morning -- except for the most urgent of reasons -- should have been the tip off. It wasn't.

I've been blaming my dark moods on the fact that Dorian will be leaving around August 1st and that this will bring many changes into my life -- not all of which are good. There will be economic implications since I bought this condo only two years ago and have little equity to claim should I sell it. And, sell it I must because it I could only afford it based upon our plan for shared living expenses. The thought of moving again opens up the possibility of relocating out of the area and into a place where I feel more secure; safer. We both receive SSA and I have some very modest investment dividends and retirement checks to bolster that. Now that must change. Reason enough, maybe. But not enough.

The death count in Richmond has climbed so rapidly that there have been 6 bodies to add to the count over the past weekend. One killing happened within a few blocks of our apartment. We heard the gunshots. Reason enough, again, only maybe. We've been here before. These are the drug wars that have now taken over our lives.

It couldn't have been the headlines that have caused this dive into panic since I cut off newspaper delivery over a year ago in favor of getting all of my news through the Internet. My video viewing is pretty well covered by West Wing reruns and CSPAN with occasional PBS programs from time to time. And -- wouldn't miss Jon Stewart and the Daily Show crazies or the outrageous Reno 911 that is funny enough to blast me out of any blue funk that I may fall into from the sounds of our crumbling institutions. I've given up on trying to make sense of our foreign or even domestic policy decisions. I've also given up on the notion that there is anything I can do about any of it; except to just ride out my remaining years and hope for the best for my children and theirs.

But ...

Something is beginning to surface that both gives me hope and brings further despair. It has to do with the killing spree that has turned this city upon itself in pockets of hopelessness and fear. It has given rise to defiance in some and terror in others. No one is untouched. And there is a familiarity to it. It is the 3000 block of Sacramento Street in Berkeley in the year 1978; the year that I returned to take over our failing small business in the heart of the drug trade. The fear that I'm feeling is no longer just below the surface but is now washing over me in waves. The enormous victory over the environmental changes that I experienced some 7 years later now seems unreal. It's as if only the images of a young man with his face shot off -- lying within 100 ft. of my building is the only one left in my head. I didn't know him. I was told at the time that he was 22 and was the fourth I'd witnessed as the result of drive-bys over less than ten days.

In the early days I was still far too fearful to even look up into the faces of those youngsters each day as I walked from my car into my store. They were invading my space and destroying my ability to survive economically. I saw them as the enemy and wanted them gone!

• That was long before I'd learned to speak to the streets through my use of "talking windows" that carried bulletins and information about things that mattered to me and should have to them.
  
• That was before I'd used those windows to talk about who I would vote for in the upcoming elections, and where I posted a huge facsimile of my ballot with explanations for what I would do and who I would endorse for office.
  
• That was before Fred Stripp (veteran of Pearl Harbor and a wino) began to arrive each morning with his worn down broom to voluntarily sweep the sidewalks in front of my doorway on each day of sobriety.
  
• And, before Touche began to stop by to add plants from his little garden to the little sidewalk flower boxes that bracketed the entry to the store.
  
• That was before I'd learned to stash a gallon paint mixed to match my exterior walls to immediately cover the tiniest sign of grafitti, and before the drug dealers took over the responsibility of seeing to it that the building was not touched by anyone.
  
• That was before I'd claimed "turf."
• That was before I learned that -- on the street -- I had a name and that with it came the protection of those who haunted the corners. And that those kids stationed themselves at the bus stop immediately across the street to watch over me at night.
• That was before "Red Pants" started popping in at closing time each night to walk me to my car in the dark -- so that I'd be safe.
  
• That was before I realized that the little store had become -- over many years -- a neighborhood institution and that I ran it with the consent and blessing of the community.
• That it was safe to bring in papers that looked important to be read and interpreted.
• and where kids stopped by on their way home from the elementary school two blocks away on the day when report cards were passed out -- to share their marks and pick up a token prize for those with the greatest signs of improvement.
  
• This was the place to announce a job has been secured or acceptance into a program of some sort.
• It had become a place where grief was shared over the loss of someone dear.
  
• And, I learned it on the day that I stood in front of my store alone and laughed aloud at the sight of drug dealers making sales right in front of a huge billboard that advertised (of all things) cigarette papers!

A little more than a week ago I stood up at the Richmond Summit on Street Crime and spoke passionately about the need to give up battling the negative and begin to dream new dreams of a new reality for this city and its people. I spoke of how I'd had to do that many years ago in an area that had seen 25% of the city's homicides in the year that I'd taken over our business. I'd taken credit for the success of that effort and crowed about how - in the year 1995 I'd been honored before the California State Legislature for having accomplished the redevelopment of that area and brought peace to that community. I was wrong.

This morning it dawned on me that what had really happened was that those young men (and a few desparate young women) who had no dreams of their own had bought into mine. It was with their gradual buy-in that I was able to succeed. Those kids moved in and out of jails and prisons over that seven year period of struggle but they gradually became my cohorts over time. A few of them helped to register voters toward the end -- though there were few in the community who had not lost the franchise due to felonies on their records. I recall two young men who walked into the store one day day to pick up their clipboards dressed in suits and ties (I'd put out a call from my talking windows) -- neither could add their names to the forms that were attached. I recall how ironic it was to me at the time, and of how proud I was of them both for spending an entire day walking the streets trying to get others to come up to my store to read my window sample ballots and mark to their own.

I woke this morning feeling fearful -- and frustrated to be so certain that there are answers and that I'd innocently happened upon some of them during those years. I knew better than to ever ask their names but gave them names of my own (as they had for me) and would look around as I climbed out of my car each morning -- asking, "...where is Red Pants this morning?" And would feel real concern when told that he had been picked up the night before by the police. I learned to walk out of my store and join other bystanders when the police were performing a raid -- I'd be silent but the kids would know that I was watching so that nothing cruel would happen to them. They knew that I was respected by the police and that my presence might prevent unnecessary roughness.

I believed in my own dream of bringing positive change to that little community. I believed that it could be done. Over time those kids bought into those dreams and -- together -- we made it happen. A couple of them still drop in from time to time. My son and the current Reid proprietor, David, passes along their greetings. I've since learned some real names -- and when I recognize a face or two in the newspapers under the title "Drug King Pin" I say, "...oh, that's Mrs. So-and-So's nephew!" One would think that after many years of community policing, the police would evolve an attitude in the same way and that justice would then become more humane and compassionate. But then most members of the police department do not live in the communities that they police but are seen by the kids as an occupying force from outside. This must change.

Somehow we have to provide dreams big and strong enough for kids to buy into. We have to believe so strongly in the possibility of change that our visions overpower their despair and hopelessness. No small thing, of course, but surely possible. I've lived it and survived.

If only I could convince this city that is in such fear at the moment to put all of their resources -- not into new high tech surveillance cameras or to place new police officers on the streets -- but instead to open the now-closed sports facilities, afterschool programs, and locked community centers. It might not change the kids we've lost to violence, but such moves will go a long way toward changing the reality for those youngsters coming up behind them.

We need to set resources aside with which to build new dreams for ourselves that our kids can buy into until they can gain enough education, knowledge, experience, and compassion, to create their own. That's a tall order and depends upon the ability and willingness of the greater society to contribute, but it's still possible. This, is the place for the dropping in of reparations for past history.

This is the living prophecy of Lorraine Hansberry. This is the Raisin in the Sun in the process of festering.

This, I know is true.

I've lived it.

Change is inevitable. The shape of that change is the only thing in question.

Photo #1: Gospel singer, Vanessa Bell Armstrong with her manager on a visit to Reid's, our store on Sacramento Street. I'm the booted one on her left.

Photo #2: Berkeley Mayor Loni Hancock and City Councilmember Ann Chandler - the press, and me -- as we performed the groundbreaking for 43 units of new housing in a development that replaced the city's small slum area, across the street from Reid's -- the little family store that we established in June of 1945. It was then that I learned that beauty was as contagious as blight and the community has continued to bloom.

About that wild and crazy border-crossing ...

Have been wanting to say something profound about that weird man who crossed the border from Canada a couple of weeks ago. The words were hard to find. It was all so obvious. Surely everyone had reacted to the news similarly, but I wasn't sure. After all, the jokes were numerous and the night show hosts must be having a field day. "Stranger passes immigration carrying brass knuckles, a sword, a knife and a chainsaw stained with what appeared to be blood." How crazy is that?

Allowing it to pass without comment seemed the wisest course. After all, wouldn't anyone reading those words feel the same shock over the lack of "homeland security"? That would be only one aspect of the incident, however. There was so much more to the story, not to mention the decapitated male body plus that of some unidentified woman found later. This, plus the fact that the Canadian justice system was awaiting his appearance in court that very day.

What did it say to me? The obvious was that this was the ultimate example of white privilege. The explanations given quite seriously by some good friends and some public figures were that -- the immigration agents could not be held to blame since there were no grounds upon which to hold him. (They'd confiscated his weapons, after all.) He'd received an unknown number of points simply for being white -- a kind of affirmative action not often considered publicly but silently accorded to the anointed.

Were that wild man of a different skin color; black or brown or had he appeared middle eastern, would there have been any hesitation to hold him at the border until a thorough investigation had been undertaken? The double standard has allowed for the imprisonment of hundreds (thousands?) of darkskinned people with no known crimes on record -- to be held for years in Guantanamo and elsewhere. Many have been released as innocents after losing years out of their lives to our paranoia. Many are suffering torture at the hands of American "contractors" in our names after being flown into countries known to embrace the most brutal of interrogation practices. I cannot imagine that we "good Germans" haven't taken our outrage to the streets before now in an effort to stop such practices in our names.

It is painfully clear that this obvious sociopath was given a pass because our government would never hold a "white guy" until there was clear evidence of a good reason to do so. "We had no valid reason to keep him from entering the USA. That being so, we had to allow him through."

The irony is inescapable.

New body count ...

The feeling that the earth is shifting beneath our feet is more pronounced today than it was only a few days ago. In the interim between the last entry and this has seen a 7.2 earthquake at Crescent City -- at the northwestern corner of the state. The tsunami warning involved the entire coast from Alaska to Mexico. My apartment looks out on San Francisco Bay. The sight of water was as menacing as if it were the ocean. Above us is a huge earthen dam that stores all of the water for the city of Richmond. It's several miles long. My apartment complex sits in the direct path of the San Pablo Dam. The Hayward fault runs very near to our home and -- if viewed on the map is shown dropping off into the Bay at Point Pinole -- about a mile-and-a-half from where I sit at this moment.

Add to that the sound of bullets piercing the night at around ten last night. The screams of sirens and the window-rattling roar of police helicopters announced that the street wars have moved from the rotting heart of the city to within sight of Hilltop Village -- where my home is located. Last night at least one more death and three more critical injuries were added to the list of casualties. The death toll is now 14. Four of those occurred over the past week. Today the mayor will announce a state of emergency -- as if that will quiet either the earth under our feet or our streets under assault by gun violence.

I'm certain that we're seeing a leaderless revolution and that the answers won't be easily found. During my long lifetime I've seen us reach this boiling point before. Each time only a fragment of the problem is addressed -- postponing the day of reckoning but rarely if ever taking the full corrective action required.

I'm not sure that anyone is making the connections between the fact that -- only yesterday -- the Senate was again unable to pull together a unanimous vote of apology for the horror of lynching. Since the days of Reconstruction there have been over 5000 (mostly black men) hung from trees, eviscerated, burned alive, dragged behind trucks, etc., and to the jeering and amusement of crowds of white families who participated as bystanders to a shameful continuing era in our history:

WASHINGTON -- The Senate officially apologized Monday for something it didn't do -- take a stand against the lynching of thousands of black people.

By a voice vote, the Senate approved an apology for failing to enact anti-lynching legislation. At least 80 senators signed on as co-sponsors.

Between 1890 and 1952 seven presidents urged Congress to end lynching. Nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced over that period.

But the Senate, with Southern conservatives wielding their filibuster powers, refused to act.

With the enactment of civil rights laws in the 1960s and changes in national attitudes, the issue faded away.

(Washington Post - June 15)

There is a relationship between what is happening at Guantanamo and Abu Graib and the kinds of brutality that a significant number of our citizens are capable of. We are -- and maybe always have been -- a cruel people. That our children know this at some visceral level and are reflecting that cruelty should come as no surprise. The models are before them on the small screen, in the multi-plexes in living color and surround-sound, and from the media, the internet, and at times -- from personal experiences in our juvenile detention centers and prisons. There are no surprises here. We're creating monsters and we make no apology for it.

We've created a legacy of unbelievable cruelty over many decades, and are now exporting it worldwide. Our leadership models on the world stage precisely depict what we're now living with in Richmond. This is insurgency warfare just as brutal as what we're seeing in the Middle East. The only thing lacking at this point would be the heroism of those who sacrifice their lives by becoming human bombs in the pursuit of their goal to oust the occupiers. There's little heroism on our streets; only terror and a one-way trip to the yawning gates of the prisons. But the plight of the Iraqi resembles that of Richmond's street warriors in at least one way; hopelessness deep enough to merit suicide. The differences lie in the fact that the Iraqis are struggling to rid their country of invaders who are imposing their will and threatening their sovereignty. The Richmond youngsters don't even know who the enemy is and therefore their suicide has no rational meaning. They appear to be eliminating the "self" that is reflected from others around them. They're living under a code of violence that few can penetrate. It appears that we've lost them to that code.

Today I'm frightened. In the background I can hear the voices of those testifying at the Conyers hearings in Washington. It all feels so hopeless. It's all so familiar. I'm not sure how the impeachment of the president et al will effect the threat that lies so close to me, but it may serve to give hope to those with the power to change things. It may not save the street warriors in the immediate future, but over time, it may make life safer for my grandchildren. How I wish I had the power to love these kids back into the mainstream. But my place in it is only conditionally secure, and subject to the vagaries of a changing ethos of a nation in complete moral disarray.

After all, yesterday 20 Republican senators refused to vote to apologize for the lynching of black Americans. They were not being asked to support a bill but a simple resolution. Since it was a voice vote, Majority Leader Bill Frist was able to refuse to allow the votes to be polled - thereby protecting their identity from voters. Their refusal grants permission to their constituents to continue to deny rights and perpetuate the cruelties that leave shameful stains on the body politic. It is attitudes such as theirs that continues to cheapen life and feed the rage that is exploding so brutally on the streets of Richmond.

I'm not sure how we can discover which senators voted against the resolution, it will be difficult to respond effectively. Maybe you will join with me and others in trying to identify them and to help to select suitable leaders to succeed them in 2006. We're going to have to begin to support candidates in a nationwide way -- living in the San Francisco Bay Area as I do, it would be easy to relax in the knowledge that our leadership caucus is enlightened and can be counted on to express that in their votes. I'll look at the next elections in a very different way, I think, and hope that others will do the same. Acting locally in a world economy may mean acting nationally. The context has changed drastically and our responses probably need to adjust accordingly. The time has come when we must think of Georgians and Iowans as our neighbors for the purpose of bringing change. The greatest nightmare of those who have usurped control of our country would be the coming together of ordinary people like me and thee for the purpose of bringing us back to the pursuit of a truly compassionate America. In such a nation Guantanamo, Abu Graib, and the terrifying street wars of cities like mine might eventually disappear into history as we begin to build a new future together.

There may be lots of blue state folks who are as appalled by the state of the union as we. Do you suppose?

It's a thought... .

All of the notes but none of the music ...

Spent last evening in the suburbs in the company of my friend and his grandson, a really fine 14 year-old youngster, an avid musician aspiring to find a place in the jazz scene once he matures into it. Both his parents are professional classical musicians so his world is rich with potential. I looked over at his innocent ruddy cheeks with the dark bangs stopping just above his brows in the way of the English schoolboy. He plays in a middle school jazz band that involves 80 youngsters. I thought about him and about his world in contrast to my own and that of the children I see around me from my windows. It is stark.


This morning I met with a black entrepreneur who is considering taking on some of my writings for some national exposure (don't ask). We were acquainted many years ago when we both were residents of Berkeley and when he headed the school board there and I was an aide to a member of the Berkeley City Council. He is now heading up a task force that is trying to address the out of control spate of black on black crime in Richmond. It was he who masterminded a summit about a week ago that brought together all of the forces (civic, faith, nonprofits, social agencies, and political figures and the media) to spend a full day examining the causes and effects of this frightening situation.

I learned from him that there have been 90 shootings since January 1st (all black), resulting in countless injuries and 10 deaths, the most recent being two days ago within a block of NIAD, the place where Dorrie spends her days. She'd mentioned when she came home on Thursday the yellow tape that surrounded the block. I felt a chill but it was quickly dissipated as my mind absorbed this no longer unfamiliar announcement and the buzzer sounded on the micro wave oven announcing supper.

Richmond is now listed as the most dangerous city in the entire state. It is the 12th most dangerous in the nation. It is a city without its soul ... .


Last night I sat in one of the clubhouses in Rossmoor, a relatively affluent mostly white gated community of 10,000. The room held perhaps 75 elders (except for Matthew) to listen to a concert featuring Dmitri Matheny on flugelhorn accompanied by a jazz pianist whose name I didn't catch. They were playing standards so "standard" that I could have named the arrangers and hummed the lead on anything played (and did to the annoyance of the woman sitting to my left!). It was a typical 'white folks' audience -- sitting quietly between songs and clapping politely as the ends were tagged; so sterile. I've seen a far greater level of enthusiasm in a chamber music audience -- but only in a highly controlled manner that dictates precisely where applause is allowed (only at the end of the piece and surely not ever after a movement).

It was clear that no one in the room realized that jazz here was totally out of context, and that the only way to fully experience this music is to be in an "affirmative action" crowd made up of at least 65% black folks. Only half of the experience is derived from what happens onstage, the other half comes to life from those listening. It's the old "call and response" that feeds the musicians and floats under them in a way that provides the impetus for creativity -- the "music". It's the same element that a rousing black gospel choir provides for the preacher to soar over and drives the frenzy that good preaching evokes and sets up the spontaneous altar shuffle, the occasional swoon -- and the "speaking in tongues" phenomena. Black audiences relate to performers one-on-one. The response is immediate, passionate, noisy, with shouts of appreciation of any especially inventive phrase -- and right in the middle of a riff! They're participants in the performance. They're sophisticated and pick up every nuance and the players know it. Musicians work as hard to bring that to life in an audience as black preachers do to get folks to "testify!"


It was clear that those two very accomplished white musicians last night were striving to bring the audience into their realm, but they were left with only the notes. They had no idea of how to produce the jazz experience in that "civilized" room. I'm not even sure that they knew that they have only partial control over the end product -- the music. I wonder if they know that the notes that they play may be on the charts on the music stands before them -- but that the music is in the people they are trying so hard to emulate. These audiences don't have a clue.


The black kids who are wielding the guns on our streets probably have no idea that the product being so faithfully imitated in Matt's 80-piece middle school jazz band, and that which was being presented last night at Rossmoor originated on the streets, in the clubs, in the choir lofts of street-front churches is their legacy -- bought and paid for by much pain and humiliation by black musicians who preceded them. They've lost sight of that blacks created America's only original internationally-celebrated art form by a lifetime. Perhaps they never knew. Where would they have learned about themselves and their culture -- about jazz?

Because the links have never been made to a culture that continues to enrich the world, these kids are bereft of a crucial connection to their own souls. Self-hatred has been internalized to the point where what we're seeing may actually be a leaderless revolution" misnamed - "Crime in the Streets." Life has been cheapened by successive wars communicated by successive major developments in the delivery of information to masses now armed to emulate the destruction on their own scarred and crime-ridden city streets of neighborhoods that exist in a state of hopelessness.

The black musicians who created the playbook that has lived into our times climbed out of the ghettos and into international prominence through their instruments and access to instruction through either working as teens with older pros or with borrowed instruments through public school programs. The access to this art has now been stripped from school curricula. That is, except for the Matts out in the safety of the suburbs where affluent parents have created foundations through which to augment the arts and keep them as avenues to fame and fortune -- for the enrichment of their own children. What Richmond kids have access to are illegal drugs and guns. The 49% dropout rate can probably be partially attributed to the loss of the arts in public schools. Those 49% of students of color drop out of school by the tenth grade.

Bereft of alternatives but with music and "the beat" crying for expression from somewhere deep within, our kids have been left with only their voices -- their lips -- to use -- and out of that they've fashioned rap, Hip Hop,, an art form that has swept the world and become the vehicle for poets and DeeJays of every language. They've re-shaped street culture at least one more time. That so much of it expresses rage should be a surprise to no one. Rage has become the irresistible driving force for much of the contemporary music of the young, and rightly so. But it transforms when expressed by those who've been lucky enough to attain the resources to combine their artistry with that of others -- often across cultures -- and in the way of Josh Redman, Jill Scott, Paul "DJ Spookie" Miller, and Will Power.

There was a sadness for me last night. I found myself wondering where the new black players are going to come from? Will the art form simply die when the sources have all become derivative and innovation has succumbed to market forces and aging memories? What will happen when there is no one left who remembers that -- once the emotional content has been stripped away -- once the performer is no longer fed by the listener; once the "call and response" has disappeared ... are we simply listening to empty echoes of what once was? And are the sounds I heard last night merely ashes to the embers of the originals? Is this new hybrid composed of black innovation plus white emulation going to be enough to resurrect the souls of our children? Will education ever become relevant enough to nourish and promote their entry into the culture with full credit for ancestral contributions already invested? Or will black culture continue to be expropriated without recognition; with critical elements left on the cutting-room floor because we've simply forgotten all of the elements and accept it in a form that is soul-less?

... and ... in the final analysis, is the essence of what jazz is being defined by the emulators? 

What will that mean?


I wonder if "all of the notes but none of the music" isn't a metaphor for a lot of what I'm living in these confusing final years?

Something to think about before falling to sleep tonight ... .

Photo: Ceramic on wood. This was an award received by our store, Reid's Records, for having pioneered black gospel music and for having contributed significantly to the popularizing of the art form. Geoffrey's Circle in downtown Oakland hosted the event in the early mid-90's.

Lost in the confusion of past days ... found while foraging through old memories ...

a large cache of papers (correspondence and notes) from the experience of the Unitarian-Universalist Black Caucus at a critical time in UU history. They're written to friends with whom I shared the experience and give an accurate picture of a truly historic era that has not been heavily documented. On an impulse, I emailed an African American minister friend now living in the Boston area telling him that -- while going through old files I'd come upon papers that he might find of interest. He's far younger than I; the age of my eldest son, I think, and one with an abiding interest in recent black history.

I read through only a few of the papers -- fully intending to run them through the paper shredder but finding it difficult to do so. They held little of importance to me at this point in my life -- especially when there were so many other ways to go in recalling the events of my history -- but should they be trashed? Probably not.

I didn't see them as anything more than my personal account of events, but, suppose other personal accounts could be turned up from basements or attics in other parts of the country? It was after all, a national movement involving 3 meetings in 3 states over 3 years and filled with content that should be remembered. Supposing he could combine my documents with those of others yet to be discovered? Could that not be interesting?

He responded almost immediately and within two weeks sent a message that he would be here in the Bay Area for several days soon and would love to have a chance to talk about my offer. It was a given that he was enthusiastic about having possession of my papers.

He came last Wednesday; we spent the day together, and I learned from him that there is, indeed, work being done at the moment in gathering together just such works into an archive being established at the University of Chicago. We agreed that I will pull my papers together into protective sheets in a binder and send them to him for inclusion. My request was that he first scan them for anything that might be hurtful to anyone -- or that might be politically inappropriate in light of subsequent developments in the years following -- but otherwise they're his to use as he sees fit. It's a considerable batch of sometimes hyperbolic accounts of events, but the few that I took the time to scan were exciting to read. I believe that others will find them equally so.

So you see, I may be becoming a writer by default.

Over the next few days I'll go back to foraging through these yellowing crumbling documents for more pieces to share here. But that may mean more discoveries that need to be directed into other avenues for sharing to more targeted readers in the black community.

It could be that I've lived many books, any one of which could find its way into print. Maybe the hardest job will be choosing which book to write. It may be that I will become stuck -- unable to decide and lose the momentum to write at all. It could be that the remembering will serve its own purpose and not need to be acted on. But deep down I think that would be regrettable.

Will I stop long enough in the living of it to tell about it?

No longer waiting to exhale ...

It has been less than 24 hours since those crucial decisions were arrived at to begin a 90 degree turn in the pattern of our lives. I'm feeling less pain than relief -- though this may be a temporary state and not one to count on quite yet.

The immediate crisis has passed. Life at home is again on an even keel with little sign of the trauma of the past several days.

The biggest change is the one taking place in my mind -- coming to terms with where we are in space and time. I've been living with a daughter who is chronologically at middle age with a mental age of a rebellious young adolescent. She is composed of a mind that is riddled with empty spaces where logic and judgement and rationality should be residing; a mind with huge deficits controlling a normal healthy body, with a raging libido and all of the hungers of an adult woman. A necessary hysterectomy performed about two years ago has thrust this healthy female body prematurely into menopause -- adding the ultimate combination of traumatic physical/emotional elements to an already compromised female system. I am no match for what nature has wrought. No one is. It will take a team of professionals blending abilities and training to even begin to address something so complex. Everything short of that will fall short of what is needed to maximize her again.

I know what that looks like because -- when she arrived home from several years of schooling at St. Vincents Academy in Santa Barbara at 19 -- that word would have described her. She had been maximized. My hopes for her were realistic in light of what she'd been exposed to. She had received her high school diploma with the ability to enter any community college at the vocational level. She was self-confident, capable of holding her own socially, and with enough training to benefit in sheltered-workshop situations. It was all I could have asked for. My sense of what she might be capable of was strongly influenced by what she'd been given up to that point in her life, and of how much she'd profited from it. I had high hopes that didn't take into account the slippage in the safety net that would follow in the wake of huge and consistent cutbacks in what the state allotted to the services to the developmentally disabled.

When assessed in that way, I feel fortunate to have been able to cope so well for so long. There is no disgrace nor failure to rue. Superfriends are immune to all that. We just do the best we can given the tools we have to work with. The trick is to know when the system reaches overload, and to begin to increase the universe of minds required to deal with it as needed. I've done that.

Now I will concentrate on doing those things that keep me whole and capable of letting go gradually. We will probably have until August before the necessary processes have been worked through by those in whose hands our fate now rests. I will concentrate of my role as protector-mother until circumstances change that into whatever comes next.

She will swim this weekend at the University of the Pacific and will come home bedecked with ribbons (as always), filled with pride of achievement. She's preparing for the next NIAD art reception and exhibit in about ten days and that will hold us in a comfortable relationship where she is fully occupied by good things.

Me? I'll begin my own process of separation -- already begun as you can see -- which will be so much easier now that next steps are beginning to emerge. I'm no longer alone with the decisions and -- even better than that -- I trust those in whose hands our fate now rests. It's been a long time since I've had the will or the strength to allow that to happen.

Her future is not as I'd envisioned it when she was a toddler -- when I was coming to terms with the life ahead for her -- but it can still work. I will still be needed but in a new way; one that is ill-defined right now, but one that may require more distance between us than ever before. That will be hard. But I'm beginning to understand that her ability to adjust to those next steps may be embedded in my ability to allow for the distance between her life and my own to be broadened considerably.

A life of my own ...

Now that's a concept that I don't think I've ever really considered ...

...maybe I'll see the birth of at least one more Betty; one who's outlived or outgrown the need to mother. Or, maybe I'll learn whether one of my lesser "Bettys" will emerge to take over. It would be lovely if I found that my "woman" has stepped up in front of my "mother" to take charge of the 'bod' and that there are still discoveries to be made from yet one more edge of my being.

I'm sure that he'll appreciate such an outcome.

We'll get to test that out this weekend while Dorian is in Stockton and while I'm aware that this is the beginning of something unexpected but probably long overdue. We'll start with dinner and a concert on Saturday evening ... and maybe I'll begin to let it feel 'normal.' My cell phone will be fully-charged and waiting for word of disaster (as always) but maybe just a little less so than before.

Life will go on, and for both Dorian and me.

Photo: Dorian Leon Reid upon her graduation from St. Vincent's Academy in Santa Barbara.

So many decisions -- so little time ...

It's been days since I've written and the reasons have little to do with not having anything to write about, but with so many events happening so fast -- all having such huge impacts on my immediate future. It's dizzying!

There are so many conversations going on in my head (me with self) that I'm beginning to lose track of just which of "me" is directing my life at any given moment. And, as I've cautioned before -- this has nothing to do with pathology -- but with which of the many women that I am will have control over my movements? I so want to simply relax into the Betty evoked by my new romantic interest but feel compelled by the very maternal me who is the facilitator of the life of my handicapped daughter, Dorian. The pull is strong in both directions, and the urgency of waning days on the planet is working hard to keep me tied to a position of enlightened self-interest.

Dorian's life is being threatened by the fact that we're needing to separate her from me in order to re-establish her path toward full independence -- interrupted by the deteriorating support system we'd so carefully built over many years. State budget cuts ended those plans when the safety net crumbled and her apartment had to be closed and a return to share my home was the only answer. Many have faced homelessness and life under bridges at that point. We were lucky that I'm still living and able to absorb her into my life.

But that's been less than successful. I've learned over the past year through living with her that this probably was never a viable option anyway, and -- having had a close look at her mental deficits -- I'm quite certain that she should never have been a candidate for independent living. Having the social system collapse may have been a hidden blessing.

She is now in a state of total "adolescent rebellion" and both our lives are impacted by my inability to protect her from herself. We needed outside counsel and I received that this morning. After a conference with her case manager and social worker I've agreed that she is needing a residential treatment program for at least a year. Just such a program exists within 40 miles (reachable for visits) and at the end of that time she will be evermore in a supportive-living placement -- probably in a group home somewhere.

This means giving up her five-day-a-week program at NIAD, but it also means that art will become a part of her treatment program since it means so much to her. That's hard to deal with. It also means an end to her Special Olympics programs as well. She is such a successful athlete that she has been selected to compete in the swimming competitions at the California State Games at the University of Pacific in Stockton this very weekend.

I cannot imagine that anything as important to her as these elements being sacrificed, but I also am ready to yield to the advice of professionals with more objectivity than I have at the moment.

I'll miss her. She is a huge part of my life and has become really central over the past year despite the difficulties of being her mother, therapist, best friend, and mentor.

There is also the sense of guilt at being given back my own life again at the expense of diminishing hers. Though I'm surely wise enough to know that this is an unavoidable aspect of being a parent, and that the feeling will eventually leave as I see the effects of giving her a new environment in which to grow and adjust to being separate from me. I've regressed a great deal over the past year; becoming Momma instead of Superfriend as before. I'd also begun to "diagnose" and "treat" inappropriately, drawing on a great deal of experience in the field of the disabled as the result of my professional life where I was the representative responsible for the interactions between my state assembly position and that of the disabled community; its parents, clients, and vendors. It was impossible for me to live up to my own expectations.

All said, I've a lot to get used to over the next few weeks as the changes begin to take place. It will not be easy for either of us. We'll both be ambivalent since she is angry with me these days and acting out -- and I'm feeling trapped by the constant need to provide oversight and protection in a situation that is clearly beyond my control. We need to move fast while she is distracted by her anger with me -- and willing to trying something else. Waiting until we're in a good and loving place will work against our ability to separate. A paradox.

I may not have been writing because of my mixed feelings, and may continue to be unable to put those into words. On the other hand, I may find that the candor that tends to work for me when I'm writing will make it possible for me to work though the trauma by setting it into words on this screen. In that case, anyone reading this may find themselves reflected here if they're dealing with similar problems of involuntary separations.

Hold us in your thoughts ...

Even more, write to me if there are concerns, questions, or words of advice that might help this transition.

In typing that last word, it felt good. Long lives have undergone a myriad of transitions. That word almost better than any other, fits the life process so well. Learning to move in and out of patterns can serve one well, if we've learned to embrace rather than resist those that cannot be altered or avoided. I believe that I've learned that lesson well, and that by now things simply fall into place pretty neatly if I don't put up too much resistance. I know that the positive can be enhanced by embracing change and that the negative can be overcome by caring.

That will leave me free to begin to explore next steps ... and to help Dorian do the same.

First Holy Communion in today's world ...

Since Sunday I've been wondering how to talk about the re-visiting the "faith of my fathers" on the occasion of the sacramental ceremony for my exquisitely lovely young granddaughters, Alyana and Tamaya Reid. So much bubbled up that I'm still running it all over and over in my head and coming up with little more than great pride and joy in their innocent acceptance of the faith that has supported our family for generations.

I was certainly not prepared for the changes in Catholicism. Much of which is shaped by changing demographics in Oakland plus the calling of a priest to St. Patricks whose history includes parish work in South Africa as well as time spent with Mother Teresa in India. He is white in a parish that is not. This added a note of irony to hear his homily reminding us of how "God so loved the poor and of the beauty in the pride of parents with little to give but love...". The church is situated in one of the poorest areas of the city with a congregation made up of largely African-American and Latino parishioners. Both the priest and the church have yielded to new demands for relevance by the congregations and holds its masses in two languages. In this formerly all-black church there is an adapted fundamentalist black gospel liturgy that closely resembles protestantism. This characterized the communion mass that honored David's children.

When I received First Holy Communion many years ago it was with a large class of kids with whom I'd studied catechism over several months. Little girls were dressed like tiny brides (as were my granddaughters) and marched in a long procession before a gathering of proud parents. We stood awed by the Latin mass -- the scent of incense -- the terrifying sight of Jesus hanging on the cross ... and were inducted fearfully yet reverently into the faith of our elders.

Alyana and Tamaya were the only young celebrants on Sunday. The other children had received the sacrament the day before in the Spanish-speaking mass. This day was to be ours, alone, with family and friends and the rest of the English-speaking parishioners.

When I was a child the area that held the altar was sacrosanct and no one save the priest and the altar boys crossed past the altar rail under any circumstances. Genuflecting and the making the sign of the cross was practiced each time one walked past the altar by way of the middle aisle. At St. Patricks the altar sits on a raised platform closer to the congregation -- with no separating altar rail -- and with the (African-American) choir seated behind the altar in that eerie "no-trespassing" area of old. The sense of mystery and piety had evaporated and that familiar sense of the "presence of The Almighty" had disappeared along with it. For me Catholicism has gone generic; has blanded out.

I saw no kneelers until someone pointed them out to me when I asked -- tucked up idly under the pews -- and not in use throughout the entire 2 hour mass. Nothing was familiar; surely not any of the things that I'd relinquished to my need for truth and logic many years before. I missed the "awe" of it all.

What had not changed, however, was the strength of the deep love and pride and trust in a forgiving savior that was everywhere in that sanctuary. David, is a strong believer as are his children. I honor that. My other son, Bob, seated beside me on the front row probably is still unchurched after years of UUism, but for the moment we were both at least temporarily, believers, too. We believed in David, in Alyana, and in Tamaya and supportive in their trust in the path they'd chosen - in the footsteps of my parents and their parents and all of the generations gone before.

What was dramatically new was the large role that our little girls played throughout the ceremony. They marched in with the priest who carried the tall brass crucifix glinting in the soft light from stained glass windows, the altar boys, and the church dignitaries in a processional. I saw no nuns -- but then since they're not often dressed in habits any more -- how would one know? The two little ones sat in the front row in full view of the parishioners -- aware of being celebrated. At one point during the rites, they disappeared only to emerge later at the head of another procession from the back of the sanctuary -- this time leading while they together carried a large folded immaculate sacred snow white cloth that they set into place on the altar in preparation for the sharing of the host.

The ceremony ended with these two little girls standing before microphones singing a lovely gospel song (black gospel) to a surprised congregation who shouted their approval in typical black "call and response" at various high points in the music. It was astounding!

I sat weeping with joy but nonetheless still comfortable in my religious independence yet with not one shred of regret at having moved on long ago into a personal search for truth. But oh, how I wish them continued joy in their own believing; and that this belief system will hold them close and nurture them until such time as they, too, enter the age of inquiry. I truly believe that -- if allowed to be -- spirituality is as developmental as the rest of us, and that -- given education and experience through which to gain the strength to step off into the chasm of unknowing along with other seekers after truth, they, too will be strong and principled and compassionate.

I've found it to be true that those without a sense of certainty and mission are far less strident and evangelical than those claiming truth. The cruelties seen today coming from fundamentalists living distorted versions of Christianity bears little resemblence to the ways of the gentle Jesus who, I firmly believe, was also a seeker after truth -- a leader who became one by virtue of being followed and not by self-proclamation.

In that respect, I can probably claim to be in good company. I can only wish His kind of love and humility for my newly-blessed little Catholics, Alyana and Tamaya Reid.

Amen.

On believing ... (dated November 29, 1997)

Realized while away that one of the things that I found hardest to deal with was the assumption on the part of friends that I had become a "non-believer" because I'd not yet "found God," or that I'd simply not yet discovered their system of belief. I find that equally as frustrating whether it comes from the religious right (the fundamentalists) or from the religious left (New Age).

Many of the pseudo-religious-spiritual cliches I see here in these discussions have been familiar concepts for many years. Having survived catechism classes under the strong hand of Sr. Richard Marie as a child; Tibetan Buddhism (ten years -- by osmosis through marriage) and a warm and close friendship with Lama Wangdor; Zen Buddhism with occasional weekends at Tassajara in the Santa Cruz Mountains; Esalan with Gregory Bateson, lectures by Joseph Campbell of his work in masks and myths, etc. Add to that study in the world of the Graduate Theological Union where I have the privilege (as a Trustee) of participating in seminars with graduate students who are working hard to hammer out understandings worthy of passing on to others; plus the chance to sit at the feet of ever-searching Jesuits in conversations about life in the post-Christian world (yes!). Listening to Fr. Matthew Fox lecture on almost anything stirs the imagination "beyond belief" (and I mean that to be en quotes). After all of that, what I've ended up with is a more and more complex jungle of possibilities to find my way through, far fewer answers, and the firm sense that the only human response possible in this time of exploding theorem in astrophysics is to wait and withhold judgement until the confusion clears.

That I've arrived at this age in a state of wonder seems just fine to me. That I have by now a very critical mind that demands logic even while standing in awe of the miraculous is equally so. In the process of maturing, I've lost the need to "make sense" of the countless possibilities and live now quite comfortably with conflicting truths, contradictions, and paradoxes, and the need to rule out anything becomes less important as I continue to grow and learn. I've remained open to new thought, and have a hardest time when I find myself trodding old ground long ago explored and exhausted. But sometimes I find new truths in a fresh understanding of old themes -- and I never know when that will happen so I find myself staying "tuned in," just in case.

I suspect that I will leave this life still reaching ... .

Maybe the word humanist best describes where I find myself at the moment, but even that's subject to change in the light of new revelations.

In the words of my (at that time) 13 year-old son, Bob, when questioned about his beliefs by the parent of a young friend, "I don't think that I'm an atheist -- because there's nobody up there not to believe in."

I suppose that says it for me, too.


Photo: Young cousin, Ralston Brown, only son of Doritha Charbonnet Brown and her husband Louis. He was 7 when this picture was taken at his First Holy Communion ceremony. Dorita was Dad's youngest sister. Ralston is a jazz drummer who plays in and around the Santa Cruz area and has for many years.

It's all in the language of change ...

Over recent weeks I've been struggling -- not only with substantive issues like thoughts of giving up my condo in favor of a small studio apartment when Dorian leaves; and just what in the world will I do with all these books that I have no time to read and can't bear to part with? That will work its way out in time, I suppose. What I can't seem to come to terms with, however, is just how long it's taking for me to begin to think of myself as retired rather than simply unemployed? That's a sea change (and what in the world does 'sea' mean, anyway") and one that is purely attitudinal but oh so important. The day I manage to overcome that one I think that life will be far simpler.

Retirement seems more optional. One choice among many. Unemployment is a horse of another color altogether, and carries such negative baggage -- like being idle because you're not wanted anywhere, or, that your skills and talents are no longer seen as necessary to anyone for anything. Now, that's death! Being without meaningful work leaves so much of me unused -- left over. I can't seem to lose my need to be gainfully employed.

Will plan to work on that in the days to come. Retiring in order to write a book seems so much more fulfilling. Less involuntary. Especially if the book is one that no one else can write anyway. That's a calling, isn't it? That says that you're a central character in your own scenario, doesn't it? Maybe if I work on that -- I can make it through the next few years intact.

There's too much of me still vital and whole. I cannot imagine how others deal with moving off stage center while still in good health and spirits. I suspect that the secret may be in retiring early (if and when one can afford to) and looking at these as years for fulfilling deferred dreams. I suppose that's the intention. I just got started too late on my career path and stayed past all the exit signs. Besides, I don't seem to have had any deferred dreams -- all of mine have been aspirations ever unfolding into a continuing sense of future. It appears that I've lived them all and more. The pace has been breathless. I cannot imagine having been given more or that any more living (both good and bad) could have been squeezed into the years.

I just don't know ... but there are moments these days -- when I feel panic. It's subtle, but surely adding to that sense of urgency that comes with aging.

Time has never been more important; maybe to us all in these frightening days of unspeakable violence and death.

Photo: More mountains yet to climb? I was on a climb among the ancient cave dwellings of the long lost Annastazi in New Mexico -- where I found myself suddenly overcome by tears. Killing grounds? Don't know... . (1998)

Been giving some thought to this writing business ...

as a potentially serious author, that is. The keeping of a journal has its appeal I suppose, but one has to assume that an otherwise disinterested public wants to hear what one has to say. That's a big question. It takes a lot of ego to ascribe to that; maybe more than I have.

I understand and appreciate the appeal of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Terri McMillan, and Zora Neale Hurston. Their writings describe black life and in many cases in the vernacular of the black experience. I suppose that my admiration for their abilities has prevented me from even considering myself capable of consideration; as being worthy of the title "author." My voice may be so atypical with such an atypical story to tell that there will be no audience wanting to know. A hybrid of the times. After all, I'm still working my way out of feeling as though, racially, I'm nothing. But I've finally decided that, in fact, I'm really everything -- and a wonderful thing to be, after all. At least that's the way I see my beautifully blended grandchildren.

My life experiences are in many ways a mirror of countless other African Americans who are members of the middle class brought up to middleclass mores and values. We're often the beneficiaries of a wide variety of cultures by virtue of mescegination, greater access to socio-political life, and are often placed in positions that allow us to affect social change disproportionately -- if we opt to use it in that way. We find ourselves being sought after to validate racial diversity on boards and commissions everywhere -- often for the simple reason that we're seen as "not like those others." Many of us fall prey to ego by believing that we represent more than that. One of the most painful lessons learned in life as a black woman in white suburbia was that the concept of a middle class black exists only in the mind of a middle class black. To most of the rest of the country, a nigger is a nigger is a nigger! An architect designed home, a backyard swimming pool, a wood paneled station wagon, Armani suits and vacations in Hawaii or Palm Beach do not a member of the elite make, despite arguments to the contrary. Acceptance is invariably conditional.

Perhaps my value and marketability as a writer will lie in the fact that mine may be a relatively unheard voice. Maybe it's one of the voices of the future; a forerunner of a nation forced to write new rules of conduct to cover a country going "beige" with new guidelines created to maintain white superiority in a nation where skin color or lack thereof is fast losing power to control governance; a revolutionary thought, and one that is already bending the rules of the game. There is hope in the knowledge that many ordinary Americans are now beginning to see the fallacy in white supremacy and that its protection cannot be maintained without sacrificing democrary itself.

There are millions of us out there growing up in a world forever effected by the revolutionary social changes of the past 50 years. They've already changed the world for the better, though if you don't know where to look, you won't know that.

One of the exciting signs for me is that when I'm sitting with other elders in organizations like BCA (Berkeley Citizens Actions) or the NIOT (Not In Our Town), I see good folks still working hard to bring about racial equality for all the right reasons. But it's still a goal to be attained at great risk and personal sacrifice. If I cross town to sit in a Poetry Jam at Black Dot or the Alice Art Center, or the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, young people of every color, racial or ethnic group, gender orientation, economic class, and educational background can be seen with their eyebrow rings, skull caps and baggy pants -- sharing their poetry in a world where those differences have been relegated to a back seat and equality is simply assumed. They're not really working at it anymore. It's called the Hip Hop world, and that world has already arrived. It's standing on spindly wobbly legs like a newborn colt, but it's here. The Internet is giving it strength. The arts are giving it form. And in many ways, I can recognize it because at the Nu Upper Room in Oakland, California, I along with others acted as midwives to its birth. We weren't alone. In many corners of the country it's been coming alive simultaneously -- struggling to be heard above the din of a war that wants to crush them out to still their voices.

It's a matter of stepping ahead with them into a future that they're busily creating. The young know. And, just as that remarkable group of socially venturesome intellectuals and spiritual gurus in the late Seventies and early Eighties arrived in the Greater Bay Area in large enough numbers to establish the Human Potential Movement in the wake of the Free Speech Movement and Freedom Summer of the explosive Sixties, there is now a critical mass of youth doing the same for racial equality, environmental, and criminal justice. It's the magic of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Through its magic the Bay Area has been transformed for the better and been radiating out into the country and the world ever since.

Maybe I'll be worth reading because mine is a voice of hope. I've seen the future in the faces of the young and my only wish is that I could hang around and live it with you.
Maybe -- as a translator of the language of social change over a great expanse of time -- my voice is one of the carriers of history and a reliable predicter of the future.
Maybe because, for whatever reason, I've remained politically and experientially Black despite the seduction of expediency and the quest for personal fortune.
Maybe because I've retained the ability to say and be what I am and what it is with candor and without restraint -- mine is another Black voice to be read and heard alongside the rest.
Maybe because a deviant voice adds breadth and depth to and expands the Black experience .
Maybe this is the time to speak beyond the listeners at my shoulder and in the board rooms before it's too late and time runs out ... and just maybe

this is a gentle way of avenging the cruel enslavement of my ancestors, Celestine "Of no last name," and Leontine Breaux Allen, into whose shoes I've stepped in my time -- by giving them legitimate voices beyond the grave and into the continuum of family and national history.

...and there it is!

My reason to write -- that which only I will have lived and documented because only I have lived their lineage down through all of the drama of all of the generations and into my humble shoes!


But where do I go from here ... ?

Time out in the Marin Headlands ...

The intensity of the past few days of writing demanded a break. I should re-word that -- it's not the writing but the thinking that is so troublesome. The writing comes easily, but with each new fragment upturned there are glimpses into things long forgotten, and when night comes I can feel my jaw muscles begin to relax. Hadn't realized how much energy gets locked up there until they're released ... .

I'd been looking forward to spending all day on Thursday with the board of directors of Ma'at Academy at the Marin Headlands Institute. This is an amazing program designed by its founding director, Sharon Fuller, to bring awareness and educational opportunities to the local minority community around issues of environmental injustice. This issue is of critical importance to Contra Costa County since recent studies show that there are 300 toxic-emitting facilities in the city of Richmond. There are 5 petroleum refineries in Contra Costa County, the most in any area in the nation. Despite the constant redefining of what constitutes a brownfield, this and surrounding cities are awash with them. The statistics on breast cancer, asthma, and autism are stunning. From a speech I wrote two years ago for my former boss, Assemblywoman Loni Hancock of the 14th Assembly District -- the alarming statistic for autism showed a 97% leap in four years and a chilling rise of 634% since 1987 (West County Times, Wednesday 5/14/2003).

Consider that ours is a city with a large population dependent upon public assistance due to joblessness. In order to supplement what foods are available through food stamp programs, a good number of folks still try to grow their own vegetables in small kitchen gardens only to find the ground in which they're grown is highly contaminated by pesticides -- and that serious illnesses came along with nourishment. Much of the bay water is now so contaminated by mercury and other toxins that the fish caught are no longer edible without treatment. The most popular fishing spots sit over what has been long designated as Superfund sites. It's been a major job to get the state to post warnings to that effect; an effort that Ma'at Academy has worked to encourage for years.

The problems of environmental justice are major issues in communities of color. This is true across the country. It will be a growing issue as awareness of the dangers loom larger in years ahead. Ma'at is at the forefront of the struggle to educate the local minority community to the hazards ahead through a variety of approaches, including conducting afterschool programs in the local high schools. It is important work. I'm honored to be a part of it.

It was a good meeting, scheduled to end at four o'clock in the afternoon -- but we were actually on the road back to Richmond by two. It's that "road back to Richmond" that I found so exciting. As we drove up the backside of the headlands -- up the hillside to the cliffs that overhang the ocean side of the Golden Gate bridge there comes into view the most astounding vista that I have ever seen. And that in an area of the world where stunning vistas appear framed by your windshield with such frequency that those of us who've lived here all our lives simply yawn and drive on.

It is only matched by my first view of Mt. Shasta experienced only a short time ago. Maybe it's even better than that, because it brings together the magnificence of nature with the magnificence of human-produced architectural splendor and incomparable beauty! It gives one the best of both in ways that affirm our ability to be a part of creation.

And I knew that somewhere not too far away -- but out of view -- I was about as close to the Farallons as ever I'd been from land -- and that I'd played a part in both the creation of the GGNRA (Golden Gate National Recreational Area) by having served with others on its founding board and that I'd had a role in that remarkable film on the automation of the light on the Farallon Islands that saved it as avian habitat.

I'd just spent the day (for the first time) here where hundreds of school children can be seen with teachers and guides hiking the trails and sitting around in small study groups learning about the environment and biota of this beautiful area. How privileged have I been over time! How wondrous that I've lived long enough to witness the full bloom of those activities entered into so long ago by those of us with little sense of the impact of sitting in those beanbag chairs in Berkeley livingrooms with other dreamers and planners -- drunk with our ability to make real for some future generation the vision of "swords into ploughshares!" We'd just come through Vietnam, after all. It was the drama of our Ann vs. the Department of Interior -- and Ann won the Presidio, the Marin Headlands, and actualized the first urban national park in the nation!

It's possible that there are young people now sitting in trees, around campfires, and working in labs, creating the answers to global warming -- without any idea that their efforts will someday be rewarded in just this way. Each adding their small piece to the whole that will bring an end to the greed of over-consumption, pieces that may slow the melting of the glaciers and the rising of the oceans. Maybe those redwoods will not be lost after all, and some 80 year-olds in the far distant future will know (only in retrospect) that placing their bodies against those chainsaws and hanging banners across freeways really worked.

That's the way it felt when I climbed into bed last night. Those feelings were not stated on the drive home -- it was just that I was filled to overflowing with words that got pressed behind the words that made it out of my mouth! I felt as though I dominated the conversation all the way home by answering every question raised by anyone and holding back on the feelings that were causing my breathing to be shallow and thin and my voice to sound reedy with echoes in my head as I heard the sounds of my far-too-many words fill the van.

I think that Ma'at Academy will be one of those Bay Area wonders that will someday sweep the nation as a replicable model and that those involved will be the elders of tomorrow looking back in wonder.

I won't live long enough to reap the benefits of their work, but at my age I have the ability to see how it all fits together and to try to voice that for those caught up in and discouraged by the hopelessness of the struggles of the moment.

Maybe this describes the progress of civilizations ...

But what explains wars?

Endless games of Solitaire ...

After yesterday's post I found myself unable to disengage from the past. For more then 3 hours I sat playing Solitaire; absently, tearfully. For just a while there the lapse back into time caused by the sudden reminder of our anniversary totally blocked out the present ... . Strange. May 24th has slipped by unnoticed for many years now, pushed aside by anniversaries being amassed by time and events more worthy of celebration. After all, that marriage ended painfully long ago, and another had replaced it fairly quickly. Yet, here it was; delivered by a fragment of notepaper from some place deep in my subconsciousness -- and freshened into the present as if summoned.

It was that oddness that I'd struggled with during the years diagnosed as a period of "mental illness" -- that feeling of being out of sync with time and place. Was there some knowing place in me that guided my movements over the past weeks into these old papers? I'm tearful and when not, I'm feeling dry sobs that cause quick intakes of breath from time to time, as if I'm forgetting to breathe... .

One thing is becoming clearer with each new revelation. Those strident lyrics must have come near the point where I was still searching hungrily for strength from outside myself. I was still without a sense of having control of my own destiny. Still looking for my man to deliver completion. For all the brave words in this anthem of defiance, I was still a very lost young woman screaming for self-definition. I was forced to do that in the midst of also learning the hard lessons of racism and irrational societal rejection, and all while trying to meet the challenges of motherhood. The convergence of traumatic events was devastating and had to be vented somehow. Had I not found a way to express the pain my personality might have splintered hopelessly. I had to find a way to travel great distances in such a way that my brain-damaged 3 year-old could cling to my skirt and not become lost. The only possible escape was to move ever deeper into myself.

By virtue of hindsight, I'm beginning to see that the mental break may have marked the point where I came to terms with the fact that the source of all power was internal. Where I stopped looking for completion from outside myself. This may have been the place where I grew up, so-to-speak. The imaginative idealist and deeply-knowing little girl of six reappeared (disguised as psychosis) and took over control, eventually. She'd survived into the Sixties -- a childhood lived in a poor but proud black family during the uncertainty of the Great Depression; an adolescence supported by 2 or 3 imaginative and caring school teachers (that's all it takes, really), and those few remnants of her were still there to save me when the persona that I'd so carefully created to cope gave way. She was the one with the magic and the ability to survive, I truly believe, and still is.

It was at the age of 7 that First Communion training took over and all power was relegated to "God!" That is undoubtedly where the quiet acceptance of male dominance emerged and where I dared not ever even think that a lowly little girl could create anything of note. After all, creating was the province of The Almighty! The concept of Divine Intervention worked against my need to claim my own 'edges;' to know what I could or could not control, create, or define. I'd grown painfully into the ability to assume personal responsibility for my own life. I'd grown out of orthodoxy and into I knew not what, but whatever it was, it was mine.

I wonder if it's really this simple? Could be. For all those reasons and more, I shut that little girl down early in life, though she surely remained in the subconscious and learned to sing Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry in secret behind the garage at around age 11, and to read Maxwell Anderson and cry with Maria in Winterset; and to pretend the world of Camelot into being when the real world became too painful. I probably shared all that as sins to Father Kelly in the confessional on some misguided Saturday afternoon before receiving Sunday morning communion. What foolishness! How on earth is a child to know?

And now, here she was -- meditating while ironing his shirts ... .

I know that at some point early in life I put a lid on my own spirituality -- my individuality -- and settled for being an appendage to others. That, fortunately, ended when it was no longer sustainable.

I don't think that I can blame anyone for that.

Except maybe those guys at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, who still believe they hold the keys to the kingdom and the rights to define power (god) in their own image.

Guess you can count me among the uncompromising feminists.

...and how on earth could I have not ended up an atheist?

What a find!

Still foraging through these boxes and in the process happened upon two additional verses of the lyric included in the entry of Thursday, May 19th. They include a reference to my young husband, Mel Reid, and some indication of the loneliness that balances off the defiance. It's all there.

the gods (if there be) surely knew in their infinite wisdom
that life's gifts are safer in storms held in branches that bend
trees rooted in earth cradling seedlets of life gone before it
a Woman am I - and the day of my dawning is now!

If I could but know in my soul of these truths I am singing
if he could but show in his living of time that he sees ...
and if we could but grow toward this light that these years might be bringing
this woman could cry - that the day of my dawning is now!

© Betty Reid 6/1961

And today is May 24, 2005. I was married to Mel on this very day in 1942 -- only months after Pearl Harbor and the beginning of more milestones that are undoubtedly stashed here in these papers -- waiting to be rediscovered ... .

It should, but it doesn't strike me as odd that I would have discovered this never-sung, long forgotten psalm on this day. I sit with tears of obscure meaning coursing down my cheeks quietly as I remember him and the innocence of those years, and the hunger for I knew not what ... but that I knew in my heart that he could never fulfill. My suspicion was that no one could because I could neither name it nor recognize its source ... .

Find myself wondering if you've noticed that I was witness to so many of the major social, political, and ceremonial events of my century. I've not really been aware of that until now. It's like knowing the taste, feel, and exact time of the tragic assassinations of the Sixties. All of the affect comes up for me in the act of fingering letters, fragile news clippings, song lyrics, poetry, sketches in margins.

Wish I'd thought to do this long ago ... but I would not be in my years of summation, I think. Maybe introspection takes considerable aging and mellowing before candor kicks in and one can step outside oneself and look back without a sense of involvement except as an observer. Don't think I could have done this before now.

Now back to foraging ... .

Lost in a reverie of times past ...
Finally took the time to read back into time through these pages. I've been fearful of doing that for fear that I would become self-conscious and the writing would become stilted -- losing spontaneity. This, after all is intended to be stream of consciousness journaling, with no pattern except for whatever the momentum of memory creates. I do see that the words ring with authenticity. Because they're moving freely without needing to honor any prescription, they're providing triggers into the past in ways that bring my own laughter and tears in the writing of them. That's good, I think. Fortunately, I'm a touch typist and the thoughts flow from my fingertips as quickly as they form in my brain.

Decided to try to give some form -- style -- to my "book," in the hope that it might read more smoothly to eyes of strangers who may have expectations that I haven't met. Not sure what to do about that, though.

You'll notice that I've introduced color and type size for emphasis. Nice? Or have I now simply added an element of "cuteness?"

In reading back there is a pattern that didn't show up before in the living of it. I've been defiant all my life, haven't I? Throughout all of the pain and sorrow, the good days and the bad, I've refused ever to yield to mediocrity and/or false promises. I've possessed a remarkable nonsense detector that has sifted everything that entered my brain for what modicum of truth might be there, and tossed everything that didn't "scan" properly. There's been a healthy amount of skepticism that's shielded me from deception, even when I didn't recognize it. And, it truly does appear that I live by my intuition, even when there's little evidence that this was advisable. And, as I grew older, willingness to trust myself above all others has prevailed. Crazy? You're right.

I've been lost in these blue plastic storage boxes now for several days. There is so much there -- notes from experiences that would have disappeared into oblivion had not those scraps been squirreled away in these fading manila folders. Not sure how I can ever organize them into sentences and paragraphs that aren't reductive. Some evoke stories that would make entire chapters in a book, and that defy abridgement.

Since that last post (Thursday?), I've spent many hours wandering around in the past -- remembering events that have become real again, and that are so important in the continuum of this life. I've been hardly sleeping, at least not soundly, waking with new revelations triggered by a scrap of paper with a few sentences jotted carelessly long ago. They flesh out during dreamtime, and become whole again -- with the urgency and potency of the original experience. I pop out of bed, creep to the kitchen to not wake Dorian, and pour myself a tall glass of cold milk ... .

I may need to stop writing for a few days, and just spend time with the photos and writings of old -- not trying to make anything of them until my mind can do the initial editing, leaving me with essences of experiences rather than full-real authors excel and separate themselves from the novices. They've learned to suggest, to imply, to use words as surgical instruments -- coaxing with a few words pictures of entire experiences.
blown replays. I suspect that this is where

Maybe I'm already doing that to some extent ... but I don't really know.

...but I'm beginning to seriously consider the possibility that writing professionally may be my next calling ...

Do I hear an amen?