What a day this has been (isn't that a line from a song lyric?) .... oh yes, now I remember ... .

"what a rare mood I'm in -- it's almost like being in love!"

Today held two different yet related events, each might have provided enough positive energy to stand alone.  The first I've not had the nerve to mention since it involved yet another "honoring", this time being named 'Woman of the Year" by the Delta Delta Chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma Society.  This is an international organization for educators.  I'm beginning to learn to accept the accolades as opportunities to showcase the work of the National Park Service -- and as such -- it feels less weighty somehow. The certificate read

for

Excellence in Community Education

and the dedication, relentless activism, and passion to bring the untold stories of the Richmond Home Front to the community and beyond."  (June 9, 2012)

But there's something else creeping in that is heady indeed.  Today I could give voice to the feeling that  I'm positioned in space precisely as was intended -- and where the entire focus of my life has been heading for what is now the tenth decade.  It becomes more and more difficult to cling to my atheism at such times, or those intriguing speculations on Fate, Kismet, and Predestination.

I could hardly be more comfortable in my shoes, and there's no one else on earth that I would rather be.  Yet, how helpful it would have been to have enjoyed this feeling at some earlier time of life.  But, I'm beginning to suspect that it had to be aged into.

Though I was in a room filled with strangers -- it would have been possible to have started a conversation in the middle of the 6th paragraph with any one of them -- chosen at random.  I was feeling human connections that transformed each into an old acquaintance.  I could see me in their faces as we talked, and though the words I was speaking may well have been taken as boastful at some other time, the feelings were anything but.  I could trust them with even this truth, and we could share the joy because the initial human/feminine connection was firmly in place -- so humility, and, whatever this is, could co-exist. 

It is at times like these that words fail, and we must trust one another to fill in the gaps, and we did.

After a delicious brunch in a beautiful home high in the Berkeley Hills, I drove proudly and "grinningly" down steep Marin Avenue toward the second event of the day; the two o'clock premiere of "Blossoms and Thorns," a Ken Koka short film depicting the Japanese/American internment experience.  This is one of several that take us through the forgotten stories of the Home Front era; films to be shown in the theater of the Visitor's Center of the park.  The work is a gift from local Americans of Japanese descent, the families of the cut flower industry who suffered the shameful imprisonment.  It has taken 70 years for them to share that experience with the rest of us.  I sat in the dark as the credits ran at the conclusion and -- despite the fact that I cannot with certainty point to anything I contributed to the making of this work --  there was my name listed among the others.  It feels irrational now, but I was able to make the connection with the morning's event, and felt quietly deserving of this new honor of "Woman of the Year" bestowed only hours before ... and the headiness returned ... this time with a sense of wonder at the forces that produce such happy outcomes.

Could it be that these honors have more to do with being than doing?

I could hear my own words, " ... I'm privileged to be helping to shape a new national park!"

... and it's quite true, isn't it.

Of course the euphoria won't last.  It never does.  But for now I'm so grateful for simply being alive.

Photos by Linda Blake

Today was spent "rangering" in the theater and showing visitors around the exhibits ... . 

... so far,  interest in my age rivals interest in the exhibits, and my public persona may be getting in the way of my work!  Wish I could think up a good quip about the aging process.  Maybe I'll just tell them about having been recently wooed by an online advertising agency which matches bloggers with businesses for profit (true).  They were very flattering about my writing, but I turned them down when it occurred to me that the only firms that might be interested in my blog would be those selling adult diapers, step-in bath-tubs, and scooters!

But that might not do, right?

it was simply glorious ... so much more than I'd dared dream the experience might be ...

This photo speaks to the numbers who attended, but can't possibly express what the day meant to those who've been waiting so long for the Visitor's Education Center to become a reality.

It took hours on end to get to sleep last night.  It was impossible to move on since savoring and reliving every moment kept me on edge until the wee hours of the morning.  Whatever passes for "normal" in these dwindling days will again bring sleep in a day or so, but for now -- it's all too wonderful to spend time passively in an unconscious state. 

It begins to look as if each day now arrives with an aliveness that demands complete attention.  It's fatiguing at times, but not in a bad way.  I'm paying close attention to each moment as it is lived (or so it seems), so that nothing will escape without thorough examination and evaluation as to whether it's worth memorizing.  I'm saving only the best stuff, I think, and tossing the irrelevant.

... and yes, time now is being lived out in hurried cycles, with Christmas arriving every six weeks.

Another day or so will be needed before I can possibly absorb what this new Visitor's Center will mean to the work.  I do know that this place will bring monumental  changes, but I do have some control over the nature of those changes -- at least as they apply to me, but it's enough for now just to savor the immediate past hours before leaving them to re-start the future ... .

The magic of memory to guide destinies ...  back to Epiphany!


Does the name Lloyd C. Douglas mean anything to you?  He was an important author of my youth with The Robe, The Magnificent Obsession, and personally most meaningful "The Green Light" among his novels.  It took almost two hours of stubbornly probing memory to finally bring  his name to mind.  It wasn't until I was lying in bed mulling over the headiness of the commencement experience that the dots began to connect like metal shavings on a magnet, and Douglas emerged as a major influence for me .  How little we credit those people and incidents that have moved us through life over time.

Something jogged him into the forefront as I was emptying the pocket of my black crepe suit and as my fingers fell upon the string of cultured pearls I'd (without conscious thought) placed there just before choosing a small diamond star on a platinum chain -- to wear for this occasion.   For some reason I didn't return the pearls to their little black velvet case, but instead slipped them into my pocket ... strange, but in keeping with this eerie power I've always had to be out of sync and out of sequence with time; naturally.

They were a wedding gift from Mel, my husband and the father of our four childrens.  Over time they'd been relegated to non-use as the marriage began to deconstruct with all the attendant misery of mid-life.

Let's move now to the turbulent Sixties, and the night before the daughter of a friend, Don Sanford and a university student, was scheduled to leave for a stint as a teacher in a freedom school under the leadership of C.O.R.E. in Canton, Mississippi.  It was Freedom Summer, 1964, and I was hopelessly tied to the care and feeding of four children at a time when I envied young (white) Susan Sanford's ability to do this daring and revolutionary thing.  I'd been invited to share the farewell dinner with the Sanfords, and as it ended I secretly slipped my pearls into her hand with the words, wear them every day under your T-shirts and only return them to me when your work is done.""  


Susan's letters to her family were shared with me that summer and their words became embedded in my song lyrics in the creative cultural explosion in which I found myself.  The pearls were returned, but over the passing years have rarely been worn.  They'd taken on the patina of service and could no longer be mere "jewelry".  They were anointed by a life experience too painful and meaningful to be squandered as "ornament."  So there they have lain all these years.

By all rights, if memories were informing me as well they should, this would all have revealed itself with the Fannie Lou Hamer announcement. but it didn't.  It was tantalizingly close, though, because I'd picked them up -- finally -- as "jewelry' only to slip them into the pocket just before leaving for the commencement celebration.

Then "The Green Light" and Lloyd C. Douglas now enter the scene:

In it (as I recall) the premise upon which the novel rests, is that there is power in giving only if there is an unbreakable promise that neither giver nor receiver will ever disclose the source of the gift.  By so doing, power is endlessly multiplied, like compounded interest accrued by intent and sealed by silence.

... and I'm realizing that -- despite the fact that by wearing my magical pearls yesterday, and sharing this connection to Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Movement that she founded --  might have added drama to the proceedings, I chose to "keep the power," by holding it close on my body without disclosing the story publicly in my two-minute acceptance speech.  And it was done without conscious intent.  Yet when I removed it a moment ago from its velvet case and let the little necklace drape over my fingers, I found myself wondering how The Green Light may have influenced other moments in time?  Reluctance to allow myself to accept credit for what are clearly exceptional feats that have perhaps changed lives is surely related to this simple though profound concept.

Is this then, the source of the "updraft" that I'm experiencing in the dramatic arc of my life's trajectory in these days of tributes; the California College of the Arts honorary doctorate of last spring; and yesterday's prestigious Hamer Award?  Is this just all too "Hollywood-ian" to subscribe to?  Maybe so; yet it just may be hokey enough to demand a pause for wonder ... and to appreciate the fact that had I remained a practicing Catholic, I would surely have ended up doing daily postulations in some Nunnery!

...  the extent to which all of our lives are influenced by the creative acts of unknown others is probably immeasurable, yet much of it eventually defies logic and succumbs to gaps in memory. Popular culture may be wildly under-rated movers into futures most have not yet lived themselves into -- except maybe for a selected few of the lucky ones, yours truly among them.

Epiphany .... !

... it happens.  Mysteries unfold at the most unexpected times, and almost always without fanfare.

Yesterday I drove in to the university's Zellerbach underground parking lot, and after presenting my VIP permit to the parking attendant, found myself in the maze of campus shops selling Cal T-shirts and student supplies with the unrelenting compulsion to follow "just anybody" dressed in a cap and gown.  Not smart.  That lead proved untrustworthy as I found myself surrounded by those heading for the Asian students ceremony on the second floor of the Student's Union!  So much for that system.  No GPS could save me now.

I then took the stairs back to the ground floor and approached 3 African American women (one of whom was "capped and gowned," with a friendly "... since you're obviously heading for the African American graduation commencement ceremony -- may I join you since I have no idea where I'm going?"  The eldest of the 3 said, " of course, but we're heading for the restrooms but if you'd like to join us you're surely welcome to!"

A few more false starts that led out of the Student Union building (shudda knowed that, right?) back across the Quad and into Zellerbach auditorium where confusion ended as I was guided through the theater (had no idea there would be such a large crowd anticipated), up to the stage and then backstage to the Green Room to wait with black-robed and colorfully "stoled" members of faculty with whom I would soon march onto the stage and take my seat in the front row for the ritual of commencement as the Fannie Lou Hamer honoree.

It was then that I met Dr. Charles Henry, Chair of the African American Studies Department (and who had recommended my being named to this great honor), and was reunited with Dr. Hardy Frye, an old and greatly honored scholar and friend from at least 40 years ago.  He was former head of Black Studies, now retired.  Hardy and I both worked for the Berkeley City administration when he served as Mayor Gus Newport's Chief of Staff, and I was city councilman Don Jelinek's aide.  It was great to see him again.  Life has taken this scholar to the top of his field, and when he told that he had supported my nomination for the Hamer Award, I immediately felt both the weight of the honor, and -- in an odd way -- validated in receiving it.

It was not so long ago that I might have been totally demoralized by the experience, but you know what?  I seem to be finally getting the hang of this "honoring" thing.  In this context, it made a kind of sense.
Never having attended college, and, despite my ten years as a faculty wife of a UC professor (Dr. William F. Soskin) -- and the resulting "non-traditional doctorate in psychology" that came with the years I participated as a "graduate student" in his research program, this was an alien setting for me.  It's always been as though I was the camel's nose that slipped under the tent in such rituals; never quite legitimate, and despite the illusion of knowing I tend to send out, I knew that it was unearned.  My status as a card-carrying member of the unwashed continues to guarantee my sense of humility -- that and being the mother of Dorian Reid who has accomplished so much with so little ... .

As the procession was about to end, someone came up behind me on the stage to whisper in my ear, "the young man at the end would like for you to drape his stole, if you would be willing."  What an honor to be invited to participate in this precious moment in someone's personal history.  What a time!

... but to get back to the epiphany ... but now I need to stop for a cup of tea and another tissue ...  more later.

Oh, say can you see ...

... that I've forgotten to mention a very significant invitation that arrived last week in a phone call from the National World War II Museum in New Orleans?  Mr. Jeremy Collins wanted to know if I'd be interested in participating in a conference in that city on December 6th, 7th, and 8th.  Would I?  You betcha!  I will be sharing the dais with Emily Yellin, journalist and author of "Our Mother's War".  We will be the two female panelists, among others.  We've met before when she served as keynoter for a Rosie Trust banquet a few years ago.  We share a Unitarian-Universalist background.  It will be great to see her again. 

As you know, if you've been reading my journal for awhile, this is my ancestral home, and I've not visited for at least two decades.  There are many Breauxs, Allens, and Charbonnets still living in the city, and this will be my first post-Katrina tour of the old Tremé neighborhoods where my father grew up, and from which my own family escaped after the disastrous floods of 1927 that brought us to the West.

All permissions have been granted, and anticipation could hardly be greater.  An opportunity for a grand reunion? Maybe.  I'm sending out the call to the family and we have several months to save up our pennies and plan for a gathering of some sort.

Small wonder that I go around breathlessly these days.  Life is moving so fast and furiously, that one can hardly maintain the rhythm!

... but in that regard, this week I have tickets to hear Dmitri Matheny and his band at Yoshi's on the Oakland waterfront with my jazz friend, Anne.  An infusion of jazz tends to provide an essential and stabilizing element when life becomes overwhelming -- as it is in this period of updraft!

An auspicious moment of discovery ...

On the weekend -- at the invitation of the Rosie the Riveter Trust board -- I attended a Gala in the Craneway Pavilion at Ford Point.

The evening opened at six with a preview of the Visitors Center that has been under construction (restoration) for the past year, followed by a banquet for several hundred guests and supporters; political and corporate leaders, representatives from industry, and National and Regional Park Service folks, and representatives from a number of Labor Unions.

The invitation had come in a casual phone call from my supervisor saying that the Trust would like me to attend.  No big deal.  Some of our rangers would be attending, either as guests or support staff, so there was no preparation for what lay ahead.

Small talk at receptions has never been my favorite past-time, so I wandered around feeling awkward for the better part of an hour, stopping just long enough at clusters to touch lives but not too deeply.

There came the point where it was time to move into the grandeur of the Craneway for the fancy dinner.  I'd not been told where to sit, and had no idea who might have the chart.  No place cards -- but this was a formal banquet so seating must surely have been planned ...

Then I saw him, Mr. John August, head of all of the Kaiser Permanente unions, based in Washington, D.C.  He's a wonderfully warm human being with whom I felt personally connected through my work. Having served as his tour guide on at least two occasions over the years, he'd requested a copy of "Of Lost Conversations,"  (created with Ranger Naomi Torres) the little DVD on the Black experience as lived on the home front during WWII.  The irony of my having started out at the age of twenty as a file clerk in a racially segregated Boilermakers Union hall in Richmond, and in these senior years to have served as an interpreter to the Leader of all of KP unions is mind-boggling!  What this says about social change in the nation over a single lifetime is truly awesome.

When John Austin noticed me idling in space, he indicated that I was to be seated at his table.  There was nothing to signal that he was the guest of honor who would be delivering the evening's keynote speech, or that this was the head table.  (Are you still with me?)  My work didn't involve any of the planning meetings.

As the formal part of proceedings opened with introductions of dignitaries in the room (Rep. George Miller, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, among others), and the usual tributes -- things gradually built to the place where Austin was being introduced.  He gathered up his notes and headed for the dais.

His speech was brilliant!  Most noteworthy, it got through to me -- finally -- that  I could actually hear my influence woven through his words.  My name was cited several times, so it wasn't my imagination.  He got it! 

The words I remember most clearly were in the place where he spoke of visiting Ellis Island for the first time; very early after its designation as a national park, when it was little more than decaying physical artifacts that would someday tell its stories.  This is the state our park site was in (and still is, though much further along) when first he visited several years ago.  I'll never forget his words, "... the stories of these emerging parks are under the hats of the rangers."  We, the interpreters, are entrusted with that national history, and we're being effective in that work.

I felt the tears begin to well up as I heard myself in John Austin's words.  

This, then, is the reason for the honors? I truly am helping to shape a new national park, and the public also gets it.  What a privilege we've been given.

About those tears:

It should be noted that on the drive home they were released with a cascade of giggles as I noticed something quite new.  No longer were they flowing down my cheeks and dripping sloppily off my chin but some of them were ending up in my hair led by wrinkles that now re-direct the flow!  It's surely not perfect, but it's novel.  Maybe that's the function of crow's feet.  Do you suppose?  Imagine still discovering newness at my age!   

 

Will wonders (and honors) never cease?

This past week a call came announcing that I've been selected to receive this year's
 
        Fannie Lou Hamer Award

at the African American student's graduation ceremony at Zellerbach Hall, at the University of California, Berkeley.  That will be on the afternoon of May 19th.

Never having understood how these selections are made, there's genuine surprise and humility -- and sometimes puzzlement.  For instance, I've never fully understood how the choice was made for the honorary doctorate(!) at the California College of the Arts last spring, and was never satisfied that it was deserved.  Having never watched the DVD of the ceremony  --  it still doesn't seem to fit somehow, though I'll be ever grateful for having been so honored, for whatever reason.

But this one is less mysterious:


This followed an event of a few months ago at which I was a panelist for a service organization, Senior Moments. The engagement had naturally grown out of having served as the Black History Month speaker for the African American Employees Network at Safeway Corporate offices.    It was a good working day.  After all, I'm engaged in outreach assignments from time to time, and this is my busy season.

In the more recent event, the lectern was shared with an old friend, Jerry Lange, a former PBS talk show host, journalist, and author; and also a professor from the Black Studies Department of U.C. Berkeley.  The audience was warmly responsive.  Apparently, it was the professor who is responsible for this important nomination for the Hamer Award.

... and this one feels good.  Fannie Lou Hamer, the courageous political organizer who headed the Mississippi Freedom Party that dramatically challenged the Democratic Convention in 1968 by demanding seating for her delegation to represent her state.  Her daring move -- 4 years later in 1972 -- made possible Shirley Chisholm's historic run for the presidency of these United States as the first woman to make the attempt -- and with yours truly seated with the California delegation in Miami's huge Convention Hall.  And, having been elected to represent my congressional district by people who had threatened our very existence as we moved among them to become the first black family in the community through some 20 traumatic years before!  That's how fast social change was occurring at the time.

Having been found worthy of this award is such an honor!

I'm expected to make a two-minute acceptance speech to the graduates -- and this time we're ready.

"The future is formed by what we do or fail to do, individually, in the present." 

... and will finish with a grateful "thank you" and have one-and-a-half minutes to use elsewhere!

Whoever dubbed these "the Golden Years" wasn't just blowin' smoke through his ears. This is serious stuff!  Could this be compensation for thinning hair, sagging everything, and a creeping suspicion that one day I'll wake up to find that lots of folks have made some glaring errors in judgment and all these wonderful tributes will have to be returned to the proper honorees?  Meanwhile, I'm lining them all in a row on my library table -- and when I'm feeling unappreciated I can point to them and say, "See?"

Dorian Reid - "Colorful Cats"

I know that I've been among the missing since late in March ...

... and I don't think that I was fully appreciating how traumatic the separation from Dorian might be.  Not that she's gone out of my life, but our relationship has (necessarily) changed since I've turned her life over to a Trust, a legal/social services/team that will provide future guidance as I prepare for what should surely be my final decade.

I'd convinced myself that doing so would give me back my life (meaningless concept, that), and would provide the opportunity for me to watch (while I'm still living) just how she will fare after my death.  Sounds neatly managed, doesn't it?  Don't be fooled, guys.  At 90, it's hell to be staring into the Abyss of Non-existence when, ironically, my personal life's trajectory has caught a wild and turbulent updraft that is dizzying!  The contrasts of highs and lows have never been more stark. I'm feeling off-balance, and often on the verge of tears.  An appropriate response to the situation?  I think so ... .

I'm pleased with the decision; am assured that she is in good hands; that we've gotten most things right over the years.  I'd filled the balance of my life with meaningful work that has brought public acclaim and deep satisfaction, so what's wrong?  My work with the National Park Service has brought adventure, challenges, and a family of young friends who have enriched my life and brought great pleasure through days filled with newness undreamed of.

That all happened over the past months, and went smoothly as planned.  Dorrie talks very factually about "when you're gone," which stings a bit -- though is softened by her obvious innocence.  Haven't I worked toward this for all of our lives?

I discovered while searching for her permanent living space that, ironically, many of those security measures that used to exist for the mentally-disabled over years of state and federal cutbacks -- are now available to her in senior housing complexes.   She'd aged into eligibility (now 55), and the benefits that come with that are considerable.  How ironic!  We are truly investing our resources in the wrong end of the  life-line!  Therein lies madness.

Nonetheless she has just been confirmed for a 2-bedroom apartment within walking distance to the Mall, to her mother's condo, and across the road from "Cat City," the home of a community of feral cats that she's shared the responsibility for with other women in the neighborhood.  The care and feeding is a labor of love, and provides her with women who share her passion for felines.

So -- she and her two domestic cats will be moving within the next couple of weeks, and her mother will probably figure out just what is different about this move, and why it feels so final?  She's been living semi-independently for some time now, after spending many months hospitalized from injuries suffered in her 2009 accident.  Maybe it means that I'm trusting the world just a little less with my daughter since that time; maybe ... .

rear of building - landscapers at work

What a strange day this has been ... .

Our Visitors Center is nearing completion and we're in the process of designing temporary exhibits that will be on display over the coming months -- until the permanent exhibits are completed and installed.

The process of restoration of the historic Oil House of the old Ford Assembly Plant has taken more than a year to complete, but the grand opening is scheduled to take place on Memorial Day weekend, on May 26th.

We've not been able to enter while the structure was under re-construction, so along with the rest of our staff, I'm curious and fascinated with the occasional peeks I get walking by while conducting a tour of the scattered sites that make up the park.  The Ford Assembly Building is one of the major features of the park.

Several of us have been assigned the task of designing 6' "Pull-up" panels on different subjects -- that will be combined with appropriate and relevant exhibits borrowed from other parks around the country until those professionally-designed arrive around the end of the year.  Matt's panel has to do with the environment; Elizabeth's with the disabled; and mine (obviously) with civil rights.  There are others.  We're creating the texts and Luther, our graphics artist, is putting them into display form for presentation.  I'm pleased with the text I created, but have little sense of how the words will combine with the photos I've chosen until his expertise is applied.  This is a new experience for me, but seemed well within my abilities.  I'm continually surprised at those embedded capacities and only wished I'd had the courage to call on them before I'd grown into these final years.

All that is to say that -- I'm not sure of the reason -- but I seem to be seriously drained of energy today.  I conducted back-to-back bus tours over Friday and Saturday; unusual for me.  Each lasts about 3 hours and covers many of the scattered sites that form the boundary-less Rosie the Riveter WWII/ Home Front Historical National Park.  What is more important, though, is the fact that -- not being a trained historian working from acquired knowledge -- I'm reaching deep into my own past to retrieve personal history and sharing that with strangers on each tour.  It means that there is an emotional component that tends to leave me feeling spent for a few hours each time, so normally I try to allow a few days of recovery time between tours.  This, combined with the fact that I've had to conduct two of those tours in a drenching rainstorm which added an element of sadness to both tours, may have added to feelings of depression over the past 24 hours.  Wet feet will do it every time.

... but then maybe I'm just winding down now ... and am finally facing up to that fact... .

If the feelings linger, I'll know.

Every now and then I hit a period that is so murky -- and so troubling that there is a reluctance to put it to words ... this is one of those times ... .

It started with the image of our soldiers defiling the remains of those Afghan warriors, followed by the burning of the Koran in an Islamic nation where the act would surely ignite fury.  It was so difficult to connect the act with all that we profess to stand for, yet there were no surprises.  Why not?  I've grown used to the dehumanization of the war machine that we've become, and, along with the crowd -- I paid lip service to the slow devolution of what I'd known as 'patriotism' since childhood -- and in its place something I just didn't recognize had come into being.  Was it that my shock level had dropped to a place where the only response was to close it all out and numb myself into complacency?

One recent late night it began to sort itself out.  I sat alone at my computer watching a special commemorative edition of "King, a Filmed Record:  Montgomery to Memphis."  I thought I remembered it  all -- having lived through it -- but the horror freshened as the years dropped away -- and the experience of the times achingly relived.  The film was shown in selected theaters but one night, I'm told, and it has been unavailable since that time.

The reviews at the time read:

"A piece of history of immense power."

- Los Angeles Times -

Magnificent!  - Harpers

Brilliant! - Saturday Review

"One Great Stunning, Stunning Film"

- Women's Wear Daily -

"It is the record of black peoples growth in pride and love of

America, played against a background of animal savagery, 

swastikas and leather coated storm troopers."

- Baltimore African American -

"The documentary footage is stunning ... The events are allowed

to speak for themselves.  The sound track bursts with vitality ...

and, most thrilling of all, the speeches of the man himself."

- New York Times-

My son, Bob, learned that it's been re-released and is available on the Internet and suggested that it was the best account of the struggle that he'd seen.  I ordered a copy and watched it in awe and in so doing -- allowed feelings of fear and fascination to be revived.  For days I've been unable to think of little else.

What came clear for me in the process was that there is no doubt in my mind that those angry men who were opposing the King peace marchers from the sidelines on the streets of Memphis, Selma, Jackson, Mississippi, yes, and Chicago, were capable of the horrific atrocities that we're seeing in today's headlines.  

At what point will white supremacy be seen as a matter of national security?  That's the piece that's been missing from the national debate.  This is what we've not had the courage nor the willingness to face up to as a nation.  A wise teacher once told me that most cultures have "truths" for which they are willing to fight and die but by which they refuse to live.  Cynical?  I'm not so sure.

This week's cold-blooded slaying of 16 unarmed Afghan people by an Army sergeant husband and father threatened the entire course of a questionable war and the fate of our armed forces remaining there.  Those shrieking crowds on the streets of our cities 40 years ago were the threat to the lives of King and his followers who were peaceably demonstrating for the right to vote.  That seething mob was obviously energized by feelings of entitlement which derived by birthright from their white skins.  It was chilling to watch that physical struggle -- lo these many years later -- and to see the legacy of that hatred being played out still in the places where we're "on the ground" in the interest of "spreading democracy."  

  

Those ghosts are still haunting us.  Echoes of it ring out from the encoded language of the presidential primaries.  "We've got to take the country back!" and at any cost, apparently, and from whom?  It's more than racism.  It's by now embedded in the DNA of white America, and is a mental disease that is threatening us all.  It's the unspoken reality of white entitlement that pervades our national and international relations, to our peril. it seems.

We've come a long way in those much-needed conversations on the subject of race, but I find myself wondering if we still have the time and the inclination to go the rest of the way toward liberty and justice for all?  Our national survival may well depend upon it.

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!