Black History Week at Dancey Memorial held a few surprises after all ...

Last Sunday I was scheduled to speak at a small heavily-armored storefront church in heart of the Black community in the flatlands of East Oakland.  The occasion was their annual program and I was the keynoter.  Arrived on time and just a bit fazed by the printed program which listed about 90 minutes worth of "acts" with my portion coming at the end.  Afterwards I would be rushing home to take Dorian out for a long-planned birthday dinner.  But that wouldn't happen until after some praise singing; opening words by the pastor, Reverend Joe Nobles, who radiated love and caring; introductions all around by the traditional shaking of hands with other congregants, a few remarks by two city councilpersons, the usual recitations of the words of Dr. King; poems by Maya Angelou;  facts about black inventors and scientists;  a praise dance by a young man, more praise singing -- all very warm and stirring with beaming parents urging applause with continuing words of encouragement.  The performers were the children.  In fact most of my audience would be somewhere between the ages of 5 and 15, as it turned out, with parents and grandparents sprinkled generously among them. 

It seemed a sign of the times, somehow, that listed as the "Program Mover" was Detective Terrance Montigue of the Alameda County Sheriff's Office.

Now, you need to know that -- when possible -- I've learned to re-direct all such requests for talks to the younger rangers of our staff in the belief that the age difference is simply too great between elementary school children and me, and that the cause is better served by those with fewer years and less wear on their psyches.  Even high-schoolers are sometimes a challenge, though I've found some success on occasion.  I was looking out on my greatest nightmare! I was simply not prepared for this -- but as it turned out -- there would be plenty of time to figure out just how I would handle the relating of 70 year-old history of a park dedicated to the emancipation of women into the nation's workforce to children who probably come from single parent households headed by women.  How was this going to be made relevant to today's children; kids who probably couldn't recall when their moms didn't work as a matter of family survival? 

After awhile the parade of youngsters standing at the microphone -- proudly reciting the all too familiar words of African American icons -- it came to me.  I was prepared to show my short "Of Lost Conversations" DVD which would surely catch the attention of the grownups in that congregation, but I would talk to the children about heroes.  Of course!  And, despite the fact that there was far too much light in the room for the audience to see the images projected on the wall, fortunately the narration is where most of the power of the piece lies, anyway, so it mattered little.  It's hard to recapture now because the words had come spontaneously without prior thought, and I'm not sure just how much of this was actually said, and how much was improved upon on the thoughtful drive home.  Suddenly I'd found a way to speak with children and to be relevant to their lives while interpreting our park.

I told them that all of those they've spoken of in their program today had been  children like themselves -- kids who had no idea while growing up that they would someday be seen as heroes by the world.  I told them that children were only grownups who hadn't yet grown into their potential.  I spoke of how my generation had met the challenge of its day by building those 747 ships in 3 years and 8 months -- therefore turning around the course of a great war.  I told them that they would have to meet the challenge of their day -- discovering renewable sources of energy; rising sea levels, and climate change -- and that the "heroes" who would discover just how to do that might be sitting right next to them this day in this sanctuary.  Or that hero may even be you.  That Henry J. Kaiser was an 8th grade dropout cement contractor who'd never built a ship, but dreamed of a way to revolutionize shipbuilding and found a way to do it with those he'd brought into his workforce from mostly rural areas of the South - many of whom were people who looked just like us -- quite possibly their grandparents and great-grandparents-- who had never before welded or riveted but who learned to do a tiny part of a huge job and, together, they made history.

The children were all-attention.  They were engaged in the story.  My talk was over in about 10-15 minutes.  Pastor Nobles followed me out onto the street to walk me to my car suggesting on the way that I might think about addressing their annual district-wide convention in the Fall. 

I brought their printed program home to post in my office cubicle as a reminder of the day that I found my voice with children in a Black History Month program at Dancey Memorial Church.

Looking forward to addressing that convention in the Fall.

I don't think that there has ever been a longer hiatus for this blog ... but I'm back ... .

Have to admit that I was temporarily seduced by Facebook, but the love affair seems to have ended, though I'll surely visit from time to time.

It seems to me that I was fitting my life and my self into someone else's format and it gradually lost its charm.  At first I felt in control of that world that -- for a while there  -- I thought that I was creating.  It was peopled by friends and family but gradually that illusion gave way to one in which it took far more dedication from me to maintain any semblance of order.  I just don't think that I want to be programmed in the way that the new social networks tend to demand.  And the time it would take to tailor the program to my personal needs just wasn't available, or maybe I just didn't want to invest that time.  Besides that, it didn't feel good to realize that I'd become fodder for the data-miners.  (Or is anyone else receiving announcements for hip replacements, cataract removal, scooters, and burial sites with a view?)

While there was a noticeable increase in contacts with family members and friends whom I rarely run across in the course of my days, there was a far greater increase in names who were (I'm sure) friends of friends -- all lovely folks, but with whom I shared little in common.  Besides, it felt strange and mean to unfriend anyone who'd invited me into their circle.  It just got unwieldy and awkward, finally.  

Besides that, LinkEd somehow got my work email address and there are so many invitations to join my friends in that social network that I began to feel stalked!  

My blogging had become so much a part of the way I was processing time as it went by -- my chance to delve more deeply into day-to-day experiences of living -- with no limits; no rules; no boundaries except for those self-imposed.   Blogging serves my purposes -- that of leaving a record of my extraordinary ordinary existence for my children to ponder after I'm gone.  FB can't achieve that goal.  Such networks require immediacy.  They're now!  They're not for the reflective.  In a rather peculiar way, they tend to stress the throwaway culture that we've grown into.  Hit and run!  No "do-overs."

I suppose it was "just one of those things", as Cole Porter would have said.


... but then maybe age has given me a better way to measure meaning.

I'm back.

"Between me & the Other World" and the unrelenting passage of time ...

Choreographer/Historian Joanna Haigood's brilliant work combined with the artistry of the amazing dancer, Robert Henry Johnson, has served to completely unsettle my world over the past 24 hours.  Yesterday's experience evoked so much more than was apparent during and after the performance.  But, I hasten to add -- that didn't prevent me from speaking up during the Q&A that followed the presentation.  I suppose I had to speak if only to relieve the tension that arose in me at the performance's stunningly dramatic ending.

Since this was a workshop production of a work-in-progress, it was performed sans stage sets or costumes, and was done before an "insider" audience of good friends, patrons, board members, potential funders, members of Zaccho Dance Theater company and staff, and some I recognize as performers from the theater world of San Francisco.  I caught a glimpse of many I've either known or been audience to over the decades.

Johnson's solo performance was rich in imagery, mood, and culturally "black" in a way that I've rarely had access to over the recent past.  From the media in all its forms, black culture is delivered through white "derivatives" who have perfected their delivery of the genre so successfully that we tend to forget that the source lies at the very root of our being, and that -- like "painting by numbers," a kind of faux black culture -- not dependent upon skin color, race, or life experience -- has been universally expropriated by others and cast into the mainstream; a place we've only recently been allowed full access to.

In that lull just before sleep, I tossed and turned restlessly.  I wondered why the tears midway through the performance?  In fact, I was brimming several times on the drive home, and it was evident that my Q&A responses had not been nearly deep enough to dislodge the emotional blockage causing the tears.

I'd told (again) the story of my great-grandmother, Leontine's having been born into slavery in 1846 and of my having therefore known my enslaved ancestor since she lived to be 102, passing on when I was a 27 year-old mother of two. The piece had ended with a depiction of a caged almost bare Robert Henry's glistening agile brown dancer's body crouched and straining helplessly against the bars of a restrictive metal enclosure.  It was an image that immediately brought to mind slavery and of Mamma, and (I thought) brought the tears.

Much later I realized that the hurtful response was more closely related to the dance movements that had taken us through a vast array of feelings and emotions, high points and low, all in the vernacular of what I recognized as "blackness."  The dance was accompanied by images projected against scrims and videotapes and a selection of music that was as evocative as the movements -- but it was the message in the sequencing of the work that had been so devastating!  And therein lies the problem. The opening of the piece saw a well-identified confident young black man, strutting, strolling, ambling, with images interspersed with well-defined characterizations of mood and color; and grace.

All of that life of victory and pain we were taken on over the course of the piece ended in disaster!  My life's trajectory appears to have been in a straight line that starts with enslavement (Mamma) but ends in victory over circumstances that at times lie beyond me.  Here the choreography reversed the process, and -- though I would agree that the battles have surely not all been won, in these final years -- I'm feeling so vindicated; so fulfilled, so respected, that when I was forced into that cage with the dance; it was painfully disturbing, so much so that I couldn't allow the "defeat" that I was feeling to be voiced, but gave it other words of explanation -- the story of my Mamma.  But make no mistakes -- it was I in that cage with Robert Henry.  The generational destruction has reached into my life, and haunts me still, as surely as it has in all those around me who have lived the black experience.

Just before sleep, I realized that I'd been fooling myself for far too long.  That I'd been convincing myself that my fate had been shared by all others of my race -- and that we'd all moved so much further along the journey toward equality than is true in fact.  That artists like Joanna Haigood and Robert Henry Johnson are cautioning us to not opt out of the struggle so quickly as to lose one another and leave our cultural legacy behind by either error or arrogance.  I've always suspected that -- while some of us were trying to get into the "front of the bus" during the Black Revolution," Dubois's "talented tenth" were trying to get into the country club! Haigood's work is a constant reminder that either we all reach the Promised Land, together, or, none of us can.  And that, should we reach it stripped of our culture, we may be lost among those devoid of that which makes us human.

I will need to re-read DuBois's The Souls of Black Folks once more.  Then I will wait for the next staging  of this important work-in-progress to see just how far we have gotten on the road to better understanding our gifts as well as our legacy.

Writing this has been therapeutic.  I can feel that lump in my throat quietly dissolving.  The dry sobs that woke me in the night have gone away.  This may not make sense to anyone else, but it does to me.

Note:  Something has happened to time in this; surely my tenth and final decade. Time has collapsed in on itself.  As future diminishes, both past and present have begun to merge in a kind of simultaneity that is strange and new.  The distances between generations are disappearing, so that only the affect remains.   Human history is becoming my history.  Wish I understood more about the phenomenon, but it's relatively new, but if luck holds out against the ravages of its passage -- watching the aging process as it occurs may be as exciting as living it has been, and the approaching ending of my time more natural and less terrifying.

Experienced a visit to an earlier time yesterday afternoon (echoes of the Nu Upper Room) ... .

The show had been advertised through an email received a few days ago announcing this event at one of the small theaters in the old Mission district of San Francisco; a work in progress from the studios of noted choreographer/historian, Joanna Haigood, whose artistry has played out in the back of my mind as a theater experience I've wanted to see shared ever more broadly -- one of the uncompleted projects on my life's agenda. Haigood's "Invisible Wings" was performed some years ago under the auspices of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) of the National Park Service, so this isn't so far-fetched as one might think at first blush.  After several attempts -- the cost of production and lack of budget has kept that particular dream from being considered in any serious way.  But it still haunts me from time to time. 


If you've been reading this blog for a while (or if you'll enter Joanna's name into that little search bar above the banner to bring up earlier posts) you'll know that I've entertained visions of having her dance company, Zaccho, performing on the SS Red Oak Victory -- high up in the rigging -- for what seems an eternity of changing park staff personnel and budgetary cutbacks.

Lately I've been finding that vision rising to the surface again, and there is a real possibility that there may be another opportunity to bring it out again for consideration, and I've been taking informal steps to re-start the conversation.  This time it might be as the centerpiece of a future Home Front Festival.


It was because of this renewed interest in that project that I called my friend, Jennifer, to arrange to attend an emotional and somewhat disturbing afternoon of Joanna's deeply-moving new work-in-progress based on W.E.B. Dubois's book, "The Soul of Black Folks."

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.  One ever feels his two-ness -- an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

The title given to yesterday's workshop production is "Between me and the other World." It will probably be at least a year in development, and if that experience was a forerunner of its power in a more completed form, this important piece should place solo artist, Robert Henry Johnson, among the dance world's most celebrated masters.

Drug-sniffing dogs in middle schools ... ?


... and what on earth would that have to do with this picture? Everything.  A nation that has given up on its children has become suicidal, lost its way, and abandoned all hope for the future. Have we gone completely mad?

And why is so much of the available funding for youth services found in the budgets of law enforcement?  Would we be having better luck if (as before) those funds were again used to staff our recreation centers?  Everything shuts down in the early evening; except the kids! 

 
How did we get so far off track, anyway?  Is no one else disturbed by the sight of police cars parked at high schools, routinely; high schools in my city that have the outward appearance of prisons? Schools with their metal detectors that long ago -- for budgetary reasons -- gave up counselors and school nurses in favor of this?  Both positions provide prevention, intervention, and might go a long way toward eliminating the need for police on campus.  Resources for youth are often dependent upon their being defined as "at risk," and rarely as entitlements -- as it was when we were young.


The taxpayers of California, by refusing to allow the raising of taxes with which to fund much-needed services for children, have allowed education to be gutted of all those things that brings kids to school each day, and sustains their interest in remaining in the system.  Music, the Arts, electives of all kinds; school clubs, athletics.  The schools have lost their relevance to many young lives by the time they reach their teens, and by ninth grade 49% have dropped out (mostly Black and Brown youth), or been transferred into the prison system where the costs of upkeep are astronomically higher than it would have been to educate them in the first place!


This is not true in the suburbs where parents have formed support groups and foundations which financially support a full array of enriching programs like science fairs, music and fine arts, (yes, and counselors, and school nurses) that school districts in my part of the county simply cannot afford. 


School districts receive funds from the State based on ADA (Average Daily Attendance), so those dropouts determine what moneys come into the district, so where the dropout rate is high, resources continue to shrink and essentials (like textbooks) disappear into some bottomless chasm of need.


If we're not going to educate the electorate, then we'll have need to control it; hence drug-sniffing canines.


How sad that we've come to this.


I need to find the relevance in my work, and where it interfaces with the critical needs I see all around me.  So far today that relevance escapes me ... .

... I'm at home feeling depressed.  Not a usual state for me, yet there's something familiar about this mood, enough so that I think I might be reaching for justification to match the feelings.  Can't find anything in my immediate past, present, or future that warrants "the Blues," so I may be borrowing heavily from the news reports,  all devastatingly unreal.


Maybe I'm having leftover blahs from watching the State of the Union speech last night, and being aware of how much game-playing goes on at such a high level, and understanding just how much the lives of ordinary citizens (yes, and children and youth) depend upon what's happening in that Chamber.  That, combined with the unbelievable nonsense going on in the primary races where candidates whose constituencies appear to represent such a thin slice of the electorate ... it's surreal!


Oh well, maybe tomorrow... .

Had one of those crazy flashbacks this morning -- of another Betty at another time ... .


It was while getting into my clothes for a day at home, and just as I was slipping a cotton turtleneck over my head (and the label caught in my hair for just a few seconds) the long-forgotten image rose in full color with all of the affect of the embarrassment I'd felt at the time.


I was attending a gathering at Mt. Diablo Unitarian-Universalist Church where I was an active (and usually smartly-dressed) member.  I was moving comfortably and confidently among friends when a smiling woman gently pressed my elbow with the words, "... Betty, that's such a pretty dress,  and I can only imagine how much more beautiful it would be with the label on the inside!"  Yes, you guessed it.  In my rush to get my children ready for Sunday school, I'd somehow turned it inside out, and hadn't noticed until it was brought to my attention.  That friend should have been rewarded for the gentlest most tactful handling of a delicate matter, but all she got was my awkward "Oops!" followed by red-faced giggling that echoes still as I think back to that morning so long ago.  A quick trip to the restroom took care of the problem, and after a few moments -- my dignity had been restored.


Were that to happen at this stage in life I'd have immediately made an appointment for a brain scan and lived for days in mortal fear that I was the one-in-eight living in the early stages of dementia (one-in-two after the age of ninety.)  In the past few days I've read reports of the projections as Alzheimers explodes in the aging population.  It seems to be only a matter of time ... .

Yet ... 


(Now where do you suppose I left my car keys?)

Photo:  Dorian at age eleven, and Mom about to leave  for church.

I may finally be coming to terms with having become a "public figure" ... .


The role is an awkward fit, and sometimes an inconvenience -- particularly when I find myself in the checkout line at the Safeway supermarket on the way home from work and in uniform.  The admiring glances stolen by young girls stiffens my spine a bit, and quickens my step through the aisles, but I'm not confused by the differences between respect for the flat hat and for the elderly woman under it.  The National Park Service has earned its honors as "America's best idea," (a la Ken Burns). It's when the local PBS Channel has aired the documentary, "This is Us," for the umpteenth time the night before, and men and woman from my generation feel their spines stiffen in reflected glory of one of their own still being in the game ... and getting away with it after all these years ...  then a different sort of effect pops up; equally complimentary.  But at the end of the day, "celebrity" wears thin, and hunger pangs begin to take their toll on the old psyche as I try to decide what shape my pasta will take this day, and which spaghetti sauce -- and a new-found weariness creeps into my smile and it comes less easily as I begin to feel watched ... .


You can imagine the feeling last Wednesday as I stood before an interracial audience hosted by the African American Leadership Network of Safeway Stores at their corporate headquarters in Pleasanton. I'd been invited to be the speaker for their observance of Dr. King's birthday.  As I was escorted to the Green Room in their grand auditorium, I learned that the day's presentation was being televised for the entire Safeway television (nationwide?) network, so that those who could not attend would have access to the hour-long program "On Demand" from the archives wherever they are and whenever they wished.  Wow!  What one earth did I have to say that should warrant such coverage?   Surely it's time to pay closer attention to preparing my remarks, and to stop depending upon the power of memory.  Did I not owe my hosts more than that?  But since my improvised talks have always been enough, could I not be risking whatever success I'm experiencing by simply sharing my truths as I  recall them -- and not becoming so self-conscious that something of value gets lost?


The experience was unsettling enough that -- as I was grandly escorted to the car laden with a huge bouquet of about two dozen long-stemmed yellow-red-tipped-petaled roses and two tickets to the new Tuskegee Airmen film, "Red Tails,"  I somehow failed to notice that their portable mike attached to my belt with the wire clipped to my lapel, was hidden under the armful of roses.  This was not discovered until I was back at my desk 40 miles away in Richmond and a colleague called attention to my strange "jewelry."  (It was returned in the morning.)


In February I will be guest speaker at IT&T Corporate Headquarters in San Ramon.  Maybe by then I'll have come to terms with this public person I've gradually become ... but I don't believe we have time enough for that to happen.  Maybe this is a case of "if it ain't broke don't fix it."  Maybe it's a mistake to try to become who they think I am.  That might be very difficult to accomplish at this late date.  I'd need another lifetime to figure out just who that is.

It was the fifth Annual Day of Service in my Richmond community -- in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday ... .


I'd been invited by Doria Robinson, the director of Urban Tilth, the lead nonprofit on the Richmond Greenway project, to "say a few words" at today's ceremony.  

 Arrived early to find things in the usual chaos so typical of volunteer organizations, but it was friendly chaos of the kind that delivers positive outcomes rising from well-intentioned strangers coming together in a common cause.  There were young people, children leading parents; elders lending advice when needed; members of the City Council led by the Mayor, the Vice Mayor; environmentalists sprinkled among members of uniformed National Park Rangers as well as Forestry Service folks.


I was struck by the fact that here was that future that Dr. King had sacrificed his life to bring about.  We -- in one of the nation's working class under-employed and over-foreclosed cities where barred windows and protective fences are the common denominator --   we are living right smack in the middle of it!


The Greenway runs for about 2 miles along a long-abandoned railroad bed now developed into broad walks and bike paths where the community made up of several school sites nestled among modest low-income homes and showing hints of seeds bursting into a premature spring and (finally) maturity in some of the perennials from earlier plantings.  The Greenway is blossoming with gardening projects of various kinds on land ceded by the city for the purpose.

There are flower gardens with ornamental plantings which need no excuse for being except the pure art of providing color and "spirit"; vegetable gardens that provide work for volunteers and free food for tables of anyone in need, and medicinal herbs introduced from older cultures.  Today, about 400 folks from every age, race, and ethnicity joined in the effort by planting 60 donated fruit trees in the Edible Forest; planted hundreds of native plants, and built wooden boxes for raised beds -- necessary where soil remains contaminated from WWII war-related industries.  And, I was invited to do the "first dig" in the soil for the planting of a mighty Legacy Oak Tree  (expected to stand for at least 250 years) that will stand among them.  What an honor!  As an example of Civic Engagement (code words from the Park Ranger's Manual), this was priceless.



Richmond and communities like it across the country -- cities with challenges rarely experienced in the suburbs -- are most often depicted as "communities of need."  Rarely are they viewed as living laboratories where diverse communities are in a constantly changing grand experiment -- testing the meaning and efficacy of "democracy" with newly-arrived immigrants adding the element of "hope" where it needs renewal for the disaffected, disenchanted, underprivileged and under-served who have found refuge here over many  generations of struggle.  You won't find members of the 1% here; the system is working just fine for them.  It is in these communities that this system is tested and challenged and often found wanting.  It is out of our discontent that change is born and generational adjustments are made.


Today I saw "Democracy" in all its glory actualize the King Dream of years ago.  We did what every generation must do -- what nation's around the world are rising up at the risk of their lives to achieve -- we are re-creating democracy in our time.  Every generation must do so.  Ours is not presented to us on stone tablets nor handed down by powerful family dynasties.  It is dynamic and must be critiqued and challenged constantly if we're to sustain the freedoms spelled out in our founding documents.  It's messy and chaotic. There will always be false prophets, flat-earthers, disbelievers, but we will prevail despite their lack of faith in our institutions.  You want neat?  Then try a dictatorship.

Dr. King's greatest gift to this nation may have been his insistence -- through personal acts of civil disobedience -- that this was/is the highest form of patriotism.  


Today's diggers and planters define who we are, not the crime stats we're constantly defined by.  Those Marines who so horrifically desecrated the dead by their unspeakable acts no more represent me than do their counterparts in an earlier time define our white citizens of today; those who came in family groups with picnic baskets to celebrate the brutal lynchings of blacks in the deep South.  Unfortunately, such unenlightened folks will always be with us.  But it is we, and not they who define Democracy.


We're seeing the "rockets red glare" of that re-creation in the Occupy Movement.  I truly believe that, and I'm beginning to worry that it is being derailed by those who don't recognize the signs nor understand the powers of our process of governance... .

Klondike Solitaire as organizer ... .


Over the years I've developed a foolproof system that keeps me relatively well-organized and productive in the work place.  Only problem is that -- from the outside -- it may appear very strange, indeed.


Here's the way it works:  When my mind goes on overload and the bells and whistles begin to sound -- as though a collision of ideas, concerns, and just plain worries is about to occur, I go up to the menu bar and click on "Solitaire," and as soon as the virtual cards begin to form a game, serenity returns. It serves just as well as a good sip of white wine clears the palate for the next course, or, it's as though in some way I've pressed the reset button on the computer of my mind and everything defaults to "factory setting," and I have a neatly erased brain to work with.  Works like a charm.  Doesn't take more than a single game, actually, rarely two (2-3 minutes at most).  A form of meditation?  But -- whatever it is -- my co-workers must think I'm really a flake wasting the government's time and accomplishing little.  I suppose the natural conclusion might be that I haven't enough to do; au contraire -- it's that life is closing in and this is my defense against the inevitable collision.


That happened the other day when our superintendent walked up to my cubicle with a question and there I was -- playing!  Embarrassing.


What he didn't know was that I'd been editing the text for a pull-up display panel for the new Visitors Center which required re-visiting what I could recall of the labor unrest in the WWII wartime industries which (I claim) incubated the modern Civil Rights Movement ("no more than 350 words at 3rd grade reading level, please").  It was as I was wrestling with this that a call came in from our attorney about Dorian's ongoing Trust procedures; then moments later another from a young student wanting an interview for a paper she was writing on the Rosie Memorial; and the smashup was about to threaten my well-planned but slowly disintegrating morning.


Went up to Menu and selected Favorites where Klondike is stashed for just such an emergency, and had just begun to clear the palate, hit the reset button, and go back to factory settings when he popped up unexpectedly.


I wonder how others handle such times?  Maybe that's what water coolers were for, right?  At least that's what I suspect happened at some earlier time.  Maybe Klondike is what we graduate to as the years pile on -- and the water cooler has disappeared in favor of the small bottle of spring water forever on call beside my handy-dandy but obsolete hopelessly dried-out little bottle of White Out.  Maybe Solitaire is a form of "shelter in place" ... .


I suppose these are the differences the passage of time brings... and I doubt that it's unique to this late-blooming park ranger.


Maybe one day I'll suggest that Solitaire be included under best practices in the Interpretation Manual for all park rangers.


Maybe not ... .

Too weird!

In sharing personal history with visitors to the park these days ...  

... I'm finding myself increasingly moving away from what I once perceived as "black" history, toward an insistence that our story be seen as an important American narrative. The change in my thinking began upon realizing the critical role played by black southerners whom tradition had forced to step into the Mississippi gutter when meeting a white person on the sidewalk.  Those folks played a major role in shaping the times and the future.  And, that as the result of an aggressive recruitment of workers into the war industries -- particularly in the Kaiser shipyards -- where they  found themselves literally catapulted to the "front of the bus" 10-12 years  before Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott (1954-1955), and incidentally, becoming the catalyst for irresistible and enduring social change. 

This unfamiliar spasm of at least limited respect and civility surely bred a new burst of hope in this new place, and may have started the surge toward full equality which radiated outward into the nation to become the modern Civil Rights Movement. The more research I do; the more refreshed my memory; the more certain am I that -- from their humble efforts in an era of relatively powerless Jim Crow institutions -- it was that heroic generation of blacks who altered the course of history, and forced a redefinition of Democracy for all Americans.

I guess this is on my mind because I'm speaking before audiences of major corporations (Safeway Stores, IT&T Employees, major labor unions, etc.) in the coming months, and that it's in January (the MLK remembrances), February (Black History Month), and March (Women's History Month) that I'm invited to share history that is largely dependent upon opinion; mine. That's a huge responsibility since I don't pretend to be an historian.   I'm sharing what is purely subjective -- yet it is I who has been given the microphone ... and the audiences.   It is sobering. It is humbling, and it is awesomely important that I measure up to the task; yet it is difficult to feel worthy of the privilege. 

I find myself wondering if this isn't partly a woman's natural reluctance to accept the mantle of leadership, even at those times when it is obvious that it is we who are leading?

More about this in weeks to come ... . 

Photo:  banner for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

How in the world .... ?


did this poster get from the wall of our office onto the Internet?  It turned up in my Google Alerts this morning when I clicked on it to find myself standing before this Ron Black poster designed for the Shotgun Players' production of the Marcus Gardley play, "This World in a Woman's Hands."  This show was staged to critical acclaim a couple of years ago in Berkeley. 


That control of one's image has long ago been lost is a given; but the number of times I've begun to confront myself without warning can be pretty disturbing, depending upon how that image is used.


Don't misunderstand; I love Ron's work, and am delighted to be associated with its message, but the use made of it by the group whose name I hesitate to repeat suggests a more strident attitude than I'm feeling at the moment.  Maybe I've simply been mellowed by the holidays and, just maybe, I'm experiencing a shift in thinking ...  .


Perhaps it's just a question of aging while having outlived my rage without losing my passion.


Need to give this some thought -- when the scent of pine needles and peppermint candy canes dies down though.  I seem to have been overcome by "Peace on Earth Good Will Toward Men", at least for the moment.

It's still there, only it's been bought by Neiman Marcus who wisely kept the magnificent towering tree ...


When I was a teenager, dating, Christmas season was not officially in until the trip to see if the great Christmas tree was in place at the City of Paris on Union Square.  It was a real tree, of course, and not the perfect artificial one we're standing under here.  (Though I wonder if artificial can ever really be perfect?)  I suppose the scent of pine is piped in ... .  It's been decades since that trip by ferry across the Bay --  (pre-Bay bridge) -- dressed to match the occasion (which meant hat and gloves, of course) officially ushered in the season with a spray of English holly in one's lapel -- and for the more daring -- a sprig of mistletoe in one's hair.


This year Peter, Tom, Pam, and I completed the pilgrimage 'roun' the Square to the sounds of Christmas bells and cable cars clanging their way up Powell street toward Grace Cathedral where memories of my late husband, Bill; dear friends, Bishop J. Kilmer "Kim" Myer, elegant silver-haired Deacon John Weaver and his Jean, popped up unceremoniously as the ghosts of Christmas past ... .  The taxi we hailed climbed to the top of California Street to return us to our car parked at the bottom when the circling-the-Square was ending; an almost forgotten decade that has pretty much dropped out of conscious memory until now.


The meaningful past tends to leap back to Mel and the kids; Tinker Toys, Tonka trucks, Lionel trains, innocent cap pistols (some things have changed; ominously), new cowboy hats; and those midlife Christmases tend to get lost.  Maybe it's because it's my children who have prevailed and continue to define life for me.  Christmas needs children, doesn't it, even when your baby is eligible for AARP?


This, after a bountiful crab dinner at Tadich at the foot of California Street near Battery ... and yet another set of decades to account for; new friendships, persisting hopes and dreams, and so very much to be grateful for.   Can Christmas be any more beautiful in New York or Paris?  If so, don't tell me.  I treasure these snow-less street scenes of the Bay Area beyond all reason. 

Merry Christmas All!
Photos by Pam's cell phone camera

I'm (more or less) firmly back under my hat, but just barely -- at times ...


Had no idea what it would mean to have to deal with the less disciplined part of myself (the artist), but maybe it was for just this reason that she remained buried for so long.  I'm daydreaming and fantasizing, and "what-iffing" for long periods of time, except for those times when my work -- which is so compelling -- intervenes.  That's when all of my "Bettys" come to full attention, and my mission takes precedence.


... as on a recent day when members of the ROHO (Regional Oral History Office) of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley brought a small delegation from the United Arab Emirates to visit the park and a bus tour with me as interpreter.  Aisha Bilkhair, Ph.D., Director of Research & Knowledge Services, headed the group.  When I learned that it is Dr. Bilkhair's responsibility to re-create and document the history of her young country through the capturing of oral histories of those still living, I felt the current of new excitement.  I learned that she and her assistants travel to Berkeley to work with the ROHO staff, and that this was one of those purposeful trips.


I recognized this as precisely the task before us in recapturing the history of the Home Front years 1941-1945 of WWII, a period only now being documented and recorded through the work we're engaged in, in collaboration with the Bancroft Library and its staff of researchers and historians.

I felt a surge of pride and a deep sense of the privilege we're being given by the National Park Service, and a new appreciation for the responsibility this demands to be accurate and honest and to imbue the work with authenticity -- a fading resource available to us mainly through the still-living veterans of the great home front mobilization of WWII.


... the fact that this Muslim woman from the Middle East has been given this important mission to accomplish at a time when the impression in the West is that women would not be chosen for such an important work was a revelation to me.  That a woman of color at such an advanced age in the West -- would be working for a federal agency in a position such as mine was undoubtedly as surprising to her.


We do live in a time of collapsing stereotypes, do we not?


Meanwhile, I'm working hard to climb back into my box, but each day I discover ribbons, sparkles, and confetti spilling out as I find myself humming under my breath ... re-imaging that road not taken ... but maybe this, too, shall pass ... .  (a gig at some upscale oasis in Dubai might not be too shabby, right?)

Note:  Aisha Bilkhair Khalifa, Ph.D., a Fulbright Post-Doctorate Fellow at Harvard University (2005–2006) holds degrees in Filmmaking, Electronic Engineering, and Ethnic Studies and a doctorate in Arab Gulf studies. Her main research interest is the African diaspora in the Gulf region. Specific areas include spirit possession, women, youth, and the transformation of identity. Recent publications include “Spirit possession and its practices in the United Arab Emirates” and “Secrecy and the circulation of knowledge among Gulf African Musical Groups”. 

Oh what I wouldn't have given for a leisurely evening probing the mind of this amazing scholar from faraway exotic lands!  My work allows me to touch lives with oh so many fascinating scholars from an increasing number of other cultures.  My options at this stage in life seem limitless.

Dorrie's Art with Mardi Gras beads

Another necessary step taken in the "taking leave" process of aging ...


Yesterday Dorian and I drove out to a nearby town so that she could meet -- for the first time -- members of the Trust team who will be responsible for her life after my death.  It went beautifully!


I'd carefully avoided building too much anxiety before the fact by too much preparation.  She has been aware that a Trust has been created, but its purpose was never defined so that her expectations wouldn't involve her having to lose her mother in order for her team to take over responsibility for the decision-making.  The goal, for me, was to try (before I become infirm and therefore unavailable to her) to have the luxury of setting my successors in place in order to have a chance to witness her life as it will be lived when I'm no longer here.  Given any luck, some of the dependence will have been transferred to others before that happens, and therefore lend less disruption to her life.


I've never wanted to have my sons responsible for her since the added weight upon their lives might one day be experienced as a burden.  I want them to go on loving and caring about her into the foreseeable future, and that might be jeopardized were she perceived in that light.  They have their lives and families, and I've carefully protected their love for her by assuming all of the responsibility myself.  It was an investment in all of our futures.  We've arrived at this point with an unbroken bond that may be sustainable with professionals bearing the responsibility for decision-making on her behalf.  Her brother's will ultimately take my place as guardian ad litem when signators are needed, or in acting for her legally, but the team created as her Trust are staff members in the law firm of highly-reputed Attorney Stephen Dale whose practice is designed for the sole purpose of serving the physically and mentally handicapped.  They will assume the major guiding role in her future.

Dorian's team consists of an investment counselor, an attorney, and a day-to-day adviser.  She remains a client of the Regional Center of the East Bay, one of a chain of agencies created and supported by the State of California under the Lanterman Act.  The RCEB will continue to provide case management, fund her NIAD education, and auxiliary services as needed.   


Yesterday, Dorrie met with her team, and as her session ended she came out to the parking lot where I sat waiting in the car with some quiet fears -- to announce that her team understood the importance of Special Olympics -- a real concern for her.  She was glowing!  She explained who her "new friends" were, and came away with a fairly good idea of what a Trust is, and of its role in her future.  Allowing her to experience this session alone, made them her team and not her mother's.  That is precisely as it should be.  My first baby steps out of the foreground and into the background of her life has been successfully accomplished.


My feelings as we drove home through the lovely and newly greening Alhambra Valley were of contentment.  Another step has been taken to insure her safety and security -- even as Governor Jerry Brown was announcing on the car radio that substantial budget cuts were unavoidable and would kick in as mandated by conditions set forth last summer in order to gain enough votes for passage. These would be in education, elder services, and for the developmental disabled ... .


... and maybe now I'll have time for those tango lessons and riding my new bike .... .

About that press conference aboard the USS Iowa on Wednesday ... .


There is something sad -- and maybe a little comic -- in an old battleship that has been resurrected from the Mothball Fleet to live again as a tourist attraction.  Those 18 inch guns that once blazed menacingly at whatever served as the defined enemy at any time have been silenced, I believe, for all time.


The men aboard on Wednesday were obviously reverent and awed in her presence.  I guess it was the gender gap that caused me to have to hide my amusement when standing 'neath those big guns -- reminding my irreverent soul of the phallic symbols they so ably represent, symbols of male dominance over the seas?  Such thoughts could not be repressed, try as I might.


Wonder how those who sailed her into battle in an earlier time would feel about today's drone jockeys -- contained safely in a capsule of some kind -- somewhere in Colorado while bombing faraway places -- over an ocean away -- with little regard for lives lost.


Where do we find the heroism in that?


Nonetheless, it was impossible to not feel the drama beneath our feet on those decks so soon to re-enter history, this time as a naval museum, a reminder of days past when heroism was differently-defined.


Photo:  Ellen Gailing

... and just what other human being do you know who received a bike for her 90th birthday?

Yes, as a complete surprise and at the top-of-the-evening, I was invited into the room with, "we have something for you," and there it was sitting in all its orange and yellow splendor in a side room at Nexus -- my bicycle!


My friends and park colleagues (plus Rosie, my southern California granddaughter who couldn't attend) picked up a collection and made the purchase weeks ago.  It had apparently been hidden away in an attached storage building outside our administration building waiting to be sprung at the concert.


It was almost too much -- and all I wanted to do in that moment -- was to crumple up in a heap and weep for pure joy!


... an unforgettable evening that still resonates daily just before sleep each night and probably will for all of the nights yet unborn ... .

Diva Days ... now truly in the past, ... maybe ...

... except that on the morning after my dream concert, the owners of Nexus  -- the beautiful Buddha-filled site where the performance was held -- invited me to sing the National Anthem at a press conference aboard the USS Iowa, the battleship moored in the Port of Richmond undergoing repairs before sailing south for a new life as a naval museum.  The event was held in commemoration of Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day; December 7th.  We old battleships are seeing a resurrection of sorts, right?

Alas, it was an honor just a tad too far and I regretfully declined.  Not looking to extend my now reinstated temporary career as an over-ripe chantoosie, and, not seeing any possible way to sing myself through the National Anthem without tripping and falling on my face, I said no to this great honor.   Singing before an audience of lifelong friends in celebration of my birthday while raising much-needed funds for a program that has meant so much to me and to Dorian was a very special thing -- to be treasured for all time.  Adding another facet to my now more-public-persona than I'd ever dreamed of or wished for, I felt in danger of over-reaching and that would be tragic.

I did attend the press conference as a part of the National Park Service delegation, however, and explained to our hosts when asked, that I might have said yes had he invited me to sing "America the Beautiful."  And, you know that might not have been so easy to refuse.  I've always so loved those lyrics ... .

especially those brilliantly instructive lines in the second verse:

"... confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law."

Magical!

Then and Now ...

More photos ... .

In the weeks leading up to that incomparable evening there was the opportunity to work with Tru Peterson, a brilliant jazz guitarist who is a graduate of Boston's Berklee School of Music; a colleague of Wynton Marsalis; who toured for a time with the folk legend, Joan Baez, and later with jazz singer Cassandra Wilson; and is currently teaching and performing in the Greater Bay Area.

We had four evenings of working together at my home in preparation for my appearance before a live audience -- 4 evenings of feeling the years drop away -- and for the first time in about 50 years I was going to sing before an audience!  I had no idea what would happen, but the experience became increasingly important to me as the time of the concert neared.  Now is a time for integration, and bringing more of my "selves" together in what is surely my final decade has almost become an obsession.

I'm not at all certain that -- had it not been for the support and encouragement of my son, Bob, I'd ever have followed through.  He was insistent and loving and probably should be recognized as having been the motivating factor in this great adventure.  Bob, along with his music partner, Margaret Miles, appeared together with me on stage for the first time.  I think I've always seen Bob as living out those inherited music genes that I'd so long ago disowned.  He is a natural performer who has lived his music with passion throughout his life.

A "Mom sandwich!"was created as 
sons, Bob and David, spontaneously
bounded onto the little stage!

In the beginning I felt tentative and for brief moments wished I'd not committed to exposing myself to ridicule (one friend aptly called it the "cringe" factor).  My voice seemed to have shrunken to a whisper, and I was rushing the phrasing and could see that Tru was having difficulty reading the level of my musicianship.  I don't think that either of us doubted for a minute, though, that it was still there, though suffering from sheer panic, surely. 

That evening I was surrounded and embraced by friends, some from a time when I was ever so young -- composing and singing -- and many who had no idea that this was ever a part of my life, but who only knew me as a community activist, political ally, wife and mother, and -- more recently -- park ranger; certainly not as poet or singer.  How would the revelation of the long concealed artist in me affect the rest of my life?  I'm guessing that I am the only one concerned with the question.  It probably held little importance to anyone else, and I'd wake the day after to find little has changed.  And, you know what?  That's precisely what has happened.


The goal of raising enough funds to make a significant donation to NIAD was more than met, thanks to the support of so many friends and family (and a few strangers) who filled the room to overflowing!

Life is spectacular, thank you!

Photo by Ellen Gailing

Tru Peterson, an extraordinary guitarist, and moi 
performing before a sold out house!

It's been a long long time, has it not ... ?

So much life in so few months -- crowding out blogging in favor of just enjoying the living of a remarkable life.

How will we ever catch up?

Maybe a few photos of the now-in-the-past  

"Road Not Taken"

concert?  What an evening!  Wish you'd all been there ... .

I have so few unrealized dreams remaining; I seem to have lived them all.

... but today I am due at the Boilerhouse Restaurant at Ford Point to provide interpretation for a park tour for 80 visiting trade unionists from around the country -- in just 45 minutes --

.. more later.


Photos by Ellen Gailing

Now here's a tribute I can relate to.  It's all a question of scale!

A ranger colleague was browsing Craig's List for bike listings and ran across this one and forwarded it to me.  It made my day -- actually several days!

It comes unsolicited from someone I'll never meet, probably.  I cannot imagine such a serendipitously more delightful tribute from one with nothing to gain.  My name on a bike riding around San Francisco carrying some unsuspecting admirer and fellow-activist, presumably.

I wrote the person who placed the ad to thank him/her for not painting over my name -- wishing I could afford to buy it to set in the middle of my living room with a lace doily draped over the handlebars, just because!

54cm Road Bike - $275 (marina / cow hollow)

---

Date: 2011-10-04, 10:18PM PDT
Reply to: sale-vgfsr-2633304535@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

---

This awesome bike is on sale because I need the money for rent and it's a little big for me anyway. It's a 54cm vintage american eagle road bike with a rock solid lugged steel frame. No dents or dings but a few chips in the amazing orange color.

The best part of this bike is the artistically crafted lugs, there is even a heart designed in the top tube. The bike is clean, new tires and grip tape. The last owners painted the name Betty Reid onto the side of the bike, named after a powerful civil rights activist of the 60's. Check her out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Reid-Soskin.

Hard to let her go but let me know if you're interested!

• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 2633304535

Watching and listening to how others memorialized September 11th  against the background of our local experience reinforced the rightness of our observance here at home ... .

Found myself silencing my radio early this morning -- feeling mercilessly exploited by media insistent upon drawing a cynical bow across every emotional string in my patriotic soul!

To have participated in Tuesday's ceremony in which a master sculptor introduced his decade-long love-based response to the World Trade Center's horrific tragedy drew upon the positive responses within each of us, and transformed the rage and fear into an instrument that would evoke our very best selves in answer to those who wished to destroy us.

But there have been moments throughout the day when I was reminded that proximity is surely a factor.  We on the West Coast didn't witness the carnage.  Surely our emotions would have been deepened had the TransAmerica Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge been struck with an equal loss of life.  Surely our fear and anger would have been heightened, and recovery less easily achieved.

Yet  --I've found myself wondering whether there isn't an overt attempt at freshening the case for continuing to generate a rationale for a profitable and never-ending state of war ... .

... but it's difficult to believe that there would be enough cynicism among us to support such a state of being -- or is it?

Telescoping time ...

Attended the history-making unveiling of the Mario Chiodo sculptures in Henry J. Kaiser Park in downtown Oakland on Tuesday.  This was the first installation of what is a monumental work of art entitled, "Remember them; Champions for humanity."  When completed it will consist of 25 figures of those who have set the patterns for the best that we are as a nation and a world.

Among the honorees were in most cases descendants of those honored, added to by those still living.  Please go to Mario's website for the complete story and photos of the event.  The sculptures were inspired by the tragedy of September 11th and took ten years to complete.  The centerpiece stands 40 feet tall and will be installed during the first part of 2012.  I can hardly wait, having had a chance to visit his studio where the work is proceeding on schedule.

But -- can you believe these photos (taken with Shirley Butt's cell phone).  They were taken at the studio party after the unveiling ceremony.  The lovely young blond woman shown on the right is Juliana Roosevelt, granddaughter of President Franklin Delano and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (Juliana's grandfather is one of the figures).  Above is Ruby Bridges -- shown in the monument as the 6 year-old courageous little girl who integrated New Orleans schools during the early days of struggle to integrate our public schools -- and under the protection of the National Guard, remember?  This drawing is from the Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover that inspired us all.  Here she is all grown up; an attractive, passionate, and articulate young woman who was in town not only to receive her honors at the unveiling, but to be present for the dedication of a bronze statue of herself that Mario created for the Alameda school that has been named Ruby Bridges Elementary in her honor!

... and here I am spanning the generations with these three iconic young American women.

... and that's not all.  The great American hero of Japanese descent, Fred Korematsu, who valiantly fought against the unjust internment of his people during WWII for which he received the Medal of Honor from President Clinton, and who is also one of the 25 figures -- has a beautiful social activist daughter, Karen Korematsu (seen here in red).  I felt surrounded by reflected greatness, and found myself wondering just how one shares such experiences so that they radiate out into the ether and enter into whatever it is that sustains us all?

So many generations since the time of their family ancestors (and me), but Chiodo managed with his magnificent sculptures to capture the essence of what it means to be human -- that potential for greatness which resides in each of us, and that -- for the most part -- lies dormant; untapped.  In an odd way, those giant figures -- though dwarfing those of us who stood in awe before them -- were extraordinary ordinary people -- their humanity made manifest not only in these great bronze images, but in the aura of their descendants as well, if only because we endowed them with inherited greatness.  In our quiet conversation, Juliana spoke with humility of how many years it took to ease her way into her iconic surname -- and that she has only recently felt -- not only the honor of being a Roosevelt -- but the heavy responsibility the name imposes.

Wish I were a poet at times like this.  But there is out there somewhere, a word artist or musician who will one day sit in the shadow of those stunning figures and give voice or notes and lyrics to what is beyond my ability to express; will marry their artistry to that of Mario Chiodo and the result will be magnificent beyond measure!  I'm certain of it.

And, most meaningfully, what is not extraordinary in Oakland and the Greater Bay Area is the fact that we were all together as equals in a social situation, something their illustrious ancestors could hardly have dreamed of.  During the time of Bridges, Roosevelt, Korematsu (only 70 years ago - less than my lifetime), I cannot imagine under what circumstances this would have been possible.   Regrettably, this probably can't be said for some parts of the country or the world still, but here -- in this place -- though unspoken, differences are no longer merely tolerated, but celebrated.

This brilliant sculptor, Mario Chiodo, has marked the place indelibly where this, above all else, is the living truth.