As one might guess, as the day of Commencement approaches -- the tension grows ... .

How on earth can one ever measure up to such expectations?  But then maybe it is only I, myself, who is setting those expectations, right?  Maybe I've already reached whatever heights others were setting for me, which would suggest their rationale for choosing me for this great honor in the first place.  But then the very fact that they're sending a limo to drive me from home and back announces their expectations in a fairly serious way, does it not? 

The big decisions have now been made; the "what to wear" and "what to say" are now set in stone.  It will be something already on hand and previously worn and guaranteed "comfortable" so that I don't have to think about appearances.  That will leave only the commencement address to concern myself with.  The title remains unchanged, "Thumb prints, gate posts, and bookends" it shall be.  Let's hope that I can weave them successfully into whatever final form they take.  At this point I'm happy to allow the content to continue to deepen and mellow.  I'm sure that I've given this talk over and over again in many settings -- in my dreams.  I'm experiencing a very active dream life from the disheveled state of the bedding in the mornings; though I'm noticing that I wake more at peace in the past few days -- a serenity that may indicate that the work is nearly done.

As foolish as it may sound, I'm reluctant to try to capture it into a paper for fear that I'll be tempted to simply read it instead of delivering the words as they present themselves at that moment at the lectern.  I know that I'm best when I can see the faces and look into the eyes of an audience; and I also know that about five minutes into my presentation, all of the paralyzing fear vanishes, and that I'll be safely home until just before the ending, with just a millisecond of panic in the silence just before the audience responds.

My colleague, Lucien, emailed that -- as she was at the StairMaster at her gym yesterday -- reading a magazine to while away the time (it was Real Simple Living) -- she happened upon a quote from me.  I vaguely recalled a writer calling from New York a few months ago (having been referred by Bruce Frankel, author of How Should I Spend the Rest of My Life).  She wanted a quote on aging to add to others from other older women whom she'd also interviewed for the article.  (It was jarring to note that those other older women were in their fifties and sixties -- the age of my children!)  By now it all seems a part of the job and a natural request that I can accomplish without losing a beat before returning to whatever I was in the middle of before my phone rang... .

Then, a few days ago a request came that seemed more important, and in keeping with my new found status as a resource in areas far beyond my ranger-ing.  This one caught my attention.   I've been invited to interview Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer prizewinning author of the brilliant "The Warmth of Others Suns"and then write an article for publication.  In a kind of rubber-hitting-the-road moment, I realized that it is quite possible that I'm being invited to participate just a mite above my current level of competence, and that I need to leave that kind of journalism to the journalists.  I lucked out with that article published in the California Historian, and this may be one of those times when I will over-reach and in so doing, risk this heady moment when I'm soaring far above my own expectations when I only need to bask in the rapture of having done so!

Since last weekend my schedule of activities included;

• driving (with Dorian) in uniform representing our park in the city's Cinco de Mayo parade; 
• that afternoon guided a 3 hour bus tour of 50 Tradeswomen, Inc., (members attending a national conference in Oakland)  through the Rosie the Riveter WWII/Home Front sites scattered throughout the city;
• ended that same day with a 101 mile drive to Aromas, a hamlet on the road to Watsonville in Monterey County, in time to attend a 7:30 pm sold-out "Songs and Stories" concert performed by my eldest son, Bob.  Dori and I stayed with Bob at his ranch home in San Juan Bautista, a  beautiful valley surrounded by hills in the greenest of springtime glory;  since then we
• participated in the Rosie the Riveter event at the Crucible in Oakland;  and yesterday
• attended the grand opening of the brand new state-of-the-art soccer field in the Nystrom District.

Life is good on this Mother's Day on this planet.


Photo:  Lottie Allen Charbonnet, my mother at 95.  She was partying at a luau in Hawaii when this photo was taken.  She lived to see her 101st birthday, and as you can see by this picture,  savored life despite the hardships her generation endured.

It's done ... !

Sent the invitation list off today, and once the problem was pinpointed and resolved -- got into the rhythm of this great honor.

It was so helpful to have had a chance to tour the campus of the California College of the Arts on Monday; to meet a member of the board; lunch with faculty members; visit the studios filled with young artists at work.  It all fell into place, finally.

I feel far less intimidated by events, and am ready now for the celebration!

Yesterday at the request of the National Institute for Artists and Disabilities I led a delegation of service worker volunteers from Belarus and their translator on a tour of some of our park sites.  They were accompanied by their US State Department hosts.  It felt great to feel confirmed in my role as a representative of an important federal agency.  There is a system of national parks being created in their country so the interest in our park-in-development was high.  I felt a real connection with the group despite the language barrier; though that was minimal since several were able to cross over into English now and then with relative ease.

Were I to have a chance to live some of those early years over again, I'd surely want to have several languages at my command.  Though, as I recall, I had a group of visitors from Japan about six months ago, and that also worked out well.  Maybe what happens between people at the non-verbal level trumps verbal expression. 

Now that the pressure is off -- maybe I can just bask in the glory of it all, and try to get into my paper hat for the festivities on May 12th and 14th.

Maybe I should think about buying a new dress for the occasion.  I thought that I'd outlived the Age of Acquisition.  It has been years since I've felt the need to even think "fashion."  But there are some lovely things hanging in my closet that I've had no occasion to bring out for a very long time.  There was a time ... maybe just once more?

A woman can always gear up for fashion, right?

Maybe I'll try for a new hair style ... do you suppose?

That is if we can still find enough hair to style!  Maybe it's time to just cut it all off and face the truth that there are just so many hair follicles to each lifetime, and at 89 I've outlived my allotment.

Mystery solved ... .

and ... had it occurred to me to stop for just a few moments ... I might have known why I couldn't create that guest list for the commencement ceremony.  It was due two weeks ago.  After spending days pushing the envelope to the back of my desk -- and at one time slipping it into a drawer so that it would be out of sight.  I finally separated out the form for cap and gown measurements, slipped that into the envelope, and dropped it off in a FedEx box in the Civic Center.  But the request for the guest list was missing from the packet.  I agonized through an enclosed note, and felt terribly guilty, but nothing moved the task forward -- not one inch.

Then today in a casual conversation with Julio, the answer was revealed.  It was so obvious.  How on earth could I not have guessed?

I've outlived most of my guest list.  And the time to allow the sadness that this realization should have elicited was missing.  The brutal truth of that sentence was the thing that I couldn't face.  Small wonder that this simple task was so difficult to complete ...  .  It was a time to mourn, and something deep inside wouldn't allow me to move on until I'd done so.

On the drive home I stopped my car on a nearby hilltop where the din of afternoon traffic is lessened -- and let the tears flow unashamed; let myself miss all those who would have made that list; lingered over each name as it surfaced.  Up came my sisters, my parents, Papa George, my dear Aunt Vivian, Gil and Eve, my eldest son, Rick; Mel and Bill; close friends and relatives long gone, and with the tears something vitally important was released.   Tomorrow I can face what is now a mere clerical task.

I'll complete the list -- made up of my sons and daughter, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, those few remaining old friends, augmented by the many good younger souls who have become central in the living of these incredible recent years; new friends;  those with whom I work; some city staff people -- some very young folks for whom I'm "Miss Betty," (and loving it!), and then I'll move on.

If I could only remember to just stop and listen ... for my inner voice.

It's always there in the quiet.

Maybe I just need more stillness.

 "Gate posts" -- my commencement address has arrived; clear and true ... .

Yesterday I woke to clarity and self-confidence.  Not sure what brought this euphoric state about, or even if one can rely upon its staying power --  but the words have lined up as if by magic.  I know their meaning, and that there is little need to try to organize them further.  Over the days to come -- between now and the day of commencement -- they will continue to sort themselves out and deepen.  They are relevant to this graduating class, I believe.  The title; "Thumb prints, gate posts, and bookends," is the key that opened the door into the connections not only to my past, but to the arts. As suspected, they were there all the time ... sitting behind my eyes waiting for me to settle down and listen to myself, maybe ... .

Funny; I hesitate to say much more about this lest this fragile wisp of security will disappear and the awful uncertainty of the past weeks will return.  And if I write them here ...  I'm not at all sure ... .

Maybe it suffices to say that those "gate posts" are key to one of the family stories about my great-grandmother, Mammå, a precious memory from childhood -- one of the many stories told by Papa George as we tied the beans to their poles and dug up the carrots and gathered the melons in that little kitchen garden after my parents and we 3 children arrived in Oakland from the New Orleans floods of 1927.

My impression of what romance meant was formed very early in childhood.  It was the Civil War story of Leontine sitting high in the branches of a pecan tree watching the Union soldiers marching past on that dusty road from Donaldsonville.  She must have been very young, perhaps 16 or 17, and from her photographs, quite pretty.  I knew that she was barely 5 feet tall, so the exciting tale of the soldier, Corporal George Allen of the Louisiana Colored Troops, stepping out of the line long enough to coax her down from her perch then re-joining the march carrying her on his shoulders for a few miles was not hard to believe.  He would later become her husband and father of their dozen or so children.  This would be the standard for love stories that Hollywood would have to meet in order to gain my little girl approval.  And it was true.

That the child, Betty, heard such lovely stories far earlier in life than those of the unspeakable brutality of slavery or the great Civil War that brought it to an end means that I had little awareness of my great-grandmother as being enslaved; nor do I recall making the personal connection until studying American history as an adolescent.  But the intellectual connections rarely mean as much as the emotional imprinting, and there is little memory of making those linkages.  If the elders of the family spoke of such times, they must have done so in creole, a patois of French that dominated speech in our homes during those years, and placed such conversations out of reach of the children.  Perhaps it was just too painful.  They could hardly have not been scarred by such memories, but I can't recall feeling a personal relationship to that tragic history until I was a young mother, when I, too, held it at arms length from my own children ... until the Sixties.

I do remember the dark stories told by Papa George when we were working together in the garden and he was talking to himself and letting me listen; which happened on occasion with some grownups.  Those stories usually involved the Ku Klux Klan and his younger brother, Uncle Albert, suddenly leaving under the cover of darkness for parts unknown -- never to return (the family later learned that he'd escaped to Kansas City); and the many bloated black bodies that floated up in the river from time to time -- bound wrists to ankles -- and the lynchings ... but the listening was terribly hard, and the nightmares ... .

I only remember Mammå as the family matriarch; celebrated by the elders as the aunts and uncles made up the delegation who would make the annual trip back to St. James Parish each year for her birthday.  Southern Pacific railroad family passes enabled this important family ritual to continue for decades since most uncles were Red Caps or Porters during the Great Depression. Wonderful stories about their childhood in that little cabin across from the levee of the Mississippi -- where my grandfather, and my mother and her siblings and so many others were raised -- fueled most grownup conversations and colored my childhood memories, and surely provided the foundation for how I relate to "the World."

Let me live with my gate posts a little longer before sharing... .

Photo: Leontine Breaux (Braud) Allen in midlife.
Bottom:  Uncle Herman Allen and his wife, Marie Gaudet Allen

Thumb print ... ?

This is one of the key images governing my life, I think.  And I can recall precisely when it became so.  Though there's something about time with me that defies logic.  I only became aware of it late in life at a moment while watching my father -- who spent the last ten years of his life totally blind -- quietly going about making simple household repairs in the usual way -- by meticulously measuring with his thumb.  At some point during his long life he had determined that from the last crease to the tip was exactly one inch.  By so doing he made of himself a physical tool of mathematics. 

I remember that somewhere before my tenth birthday (which places this incident in 1931 -- mid-Depression), Dad and I were building a (dry) fish pond in the side garden on a summer afternoon.  There was no money for running water into the pond from the house, but nonetheless, we were working diligently on this project that would feature an island and miniature wooden bridge, and that -- as we worked -- there were always "the lessons," delivered as though gospels from on high.  I remember the sand, gravel, and bag of cement next to the galvanized water buckets; the scraping sounds of mixing with the hand trowel as we stacked the rocks in place, and then filled in with the wet mixture with Dad keeping up a patter of conversation all the while.

A nice reminder that beauty is its own reason for being, and that even a dry fish pond is justifiable if viewed as art (but this is an assessment of a mature woman -- remembering).  I have no idea what sacrifices were necessary for us to have that little pond surrounded as it was by iris, tulips, and daffodils each spring throughout my childhood.  It was sitting beside that little pond in the shade of an almond tree that I discovered Edna St. Vincent Millay in a book that arrived in a box from the nearby Salvation Army store that mother haunted at least weekly for bargains.

At that time our proud father was working for the Southern Pacific railroad as a lunch car attendant, and would be gone for days at a time with 2 or 3 days layover between runs.  With two sisters and Mom to compete with, time with him was precious, and to have it, alone, a privilege, indeed.

But this was late in life, and this always productive man was now in his early nineties, blind, and partially bedridden -- but was still going about his days being the "man of the house." As I watched, he was installing a new door knob and lock.  I stood fascinated watching the familiar "thumbing" that I now remembered as one of the lessons of the fish pond, and can still hear his voice as he said:

"My father taught me to measure carefully, and to never repeat the process.  If you can't trust yourself to cut it means that you didn't do it right the first time.  Never re-trace your steps."  

His father was the final authority.  Back in New Orleans, Louis Charbonnet was a celebrated engineer, ornamental iron worker, and millwright, and Dad had apprenticed under him since his early teens.

I'm reminded that -- when invited to write an article for the California Historian (something I'd never done for publication) - it was a complete disaster.  I could not edit my work.  Once written, all efforts to alter a single word met with failure.  I remember how -- when I tried to re-arrange sentences or paragraphs, delete for reasons of redundancy, -- the words would take me in some new direction and I could never re-connect the new text with the old.  Frustration caused me to finally submit the (far too long!) article to the editors with permission to "edit to fit," just to make the deadline.  To my total surprise, in a few weeks the editor called to say that they were not only not going to edit the piece, but were planning to run it as the cover article in its entirety, so could she stop by to select some photos?  Could it be that I'd "measured right the first time," and that it was not the lack of editing ability?  I recognize now that I'd chalked it up to a deficit when it should have been credited as an asset.  How often have I done that, and am I doing so now?

Also, not only have my music and lyrics always arrived fully formed and never change, but I remember that once written, they remain an accurate measure of the frame of mind in which they were created, and that I know that were they written even a few hours later, they would have been different songs.  They have always captured accurately for me the moment of their creation.

I've rarely retraced my steps; driven past the places where I've formerly lived -- even to the East Oakland home where I grew up and where that pond we built was created; nor have I shadowed my son, David, as he has taken over Reid's Records; or ever tried to revive my "artist" self from former lives (my guitar sits silently in its case -- as it has for several decades) until son, Bob, visits and wants to share something he's written); or, rarely read back through this blog, except to add a photo or two, and never to edit.

"Once measured,  cut and move on."

Wisdom of the Thumb Print, and a hint at just how early in life values are formed, and that children really are the sum total of all that has gone before.  One day someone will determine through proper study and peer review that we are, indeed, the product of genetic coding  --  that there well may be some esoteric forms of accumulated wisdom or gifts (yes, even the ability to bend time) that span generations -- and that -- at some point we will learn to use such knowledge wisely for the benefit of humankind, and move into the future less fearful. 

But I'm not quite there yet ... .

I'm guessing that it was a combination of things; the threat of being furloughed by the NPS on top of the financial pressures of having that possibility coincide with the property tax deadline ...

Well, we scraped by the federal budget debacle, and we're still here.

But along the way the glow of confidence that was acquired at Humboldt State University proved far more fragile than one might have hoped, and panic began to set in over the past few days. I've been inexplicably close to tears much of time; even spilling over upon discovering in an email yesterday that yet another honor (this time from the Historic Preservation Commission of the city) has been bestowed, and that I'll need to justify to myself over the days ahead(!).  The result was that the packet of information needed by California College of the Arts for commencement sits on my desk demanding attention but providing only guilt at being paralyzed by Lord knows what ... ?

I've not yet turned in my invitation list, though I did manage to get a few addresses before collapsing into this lethargic state that has produced a darkish veil of whatever this is.  It's uncharacteristic of me.  I'm not normally a procrastinator nor a depressive, but how else do I explain this?

The commencement address is writing itself in the sleep state -- I've composed it countless times -- only to have it disappear into the ether come sun-up.  The title, though, remains and is unchanging.  It's called, "Thumb print, gate posts, and bookends."  I believe that I know what it means, and I believe that it will be there when I need it.  The problem seems to be that -- though I've written speeches for others, I've never really written one that I was expected to deliver.  I'm not even certain that I can.  But maybe all that will be required of me will be to stand at that lectern and allow the words to express themselves.  Maybe they're building up in the REM state, forming into shape for delivery.  I recognize the process.  It's the way I wrote music and lyrics long ago, songs that never changed, once written, and always appeared to be something I was remembering ... strange.

Maybe all I need is to trust that this is something that simply is.


For some reason, the vision of myself rising one day last spring  (as if it were just another Tuesday), mechanically showering and getting into formal summer dress uniform (white shirt and tie, 4-button coat, highly polished oxblood shoes, badges, and ID bars, topped off with flat hat), then getting into my car for the drive to the office where I'm greeted by Tom, our deputy superintendent, also dressed formally, who excitedly told me that I was to accompany him to Buchanan Field in Concord to meet Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's plane whose staff person had called late last night.  It was announced -- without warning -- that the Secretary's plane would touch down for a 90-minute surprise visit to the newly-named 392nd unit of the National Park System, Port Chicago Weapons Station.  I would later learn that -- en route from the airport to the Port Chicago site -- that I would give the Secretary the story of the new park, and that a delegation of dignitaries; including Superintendent Martha Lee, the mayor of the City of Concord, the base commander,  the president of Friends of Port Chicago, a rep from Rep. George Miller's office,  plus local press who had been alerted to the big news, etc., would be waiting to greet him and his party. 

I could not possibly have known of his impending visit since the call came long after I'd left for home on the evening before.  The occasions when I am called upon to be so dressed are rare (only a few times a year), and how on earth would I have known that this would be such an occasion?  And -- it didn't occur to me until just before sleep that night that, again, the sequencing was off ... .

It is this little understood state of an unnamed and unnameable ability -- this sixth sense from one of my unnamed and unnameable dimensions -- that I need to trust now.

But can one go through life depending upon something so nebulous? Yet, is this not the way I've always lived -- intuitively sensing out directions -- often acting before the fact? Always alive -- in the moment?  And -- always aware of context?  Doesn't everybody?  (Does anybody else ... ?)

Will this be the source of my commencement speech-in-progress;  this speech that has such an intriguing title but quite literally, no content?

One can only hope ... .

Ain't I a woman ... ?

Another busy week, but a thoughtful week it was.

My mind has been spinning with new thoughts born of the visit to Humboldt State University, and exposure to information that was mind-bending in that I became more acutely aware that so many of my conclusions have been arrived at in intellectual isolation and with unguided reading and a haphazard system of self-education.   My natural intelligence has served me well, but how much more could I have accomplished had I had the advantage of attending such a university in my youth?  How I do envy those young woman of the sisterhood whose lives and achievements are being shared with a generation of the young leaders who will take us into the future.

On the long drive back (after I was beyond the snow line), I was reminded of something said in passing by my host, HSU Prof. Christina Accomando who has done extensive research on Truth:

"... Sojourner Truth's first language was Dutch.  She was born in New York where she was owned by a Dutch family.  Her legacy is oral and transcribed in some imagined southern slave dialects by various scribes whose work it was to record her words over many years."

I found myself harking back to those words that echo down through history from the Seneca Falls Conference, "Ain't I a woman?"

Those thoughts (from my undisciplined mind)  collided with  two unrelated others and the combination threatened to derail yesterday's bus tour during which I found myself expressing them aloud -- and before I'd gotten around to understanding them fully.  I'm still working it through so this post may undergo revision as I do so.

The first is that I have a persistent need to disassociate myself from the "Rosie the Riveter" story.  I've always considered that story a part of the myth of the emancipation of women into the work force -- and my contention has always been that this did not apply to women of color since we've been working outside the home since slavery. Given the fact that, until recent times, black men had been limited to the lowest-paying service sector jobs, so it had always taken two salaries to support black families.  My WWII job in Boilermakers A-36, a Jim Crow union created for blacks only, meant that I had never seen myself as the romantic Rosie of "We can do it" fame.

Yet I've become increasingly uncomfortable with my position.  It wasn't that I felt that it was untrue or unjustified, it's just that there is a legitimate white Rosie story that isn't being told, and that it needs to be.  And, that white women needed to be demanding more from that history than a catchy tune, red bandannas, posters, and belated kudos.

The equally compelling thought was of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 in which 149 lives were lost; immigrant women working for $6 a week under such conditions that in the aftermath, the horrific conditions of the workplaces in the garment industry came under harsh scrutiny, and the movement for unionization was strengthened.

WWII did not bring American women into the workplace for the first time.  That's a myth.  Women have been working since time immemorial.  Only it was not called work until they were introduced to what had formerly been male occupations ("work").  What women did was always defined as their life roles -- to be ever in support of the men of the society.  We have always been secretaries, librarians, teachers, nurses; always supportive of men -- with few exceptions.  Women's work consisting of child care, general housekeeping, shopping, washing and ironing, budgeting, preparing meals, etc., were considered "what wives do"  until they were recruited into the work force to do welding, riveting, conducting orchestras, dispatching trucks, engineering, reading blueprints, ferrying aircraft into war zones, contracting, manufacturing munitions, assembling jeeps and tanks, etc.; all work, for the first time in history.

Despite the fact that Rosie was often a poor woman whose opportunities were limited before she entered the defense industry, the romanticized vision that endures was that she was a middle class white woman (played by Katherine Hepburn or Rosalind Russell) who called her hairdresser or manicurist to cancel her next appointments and headed for the shipyards and aircraft plants to sign on as replacements for our fighting men.  That those pioneer women who were widowed by the Civil War and WWI had not been workers -- though raising large families, alone, on farms they ran themselves -- were not workers???  That those immigrant women whose lives were lost in the Triangle fire were not workers and therefore not counted before WWII as such?  Were those migrant sweatshop workers even counted as women?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, and the rest of the Suffragettes might have fared better had they heard Sojourner Truth's words as "Ain't I a worker?"  Maybe the scribes got it wrong?  But then, what do I know?

Maybe, in time, some powerful gutsy white feminist -- whose passion for her story equals mine for my black story -- will appear out of the blue to guide walking tours at that great Rosie the Riveter Memorial on the Richmond Marina -- and make the feminist story come alive!  It's one of the multiple stories inscribed along the walkway that begs re-visiting, along with the story of Henry Kaiser, masterful industrialist who changed the workplace and revolutionized ship building;  the Port Chicago explosion that brought about the desegregation of the Armed Forces; the story of the internment of Japanese, 70,000 of whom were American citizens; the moving inscription that tells of the fact that WWII gave us 54.8 million casualties, worldwide; a number reflecting the last time we included civilian deaths, before the concept of "collateral damage" was introduced into the language of war; and the story of women in all its complexity -- because we were represented in all of those stories -- except that of Port Chicago -- and with little recognition -- until recent times. 

I have a feeling that these thoughts may undergo revision.  I managed to get myself into a fairly lively debate with two of my male colleagues yesterday which, unfortunately, gave off more heat than light -- so I'm not yet comfortable with my conclusions -- but the very fact that this history is still raising passions may be proof enough that we're finally processing it.  Maybe we'll get around to processing the Civil War before I trade my ranger flat-hat for a French beret!

The Humboldt adventure looms large this morning ... .

While writing the last entry Dorian called to ask if we could make a trip to the fabric store for some yarn she needs for a project.  This meant driving to the mall, waiting in the car under the protection of our blue handicap placard (a privilege almost equal to having valet parking) while she makes her choices.  This sometimes involves a generous amount of time -- but that's what crossword puzzles were meant for, and I always keep the latest New York Times magazine under the seat for just this kind of opportunity.  And such errands also allow time for chewing on whatever is left unprocessed in life that either was initiated by writing, or, is resisting resolution.

My mind was still occupied with the S.F. State protest of 40 years ago, and I remembered that -- (and long before blogging was even a word)  I tended to write accounts of significant events for myself.  Since these were rarely shared and certainly not meant for anyone else's eyes, my files were bulging with what I now see as first-person accounts of historic events.  Who knew?

All that is to say that somewhere in my files is that "first-person account" of that dramatic confrontation on the S.F. State campus.  My Humboldt experience suggests that it's important that I add that document to this blog (maybe under Cbreaux's Annex?).

And it is critically important to resist the temptation to make the corrections that 89 year-old far more experienced Betty might be tempted to do -- (The original was pre-computer; typed on my trusty IBM Selectric without SpellCheck or the editing capacity now available.)   I know that I must simply scan the document as is, typos and all.  As I recall, it's polemical and filled with youthful hyperbole, which may be precisely why it's important to not allow myself to try to temper young Betty's voice.  Maybe that's where the value is; value to preserving and revisiting that woman-that-I-once-was involved as a mere bystander in a major confrontation that changed the very nature of educational institutions and democratized the process in ways that bled out into every other institution and pointed the way toward freedoms promised but more often denied.

And I was only a spectator to social change.  I was on campus that day with two UU ministers (Revs. Aron Gilmartin and Harold Wilson) in a quest for understanding of the headlines we were reading almost daily.  Did I consider myself a political activist?  No.  Not then, and not even now.  When I saw the words describing me written out on the whiteboard on Thursday morning in that classroom, it was jarring.  All of those titles were endowed after the fact.  They all represented simply Betty in the process of living of a life and responding intuitively to whatever presented itself.  I recall when I first saw -- in print -- myself described as a cultural anthropologist, I had to look up what it meant!

Now I need to explore those files for that paper and hope that I don't lose the sense of its importance in the process -- and opt out of posting it.  At times second thoughts may stifle creativity.  The Sisterhood will be happy to get it, and will use it well.

It's over -- but maybe it's just another beginning -- this newest chapter in the remarkable life of Betty ... .

The Humboldt experience will mark the place where so much came together for me -- at a time when it was crucial to my next steps.

I'm in one of those periods where life is unfolding at a rate that defies understanding, and when I haven't the luxury of time to process all that is happening to me and to my ability to make sense of the world.  I've lived these periods before, but never with such a sense of urgency and import as now.   Yesterday at Humboldt State University before combined classes of young students I was a teacher.

I may have finally come to terms with the appropriateness of May 14th and the commencement ceremonies -- as the place where academic achievement equates with life equivalency.  I'm not the first, and I'll not be the last.  There are a host of extraordinary ordinary folks who have been honored by the academy, legislatures, institutions, for having taken the more circuitous route toward the same goals yet arrived at the same place having had impact along the way.  I think of cousin George Allen, a grandson of my enslaved great grandmother, Leontine, who rose to be president of Southern University -- only the second generation out of slavery, and the many African Americans of note who followed.

Most important, I discovered a sisterhood that exists on that campus that exemplifies the changes the world will need in order to survive the lightning quick rate of change that waits for no one.  This cadre of young teachers have an excitement about them that one can only hope is reflected widely across the academy. 

I rarely read back through my blog, there's
little time for that, so I'm not sure I've written about the experience of sitting in a Berkeley meeting of politically progressive elders -- mostly former east coast "red diaper babies," now grown old --  as they discussed just how we were going to change the world for the better by whatever means necessary.  These were white-haired "revolutionary" veterans of peace marches, and "Save the Whales" and "A Woman's Right To Choose," etc.  That was in the afternoon.  That very evening I drove to the Fruitvale District of Oakland to the Nu Upper Room, an artist's collective that met in the historic old Masonic Temple where the Hip Hop generation -- guided with love by guru Rafiq Bilal -- was hosting a cultural revolution of its own -- and I discovered that those goals that were being fought for so earnestly by those Gray Panthers earlier in the day had already been achieved across town and by nightfall!  One simply needed to change the lens and tilt the viewfinder a tad and nirvana was a reality.  Here were young people of every color and ethnicity; visual artists, dancers, playwrights, poets, gathering in the name of black culture and honoring it and themselves in ways that were stunningly meaningful.

It was so in Arcata.  Instead of idealistic black revolutionary Hip Hop Guru, Rafiq, here was this amazing sisterhood made up of Christina, Wurgil, Maria, Patty, Karla, Janet, Lorena and Barbara -- all leading eager and inquiring young students in an exploration of subject matter that only a few decades ago were being so valiantly fought over in our educational institutions.  And, yes, I was in that crowd  in 1968 when jauntily tam o' shantered S.I. Hayakawa stood on the rooftop of the Student's Union with his bullhorn taunting the crowd below in that dramatic confrontation over the resistance to the creation of an Ethnic Studies Department at San Francisco State.  That scene ended in tear gas and law enforcement officers on horseback swinging truncheons while plowing through a mass of determined students and supporters -- a sign of the times.

On the long drive home, at Laytonville, I found myself driving through a pouring rain sobbing convulsively!  My personal storm lasted until the outskirts of Willits many miles south.  It was a long but cleansing drive through magnificent redwood and rushing river country that I'll remember with awe for the rest of time.

And how strange that I hadn't found closure on the S.F. State event until this adventure at Humboldt State University, some 40 years later.

Connecting the dots has become a profound ritual in these concluding years.  Maybe that's reason enough for recognition on May 14th. Maybe it simply means acceptance of my role as "first source" to a history of some of the most tumultuous eras in our nation's narrative -- a time when the social landscape was altered for all time, -- and I've been witness to that history and have lived into the actualizing of what is no longer seen as alternative, but essential to the education of whole persons; whole young Americans. 

And the long drive home yielded more ...

later.

Just when I sense that I'm beginning to take myself too seriously ... look what happens.

First there was Tutt (another Charbonnet stranger cousin who appeared magically from cyberspace) to inquire if I knew of a Charbonnet family crest -- a Coat of Arms?  I was delighted that there just might be such a thing somewhere, but punted by sending an email to Cousin Paul in Baton Rouge, the arbiter of all things Charbonnet from his side of the family.  Surely such a thing could hardly have emanated from mine.  This was a European thing.   Our side is into ceremonial masks and totems; no crests. You may recall -- if you've been reading my blog for a while, Paul and Shirley -- from the melanin-challenged side of the family -- actually flew out to the West Coast to meet me a couple of years ago.  It was a grand reunion that found us more confounded by our politics than by race.  Paul is a devout conservative  Republican and I, well,  you know the answer to that one.  But politics aside, we were absolutely delighted with what we found in each other and celebrated coming together after centuries of separation.

The next day Tutt followed up by another message announcing that he'd indeed found one, and that he would share it with me as an attachment. 

Meanwhile, Paul responded with "I don't know of any, but were it possible to do so" this is what I would design in honor of our most senior and illustrious family member" (I'm paraphrasing).  And, so saying; voila!

Maybe I'll have it emblazoned on a tee-shirt or make it into a flag to hang from the antenna on my little Honda.  Maybe two -- one on each side a la diplomatic service!

I can just imagine getting a fit of the giggles in the middle of some self-induced profundity -- just thinking about this image!

I can just imagine historic St. Louis Cemetery in Old New Orleans sending up a roar as the ancestors roll over in their crypts! ... while in another part of the graveyard -- waaaaay over there in a corner --- others are dancin' for pure joy at what has come to pass.  I've always known that there were those down through history who were always trying to get it right; and that history has mostly been written by those who didn't.  And that in our generation, we've moved closer to that place of racial harmony that we all must reach before true democracy is replicable throughout the world.

Maybe it was always a family thing.

When the call came from a member of the faculty at Humboldt State some weeks ago, it seemed a likely add-on to end the busiest time of the year for me... .

She told me in that original email introduction that her classes had been reading my blog after being introduced to me through a few paragraphs of Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi's recently-published history of the ACLU in California entitled, "Wherever there's a fight."  Elinson had interviewed me a few years ago, and had later sent a copy as a gift -- and before the end of last year we shared the podium at the Japanese American Methodist where we were panelists.

Meanwhile, those classes have apparently viewed the videos and clips on my blog and after doing so faculty invited me to spend a few days on campus meeting with classes in Women's  and Multicultural Studies.  I have no idea how this will play out, but I gather that the format will be informal and that I will be primarily in a Q&A setting -- that's where I'm most comfortable, anyway.

It seems reasonable to ask for annual leave from work in order to have this on-campus experience as a preliminary to my upcoming great adventure at the California College of the Arts in May.  I've had a difficult time getting into a place where that whole thing doesn't feel waaaay over-the-top and downright weird!  An honorary doctorate, indeed!  But maybe if I could just get out of the maelstrom for a few days, I can make some sense of it. May is coming up fast.  We're at the point of having to send in the invitation list, measurements for cap and robe, begin to form a commencement address to deliver(!); and all of that has to come from somewhere within -- some place where I'll need some stillness to reach.  Perhaps Humboldt State nestled in the old growth redwoods is that place.

I've never written a speech; been "uploading" truth now for years with nary a note nor clues chalked onto cuffs or palms.  But it feels as if a commencement speech needs more preparation than that; more evidence of study and effort ... but whenever I try to cull those gems of wisdom that occur deep in the night to wake me from sleep ... in the morning they've vanished without a trace.  And you know what?  I know that it's in me somewhere and will emerge -- maybe as I stand on that dais and not a moment before -- but it would be so comforting to feel certain that I'm deserving of such an honor.

Tennyrate, I was offered the option of being flown in (50 minutes out of SFO on United), or the only other alternative -- to make that 5 and-a-half-hour drive north up Highway 101.  Sounded so enticing -- given the reasons above -- until the past couple of days when the storms have been relentless.  I feel so in need of that 5 hours transition time between lives.  I will be driving north into rain country.  The snow level has been as low as some of the Bay Area foothills this weekend.  Now I'm anxiously watching the 5-day forecast and hoping for change.  It doesn't look very promising.  However, the die is cast, and I will leave early on Wednesday morning -- with a couple of audio books on CD (Mark Twain as narrated by Matt Damon and Howard Zinn's History of America which I've never had time to complete).

Wish me luck, guys.

There are times when past and present collide and all of my dimensions get into a grand melange and there's nothing to do but simply stop! ... .

My great adventure at blogging started, after all, with my entry into the exacting science of genealogy years ago.  It was in tracing my paternal line that all manner of obstacles prevented my ability to trace any of the women among the ancestors. This was particularly ironic since there is such a long line of strong women whom I remember vividly (Mammå, herself - Leontine Breaux Allen, the matriarch of the Breaux line; Aunt Vivian Jernigan, the dynamo from my mother's generation; Aunt Alice who created the first school for black children in St. James Parish; and so many others) -- but they were impossible to track due to name changes through marriage.

I first started this journal in September of 2003 as a way to leave my own history for those who come after, and, here it is March 2011 and I'm still blogging.  Not only that, but I'm piling on "Life" in so many ways that I'm breathless just trying to keep up with myself!

I'm reminded of this because right in the middle of one of the most crushing speaking schedules to date, a member of the family emailed this photo of these paternal ancestors.  It is by far the earliest I've ever seen, and not only that -- but it is a photograph of one of the women in my lineage.  Wonder of wonders!

With my talk yesterday at Berkeley City College just completed, and, only two days away from my Humboldt State University campus adventure in the offing -- all I can do this minute is think about returning to this fascinating work that started it all.  With the help of others I've partially completed 13 generations of the Charbonnet Family Tree (see links above the archives), and I'm so afraid that it will remain unfinished even as this amazing American family saga continues to unfold ... .

Then this morning I opened my mail to an announcement that the family crest has been located ... and that this distant cousin from my time will send it along as soon as received ... .

Just how many worlds can I manage to maneuver in simultaneously without crashing the space ship?

... then today there was the panel on Women's Empowerment at St. Marys College in Moraga ...

Such a different view of the world!

The drive from the urban area of Richmond with its grittiness and dark view of the world -- across scenic San Pablo Dam Road; through picturesque Orinda Village and the outskirts through the once familiar now any-small-city-in-the-USA-ized town of Lafayette; across the rural landscape past the Sunday cyclists and out into the back countryside to Moraga and venerable old St. Marys College -- and it was bound to be a novel day.

I arrived at the campus Soda Center as the keynote speaker, the Mayor of Moraga, was at the lectern.  The room was half-full, but then I recalled that this was the second day of a two-day conference, and participants were scattered into breakout groups.  At this point I had no idea what to expect, except that I was to serve on a panel with unidentified others.  Not much to go on, right?

We were given a printout with a selection of questions that might be used to guide our presentations.

It went well.  I felt comfortable and able to respond to my own satisfaction.

This experience, as it happens, will serve as preparation for my 3-day, 2-night, adventure as a guest lecturer the last week in March at Humboldt State University.  It may also serve as preparation for my commencement  talk at California School of the Arts in San Francisco in May.  That still lies ahead but is looming less and less threatening as I build on the campus experiences, before a generation that seems finally but truly ready for the honest national conversations that their parents and grandparents have avoided until now.

Such a dedicated and earnest group of young panelists, each with a passion formed of personal experience, and each having found a channel through which to effectively confront whatever challenges lay before them.  I felt a deep sense of separation born of age and experience, yet an equally deep realization that such a treasure of self-discovery lies in their futures -- still forming -- and that they are each change agents who are earnestly and with love creating the world in which my grandchildren will either knowingly or unknowingly and in faith -- join them in building a world far more empathetic than the one which parented my generation.

How honored it feels to be available to stand on the same side of the racial and cultural barriers with them as we together bridge the chasm of cynicism and indifference at this end of the 1st decade of the 21st Century.  The Age of Aquarius!  

Whoever would have dreamed ... ?

Still nursing the bi-centennial grandfather of colds and making every attempt to not let it interfere with Life with Betty ... .


The video below was done at the February 19th Family Journey Day sponsored by Supervisor Keith Carson of the Fifth District of Alameda, County.  It drew about 150 hardy souls who were willing and able to attend despite a drenching extended downpour.  


We were 3 panelists; a woman minister, a retired former San Francisco State head of the Department of Black Studies -- and moi.



After being totally intimidated upon noticing the voluminous notes each were clutching prior to the opening of the program (I never speak from notes), I settled in to listening for clues of what I might draw from the others when my turn came at the lectern.  Fortunately, I was not the first to speak so could build on Dr. T'Shaka's words, though he didn't leave many lifelines to cling to.  Our accounting of those years differed enough so that I had to find my own way in the telling. 


All 3 talks are accessible on You.Tube.com, so -- the complete afternoon with Q&A are available.  

This audience was interesting in that it was almost all African American, and mostly young.  It was a challenge to make this history compelling to youth who've had so little preparation with which to receive it.  I'm told that this program will usher in a comprehensive one that will involve learning the rudiments of genealogy and building family trees that will extend through the summer; a worthy undertaking.


They were very gracious.  It was an afternoon well-spent.

Family Journeys (Part 3) || African African Family and Black History Pro...

Sorry to have been missing for so long ...

I know.  It’s been a long time between posts -- maybe the longest time ever.  But the first 3 months of the year have become busier than ever due to the increasing number of African American-related events that have found their way onto my calendar; more each year. 

To completely confuse matters -- I was not only scheduled beyond reasonable expectations, but received a jury summons right in the middle of it all, and for reasons beyond my ken, I reached a point where I simply stopped everything until I could catch the ring on this merry-go-round and ride until some destination would reveal itself. 

Last week, as ordered, I found myself seated in the jury assembly room in the Martinez County Courthouse at the appointed hour of 8 am. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask for release from duty (I’ve been called before but never served) because -- down deep -- I know that this is one of the rights guaranteed by the constitution to any American citizen accused of a crime.  The only way those rights can be guaranteed is if ordinary people like me participate in the process.  I have never, and would not ever opt out.

But in the end, that’s precisely what I managed to do.  At least a deferral was granted at the very last step in the process of jury selection.

We were the last 65 potential jurors in a roomful of twice that many.  We were led to the third floor courtroom of Judge Barbara Zuniga for final selection.  The Bailiff set the tone.  This was serious.  I had no idea how that process would go, never having reached this far.  We sat in awed silence as he prepared us for next steps.

Finally, we were suddenly on automatic.  “All rise!” and a slim and attractive blond robed woman entered from her chambers to do what to her must have been ritual and dull.  To those gathered before her, it was surely not.

I’d entered with the first 18 and therefore filed into the actual upholstered chairs of the jury stand.  The rest were seated as “audience.” 

She told us what we might expect over the days ahead; that those remaining in the pool were to return next Tuesday morning at the appointed hour to be examined by the attorneys, and that she didn’t expect this particular case to last more than 5 months. 

Also in her preparatory speech she pretty much erased any excuses that those of us seated before her might be harboring.  It said clearly on our summons that any reason for non-serving had to be submitted 5 days prior to the date issued on the summons. 

Yet, here on the paper before me now was a new form that clearly stated, “I would like to be excused because ...”.  She ended her presentation with the words that everyone would be excused now to return on Tuesday, but that those of us who felt that we had any reason not to serve at this time should remain in the room.   This was unexpected.

Five months.  At my age this could easily be the rest of my life, right?  And here I am with speaking engagements that have been building over the past 3 months (January - the King Holidays; February -  Black History Month; and March - Womens’ History Month), and my unique role with the National Park Service would suggest that I would need to cancel all of those (now advertised) dates with no one to send as replacement speakers.  The full impact of those facts suddenly rose to be dealt with.  And not from the standpoint of ego needs, but simply from the very practical standpoint of my status as the resident  “elder” whose memory has become an irreplaceable asset to the work of interpretation of the Rosie stories of the Home Front.

Only this past week a major newspaper story had been published in all of the local papers about my talk at Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, and flyers were being distributed about Alameda County 5th District Supervisor Keith Carson's Family History Day in Berkeley -- in which I was to be one of 3 panelists.

And, I’ve been invited to be a guest lecturer at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California (50 minute flight) where I will be their guest on campus for 3 days and 2 nights.  I’m scheduled to fly up on Wednesday, March 23rd to meet with classes in multicultural studies.

Impulsively, I managed to get enough of that into two paragraphs (starting with my age), and -- the judge must surely have seen the news articles -- and hand it to the bailiff.
 
It was no more than five minutes later when -- after disappearing into the judges chambers with our little slips in hand -- the bailiff returned and called my name.

“Mrs. Soskin?  You are granted a deferral for 11 months.  You may leave the courtroom and return to the Jury Assistance Desk downstairs off the main lobby to arrange for your return. “

I signed on to be re-summoned on November 1st.

You just never know.  And by then I will have celebrated my 90th birthday!

Now, which do you suppose warranted the deferral, a consideration of my age, or, my new-found rather fragile celebrity?  We'll never know.

The evening was magical ... !

Lawrence was magnificent!  His rich and velvety baritone-bass filled the hall without amplification.  I heard the old spirituals as if for the first time; Deep River, There is a Balm in Gilead, Motherless Child, but also Summertime and Ol' Man River.  The audience was racially mixed and culturally diverse (one could tell that from the fact that those new to classical music applauded at the ends of movements while the seasoned concert goers waited until the final notes of the piece have sounded).  I now consider myself  "seasoned," but not enough to feel superior and annoyed at the novice theater-goers who aren't clued in to (formal) audience protocols.

It's that "call and response" thing I've talked about.  In my world we Black folk don't sit on our hands.  We let artists know that we appreciate them.  It's one of those cultural variations that will probably always remain.  It's like they clap on one and three to the music, and we clap on two and four (syncopation).  You can tell -- when you're sitting in a darkened theater -- that the audience is racially integrated when the rhythmic clapping falls on all four beats.  If you find yourself in an audience where you're the only one clapping on two and four -- you better look around!  (You may be in the wrong room.)

The city of Lafayette, California, has been given a giant leap forward in the race toward reconciliation through the Gold Coast Chamber Player's concert -- but that isn't all.  On Monday evening the Veterans Memorial Hall in Lafayette is the site of the NPR broadcast of the Commonwealth Club -- an evening panel discussion in which Rep. Barbara Lee and others will participate -- the second event in the city's month-long observance of Black History Month.  Would love to attend, but this is a busy week, and it's quite impossible to take the time.

If what is happening in the Diablo Valley is any indication, we need no longer ask if the Obama presidency has made a difference in national life.  We are quite ready and willing to have those long delayed conversations in order to process decades of forgotten and/or neglected history.

Today I accepted an invitation to appear on National Public Radio station KALW (SF) for an hour between 10 and 11 o'clock on Monday morning, 2/7.  The subject will be unsung heroes of the Home Front Era.  I believe it's a call-in show, but I'll know more about that tomorrow when the producer calls to fill in the details.  It will take little effort since they've suggested that I not come into the studio but do my part by telephone from my office (will wonders never cease?).  I'm not at all sure that would be preferable since I think I'd much prefer seeing the person I've speaking with.  Since
I'll be conducting two bus tours this week (2/3 and 2/5), there should be much to talk about.

And in the background of my mind there will be sounds of that deep, deep, rich baritone with those resonant low notes ...

Photo:  The logo of the Gold Coast Chamber Players.

Conversations need not all be verbal ... case in point ... .

They've been playing in the background of our national life through the Arts for decades and have probably moved us further along the path of reconciliation among people of different races than all of the speeches of all of the great orators over all of the centuries.  These "conversations" (i.e. "the Kirov Ballet meets Alvin Ailey," and "Ray Charles with strings plays Carnegie Hall) have moved past novelty into the creation of new art forms in music and dance to delighted audiences throughout the world.  The "Black voice" as Dvorak described it -- is so powerfully and deeply infused in all of America's popular music that we may have forgotten its origins or appreciated its contribution to the very definition of what is uniquely American in our music; or the culture of pain and anguish; the unbounded joy and deep sorrow; the struggles which produced it.

Over the past few years I've been flirting with chamber music -- and finding myself yielding to its magic but always suspecting that "... a little Mingus on bass and Max Roach or "Philly" Joe Jones on percussion -- maybe Miles with a muted riff now and again..."  might improve Haydn a bit (grin!).  But over time my resistance gave way to a genuine appreciation for the genre, even while secretly wishing that my greater love, jazz, might one day be seen as equally classical music.  It was the violas playing Mozart and cellos playing Villa-lobos, especially, or almost anything else, that won me over in the end.

Next Saturday evening I will attend the opening concert of the Gold Coast Chamber Players in Lafayette, California -- a place located within a comfortable hike from the home we built in the 50s -- the place that was so life-changing for our family in a tumultuous time in our nation's history --- ten years or so before the Civil Rights Revolution of the Sixties, and long before we gave up the less than welcoming suburbs and retreated back to a more comfortable anonymity of a racially and culturally diverse life in the city; a debt owed to our children once they reached adolescence. 

The Gold Coast Chamber Players are bringing Lafayette its first observance of Black History Month -- in a place where perhaps one percent of the population is other than white.  Not only that, but the artistic director and my dear friend, Pamela Freund-Striplen, is bringing together her favorite composer, Antonin Dvorak, with brilliant African American baritone, Lawrence Beamen, in concert.  Not only those two giants from different centuries and races, but also included in the program will be the work of William Grant Still, a noted African America composer from another era.

... and I will be appropriately-clad in my conservative black crepe suit with pearls -- to be (with other volunteers) greeting the music lovers upon arrival and pressing programs into their hands.   And, I may be the only person in the room who realizes just how far we have all had to come in order for this to be an ordinary social event, or of how much change over how many years was necessary for any of this to even begin to be normal.  


This weekend's "conversation" between Mr. Beamen and Mr. Dvorak across the ages may enable those of Diablo Valley residents to deepen.  They've already had their effect upon me in that these conversations are more often being engaged in from the same side of the racial barrier, finally, and being less often shouted across chasms of hatred and acrimony.  But this may be more true in this part of the country.  Overall, there is still much work to be done, but Lafayette is taking the necessary steps toward fulfillment of the promise, " ...in order to form a more perfect Union".


Do watch this amazing 34 year-old "Robeson" in this interview.  He was born in Mississippi but raised in Richmond, California (my town).  His youth doesn't permit him to comprehend the distance we've all traveled since his grandparents back home were expected to step off the curb and into the gutter when encountering a white person on the pathway -- and never to make eye contact without threat of harm.  And where hardly anyone would have known his last name -- surnames were for whites, only.  Mister Beamen?   Never!

But that's  a conversation for another time ... .

Program, anyone?

HARMONY & MELODY with Lawrence Beamen and the Gold Coast Chamber Players

On Tuesday another of my bus tours will be filmed; this time by World Trust ... .

I was reminded of this PBS piece (below) that was filmed about two years ago, and I needed to view it again in order to remind myself of just what were the important lessons from that experience that I may need to call upon again.

I think if there's anything to be learned from viewing it again, it would be that one really can't prepare for such an event.  It means being whoever I wake up to "being" on Tuesday, and using whatever is in the air that day.  Most of the work comes with the editing, maybe.  I'm pleased with this footage -- and could never have guessed how it would turn out while we were filming.  In fact, somewhere along the way I forgot that the cameras were present.  The film crew was very unobtrusive.  Maybe it will be so this time, too.  

I believe that Dr. Shakti Butler, Founder and Executive Producer, is planning to create a segment that will be incorporated into her next documentary.  Her field is psychology, with specific work aimed at achieving greater understanding between those of different races and cultures.  She travels throughout the country conducting workshops for educational institutions and corporations.

She invited me to her home some weeks ago where I shared a lovely dinner with her family which included her cinematographer husband, Rick Butler.  I left with 3 of her films in hand, all really fine.  It was surprising to find among those pictured several people whom I've met in my wanderings over time; Aisha Bilal in a dance sequence; Erika Huggins of the Black Panther Party, we've never met, but her oral history sits in a binder on my desk.  She is so articulate ... so sensitive ... so insightful, so wounded yet (surprisingly) so compassionate -- that I keep that binder within reach for those times when I need centering, focus, when, temporarily, the path forward has become clouded.

Also on camera is one of my favorite speakers, Tim Wise, whose understanding of the concept of white privilege is so dead on that -- despite the seriousness of the topic -- his wry delivery of skillfully scripted comic lines rivals the best of the stand-ups!  I bought a copy of his speech on video and presented it to our police chief as a gift a while back.  Richmond (as does many cities) has both a black and a white police officer's association within its structure.  A holdover from less enlightened times?  That's a conversation I'd love to have with him someday.  What's with that, anyway?  I would hazard a guess that it's at the insistence of black police officers.  Were it the other way, it would not be allowed, right?  Should this be the other way around it would be considered racist, surely.  Just one of the contradictions that we've learned to live with without questioning.

Maybe we need that conversation before I arrange for those tango lessons.

So  much to do ... so little time.

This Is Us! Betty Soskin

DRUUMM (Diverse Revolutionary Unitarian-Universalist Multicultural Ministry)

... an organization about which I knew nothing until recently, but I'd been invited  to make a presentation on my work with the National Park Service before the group at a national conference hosted yesterday by the 1st UU Church in downtown Oakland. I'd accepted since there is this little understood lack of visitation by People of Color in our national parks,  and that this might be a way to reach into this community for some answers.

Because I'm never presenting from prepared notes and depending upon memory, passion, and whatever arises from the audience, I arrived on Saturday to spend an hour or so trying to get a "feel" of the group that I would appear before on Sunday afternoon.

It felt good.  Home.  Comfortable.  I'd long ago lost the need to "belong" in connection with organized religion.  It happened while I wasn't noticing.  It must have been then that I released my spiritual "training wheels" and struck out on my own individual search for answers to Life's great questions.  This work was far too important to entrust to any priest, lama, minister, rabbi, or shaman as intercessors, but needed to be individually confronted in a random universe.  I didn't notice when that happened; and am aware of the change only in retrospect. I recall no spiritual/intellectual coming-of-age; just a drifting away into new territory that more resembled astrophysics then religion -- but that provided no more answers than before -- when I was looking over my husband, Bill's, shoulder at the Tibetan Buddhist disciplines and practices.

My youngest son, David, raised UU, but eventually returning to the Faith of Our Fathers, Catholicism, was among those in yesterday's audience.  In a way, after a long absence he was returning to the humanist environment of Liberal religion.  That felt good.  At the end of my talk -- during the Q&A he spoke to the arc of his spiritual life and -- contrary to what might have been expected, I felt complete success as his spiritual guide through childhood in that he had chosen for himself as an adult, the faith of our centuries-old paternal line, the Charbonnet, when he opted for legacy over denominational definition.  The Creole Charbonnet men had been builders of Catholic Churches in New Orleans since the early-1900s, when my grandfather, Louis Charbonnet, designed and constructed the Convent of the Holy Family Sisters - the first religious Order for African American nuns in the country; as well as the historic Corpus Christi Church in the Tremé.  Among our family treasures is this fading photograph of Corpus Christi High School, one of the earliest constructed for children of color; also a Charbonnet site.

Besides, I was almost certain that the God in whom David believes as all-powerful and all-loving would understand David's mother's atheism and credit her with having gotten the love message and executed it well throughout life.  Crazy?  Maybe.  But my children were guided toward finding their own answers to great questions -- then joined me in later life in the search for meaning, and had arrived at their own answers without losing respect for the individual choices of their parents and siblings.  This speaks well for UUism.

Another discovery was that somewhere along the way it appears that I've outlived my rage.  I truly believe that  anger has served me well over a lifetime, but that at some point over the past decade or so, it has been transformed into something other -- yet leaving behind the associated passion.  Maybe this is what has empowered my work.  There is something operating that feels new and which provides an edge -- I can see it in the faces of my audiences.  I'm left with an inexplicable feeling of awe at the close of each talk -- almost tearful.  I've not figured this out, nor do I know how one consciously creates such moments, but oh how I wish they'd come at some earlier time of life.

But then I do dimly recall knowing such moments while singing ... when even this Atheist experiences the touching of souls -- even while doubting the very concept of "the soul."  That's when the need for suspension of judgment kicks in -- and one consigns those things which one cannot touch, hear, or see -- but which one knows are there-- to be cast out onto that illusive dimension called "The Ineffable." 

Over the past 24 hours, I've found myself wondering for the first time, seriously, if the time hasn't come to climb out from under my flat hat and finish up in a sprint as Betty Soskin, Private Citizen?

I'm really not sure yet, that this is the proper course, but at least there are stirrings ... and, no, I've no intention of slowing down or retiring (at least not before I've taken those tango lessons and learned to play the cello).

My identity is more and more determined by an expanding public image but maybe the "juice" still emanates from my private self?

In thinking about how to handle the CYCLE gardening project -- all of the answers that rise to the top fall outside the perimeters of my ranger role.  For instance, were I not with the park service it would be easy to  have someone measure off the empty and garden-ready space to see just how many raised beds it could accommodate; have someone with more expertise than I to tell us how much each would cost, then initiate a campaign that would invite the public to "purchase" individual beds.  Funds raised would provide the lumber for each, and -- if such a campaign were successful, we'd be off and running before we've lost the kids.  How's that for an idea?  It might even be possible to run such a campaign online ... needs more thought, though.

However, it's "under the flat hat" that I have six months of commitments to fulfill -- so maybe over the past 7 years the power that now fuels my work and reputation (beyond what came with me into my position from my private self) would disappear in a "poof!" once I discarded the uniform.  It's so hard too gauge that. "Celebrity" can be deceptive; an ego trap.

On the other hand, maybe I can have it all.  Maybe in some way those projects which seem relatively unrelated to my interpretive role with the NPS can be made to fit under some arcane classification; maybe I'm simply needing to give more time to making the connections.

I'm convinced that somewhere in here there is an explanation to just why it is that the National Park Service is having such difficulty attracting visitation from the ranks of "People of Color."  The recent Oprah & Gail nationally televised visit to Yosemite was an attempt to chip away at that persistent problem.  Maybe those connections must be made -- not by black celebrities from luxuriously outfitted campers -- but through relating back home in communities where the under-served and under-privileged might be introduced into the park system through home-based community-created programs as a beginning point; and by rangers of color under flat hats.

Maybe as long as I'm one of those rare beings, there is a need for me to remain in place with the full force of this great federal agency providing the wind at my back.


Maybe I've thought this through enough over the past few minutes (my fingers/brain connection usually can be counted on to deliver), and retirement can be delayed -- at least until I've found an answer to this gardening project.  To Lily Mae and Lena, and to those young people -- currently, I am the federal government's response to their dilemma, I just can't fathom just how that is.

Maybe that's reason enough to carry on, at least until I locate that tango instructor.

Now if I can only figure out how to get someone else to design that fund-raising campaign while I continue to be the governmental response to those who need one.


Photo:  top was taken at the Home Front Festival in 2010 at Shipyard 3 in Richmond.
             bottom -- 1972 Democratic Convention at Miami Beach, Florida where I was a McGovern  delegate.  This may have been where "private citizen" Betty was successfully launched.