Thoughts while watching media coverage of candidates aspiring to lead us ... .

... and noticing a simple thing that has failed to catch my attention until now, but could be of vital importance. 

Listening to the stump speeches of some of the most bellicose -- now being honed into whatever goes as politically expedient and poll-worthy.

Found myself wondering just how inclusive is their use of the word,"we."  Tiny word, but one with hidden powers beneath its simplicity.

Do you suppose, when that little word is a part of a sentence about our need to protect the people of our country from the scourge of brutal terrorism -- that the man who operates the Taco Truck that delivers lunch to factories and office complexes; the black handyman who cleans the gutters and stops the leaks and his wife who runs the beauty shop; the cleaning woman who can only come to work on Tuesdays because her other jobs take up all the other days; the newly-arrived middle-eastern family who haven't yet mastered enough of our language to stray more than a few blocks from home; their young daughter whose head scarf may still set her apart from her peers and is beginning to weigh heavily;  and those young people living in fear of deportation because -- though they were born and brought up in this country, cannot gain citizenship because their parents are undocumented?  Are all included in the WE?

If those who aspire to lead us were forced to study and explain their "we," and if they, themselves, understood the depth of meaning in its use -- do you suppose they could continue to defend current regression into a kind of isolationism that is indefensible within the context of our founding documents?  That they could -- in good conscience -- be shouting over the voices of the reasonable about closing the borders against those seeking asylum from the unspeakable brutality taking over their homelands?

American lives of every racial group, economic status, culture, and religious affiliation, have been sacrificed to gain and defend our freedoms in decades of endless wars.  All that cannot be waived so that only those who make up the top 1%, or whose skin tones fall in the white/ivory/peach part of the spectrum, would fall under Homeland Security protection.  "WE, the people" come in all flavors, but there's something that sounds hollow about that word as it slips out onto the air waves from the lips of some who would hope to lead us into an increasingly dangerous and separatist future.

... and why does the phrase American exceptionalism make...  my... skin... crawl?

Whiplash!  Out of total despair -- into sublime joy!

Yesterday, upon arrival at the Visitor Center for my first program of the day, the familiar big yellow school bus arrived from Vacaville, California.  Pouring out of it were 55 high school students with perhaps 5 instructors.  It had been explained that these kids were advanced placement students and had studied this era so were prepped for my talk.  Still  I was more than a bit apprehensive.  The inescapable feeling of late, that someone far younger than I should be interacting with teens -- that the distance between their ages and mine was simply too great for me to hold their interest.  I felt so inadequate.  These could be my grand- and great-grandchildren! Why did anyone believe that this was appropriate?  One of the younger ranger surely should be interpreting this history for them.

But this had been scheduled for me, and there was nothing to do but comply.  Later in the day, at my 2 o'clock presentation, I would have the grownups, and my confidence would return as before.

To add to the confusion, two members of the team who will be filming my talk had arrived and were standing at the back of the theater trying to scope out the existing lighting and to learn how to supplement ...

The kids got seated and I introduced the 15-minute orientation film without incident.  When the lights dimmed and I did the usual -- moved my wooden stool to a place against the wall just beyond the entrance and the black velvet curtain intended to dampen the sounds from the hallway.  It was then that the curtain was drawn back slightly and Wes, one of the docents, tapped me on the shoulder and whispered that there was an urgent telephone call from Tom, our superintendent, - and I must immediately go into Elizabeth's office to answer.

Mind you, I'm still wearing a lapel mike attached to my necktie and it was live!

I made my way across the short hallway; picked up the phone, and at the other end of the line was Director Jon Jarvis of the National Park Service calling from Washington to announce an invitation for me to attend the tree lighting ceremony at the White House with the First Family on December 3rd!  Not only that, but that I was being asked to introduce the president of the United States of America!  I was stunned.  I'm not sure where my feet were, but somehow they fell into place beneath me and took me back into the theater where the film was still in progress.  (Fortunately, Michael, who was serving as my techie had rushed into the office to cut off the mike just before the call came, but not before my voice had boomed out into the audience while en route!)  

Photo by Carl Bidleman

Climbed back onto my stool as "Home Front Heroes" drew to a close.  Looked out at those lovely young faces and said, "You won't believe what just happened.  There was a call from Washington, D.C., and ...", in a few sentences blurted out the incredible story.  "You're the first to know, and you'll just have to keep our secret until it hits the news cycle."   I didn't know at the time whether the news should be shared.  I simply could not have continued my talk with those words crowding out everything else.  They had to be voiced.  Surprisingly, after taking a few quieting breaths, I was able to pick up the next few sentences of my presentation, and allow the excitement to be quelled until the
work was done.  Time enough later to go out to the water's edge to stand quietly to let it all in.

As the kids took leave (after the usual round of picture-taking) I realized that those years between us made us miles apart, but that our humanity was the equalizer.  I don't think that I'll ever experience such fears again, at least not until the next time.  As a parting gift, each took the time to jot down on small slips of paper, their impressions and gratefulness for the experience.  This was surely planned in advance of their coming.  The notes were thoughtful and sincere -- they left me with more than 50 slips that I will treasure against the dark days.

It was then that the filmmakers (who'd followed me out to the water's edge) told me that they were planning to make the trip to Washington with me -- if the permissions were granted by Homeland Security, and for the first time -- I realized that I was probably the only person who didn't know that this was programmed to happen on this day ... .They'd filmed those moments of my explanation to the students in those words that I shall never be able recall ... but maybe it matters not.

... and maybe it was all for the best.  I could not possibly have endured the painful pleasure of anticipation.

   

Somewhere in the early days of this journal I'm certain that I wrote of "Betty's 500 ft. area of responsibility" ... .

In the light of the unbelievable savagery experienced in Paris this weekend, I could feel myself shrinking back into the desperate mindset of those days:

On the streets outside our little store in South Berkeley the drug trade had claimed territory and our building was right in the middle of it.  We were at ground zero.  Within a few weeks -- at different times -- I witnessed 4 young black men brutally shot down on the streets; it was a turf war. A police car in fast pursuit in the middle of the night crashed through our plate glass windows.  On a quiet Saturday afternoon with customers browsing the record bins, a bullet screamed through our window from a police action across the street -- and was embedded in the wall behind the counter.  A meeting held by the tenant on our second floor -- a meeting which included the police chief caused the suspicious drug dealers to affix barrel bombs to our 8' plate glass windows and blasted them out in the middle of the night leaving us vulnerable to looters.

Another dark day, due to the indescribable fetid odor of decaying flesh reeking from our dumpster, the garbage collectors found the remains of a fetus that had been festering for a number of days -- from some unknown troubled young soul, surely.

Over time I developed the ability to imagine that there were buttons just below my rib cage, and that I could press one of them as I got out of my car each morning -- to enable the ability to dumb down to a level of insensitivity that would allow me to exist over another work day on the street -- before climbing back into the driver's seat on an exhale upon closing.  Just another day of survival in my state of existence as 3/5ths of a human being (as an African American).  And I suppose, another 5th might be knocked off for my status as woman. 

At that time I had more money invested in irons bars on my doors and windows than in merchandise for resale.  It was then that -- when I attempted to buy insurance coverage the agent told me that if I could lift our building up and set it down 3 blocks in any directions, they would be happy to write a policy, but where it stood there was simply too much risk.  I could not count on help, either from the insurance company or the police department who were reluctant to clean up the area,  "... because when something happens in other parts of town, we know the most likely place to pick up the culprit!"  They were using our neighborhood as a catchment area for their own purposes. 

Though I've never shirked my political activist role, it was during those years that I stopped trying to change the world and made a commitment to limit my personal area of responsibility to changing just 500 feet!  It worked.  The world would have to take care of itself but everything that lay within my self-imposed boundaries had better shape up or ship out!  It only was then that life became manageable, and the awful panic subsided.  That familiar feeling of a chronic state of panic has returned since Paris ... .

Over past years I've allowed my self-determined sphere of influence to expand unrealistically; to gradually take in city, state, and at times national issues; rarely international.  Currently, my activism includes work with the National Park System, and in that work I've had some real successes.  That is, until Friday's horrific headlines from Paris.

Woke Saturday morning after a sleepless night of agonizing over the brutality -- the unbelievable savagery of ISIS in the unprovoked attack on innocent people in a bloody massacre that defies the imagination! My breathing is not as measured as before, and I have to keep reminding myself to stop the occasional dry sobs so that my palms will be less sweaty and my heartbeat can ease into a more reasonable rate.  I'm experiencing even greater fears as in those dark and frightening days when forced to reduce my world to a more manageable size.


I'm willing to be responsible for my 500 feet, again, if the rest of you will take up those on the East, West, North, and South of mine.  You'll need to recruit for the footage beyond those you designate as your own, though, if we're going to pull this off.  Maybe we can still make it work.  I have to remind myself that -- before turning the store over to my son, David, some years ago -- I had brash young drug dealers standing on street corners with clipboards in white shirts and ties - registering voters!

It's conceivable that ISIS will pose more complex problems, but I'm game if you are.

Meanwhile, I'm simply terrified.

It's this awful feeling of profound helplessness ... and the deep down gnawing suspicion that the known world has spiraled out of anyone's control.


... but this morning as I listened to our young capable President Barack Obama, I was able to lean on just a few moments of confidence in his leadership, before it evaporated into the somber sound bytes coming from NPR.  I can imagine no one in whom I have greater trust in these dark days of fear and uncertainty.

He obviously can't limit his world to 500 feet.  He has the awesome responsibility of the nation and all of the people of the world, who like me, are hungrily looking to him for guidance and assurance that life will go on even as it veers so tragically off course.  Dr. Carson?  Really?  Who else would you suggest?

Would that those who are manning those roadblocks that prevent him from fully governing would stand aside and allow his wisdom to prevail -- is there really anyone else in sight with the power and the purpose to lead us toward a more compassionate future?

Think about that, then take the 500 ft. that abuts mine (east, west, north, or south) and see that everyone who is an eligible voter is registered.

That's how we begin to re-create Democracy in our time.

... then, of course, filming did not begin as scheduled, and both the stilling of the rumor, and that momentary burst of adrenaline in anticipation had to be dismissed ...

... and what passes as normalcy has returned.

New information (received in an email this morning) is that on the upcoming Tuesday the team will arrive at the Visitor Center at 9:45 to scope out the existing lighting in our little theater in order to figure out what supplements will be needed for the cameras.  It is only after that's been done that the work schedule will be arrived at, and (of course) activities of the holiday season are fast approaching.

Since I'm planning to take a week off for the Thanksgiving holiday, later to be followed by two weeks for Christmas and the final week of the year -- it's getting pret-ty "iffy."

Find myself wondering whether this can happen before the first week in the new year?  Sounds very unlikely, but since this is a first experience -- I'm not sure what the preparation period demands, and was under the impression that it's in the editing stages that time is a factor.

So much more time for apprehension to build, and confidence to erode ... but there is also time for experiences with new audiences to absorb, and for that magical warmth to build ... .

I suppose it all balances out in the end.

Maybe it just means that the expected adrenaline rush is a stage that will dissipate over the prep period, and that it will all be uneventful.  But then maybe that nervousness provides the edge that sharpens the experience for us all.

So much to learn.

So little time remaining ... .

... and yesterday, November 12th, is the birthday of my late younger sister, Lottie, and this year I'm missing her dearly which provides it own edge.  She died only 3 years ago.  That sense of urgency returns with a vengeance when I remember just how fragile is life in this final decade.  I cannot imagine Lottie not being alive. She was so vibrant!  How impossible it is to try to visualize the state of non-existence... .

I'm told that this is the week when filming of my theater talks will begin ... .

... and I'm at home today growing edgy and uncertain that I can fulfill expectations ... .

... trying to recapture images of recent week's audiences and finding comfort in the fact that among the visitors were teachers and historians; 4 members of Rep. Nancy Pelosi's staff; 4 white-haired grandchildren of President Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt; someone who introduced herself as "Eve," who asked if I would be interested in meeting Van Jones (CNN), or in coming to Silicon Valley to speak to those audiences who are changing the world even as we speak? Or, how about a TED talk? All this must mean something of worth is happening here, right?

At the time that Eve came up the adrenaline rush was just subsiding, along with whatever it is that makes it possible for the inner Betty to emerge with the authenticity that validates my work, so outer Betty was really only half present.  I would need these memories, along with that of 15 exuberant students from San Francisco State University who'd been promised extra credit for sitting in on my talk; with the 15 sober young Coast Guardsmen and women who sat at rapt attention last week (they were still and stone-like throughout, and I found myself wishing that I could be present when they were back at their base discussing the experience ... .).   Their firm handshakes as they took leave certainly expressed how deeply they'd been moved.  My presentations have grown from 3/times weekly to -- last week -- 6!  That is not sustainable, though.  The emotional demands of 6 one-hour programs in one week is simply too exhausting, and burnout is predictable.

Fortunately, I will be taking two weeks off during the holiday season.    

It is in the re-examining of those experiences -- and others like them gathered over years -- that will provide the confidence that may or may not carry me through the next two weeks of filming.

I'm often aware in infrequent flashes that a number of visitors are taping my talks with their cellphones, but -- once the work begins -- that awareness moves to an unoccupied corner of my brain -- and I'm only aware of the eyes before me; nothing beyond.  I work with the theater lights turned up to their brightest in order to make that connection possible.  Maybe my response to the presence of cameras and lights will  be no more than a momentary distraction, and that connection with those eyes will be impossible to disrupt; or so we will hope.     

It's in those first few minutes after my last sentence is uttered; just after that long silence as folks are collecting themselves; just before the Q&A is about to start.  That's when I feel most vulnerable, but invariably it is also when I feel most rewarded by the intensity of those moments.  It's in those seconds when I'm placing the stool back behind the lectern and turning to face them as they move toward me to take leave with a handshake or a warm hug, and I feel the closeness of our encounter most directly -- the cellphones come out and photos to take home get taken ... .

I need to remember that -- as a primary source -- I carry the collective truth of my generation, for those who will succeed us.  In this last decade the record of life as we lived it should leave footprints for the next generation to grow into.  I'm privileged, through the great federal agency that provided the platform upon which I'm standing,  to be a link between then and now.

Maybe the power of Truth is being tested; and is there a greater purpose to be served in this final decade?

Tomorrow we will begin.

   

Insight from one who remembers ... .

In writing that last post I was reminded of another statement that has become an element in my talks... but that begs for delving more deeply:

There's a place where I'm describing my introduction to the planning team of our park back in 2003, and learning about the importance of the Albert Kahn-designed Ford Assembly Plant which had been built between the years of 1929-1931 on state-owned land.  It was built on air rights, a concept only recently adopted at that time.   It was an important piece of the Home Front story because it had been constructed to assemble Model A Fords but was converted to outfitting thousands of tanks and jeeps for the war in the Pacific theater during WWII.

In my talk I speak of that PowerPoint presentation being the first time I was able to see the scattered sites that define the park, and instantly recognize them as sites of racial segregation.  I state clearly that, "I was the only person in that room who could see that, because what gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering.  I was the only person who had any reason to know that.  There was no grand conspiracy to leave our history out, the real history was simply forgotten over time."

This morning as I slowly awakened -- just before opening my eyes to test the degree of still-darkness before sun-up -- it dawned on me that there must be many truths that only people of color are in a position to recall, and many more -- both black and newly-enlightened whites -- who care but are too young to have ever known.  There are important reasons why there are two Americas; if not more.

For instance, might there be less of a separation between black and white America if white America knew that when the Social Security System was created, two classes of workers were omitted; laborers and domestic servants?  It was the elimination of African Americans from that groundbreaking enabling system that brought stability to so many American lives and that created a permanent injustice that made the creation of wealth virtually impossible. We were locked out from the beginning by being forced to remain at the service worker level due to a lack of opportunity to rise above it. Discrimination in the work place would continue to be a barrier for decades, and in many places it still persists. 

The second was the GI Bill which guaranteed every returning veteran of WWII an education and a mortgage.  But the bill was administered locally instead of federally which enabled the local banker to control just who received mortgages and where.  The bill made possible the construction of the nationwide suburbs which were created for "whites only".  They were off-limits to non-whites through covenants written into the deeds of all new housing construction.

Nor could a returning black veteran use the Bill to enter college or graduate school unless said institutions were open to people of color.  At that time such institutions were few and far between and often involving traveling great distances from black population centers.   Have we forgotten that the illustrious Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall financed his law school education by working as a Pullman porter?

It was then that older properties within city limits were made available to blacks as white flight took effect.  The inner cores of the cities became home to non-whites as more and more such properties were abandoned by white owners who could now rent out those homes as absentee landlords to renters without the financial means nor the stability to purchase property; a known pathway toward the building of personal wealth.   Instead, the payment of those rents provided mortgage payments for absentee white landlords who were already receiving government subsidies through the G.I. bill.  Only those black veterans who bought homes in red-lined districts could benefit by the bill because bankers sat in smug approval.   The practice would insure that housing would remain racially segregated, as would the schools in such districts.; and we all know how well that worked out.

Over time, commercial interests and services followed them out of the cities into the more affluent suburbs until today there are few banks, fewer food markets,  other service agencies within lower-income neighborhoods.  There are far fewer job opportunities with the disappearance of local retail businesses.  Low-skilled low-paying jobs that had always served as the first steps on the economic ladder for the young have all but disappeared.  Remember when there were paper routes and gas-pumping to do?

Are those the kids we see on city street corners, kids who have had to create their own underground economy fueled by the drug trade in order to survive?  This has proven to be one of the few alternatives to a minimum wage job at MacDonalds or Burger King, with little if any hope upon which to build a future.

Today there are fewer overt forms of racial restrictions on properties, but they still exist, informally.  The messages are encoded and the suburbs where Mel and I raised our children are still only about l% non-white, though that's gradually changing in some areas due to the gradual upward mobility of non-whites, but it's still minimal.

For those well-meaning and more enlightened folks (and Bill Cosby) who find themselves wondering just why those black folks can't get their act together, these now-forgotten truths may provide some understanding.  The problems are structural.  The effects of those errors in judgment have been costly, and by now there are few leaders who have lived long enough to see how damaging they've been, not only to black Americans who have been tragically under-served, but to society as a whole.  Tell that to those who see black America as over-advantaged and seduced into laziness by an undeserved sense of entitlements!

I was reminded yesterday as I watched the CSPAN coverage of the president's town meeting with folks in West Virginia -- worrying through some answers to the national drug abuse problem ... and the fact that, only now that the scourge of deaths by heroin overdoses has penetrated into White America, can we begin to entertain the notion that it may not be a problem of criminality after all, but an issue that must be addressed as a public health crisis.

... and how many young black and brown males had to idle their lives away behind bars or die violently in the drug wars before this could become visible to the powerful? 

Is it because we've forgotten these critical truths, or, that we've never known that such problems would bleed into all of America unless dealt with where they were most clearly visible? 

Is this the ultimate effect of Daniel Moynihan's ill-conceived concept of Benign Neglect in practice?

Daniel who?

Google it.

Strange how the mind works ... .

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by one of our interns, a college-aged student just entering what she hopes will be a career with the National Park System.  Allison wanted to have the interview as her contribution to an online blog, and since we share office spaces with other rangers at the headquarters in Richmond's Civic Center, it was an easy request to grant.


On that day we met in our conference room for a conversation that she would record, and that would serve as the basis for her assignment.

The chat was wide-ranging, covering a lifetime of starts and stops on my way to finding myself at 94 an active 5-day-a-week park ranger which is, in itself, a pretty startling story for the uninitiated.

This morning Allison sent her draft for my approval and/or corrections prior to submission.

In reviewing it I was curious that the point she highlighted in her sensitive and well-written paper was one that was almost an aside among what I might have considered far more dramatic vignettes from a pretty colorful life.


When I read the few sentences about an encounter I'd had some years ago with an African American woman from the community as we stood in line at the supermarket, I suddenly found myself in tears!  The few sentences were in response to Allison's questioning about just why it was that I'd made a statement in one of the radio interviews about why it is that I value the wearing of my NPS uniform as so important.   

"I was on my way home from work and had stopped for a few items for that night's dinner.  As we stood quietly together in line waiting for the cashier to check out our purchases, she asked politely if I worked at the prison?  (San Quentin prison is just across the bridge from Richmond.)  I answered with some chagrin since it was clear that this woman's frame of reference at seeing a uniform rose from such an unexpected place.  I remember feeling slightly amused (smug?) at how much her question exposed of her limited experience.  I should have guessed that this would come back to haunt me someday." 

That was then.

Since that time we've all lived through Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, and a constant stream of police actions resulting in the deaths of many unarmed young black men; the upsurge of media accounts of a failed justice system; the out-of-control mass killings; and meeting and interacting with Wanda Johnson, mother of the late Oscar Grant of the tragic and fatal Fruitvale station incident.

The depth of my understanding of that small incident in that supermarket took on epic proportions.  Maybe Allison read more into it than I did at the time, much to her credit.

with Sculptor Mario Chiodo's Remember Them

Today I'm tearful because -- after trying to connect the small audiences that I'm able to reach through my work -- I can see clearly that my unknown friend in that checkout line has experienced generations of conditioning that has created for her a reality that is counter to that of the "other" America.  It's not dissimilar to how we see police in those two divided Americas.  For her and for those with whom she shares lives, the justice system has always been a threat to our very survival, while to the other America -- it and the National Rifle Association exist for their protection in an increasingly dangerous world.

The National Park Service uniform held no meaning for her; it was beyond her sphere of recognition.  The prison system was something with which she has had lifelong experience, probably through no fault of her own -- but accepted as inevitable in life as an entire people have known it to be; how tragic!

The tragedy is that we've allowed ourselves to be segmented by such differing realities that we're no longer living in the same America, and neither America appears to be aware of it.  Our words have different meanings, and our lives are so differently defined by very real fractures in the foundations of an evolving society.

The wearing of my uniform is so much more than -- as I expressed it in that interview -- "upon being seen on the streets, in an elevator or escalator, I'm announcing a career path to children of color".

Tears may be a start, but in a very real way, it may mean that I'm being forced to look far deeper into the meaning of my work for ways to begin to knit together what is needed to bridge the divide.  That means putting my tiny pieces together with those of others toward creating a pathway leading us out of the wilderness of separation.

Could it be possible that -- of all the governmental agencies -- the National Park Service is best positioned to help us through to that "more compassionate future" that I so glibly have claimed over past months?

Or am I still not looking deeply enough?

It suddenly dawned -- shortly after I'd posted a complaint on Facebook about television programming... .

... that today's programming pales beside the real life adventures in my everyday world!

Sure would have been nice if the World had seen fit to deliver some of the magic when I was in better shape to receive it.  Why on earth would I meet a governor for the first time after I've stopped needing a resumé?

Sure would have been lovely had I known that the world would come calling at some point, or that it would place a microphone in my hand and put me on a soapbox and really listen to me now that the major portion of my allotted days on the planet are behind me ... .

This week a colleague pointed out that a photo of 20 year-old Betty was included in the National Parks uniform catalog on the pages devoted to hats.

What is surreal about it is that I'm finding my 94 year-old self competing with my far younger self for public attention!  

Governor Jerry Brown and moi

Who would have ever guessed the likelihood of such a happening ... .

The Rosie Trust informed us that Governor Jerry Brown -- with about two days notice -- would be signing the Fair Pay Act on our park site on Tuesday.  The setting was the magnificent cathedral-like Craneway of the historic Ford Assembly Plant.  What a scramble!  This meant that the governor and his staff would be touring our Visitor Education Center for the first time, and that the women of the California State Legislature -- both Assembly and Senate -- would be descending upon us for the ceremonial signing of the strongest equal pay statute in the nation.

It was a glorious day in every way.  Weather could hardly have been more pleasant -- and if we don't get some unpleasant weather soon to end the drought -- the State will be in serious trouble.

It was a day of reunions with those with whom I shared a political life as a field representative over past years prior to my joining the National Park Service; former Assemblywoman Dion Aroner who was my employer at the time that the legislation forming the park was introduced by now-retired Rep. George Miller and enacted with the support of our Senators Boxer and Feinstein.  And, of course, in the audience was another dear friend and our current City of Richmond mayor, Tom Butt.

with Mayor Tom But and Dion Aroner

The bill was authored by Senator Hannah Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara and was a great victory for feminists everywhere.   Her bill is the strongest bill of any put forth in the nation, and will be hailed as a huge step toward full equality for women as other states move to adopt similar measures.  How appropriate it was that the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical park would be chosen as the place where this bill should be signed!

What a time to be alive and a part of the women's movement!  I was a late-comer to the cause of feminism, but maybe that's not as important as the fact that -- over time -- I've been able to rise above my race to the gender issues that I share with the rest of those who help to hold up our half of the sky.

... and what a great way to enter the beginning of my 94th year. 

And Betty's ... .

About the time that my distant cousin, Paul, was searching out his family history on Ancestry. com I was engaged in the same process on the West Coast where I'd grown up in an extended family of Creoles of Color, re-settlers from the early days in the Tremé of old New Orleans.  My own family had been uprooted by the great floods of 1927.  Unlike Paul, who had access to records left by his grandfather, Joseph Numa Charbonnet, my search had abruptly ended upon reaching the bewildering and forbidding slave curtain somewhere in the mid-1800s.

Though there were surely ancestors before those years, I'd hit a psychological roadblock caused by self-imposed prohibitions -- something nearly every African American has experienced in attempting to trace their beginnings.  The thought of trying to connect my family with their white ancestors simply didn't occur to me.  My history ended with my great-grandfather, Dorson, for whom my father had been named.  It was as if his had been a virgin birth.  I didn't even allow myself to wonder past his birth or who his parents might have been.  It seems curious now in retrospect, that I wouldn't have been curious to delve into his mysterious beginnings.  The word illegitimacy would hardly have come up except in those early conversations spoken only in that patois of French the grownups resorted to when necessary to protect family pride.  So one just didn't go there, even as I grew to adulthood.

Eduoard's signature and Celestine's "X"

It was at this point that I closed the books and returned to exploring my maternal line which offered little more.   The earliest record unearthed from the Diocese of Baton Rouge was the marriage certificate of my enslaved great-great grandmother, Celestine "of no last name"; the paper  that radically changed the nature of her relationship to her owner, Eduoard Breaux, in 1863 (a story for another day).  Both my maternal and paternal lines ended somewhere just after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.  Notice that their marriage papers were written in French, an official language both of the State of Louisiana, and the Catholic Diocese at that time.

I was satisfied that both ancestors of color would have to serve as the beginnings of my story, that is, until I received a message from this stranger, cousin Paul, reaching out with warmth and acceptance from the white side of our family.  He was seeking to identify a list which held the names of my father's siblings.  This would become the onset of the possible coming together of the great American Charbonnet family narrative that would unite black and white relatives after centuries of separation.  Our story is America's story -- a story lived by most of us as the result of a still unprocessed history indelibly marked by slavery and the cruel national tragedy of the Civil War.

Our standing together at the burial place of our ancestor-in-common, (white) Amable, closed the circle with us both inside.  That moment still stands as one of monumental importance in a lifetime of incompleteness, a feeling that I didn't recognize until it was gone.  I'm still adjusting to the exalted feeling of being whole that was born that incredible day as we stood together beside Amable's beautiful marble tomb in St. Louis cemetery.

Paul's story:

This is Betty Charbonnet Reid Soskin, my 4th cousin 3x removed. We met over the internet as I reached out to distant cousins to begin building my Ancestry Family tree.  Betty is enchanting.  We both grew up in New Orleans but we have been separated by an age difference of 26 years, 3,000 miles, and racial boundaries.

Yet, Betty and I were sealed by our common stories of Out of France and St. Dominique.

We descend from my 7th great grandfather who lived in Southern France. His two sons left for  Louisiana about 1760.  Antoine became a successful sugar cane planter in Louisiana, but Jean raised his family in the French Caribbean island of St. Domingue, now Haiti.  The slave rebellion of 1802 and Jean's death in 1803 motivated family evacuation to Louisiana.  I descend from Antoine.  Betty descends from Jean.  Our conversations uncovered generations of relationships and warmth that neither of us had understood as children, but that now we are able to connect.

Antoine stayed in New Orleans as have many of his white descendants.  Jean’s son, Amable, evacuated to Louisiana about age 10, joining his uncle and cousins in New Orleans. There he met a lovely young slave.  Through Ancestry, we believe we have her bill of sale to Pierre Beaulieu  in St. James Parish (another full set of stories).  She took her owner's last name as her own.


Amable had a son, Dorson. By law, Dorson was a free man. White father’s of those days rarely acknowledged their mulatto sons, but assumed the obligation to school them in the military or
apprentice them in a skilled trade. Amable married a wealthy French woman and he died a relatively
young man. His white son, also named Amable, left Louisiana and returned to France with his mother . . .we have not yet connected with our French cousins.

my grandfather, Louis Charbonnet's, business card

Betty grew up in a strong, professional, mulatto community, Her father and my grandfather were builders of homes, churches, schools, mills, and offices.  The highly-skilled mulatto craftsmen were well paid in Uptown homes under supervision of my father and grandfather.  In exchange, my family worked with Betty's to obtain land, permits, city improvements, legal matters,and financing for less expensive homes built in the 8th and infamous 9th wards along Charbonnet Street ... but that's another story.


In 2012 at age 90, Betty spoke at the WWII museum in New Orleans and stayed with us in our home.
We had a goal of locating the tomb of Amable. We learned from Ancestry that he was interred in the St.Louis #1 Cemetery in the French Quarter. After a hot day of searching, the cooler evening descended in the cemetery. On our last turn, along the wall, we found Amable resting with his young daughter, a victim of yellow fever.

Leaving the cemetery, Betty introduced me to her cousins, Louis and Armand Charbonnet, operators of the Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home a few blocks away. The two Charbonnet brothers are well-known for staging the Jazz funerals. Despite having spent their lives professionally in the business, both were unaware of the link to Uptown Charbonnets, Amable, who rested nearby in a beautiful, well marked, Parisian tomb.

Through Ancestry, Betty and I have linked the two branches of our great Southern family. Times have
changed. Ancestry calls us to build family ties even when we have to reach beyond the boundaries of the past.

Upon hearing that the country's demographics are showing a surprising new trend ...

... it occurred to me that this probably deserves our attention.

The assumption  has been that the nation's fastest growing minority would be among our Mexican and South American brothers and sisters; the "Brown" folks.  Recent polling would suggest this is no longer true.  The greatest growth is in the "Other" category; those who are now of mixed parentage, crossing the lines of racial separation in its many variations.  Small wonder that we're seeing the polarity in this country harden as those who are frightened by that possibility are increasingly alarmed.

As a member of that group, and knowing so many others of mixed race, this had the ring of truth.  And, I'm guessing that we're living proof that miscegenation may indeed enhance the human gene pool and not befoul it as some might have you believe; an interesting possibility, though eminently debatable, of course.

A day or so after I read that surprising statistic -- by coincidence -- I received a request from distant (white) cousin, Paul Charbonnet, inviting my participation in an Ancestry.com proposal with him.  It would entail our (together) submitting our truncated family story in a recently announced Ad campaign.  Paul lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I'm far away on the Left Coast here in California.  It would have to be done by long distance without comparing notes except sketchily and through cyberspace.

A few days later he sent along his first draft of the result of his years-long research with the invitation that I submit my version for his son to combine into a single story to submit for consideration by Ancestry.   This happened only last week, and the first drafts have been exchanged for approval (each by the other) before submission.

I enlisted the help of one of our staff who could do the technical work and with an improvised background we prepared a short video as requested, with me reading a hastily-prepared 400-word script.  It was fun -- probably because it was a first draft and would probably undergo several edits before being entered into competition with others.

Both Paul and I have felt that the Charbonnet saga was worth, at least, a mini-series simply because the history is so colorful and so "American."  Though we'd only spoken about it in jest, and never with any serious intent.  But this kind of nibbled at the edges of that silent speculation that we both pretended didn't exist.

I'll post both scripts (one pagers) here so that you can see how one family -- separated by the racial barriers -- has begun the act of unification after more than 20 generations of only tacitly acknowledging the relationship on occasion over many decades.

I suspect that ours is a colorful example of many American stories, and that by sharing it here, others might see themselves somewhere between the lines ... .

With Amber Butts and Wanda Johnson

Served as a panelist for the Women's Center at St. Marys College in Moraga on Wedneday evening ... .

... and was reacquainted with a lovely young poet, Amber Butts, and Wanda Johnson, the mother of the late Oscar Grant who was one of the many unarmed African American young men slain by police in the  nightmarish recent past.

I'd been hesitant to accept the invitation since the theme of the evening was a local response to the Black Life Matters movement, and -- though I'm passionately supportive of this freshening of the Civil Rights struggles of the past -- the fact that I'm approaching my 94th birthday suggested to my aging mind that nothing that I had to say could possibly be relevant to a new generation facing into the winds of a change that has now moved past my own.  What on earth could I say that anyone would want to hear?

After running it past my supervisors, I was finally convinced that there might still be some juice in the system, and that Sharon Sobotta, director of the Women's Center and a respected journalist, was certainly aware of the issues that I'm still struggling with.  Perhaps there is still some relevance in the sharing of that earlier history with these students.  At least -- since they'd invited me to join their discussion -- they were open to exploring the connections.

After all, I was being asked as Betty Soskin, private citizen, and with none of the weight of representation of a federal agency.  We retain those rights, even as we stand as federal employees with Hatch Act limitations.  This would be one of those times.  I would be introduced and would participate in this panel as my private self.

I felt out of place and out of context for just the first half-hour, but after hearing Oscar Grant's mother, Wanda Johnson, share her story with its tie-ins to the tragic Trayvon Martin's, Freddy Gray's, Michael Brown's and the other's untimely deaths -- and of her selfless dedication to taking the time out of her life to travel coast-to-coast in support of those bereaved parents and dedicated attorneys -- the human-to-human, woman-to-woman compassion kicked in, and I was at home in that room among those vibrant young faces.  The distance between generations simply quietly evaporated without leaving a trace.

Except that I wondered after the fact if -- in our Afrocentric orientation we may be sacrificing our larger American interests?  I know.  That sounds like a cop-out in a way, but I can't help but feel that the larger issues of the militarization of our police needs to be addressed even as we struggle to make Black Lives Matter.  The powerful control being wielded by the NRA over those who legislate our laws. The proliferation of guns without legal restraints and regulations were equally causal in the Newtown kindergarten classroom as it was in Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

If anything stood out that evening it was the fact that the young college students are still at the place where they're working on personal reactions to often clumsily encoded disrespectful racist statements at a time when so much more direct and in-your-face responses are called for.  Perhaps it is Black Lives Matter that adds the exclamation point to an otherwise bland and relatively futile process.   I sense that in the new voices and poetry of black artists like Amber who now practice their craft with a bolder new edge that holds more promise and less fear than before.

... but maybe that would best be described as the impatient attitude of one approaching the end times with a sense of urgency that won't come for this generation until long after the time when we might have saved ourselves ...  .

 

Find myself uncomfortable with a question raised in the Q&A yesterday after my talk ...

... and -- as I law awake long after going to bed last night -- hesitant to end my day with unresolved feelings -- I realized that the question has been hanging in the air for many years.

The woman who raised the question in a heavy French accent put a new edge to the issue:

"I didn't even know you were African American, or why it is so important.  Why is that?"

I mumbled something that might suffice until we could move on, but can't even recall what those words were.  Did I hesitate taking her query head on because she was an obvious visitor to this country for whom the overlay of innocent curiosity could be excused?  It surely wasn't because I was ducking the issue out of ignorance or simple avoidance of the obvious.

My racial ambiguity is a factor, of course, one that I've had to evolve through life experience.   Though I unquestionably identify as Black, though my cultural background is provided by a rich Cajun/Creole New Orleans ancestry. And my black identity rises from the fact that I did not grow up in New Orleans, but on the West Coast where those ethnic beginnings were eventually overlaid by a purely western culture.  I lived the Post WWII black experience which brought with it the black activism of the Sixties and throughout every decade since -- at a time when the nation was sorting out its racial attitudes and forming a new definition of itself -- one that would permit us to elect a president of color in 2008 after a stormy and perilous journey through the latter half of the 20th Century.

I increasingly see myself as an evolving person in an evolving nation.

Part of the national conversation that prevents us from re-visiting that history -- that won't allow us to process the slavery era even today is this:

It was in 1807 that the importing of African slaves came to an end in this country, though smuggling continued unabated for several decades.  The buying and selling of human beings would not end until the Civil War was fought and the Emancipation Proclamation signed in 1865.

When one goes through the slave records from the years following the official end of the slave trade, most of those who show up in slave accounts are very young.  They were chattel, "livestock".  They were family assets who were passed along through wills and sold as property for many more years.  They were used to pay off gambling debts, etc.

But the most shameful truth is the fact that -- once there was no new "stock" being imported into our ports, slave owners used rape in order to produce and increase their slave holdings.  The fact that African Americans today are born with every skin color and hair texture, every facial feature, body shape, has to do with that cruel history of the beginnings of our ancestors.  During the early and mid-19th Century,  white American slave owners were quite literally selling their own children.  That's the ugly truth that remains unutterable.  Though many of us were born to free blacks, most were not.

It is no easier for us to speak of that painful history than it is for the descendants of slave owners to own it.  But that ugly truth still hangs in the room when those skin color differences are noted, as it was yesterday.  Our "otherness" has as many variations as there are races and cultures on the earth.  I'm no exception, but bear the appearance of those who preceded me on the earth by whatever practices that prevailed under that cruel economic system.  Yesterday, the French woman's innocence allowed her to raise the obvious, but awareness of that awesome truth smothered my voice in my throat, and I let it slip by with the realization that this was not the time nor the place to take that on.

But after a day of watching the debate about the de-funding of Planned Parenthood, the alleged "dismemberment of babies in the womb to harvest their stem cells," occurring in the Congress by the descendants of slave owners and their unknowing co-conspirators so piously was disheartening;  hypocritical.  That the Pro-Life movement would have its greatest strength among the evangelical southern Christians where the remnants of white supremacy still prevails is frightening. 

If not now; when?

Wish I'd taken the time to give voice to the unspeakable yesterday. 

Little Known Black History Fact: Betty Reid Soskin | Black America Web

Little Known Black History Fact: Betty Reid Soskin | Black America Web

This is an NPR interview that I've just discovered a link to.  You can listen to it if you'll use the bar at the bottom of the article.  It's about 30 minutes, I think.

A week has past since my last post, and I've lived through another crisis ...

... but this one clearly took its toll on my morale and general sense of well-being.  and I'm noticing that recovery is no longer as fast as before.

Yesterday I learned that -- over the next several months my work will be documented on film, so that will bring a new edge to my presentations.  It will bring some new elements in that may take some getting used to.  It means that things like lighting and sound will become more important, and all those things that fall under the heading of "production" will move to the forefront.  I've never had to think about anything beyond the telling of my story and silently choosing the faces in the audience that I will speak to.

I've become fairly used to noticing people using their cellphones to document my talks for (I assume) personal use, and over time that's become a non-issue.  I've had reporters and writers of one kind or another slinking around the theater taking their shots, but -- surprisingly -- once I'm into my story they become a background blur and fade away out of consciousness.  Maybe being filmed on the job will fade into my new normal as with everything else, and it will be alright.

The importance of having my work go on when I'm no longer able to do it myself is now moving into prominence, with my 94th birthday coming up within two weeks.  I'm becoming so aware of legacy, and the need to respect that for those who will succeed me both in my immediate family and in the National Park Service interpretive staff.

The radio interview on PBS's Forum show with Michael Krasny brought in a great number of new visitors, and this week there was a feature story in Travel & Leisure, a national publication, and the article in Triple A's VIA was finally published.   That release was originally intended for the November/December issue for last year, so it was a not expected after so many months.

I still marvel at how long it took for the world to notice me, and I find it a complete mystery that I've been noticed at all since I sense nothing new in either my behavior or my affect -- yet there's something familiar that is reminiscent of the attention I received long ago when I was singing.  I've listened to some audio tapes and can hear nothing vaguely resembling 'greatness' or any arresting kind of quality in my voice, but I'm aware that whatever the magic is, it seems less related to what I do than to what I am.   But having said that, I have no idea what that means ... .

Maybe it has to do somehow, with power, or charisma, and I wish I had a better handle on the why of it.  I seem to recall that there was an element of fear and a reluctance to have that kind of power over others -- for whatever reason.  That was surely an element in my drawing back from the edge early on, and refusing to enter the life of a public figure, or an entertainer.  But that was when I was a young mother and more vulnerable, I suppose.  At this advanced age, I'm far more daring, and risk-taking is not so scary, and with so little time left ... .

There was that time (I believe it was in 1965) when I introduced my original song, "Sign my name for freedom" in a concert at the Berkeley Auditorium.  The song had been written in honor of the brave souls in Mississippi who dared to fight for their right to register to vote as full citizens.   I was a participant among many in a "Hootnanny" produced as a fundraiser for some social cause. The house was full to overflowing, and as I was singing I was aware that that great mass gathered there was breathing in unison -- tied to the ends of the lines of my song -- and that I could hear them exhale as one as the song ended.   The applause was thunderous!  I remember staying behind at the end of the concert until everyone was gone so that I wouldn't have to meet anyone who might break the spell -- maybe so that I could live in that feeling as long as possible, maybe ... ?  I've wondered since -- when I allow myself to think about it -- if that isn't the seduction of being a stage performer?  This, then, is probably what one gets addicted to in that world, and what I retreated from so long ago ... without regret, but then ... .

Maybe that's why I don't tarry at the end of my talks; that thing that I can't wait to get away from -- and rush toward home; to get lost in traffic and from far away from what might have been ... .

Had my car broken into in our parking lot -- and the culprits appear to have taken more than the briefcase from my trunk ... .

the briefcase contained my IRS records for the past several years, so my identity is unquestionably compromised.

I'm totally thrown and can't seem to function at all since it happened on Saturday morning.

Discovered the theft Saturday morning as I got into my car to head for the Visitor Center on the shoreline. I immediately shut the implications out of mind in order to get through another impossible day.  On my schedule were two one-hour presentations in our theater; one at eleven and another at two o'clock.

The eleven o'clock was totally filled (48 seats) and there was simply no time to put in a police report since having them come to the Visitor Center would raise public attention in ways that I didn't want to deal with.

Because another article on my work appeared in the AAA's VIA magazine on Friday, the weekend audience was unprecedented.  We'd put in a numbering system in order to not go beyond the fire department regulations.  One hour before my talk visitors are given tickets so that we can know that we haven't exceeded our capacity, and for the two o'clock talk every ticket had been distributed within the first five minutes -- everybody had to be turned away after that!

And the compartmentalizing I was doing in order to retain my sanity was threatening my stability, and I can't imagine that I got through it all without totally freaking out!

But I did.

It's just that from the moment I returned to my apartment until now (two days later), I've been only half-conscious, I think.

Last night I finally sent my attorney an email seeking help, and first thing this morning he responded. We're meeting this afternoon.  I've still not filed a police report.  I suspect that it's out of a sense of uselessness.  This is the third time my car has been broken into in the past several months.  Twice in my carport, and once just outside City Hall where our headquarters office is located -- in Civic Center Plaza.  Both times I made police reports.  Both times it took many hours for an officer to respond.  And the experience only led to my feelings of helplessness because there is just no real defense against such incidents, and I knew it.

I mentioned the break-in on Facebook and among those who responded with wishes for recovery and assistance was a message from our police chief, offering to do whatever he could.  For that I was grateful, not so much for his official offer of help as for his friendship.  Chris Magnus is my friend, and I know he is sincerely  concerned.  But it didn't cause me to act on my own behalf, but just to give up any hope of a solution ... .

This afternoon I will have an appointment to meet with my attorney.  He's warm and caring, and seeing Steve may serve to break through the ennui and sense of helplessness that I'm sill not able to recover from ... .

Spent much of this afternoon doing something I rarely do ... .

... read back through random posts in this journal, and was soon lost in time.

Such a long and varied life I've lived.  Some of the accounts of the days of struggling toward recovery of our little business were unbelievably difficult and stressful -- and I had forgotten how fearful I was so much of the time, but certainly courageous.  I must have become softer with age, because I'm certain I could not live through such times now.  And this was a period of life that followed 20 years of being an upscale suburban housewife, and a second marriage into the life of a faculty wife on the University of California campus.

South Berkeley during the Seventies was much like Ferguson, Detroit, Chicago,  Baltimore, and other troubled areas in many parts of the country today.  It has now gentrified out of that identity, and the former low-income black residents have been displaced through being priced out of residency by economic forces.  Berkeley has lost its racial diversity over many years.  'Tis the pity, I think.  I'm far more comfortable in Richmond these days, where the diversity is rich, volatile, edgy, cantankerous, and warmly engaging.  I've grown to love Richmond. 

I remembered that when my embattled black businessman husband complained to the police that our store was being broken into about every 3 months, and that we were without adequate police protection in the community.  Since we'd parted, and before, he'd taken to sleeping on a cot in the back of the store with a rifle at his side.  The police explanation was, "... we like to have neighborhoods like this.  When something happens in other parts of town we know where we can most likely pick up the culprit."  They were using our neighborhood as a catchment area.

Of the nine halfway houses for addicts in recovery and returning former prisoners, seven of them were placed in our neighborhood by the City.   The neighborhood was ground zero for the drug trade, and those high risk people were cynically set down in the middle of the "candy store" where they were expected to live where recidivism and relapse into drug abuse would be most likely be inevitable.  Children in such areas are put at risk of their lives as time has clearly shown.  The sound of gunfire now so common had not yet become a problem, though -- over time -- I saw 4 young black boys/men gunned down within 500 yards of our store.  One Saturday afternoon -- with several customers leisurely browsing record albums -- a bullet came through the storefront window from police activity across the street -- whizzed past just over my son, David's, head and settled in the wall!


I've outlived the cynicism that had to be developed in order to withstand the quiet terror that had to be lived with every day, and that so many have had to survive while retaining enough scar tissue to serve as protection from the effects of having to spend our lives as 3/5th of a human being.

... and there were fine and upstanding folks living in that corner of South Berkeley; folks caught up in a dehumanizing system caused by poverty and degradation.  We took care of each other as far it was possible to do so.  My lot was cast with those around me, and we all made the best of it.  Despite all, I look back fondly on those troubled years, and find that I'm still spinning off lessons learned.  That period added a richness and depth to my life that continues to serve as grounding for today's small victories.

In the archives there's a good record of those years -- starting in March-April of 2004.  Use the little white search bar on the left side of the screen above the banner.  You can just check on the dates in the archives list, of course. 

 

Gone, Gone, Gone!   I'm free of vertigo and up and runnin' again!

Betty Reid Soskin: A World War II Homefront History

August 16, 2015 - 1:30pm-4:00pm 

Central Library Community Meeting Room

Come hear Betty Reid Soskin recall Richmond and the Bay Area during World War II.  This exceptional speaker and homefront hero will show a short movie of Richmond during the years 1942-1945 and follow it up with an inspiring talk that you must experience.  Betty is currently a park ranger at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Homefront National Park in Richmond, and was once employed in the Richmond shipyards during World War II.  Her talk will move you.

Event Category: 

Movie, Just for fun, Special

I'm also back at the wheel, and "Old" will just have to take a number and wait in line.

Just showered and dressed for a presentation at the Berkeley Main Library at 1:30 this afternoon, and expect to see old friends in that audience.  Having lived in Berkeley for many years, I've left a mark on it as we all do in those places where we've shared lives -- and it surely has left its mark on me.  I never thought I'd be happy living anywhere else, but I'm firmly planted now in Richmond, and think of the city as home.  But maybe home is wherever the heart is at any moment in time.  If so, I've had many, and this is only the latest version.

That 20 years in the suburbs -- painful though it was at times -- probably provided the greatest and deepest growth, and friends with whom those years were shared left their mark on my life as in no other period.  Strange.  Maybe that was the take-away in exchange for the confidence and security acquired as the result.  The pain may have been well worth it.  I'm still spinning off those years.  They've given me the needed balance to continue building on the foundation provided by the early years of woman-building that started when I was six, with Papa George as mentor.

These recent years of connecting the dots and knitting together decades of experiences -- having retained enough accumulated wisdom to articulate that -- is something I could never have anticipated.

But then, maybe that book has been thoughtfully written, and I've not yet discovered it ... .  

Well, that was short-lived ... .

Saw the neurologist today.  He administered the magical Epply maneuver and, voila!  Dizziness disappeared in one fell swoop!

It could not have been more dramatic had the genie stepped out of that bottle and chanted his magic oath.  The cure was immediate.  It took less than 10 minutes, and the world stopped spinning and I came in for a landing.  "Sleep with 3 pillows tonight; about a thirty degree lift to your head, and ... .  " ... If there is any further dizziness, give me a call," says the genie.

I'm not going to let myself wonder why this wasn't done 3 months ago ... but we won't go there. 

Blood pressure higher than ever, but it was taken after I'd been through a wild ride through rush hour traffic to the Oakland Medical Center -- and I'm the quintessential passenger-seat-driver -- and it was horrendous!  My son did the honors, but only with invisible help from my imaginary brake pedal.  We were late for my appointment -- and I hate being late -- so it was a perfect storm.

Blood pressure was off the charts upon arrival, and when it was taken again when the doctor had completed his work, it was one point higher!

On the drive home, I was in no better shape, but now I'm aware of an elevated score, so I'm ready to cash in and give up the ghost.  Even silently considered retirement ... .

Within an hour after arriving home my primary physician called to inquire about how my appointment had gone --he was aware of the (alarming) rise in my pressure, and asked me to come in tomorrow at eleven to have it taken again.

I told him that I would need to arrange for a ride (remember, he'd ordered me to give up driving), and you can imagine my surprise when he answered, "... you can drive yourself.  Now that the vertigo and dizziness have been taken care of, there's no reason why you can't do so."

Go figure.

So, I guess I've been reprieved until further notice, and will return to work on Tuesday as planned.

Now I need to seek out a treatment for whiplash!

A life changer, maybe?

After 3 months of persistent fluctuating blood pressure, and dizziness caused by the concussion suffered in May, I'm having to face the fact that -- while not yet being advised to retire or to cut back on my work schedule by my doctor -- I have been advised not to drive until further notice.

Tomorrow I will see the neurologist for answers to just what is causing continuing vertigo.  Much will depend upon her findings.

These last two weeks have been spent resting, but on Sunday afternoon I will do my presentation at the Berkeley Main Library.  I'll have a driver.  I'm looking forward to getting back in gear, and on Tuesday will return to my regular 5 day/wk work schedule.

I suppose I should be getting ready to face that "...whatever are we going go do with the old lady" conversation.  Whenever I've asked my supervisors if it's time ...  up 'til now, it has always been, "not yet, Betty."

But the handwriting may be showing up on the wall, though dimly ... .

I've always wondered if I would know when it's time to leave the stage ... maybe I'm beginning to suspect ... .

Whenever the time comes, it will be in the middle of my movie.
 

Caught enough of Krasny's Forum show this morning to have it dominate my thoughts over the past hour ... .

The subject was the situation in Ferguson as those old wounds have been reopened, and the violence returned.

Just last night I watched coverage on CNN and learned of the continuing "ticketing for profit" practices that are still going on, adding to the festering of those old wounds.  But I also noticed the presence of a diversity of races on those streets and was reminded ... .

One of the most valuable lessons learned during the earlier versions of the Civil Rights struggles was -- I suppose because I was experiencing those struggles from the position of a middle class black living among enlightened white liberals in an otherwise hostile white community -- down through history there has always been good folks tryin' to get it right, and often at the risk of their own lives.

 One might start with the Quakers,  abolitionists, and John Brown.

In this morning's discussion there was a representative of Black Lives Matter -- the current version of the struggle -- and she was articulate, and clearly disheartened by the lack of progress being shown in the clashes between the black community and the police.  She defended the actions at the Bernie Sanders rally, and made the point that in the aftermath he made his first clear statements on the state of the persistent racial problems in the nation.  Attorney Eva Patterson, one of my all-times heroes, was her clear and present -- wise and gracious self -- giving voice to the voiceless.

The call-ins that joined the debate had one thing in common.  They were from people sympathetic to the cause of justice, but clearly expressing concern that the wrong tactics were being used by the Movement ("... why Bernie Sanders, he's one of the good guys'), and suggestions for how it should be done.  May I suggest that all responses -- if coming from a place of moral intent -- are needed.   There is not one correct way to respond to unreasonable and crippling injustices.  Corrective measures have many faces, and will draw many responses depending upon countless variables.

Maybe it's my age, but I find that my eyes are ever searching the television coverage for the racial makeup of the street demonstrations.  I see hope in the fact that the diversity is growing, and that here are the folks who, historically, have always been "tryin' to get it right," and in the chaos there is a lot of democracy being built.  There always is at such times.

Every generation has to rebuild democracy in its day.  We have a constitutionally-protected right to be wrong.  We also have a constitutionally-protected right to protest those wrongs in the belief that what is right will prevail.

Democracy is a process, and every citizen has the right and responsibility to participate in that
process in order to actualize it and keep it vibrant for the next generation.

That can be ugly at times if we neglect our duty to maintain an informed electorate, but it is the price we pay for freedom.

Building and keeping a coalition of those "tryin' to get it right" is of critical importance.  Our black lives may well depend upon it.

We cannot do it alone.  It is an American problem fueled by white supremacy, but mistakenly seen as a problem based purely in black inadequacy and criminality.  Until we recognize it for what it is, we'll continue to fail to find answers.

If my Sixties experiences have any validity at all, then I have to believe that those racially-diverse street demonstrators are doing the right thing by simply being there together showing that Black Lives Matter for the nation and the world to see.