Received the gift of an entire day!

It seems that -- in the confusion of Friday-ness -- I lost David's message on my office voice mail and twisted the dates for the granddaughter's event at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts. It was not today, after all, but next weekend. You have no idea what a gift it is to learn upon awakening that I had an entire day of not-one-commitment-and-hours-on-end-of-time to squander!

Called the local spa and booked myself a facial. This is my idea of total decadence, and it's about time, too. Signed up for the whole schmear, packs and oils, and aromatherapy and soft music, patting and stroking, and fingers connecting with those little nodes of bad energy that I didn't know were there until probed... It all took one-and-a-half hours of long overdue pampering. Finished it off with a couple of rides on my favorite escalator (Macy's) in the local mall and a great big banana/mango/coconut smoothie.

Stopped in at an outrageously expensive dress shop and tried on two equally outrageously expensive dresses (black and slinky but much too short), just for the hell of it! (That's what happens when you watch two successive re-runs of Sex and the City without pause. It skews your wiring, and you forget that life's expectations of you have been dramatically lowered over the past few years. ) But for a few minutes there, Carrie Bradshaw and "forty-something" Betty weren't all that far apart, and if I squint at just the right angle and the light isn't too bright ... Actually, fading memory combined with increasing myopia serves the illusion fairly well. Did notice when I reached home, though, that my freckles are growing and in some places have united with other freckles in a new pattern that I don't seem to have noticed before.

It's probably good that there's a world to save, or I'd surely get lost in trivial pursuits, and completely lose my sense of purpose.

Stopped in at See's Candy to pick up a cuppla chunks of vanilla walnut fudge, and headed for my apartment -- but not before stopping in at Circuit City for a new jazz CD that I've been wanting (Diana Krall) -- and to Walgreens for a new super promising Sun Block recommended by the "aromatherapist." (Didn't know there were such people or careers.) Every now and again ya just gotta get out in the real world and experience these things. ;-)

Tomorrow I promise to climb back into my harness, knit my brows appropriately, complete my report on the Patriot Act (waiting in my briefcase) so that I can prep my boss for a panel appearance next week. Tonight I'll just get into my peejays and watch Trading Spaces and consider that this day has provided some balance in my often duty-bound life of service. But do you know what? I'd have it no other way.

Stopped by the Marina on the drive home tonight.

Have gotten into the habit of taking one-hour vacations at frequent intervals of late. When I'm lucky, I catch windsurfers out on the bay -- looking like dragonflies skimming the water when they're off in the distance. When close up, the sight of young bronzed bodies pressing against the wind in precarious positions, but never stressing the risk factor that goes with most sports, but instead, always seeming to blend with the environment -- never to compete with it. Windsurfing seems to me to be more closely related to dance. Today there were several beautiful and colorful sails on the water, and it was lovely to add them to the sum of my day and an impossible week as an antidote to the madness. One of the joys of living here on the edge of the continent, at the edge of social and political change, and where the horizon is without end ... where only the Marin Headlands separates us from Japan and the China coast.

Second son, David, called a few moments ago with a reminder that tomorrow his little dancers are in performance at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts. They're 5 and 7 and are in their third year of dance (if you can imagine). This fall they will begin ballet training after having completed "Dance Explorations" (okay, so that means the Bunny Hop, Ballin' the Jack, and other impressive movement "experiences"). They've had two years of African dance under a wonderful teacher and this year added drumming to their repertoire. They are also students at the Berkeley Arts Magnet School, and are doing marvelously. Tomorrow night we'll gather at the Center for a dinner show in a community of proud kids and parents.

The EBCPA is a 35 year-old institution that is located in the heart of the Iron Triangle in the old downtown part of Richmond. It serves (until recent budget cuts and the elimination of the California Arts Council) about 2100 children in the schools, and an additional number at the center, itself. There are generous scholarships so that no child is left out, and the racial and socio-economic mix is as broad as one would find anywhere on the planet, save maybe the UN, itself. Do explore their web site. Have served on the Board of Directors for many years now, and find it one of the balancing factors in my life, a way to deal with some of the negativity that I can't control.

Which reminds me, tomorrow I'll tell you something about David. And, there's a David Song, too, as I recall. This is Friday, and I'm needing to log off and re-fuel. It's been a devastating week, and I've got wounds to lick!

Will look up the link for the EBCPA, too, and I do invite you to visit.

Attended the Richmond Chamber/Arts Commission Mixer last evening,

and it took only a few conversations to sense that the chaos of Washington is deeply effecting the local scene. Wondering if that's being reflected across the country? Talked with a number of city officials and staff and picked up what feels like a general deterioration in the ability to plan beyond a few months. For instance, Richmond has adopted a half-year budget. That's unheard of for a city of this size. It is so desperate for sales tax revenue, that little attention is being paid to the negative effects of "big box" retail on small businesses in the city, and it's small business that employs the most workers.

We're at the moment watching WalMart beginning to gather signatures in order to put on the next ballot, something that will make it possible for this national behemoth to override local ordinances against SuperCenters that devote more than a limited amount of space to foods. It's an important matter, since they are known to obliterate other markets from the a wide area. And, since the other chains pay higher wages and have more benefits, the unions are fighting hard to keep them out. Yet, the need for sales tax revenue is so great in these tough economic times, that -- unlike neighboring cities that have used zoning to screen them out -- Richmond appears to be actively wooing them.

The city has seen a 30% layoff in staff and is facing another major cut in January. The promise of WalMart jobs is sweetening the pot for this strapped city, but those who need work most won't be touched since drug-testing will eliminate many at the bottom of the economic ladder. And you have to figure that this city, like many inner cities, is seeing an increase in abuse and addiction due to increasing hopelessness, joblessness, and a failing public school system that's left so many illiterate and ill-equipped for the workforce. The streets are becoming meaner and the murder rate rising with each day. One has to figure that drugs are being used, cynically, as a pacification program since few of the poor have the wherewithal to import narcotics into the urban core. That means that some much higher up are the suppliers; higher ups who are never touched by law enforcement.

With hundreds of thousands of the poor now beginning to reach the lifetime limit (in January) on welfare (Welfare Reform), more and more will fall prey to the underground economy fueled by drugs. It's inevitable. More will become homeless, and still more won't survive at all. It is impossible to build enough prisons to house the "offenders," and we're eons away from treating what's happening on the streets as a crises in public health. This county has about 35 beds available for in-patient drug treatment and thousands in need. The wait for males is many months, and -- to my knowledge -- there are still no treatment facilities for women, though one is on the drawing boards for next year.

Even the "micro" is overwhelming. In fact, it's hard now to get beyond, "Osama bin Who?"

Heard a very disturbing report today ... .

It appears that the governor-elect is considering cutting back the legislature to part-time as the way to balance off his promises of a rollback of the license taxes and other bold promises. When I asked if this was even within the realm of possibility, I was assured that it is. Hope it's just a trial balloon ... .

The implication here is that the legislature will be reduced to participating in the budget process and little else. It also would mean that the state's power will lie in the hands of the governor and the lobbyists, since term limits have already robbed the legislature of its institutional memory. No one in the Assembly can serve more than six years, a mere interruption in one's career. Can you imagine what it will be like if -- even those terms were shortened so that few will have the ability to take the necessary time out to learn the process of governance? The system will have been gutted for all intents and purposes. One shudders to think of how the power shift to the governor would effect us. I don't think the phrase "power grab" can be over-used at this point.

In California, the initiative process has been creating havoc since Prop. 13.  It changed our ability to fund education from local taxes and distorted the entire tax structure. Since that time a series of state initiatives have carried mandates that leaves less and less revenue in the general fund for the legislature to budget. The realization of this fact helped kill Prop. 53 that would have caused us to take -- off the top -- moneys for roads, bridges and infrastructure, before a dollar could be assigned to health and education. Maybe we're beginning to understand that. Perhaps, next we'll begin to see that we've harmed ourselves with term limits and will repeal that awful ruling. After all, that came into being as a way to rid the legislature of then Speaker, Willie Brown. Willie's doing fine, thank you, as San Francisco's mayor, while we're still stuck with that onerous exit strategy of long ago.

Our office has been quiet today. We're all disbelieving present reality. At some point we must be able to deal with the changing of the guard in Sacramento. It will effect us, surely, but the one we represent is still away (following the bruising last session), and will return on Monday. We'll get a read on the capitol's expectations by the end of the week. Meanwhile, I plan to stay in the micro and avoid any on air encounters with anyone in any office higher than mayor!

Have gotten into the habit of using my remote to zap Ashcroft, Bush, Powell (both), Rumsfeld, and now Schwarzenegger! Maybe I'll have to give up CSpan completely, except for Booknotes.

If I hear any more about this proposal to cut back on the time of the legislative sessions, I'll let you know. Hope it's only a rumor, but then I recall a time when I heard the possibility of our electing the Terminator was "only a rumor," too.

Just didn't have the heart to write anything yesterday ... .

The election took its toll, and a kind of numbness has set in. Will probably crash out of this in a few days, and be ready to react. For the moment, though, the lack of feeling is a blessing. Some of this comes from the deep sense of the "too late-ness" for me. After a long life of watching the pendulum swing left to right -- then right to left -- I should be finding comfort in the knowledge that this, too, shall pass. But this is different. There is little or no chance that I have enough time to see history self-correct.

There's another disturbing factor. Over the past several decades, that pendulum has failed to reach the left side -- but has swung right to middle-left, from right to right-left, center to right, and finally, right. The Left side of the national debate has all but disappeared. It would have completely disappeared except for the fact that a great influence in our lives is the Bay Areas' and the country's very first public network, Pacifica Radio, which surely has influenced the political climate of the San Francisco Bay Area and all of the 9 counties that make it up. We totally rejected the recall. Arnold did not win the north coast, but was resoundingly defeated here. The statistics are dramatic. Speaking "truth to power" has kept us in balance, and given us a sense of connectedness to others of like mind.

One might wonder why this huge state doesn't divide into two? The southern end of the state is the most populous and therefore has the greatest representation in the legislature. All of the celebrity representatives have come from that part of the state where star power counts. When I think about it, there should have been little surprise in the outcome on Tuesday. After all, they've sent to Washington, song and dance man, George Murphy, Sonny Bono, Ronald Reagan, among others, and now The Terminator.

The maps in today's newspapers shows that the Bay Area and all of the northern coast voted solidly against the recall. This would explain the optimism we were all feeling in the days leading to election day. We've never seen greater participation. In the office where I did phone-banking on election day, people were lined up waiting for a turn at the phones. There were many volunteers doing poll watching and driving folks to the polls. We were ecstatic at the turnout which was unprecedented (80% in San Francisco!). We were surrounded by a world of people who shared our concerns and our enthusiasm for the process.

On election day I went from the phone banking to city hall. As a member of the Arts Commission, I needed to participate in the presentation of our annual report at the regular meeting of the city council. That was at 7:30. Drove home immediately afterward to find the vote count well underway and concession speeches already being made. I was in shock! How could this be? Slowly undressed and climbed into bed without watching the painful process unfolding to a national audience that vacillated between shock, ridicule, and disbelief .

The words playing against the back of my closed eyelids as I fell off to sleep were, "...and California was to serve as the bulwark of resistance to the president's re-election campaign."
Dropped off to a troubled sleep after a brief cry. Just too tired to spend any more energy on "the world."

Today I go back to dealing with the micro. The macro will have to take care of itself. So today it's the Barbara Alexander Academy project, and tonight the Arts Commission and Chamber of Commerce Mixer at the Convention Center. Will reel in my vulnerability and resist the temptation to watch the political carnage that is bound to take place as the process of transition begins. State Treasurer, Secretary of State, and Senator Pro Tem John Burton are probably salivating at the thought of peeling back the state of the state to this neophyte cocky governor-designate. Would love to be a fly on the wall in the Capitol over the next week or so. Watch for some dramatic back-peddling as Ahnold begins to see what he's stepped into. It will be sobering. But maybe not nearly as sobering as the pictures in my head right now as life continues to rival the most bizarre of scenarios.

Having put my worry into words, ... feeling better. Short of joining some movement to divide the state just below Big Sur (couldn't bear to give that up), there's little that I can think of to do.

Secede?

Phew!

It's been a full day starting with voting before heading for my office, meeting with a member of the Contra Costa County Board of Education at the site of what may become the new Barbara Alexander Academy (next fall), then to stop off for a short visit with a friend from my youth -- Jackie. That was the best part of the day, by far.

We quickly picked up where we left off some years ago with scarcely a breath between sentences. I'd forwarded the link to my blog a few days ago, and learned that she'd been up well past midnight going over the words and remembering. Out came the albums and into the past we quickly found ourselves. I'm so hopeful that she and others who are still in the area will make themselves available to be interviewed for this important oral history. She agreed that it should happen, and maybe we can try at some time in the near future -- to get together in a group and reminisce with a tape recorder and video camera in the room. That thought came to me as I drove to the Democratic headquarters a few miles away.

Learned almost as soon as I arrived that there is an unprecedented number of Californians making their way to the polling places. This morning I had to stand in line for the first time in memory before casting my ballot. It feels hopeful. As I worked from the call sheets over the next several hours, was further heartened by the number of people who told me that they'd already voted. "Long lines at the voting polls!" is what the radio is blaring even as I write!

In our usual way, maybe California is reacting to the ridicule that's been heaped on us by the rest of the country, the insult of the last presidential election (Democrats outnumber others by a long way), and just doing what we do best, lead the way into the future! (Don't I wish!)

Came home to grab a bite then off to an award ceremony as a member of the Arts Commission (at city hall) at seven o'clock. It's just as well. The wait between now and the time that the polls close will be unbearable. When I get back the vote count will have begun. Will watch the returns on my computer (Secretary of State's website - it's public so you can use it, too), but will have my television tuned to the coverage on the Comedy Channel (seriously). The Daily Show cast is doing a Special that will help to celebrate if all goes well, and make defeat bearable -- if it doesn't.

Let us pray!

As you may be aware ...,

we're on the eve of the big special election, and everyone I know is working madly to bring in the vote. We share a sense of real desperation with a touch of disbelief that the governor we elected only last November may be ousted in favor of a neophyte body builder! Something has gone terribly wrong with the process, and no one seems to understand just why. It's pretty frightening.

Find myself wondering why those 15 women waited so long to come forward? And, these are legitimate charges by credible women, but we've grown so accustomed to these last minute hit pieces that cynicism kicks in and makes some doubt the validity of the complaints. Not so with those I work with, because we are just familiar enough with some of the sources of news, that we know these particular reports are legitimate. But we've certainly seen the times when they weren't, and that they emanated from all camps, liberal and conservative. It's the nature of the political process in these times of mass media and deep pockets.

Tomorrow we'll walk precincts and do the phone-banking, help to get voters to the polling places and do anything and everything humanly possible to stop the recall. I admit that -- to some extent -- I find the ritual exciting and usually relish this exercise in democracy. This time it's different. I'm running scared. Despite my feeling that those polls cannot be right because not one person that I know has been polled. No one has asked my intentions. Maybe there are millions like me out there who have not been counted and who will be the no voters. But then I worry about the more than one million who had already voted before the disclosures of the gross sexual misbehaviors of Mr. Schwarzenegger had been revealed by the L.A. Times. I cannot believe that most women voters won't be turned off by those charges, but in the few interviews I've seen on the tube in the last hour, many are accepting his denials that this is no more than "puke politics!" (his words). What an un-statesman-like praise that is! He should fire his PR firm, or they should muzzle him! What a horror show this has become.

I'm persuaded by Greg Palast's last column that links Arnold with Enron and Ken Lay. It sounds reasonable. The story is that there were several meetings earlier in the year when the pending court case in which Governor Gray Davis and Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamente are suing in the name of the state in order to recover $9 billion dollars in energy overcharges. It appears that the vanity recall initiated by Darrel Issa afforded the opportunity to insert Arnold into the ballot process, crowd Issa out, and try to capture the state house and kill the lawsuit at the same time.

There are some problems with that for me, I'm not sure that -- even if their ploy is successful and Arnold makes it into the Capitol -- he's faced with a Democratic administration -- from top to bottom -- both houses (Assembly and Senate) -- so how that could possibly be managed is a mystery to me. However, the present administration in Washington (where this is assumed to be coming from) hasn't got all that great a record on exit strategies, or follow up plans. The only one they've pulled off successfully was the seating of the president, but that took the Supreme Court to accomplish!

On Wednesday I'll try to get back into my "past lives," but over the next 48 hours I'm expecting to be preoccupied with the immediacy of this $70 million dollar recall election in a state that's already facing a $9 billion dollar shortfall in the coming year. The lion's share of our staff time was taken up with the budget only a few months ago. We're still smarting from the pressure of that. The new budget process will begin in only a few months. In order to keep on top of that, I'm sure that the governor's staff is deep in the preliminary stages of planning even as the state struggles with this untimely election. The budget must be in place in early spring. The effects of this craziness will be profound, and the voters have no idea of just how devastating this additional loss can be in a time of a national crisis in the economy.

Not sure why, but I do have a feeling that -- just maybe -- the polls are skewed by the media, and that the vote will be closer than expected. I cannot believe California will not turn back the recall. But, either way, look for this to eventually be settled in the courts. We may not have the outcome for many days. And, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that many of those who voted absentee early will be sorry that they did so.

Now I'm off to do some phone-banking tonight, and probably won't write again until after this agony is past.

Vote no on the Recall!

No on Prop. 54!

No on Prop. 53!

If you need an explanation, send me an email.

After a long and lazy Saturday ... .

enjoyed a fine dinner at a local Cantonese restaurant with a cousin and dear friend, Doug Allen. We've forged a deep and warm cross-generational friendship that seems to enrich us both each time we connect.

Doug is one of many writers in our family. He is a reporter and columnist for the Berkeley Daily Planet at the moment, but in the past has written for the San Jose Mercury News, the Metro Papers, the East Bay Express, and more. He has served as literary critic for a number of publishers from time to time, and is deep in the writing of his first novel. We talked about that a bit last night and I will be one of his readers, before he submits his manuscript to a publisher.

He brought along a copy of a document that I've been wanting to have for my family archives for ages. I'd seen it about a year ago at a family reunion and coveted it ever since.

It's a letter written in response to an inquiry from (cousin) Ivy Y. Lewis, another of our family elders. At that time Ivy was compiling a wealth of materials left by her father (and my first husband's uncle):

July 27, 1977

Dear Mrs. Lewis:

By California law, each California County has issued a biennial publication, the Great Register of Voters. You may be interested to know that Edward West Parker is listed in the 1872 Great Register of San Francisco County Voters as having registered to vote on April 15, 1870, the very first day of registration under the 15th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He listed his occupation as a boot maker; his birthplace as Virginia; and his residence as 786 Harrison Street. He gave his age as 54 on that date of registration.

You may be interested to know that my card catalog was published a few months ago in three volumes. Copies have been presented both to the East Bay Negro Historical Society, Oakland, and the African American Historical Society, San Francisco, in case you may wish to see it.

Some years ago, Mr. Williams L. Patterson told me that he had seen several copies of the San Francisco Elevator (1860s - 1880s) which were then held by local relatives of his. It occurs to me that these copies should be carefully indexed for the historical information contained in them. If you learn of the whereabouts of these papers and can secure permission to index them, I certainly would be most interested in so doing.

With best wishes,

Sincerely yours,

James Abajian

If you can imagine -- after looking at the dates on these yellowed pages -- that this was not very long after the State of California was chartered and entered the union, it may give you some sense of how hard it was for some of us to relate to the great consternation that accompanied the passage of the Voter's Rights legislation some 60 years later!

After returning from dinner, Doug and I talked late into the night. He'd brought along another photograph that showed about 18 lovely, animated young women in their early twenties. It was taken at some social event of a club I once belonged to, as did his mother, Maybelle. It was known as "The Women" (Inspired by the old classic film). It reminded me of something I wrote about a few days ago -- about my world prior to World War II -- and the social context in which we lived. There I was in this photograph standing at the far right end of the group, and for a moment I recognized (viscerally) the young Betty of that first oral history interview. This was she, and she seems very far away now. So much life has been lived. So many bridges crossed. So much pain endured. And so much joy, overall... .

During our conversation, I realized that our childhood and youth had been not unlike that of any other immigrant groups. The Portuguese, Italians, Irish, etc., whose families had come from other forms of oppression, from other corners of the world. Many of our families had escaped the pain of slavery and Jim Crow by moving west, and many of us were the first generation to grow up in a place where racial segregation didn't yet have a firm footing. Like some of our offspring today who take civil rights for granted for the most part, we reveled in our youth with as much pride and abandon as any other youngsters of any other ethnic background.

The children of that pioneer Black population might have made a fascinating study of the kind of world African Americans would have produced for themselves, were the chains of racial prejudice not used to suppress and deny the natural upward spiral enjoyed by most other groups of immigrants in the general population. This may have been an important opportunity missed. We've begun to die off now, and there aren't too many of my generation still around to work with, but what few there are should by all means be recorded for the sake of history. And, like many other pre-World War II Californians, we too are waiting for all you strangers to go home! (Said with a smile, of course.)

...Which reminds me to stop now and place a call to an old friend, Jackie, whom I've allowed to get away -- in the busyness of everyday life. I'll arrange a time this afternoon to visit. I'll take along my photo of "The Women," and watch her face light up!

More later.

Just read back through recent posts and noticed ...

a mention of the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Little did I know when I first heard his fiery oratory at that Hotel Windemere luncheon in Chicago during the Sixties, that some years later I would serve as co-chair of his Northern California campaign for the presidency. The other co-chair was Mayor Gus Newport of Berkeley.

We own a commercial building in South Berkeley where our small family business (Reid's) is located. South Berkeley at that time was predominantly an African American community, and mainly very low income. By donating the second floor of my building for the Jackson campaign headquarters, there was suddenly some added importance to the area and the community rose to the occasion. We covered the building with banners, and the windows with posters. There was a constant flow of political activists from everywhere in the nation going in and and out of that small building. The nation had come to South Berkeley, for at least a little while.

That was the year when the Democratic Convention was held in San Francisco, and that brought the national figures in to move among us. There were not only big name politicians, but musicians and performing artists, as well, all responding to the excitement of having a man of color -- finally a serious candidate for the highest office in the land. It was unprecedented.

I recall being asked at the time by white news reporter, "...isn't it unrealistic to expect that Rev. Jackson could ever be elected, and isn't that discouraging to those working so hard here?" "Nope," said I. "We've already won. Jesse Jackson doesn't need to be president. He has already opened the door to the possibility, and raised the hopes of young black kids in every ghetto in the country. There's really nothing more that he needs to do in order to claim success." We all knew that. We were realists. I still believe that this was his greatest contribution.

I remember watching his great speech at the convention that year -- he pulled out all the stops -- it was brilliant! He was equal to that other great orator, Gov. Mario Cuomo, and was ours. Watched the convention activities on television not only with the volunteer precinct walkers and phone bankers of every race, but with a group of young black student activists from U.C. Berkeley, Cal State at Hayward, and S.F. State., with a significant number of street kids (whom I knew were the local drug dealers) sprinkled in among them. The wistfulness and pride in that room was palpable. Jesse had won long before election day. The presidency was not the prize we were seeking. Though it was rarely voiced, everyone of us knew it.

Our little building had long since become an institution in that community, but after the experience of hosting the Jackson Northern California campaign, it was hallowed ground. It no longer belonged to us, but had taken on a life of its own, and became the place where minor miracles could be expected as routine. It was guarded by the young men on the street. Not only did they not loiter in front of it, but graffiti was almost unheard of. From time to time I would arrive to find plant cuttings carefully wrapped in wet papers towels and placed at the front door for our small patch of earth along the fence. On one day it was a well-worn doormat placed at the entrance from the street with a note that read, "the rains are comin' and you don't want folks trackin' mud all over your floor, Miss Betty." It was from Fred, rarely sober black veteran of the bombing of Pearl Harbor who lived in a tiny shack in the back yard of the house beyond the fence, at the back of the store.

Have since that time watched the career of Jesse Jackson wax and wane. I remember first meeting him as the charismatic leader of Chicago's Operation Breadbasket and later Operation Push, having just returned from the south where he'd been with Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. This was before the assassination. Somewhere among my letters and papers, there is one written about that first impression. Hope it hasn't been lost. It was published in the magazine of the UU Layman's League, I believe, and wish I'd had the sense to value such items. But then, that was before I realized that I might live long enough to BE Black History!

Met the camera crew and the NPS people at the memorial as planned ... .

There were a few nervous moments, but the edginess passed quickly. Spoke to Rick Smith of the national park service as we were walking toward the memorial, "...I do appreciate the fact that you and Judy Hart continue to seek me out when I'm such a wild card, and you never are sure what I'll say or do." He laughed and said reassuringly, "that's why we call you."

That removed any sense that I would be expected to spout the company line. After all, I knew absolutely nothing about the Ford Company grant, had only heard of it yesterday and knew none of the details. However, Ford was sponsoring this nationwide campaign, and surely had the right to put their imprint on it. It would be interesting to see how this balance would be worked out. Needn't have worried. Judy signaled with a subtle frown and ever so slight shake of the head to ignore any pressure that might rise, and it was freeing.

As it turned out, most of the questions were generic, of the kind that one might expect. Didn't feel particularly sparkling in my answers, but did feel at least adequate. But -- you should have been around for the Betty-to-Betty repartee on the drive home. I was brilliant! Isn't that always the way? Cameras and mikes were gone and the party was over, but brain was deeply involved in instant replay, complete with the benefit of appropriate editing.

This evening I attended a party hosted by a member of the Richmond City Council, interesting man with a deep respect for historic preservation. Learned from Judy Morgan, Chair of the Chamber of Commerce, that the pieces taped today will be edited and aired nationally on November 11th. She told me that they will be used to invite Rosie's all across the country to participate in the collection of oral histories on an interactive website. Interesting project. I am surely only the first of many who will be interviewed over the coming year.

It pleases me that the nation will get to see the Rosie memorial, a wonderful structure celebrating the woman of the home front workforce. It was designed by two San Francisco women. The work is 400 feet long; the approximate length of a victory ship. But you'll see it when the piece airs in November. This may be the first national exposure, and I can't wait for that to happen.

Second thoughts? Of course.

When asked why I believe that the Ford work is important, my answer is something I can't recall -- even these few hours later.

But, on the freeway:

"...it is important because this work gives us a chance to revisit a time when racial bigotry was rampant, but to now revisit that history with a sensitivity informed by all of the events that followed -- the desegregation of the armed forces, the March on Washington, Rosa Parks, Dr. King, Selma, the Voting Rights Act -- Birmingham, Freedom Summer of '64, Medgar Evers, two dead Kennedys, Vietnam and the international peace movement it spawned, the birth of the United Nations. Richmond was the starting place for a great social experiment that drastically changed the lives of women, and it's still going on. What happened here may have served to jump-start the new revolution, or at least helped to shape the future that we're now living in. This new park and the old Ford Plant mark the birthplace of that dramatic social change."

Wish I'd thought of all that this afternoon. But isn't that always the way?

Wasn't completely honest last night.

While it's quite true that I was feeling not quite earth-anchored, the reason was being withheld. Not sure why, except that -- as with so many aspects of my life -- the truth feels so "over-the-top."

Received a call at my office yesterday from Superintendent Judy Hart of the Rosie The Riveter WWII/Home Front National Historical Park (a mouthful!), announcing that there had been an award made by the Ford Motor Company to the park-in-progress and that someone was arriving from Washington, D.C., today from the National Park Service for that presentation. Also, someone else was flying up from Los Angeles from a public relations firm to "cover things." They will create public service announcements, an article for Working Mothers Magazine, something for Time Magazine, and, and, and, and, "...would you meet us at the memorial tomorrow for an interview and some photos?" And, we'll need you there from 1:40 until about 2:00!

It's clear that the event will be for the purpose of doing "Rosie as Icon," and that the articles will be about the generosity of the Ford Motor Company, of course. I'll be but a blip on the screen (just how much life can one crowd into a 20 minute interview, after all), and in some ways it's little more than an ego boost, and for a minute there I felt all of the giddiness that goes with such adventures.

Like the day that my live-in niece, Gail, came home from work to the McNeill-Leherer News Hour show in our den video-taping. We were already sure that the world bisected right through my kitchen. She quietly went about making tea for the crew as if there was nothing extraordinary going on at all.

I suspected that my neighbors (I was relatively new to community) -- from the number of media trucks lined up in front of our home -- and the amount of equipment moving in and out -- they probably figured that the nice little ole lady may be sheltering a drug lab and it would all turn up on the evening news. Not so, they were simply there to tape a segment about seniors online. I was only one of several members of Seniornet who were paving the way toward this new world of cyberspace communities. We were some of the earliest of those who helped to pioneer the brave new world.

When I reached home last night, the glow had worn off, I wasn't all that sure that I should be doing this at all. And there is a familiar ring to it ... .After all, there's African American Rosie, Mary "Peace" Head who still has her hard hat (which she now decorates with sequins and artificial flowers). Mary is a legitimate veteran of the home front wars and was a welder, I believe. She still attends parades and city festivals in full regalia whenever the occasions demand it.

I'm remembering now that -- when the HUAC (House UnAmerican Activities Committee) hearings were being conducted in San Francisco -- there were those disturbing scenes of protesters being hosed down the steps of the federal building. There were also the protests involving the razing of the old International Hotel. I was living in the suburbs at that time, far away from the black community and the field of action. But by that time I'd become a magnet for the more politically liberal members of the community and was looked to for explanations of what was happening beyond the hills that divided and protected us all from the action.

At first I used to puzzle at just why I was being asked to explain the actions of political situations I had no part in? In time it became clear that there was a legitimate role to play as a middle-class African American. I found a new meaning in middle-class black power. Since it was I who was being asked the questions, it seemed that there was a responsibility to get out there and find some answers; to act as a bridge in order to become a conduit for power. Consequently, I marched for Peoples' Park in Berkeley, stood vigil by slowing huge trucks with the Quakers at roadside in Port Chicago, demonstrated at the Oakland Induction Center, raised money for the Panther Party, and wrote and performed songs about it all.

No one, at that time, was going to give power to a black brotha standing on the corner with a brick in his hand, but I was experiencing a surge of power I would never have dreamed possible. I was a young wife and mother, attractive, bright and politically aware, and by that time had become an active member of the just-forming Unitarian-Universalist Church where I was surrounded by enthusiastic politically-wise social activists. It was safe to be "democratic" at me. The mayor of our town, Doug Page, was a member of our church, as were the head of the mental health association and my Kaiser pediatrician. I now felt cushioned against the pain that our family had endured only a short time before. It was up to me to get into my wood-paneled station-wagon, into some comfortable shoes, mentally fix my hard hat at the right angle, and become educated. And I did.

If it was I who lived in close proximity to those who made the rules, then it was I who needed to try to influence how those rules were going to be made. Maybe I'm still doing just that.

This afternoon I'll slip back into Thirty-Something Betty for a rationale for doing "Rosie." Just as there were no guarantees that anyone would have established cross-racial relationships strong enough to allow for the asking of the important questions of others in the Fifties -- this may still be true. I still speak truth as I know it, and to anyone who will ask. Maybe that's enough reason to accept the mantle. Maybe this is still a legitimate use of me. And maybe I'll never really know the why of it. And ... maybe it's time to just settle for the fun and the ego-satisfaction of it all.

Maybe the real question is just why the Mary Peace Heads of the world are still not being asked the important questions, directly? (And, yes, yesterday I did suggest that she might be more appropriate.) Guess we're just not quite there yet. And until then ... .

It took an endless number of games ...

of Solitaire to get myself to write tonight. Nothing seems important enough to share... Like one of those days with many starts and few endings. As if I'm somewhere in the middle of something not yet defined ... and I won't know what of the many little things I engaged in today will have any meaning tomorrow -- or the next day... . The kind of day that causes you to feel tired and suspended in space ... listening to silence as if expecting ... what? Not sure. Maybe the next phone call will ground me. The last was from Dorian -- and there's always an unfinished quality to those.

Not sure that I've told you that Dorian lives quite independently in her own apartment across town, about 30 minutes away by car. She is a client (I believe the new PC word is "consumer") of the Regional Center, with a case manager and ongoing services that makes it possible for her to live on her own. She travels on public transportation to a job in a "sheltered" situation -- a few hours at small pay, but with a sense of service.

Over the years she's had a series of such positions. She is assigned a job coach from one of the many nonprofits in the area. This has enabled her at different times to be trained as a dog groomer, collater at a local print shop, a soft-drink-machine-filler-upper, a stock girl at Long's Drugs, etc. Two days a week she spends in a marvelous program called NIAD, a comprehensive arts studio where she can dabble in any of the visual arts and does well at it. At the moment she's involved in block printing, but she has a number of cat portraits in tempura in the gallery.

She goes skiing in winter, is an enthusiastic Special Olympics athlete with medals in almost every sport (but so does everybody else). She goes camping in summer and has taken at least one cruise to Ensenada. All such activities are with people of her community and with capable staff to run interference. Over the years she's grown less and less dependent upon me, but thoroughly participates in and enjoys all family holiday activities. We shop together several times a month and go together to do ladies stuff at the beauty salon now and then.

There's some sadness in her life and an unrequited love, (maybe that should be unreturned love) that causes her (and mom) pain from time to time, but what woman doesn't go through that experience throughout her life? He's also mentally disabled and despite all, I often feel that they have compatible neuroses -- at least to the extent that she's earth mother and he needs one. Like all mom's, I want far more for her than life can deliver. Guess we want that for all those we love, and for ourselves as well.



Wrote this after my first marriage ended, and some time before divorce and remarriage:

Alone Dream

Wishing to be alone ... far from the world I've known,

a candle for lighting ... taking delight in

daring to be my own ... all my own

I'll wish me a cloud to fly, and maybe a moon to sky

I'll wish me a world within a world where there can be

a love with his own dream to share this alone dream with me

I've many a wine to taste and precious few hours to waste

So I must build me a world within a world where there can be

a man with his own dream to share this alone dream with me.

There's an interesting thing going on in my head when I'm remembering these lyrics. Each song comes back whole. The music remains etched without change -- note upon note -- as composed many years ago. A few made it to tape, but many are simply in my head, still, complete. Fascinating.

I wonder how many more are waiting to be revealed to me?

The caption reads, “Driver, bicyclist shot near Richmond Park ... .”

This would be 4th Street Park in the heart of the Iron Triangle. If the time of the incident is correct, I visited that park within two hours after the police and emergency helicopter had gone away. I went there to find one of the players I’d like to involve in a new plan to begin to build an infrastructure upon which a new Barbara Alexander Academy can rise. He was not in the community center as I’d been led to believe, so I climbed back into my car and returned to my office in El Cerrito, totally unaware of the drama that had taken place only hours before. I also realized – as I read this morning’s front page -- that this has become so commonplace in my life and in the lives of this community, that it is almost a non-event. Lives are snuffed out so casually in this culture of violence that we’ve trained ourselves to ignore the body count in order to maintain any semblance of sanity.

I read further:

“…This is bad, and it’s not going to stop here, either. ‘You shoot my cousin, well, I’m going to shoot you.’ And it’s over nothing,” Evans said. Maybe Friday night there will be another shooting, maybe later tonight, maybe the night after that. You never know. I don’t understand it… .”

Closed my eyes and remembered other places, other times. That cold February in Chicago where I met for the first time a contingent of the Blackstone Rangers. It was a meeting of the National Black Caucus at the Hotel Windemere. Young Jessye Jackson, head of Operation Breadbasket, was the inspiring lunchtime speaker and he’d brought along a group of these young men as a kind of honor guard. These were young men with a purpose. They were clearly proud young black nationalists. They wore the uniform and walked the walk. They were brought in from the streets by a caring community of elders at a critical time in their development

Thought of the Black Panthers, a group I was more familiar with, and had some affiliation with from time to time. They, too, were young people with a purpose. They, too, were proud black nationalists who wore the uniform and walked the walk.

Also realized today that most ordinary folks might not really see any differences between those earlier groups and what’s occurring on the streets of today. The differences are monumental. Those kids came out of a culture of hope, and they had the audacity to create their own opportunities for bringing change and against all odds.

What we have now – and what is being perceived as “crime in the streets” is in reality a leaderless revolution born of hopelessness and despair.

Written on the plane coming home from Chicago way back when:

Little Boy Black

Little Boy Black, Little Boy Black

City streets callin’ my little boy back

Once ‘roun’ the trashcan, twice 'roun' the pole

A foot in the gutter, a look down a hole

Little Boy... Little Boy Black

Little Boy Black, Little Boy Black

Evenin’s a’comin’ , will momma get back?

Another long day of being unseen

A momma too weary to fuss, “where you been?”

You’re such a little boy,

Little Boy Black

Little Boy Black, Little Boy Black

When will the judge let your daddy come back?

Once ‘roun’ the bottle, twice 'roun' the drunk

Asleep in the gutter rolled by a spunky little boy

Naughty Boy Black!

Little Boy Black, beautiful black!

All grown up now, to war and back

A lifetime now of being unseen

Not even a country to ask, “where you been?”

You’re such a lonely boy,

Lonely Boy Black

Little Boy Black, Little Boy Black

Angry, they call you! A militant Black.

Quick! Down the alley, duck behind the trees!

Dead in the gutter by the guns of police …

Bloody Boy!

Bloody Boy Black!

Little Boy Black, Little Boy Black

City streets callin’ my little boy back

Once ‘roun’ the headstone, twice 'roun' the grave

Hate may avenge you but only lovin’ can save

All the little boys,

Boys Black.

Thinking a lot today about California Proposition #54,

Regent Ward Connerly's controversial initiative that would remove race as a factor and move us all toward his hoped-for "colorblind society." I'm hopeful that it will be roundly defeated, but am certain that confusion reigns among people of good will. Like many state propositions, this one borrows heavily from the language of civil rights, and will surely lead many down the primrose path of deception.

My physical appearance is racially ambiguous. One might assume that there would be some relief in finally being able to opt out of "checking the boxes" of identification. Did that years ago. Upon entering the workforce at the university back in the Seventies, I made the decision to just check all those little boxes, including "other" and let it go at that. When the interviewer asked about it I just told her to take a look at me ... she laughed!

It was probably at that point that I decided that race -- at some point in successive racial intermarriages -- becomes a political choice. And, in time, I made that political choice unconditionally. I am African American. When I choose to break it down, I can identify Spanish (Islenos), French, Choctaw, Shoshone, Creole, English, African on both sides. Almost any African American would find such mixtures in their backgrounds, with few exceptions. It just proves that we come from a long line of people who loved enough to cross a lot of unimportant lines of separation. No big deal.

Through my marriage, my children added to that mix, German, Jewish (their paternal grandmother, Reba Whitelaw Reid, wasn't too sure since she was a foundling from New York); Seminole; and David's wife and their children's mother is from the Philippines. His four children moved those "lines of separation" even farther out than before.

I remember that I was told by the Womens' Health Initiative (longevity study) that African Americans were less likely to suffer from osteoporosis than whites. For just a minute there it felt comforting. Then I laughed when a crazy thought crossed my mind, "...wonder if my genes know?"

Back to Prop. 54: Do you recall in the recent past when it was acknowledged far and wide that African Americans were the largest minority group in the general population? That was before there was a critical policy decision just before the last census, to allow those of us of mixed races to so specify. Clever ploy, that. At that time there was such a thing as "the black vote.

Where I had earlier refused to be classified out of sheer stubbornness, now I could see clearly the underlying strategy. (I wonder if Ward Connerly picked that up?)

Only a few months after the census was taken, it was publicly announced far and wide that the Black population was now the second largest minority group in the nation. Surprise, surprise! We had been surpassed by the Latinos!

We were the same people. If anything, under the former "one drop rule" our numbers were growing exponentially. In fact, our population was exploding -- and someone had surely noticed and worked out a way to deal with it. We lost significant political power in the process.

Regent Connerly joined the game, perhaps in innocence. Perhaps by design. Perhaps what we have here is a simple case of paranoia on my part. Maybe ... .

Anyway, in the way that history has of repeating its lessons, another song comes to mind.
It was written during the stormy Sixties when I was being tossed between worlds -- Black and White -- active nationally in the Black Revolution while living in white suburbia in California with all of the trappings of the "good life." I was experiencing being not quite black enough in one world, and not quite white enough in the other. After a period of feeling as if I were nothing, I wrote this song as testimony to the fact that I was really everything.

To Each of Me

To each of me
to love within the reach of me
and if this love could teach to me
why each of me, in turn,
should torture so the soul of me
and tear apart the whole of me
within life's play -- each role of me
must speak to me
must learn

that blackness and the white of me
are just the day and night of me
are not the wrong or right of me
can't you see -- there's got to be

some answer to this planet's pain
my microcosmic world -- insane!
if only I could make you see
it's here to see -- just look at me
there is within me all of you
from distant lands, the whole of you
the dreams, the heart, the soul of you
if only you would see ...
that black and white are part of it
my brown is at the heart of it
and blending was the start of it
and someday it shall be
that blackness and the white of us
will be the day and night of us
and not the wrong or right of us
the weak or might of us

then we'll be free!

Having worked that through, I could then go back to being my black self in celebration of the uniqueness of being a one-of-a-kind person. Maybe it's all in being allowed to make one's own choices. Maybe identity can't be imposed from outside.

Just maybe...

Slavery is not an abstraction to me, but visceral, nor is the thought of reparations irrelevant ... .

My slave ancestor, Leontine Breaux Allen, died when I was a 27 years-old mother of two. She was born into slavery in 1846 and died in 1948 at the age of 102. She raised my mother, Lottie (born in the year 1894), along with her own children and many grandchildren, in a little house beside the Mississippi in Welcome, St. James Parish, Louisiana. I knew her.  I got to meet her during a visit to New Orleans when I was about sixteen. Her mother was Celestine "of no last name",  the wife of Eduoard Breaux, Cajun landowner. Among my papers is the marriage certificate retrieved from the Catholic Diocese in Baton Rouge. It is written in French, bearing his signature and her "X." The date of the marriage was 1865, one month after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Leontine was 19 at the time of her parents' marriage. Freedom came for both Leontine and her mother, but not before the day of the proclamation.


My mother lived to be 101. Miscegenation clearly does not foul the gene pool.

It's been a lazy Sunday afternoon ... .

The house is still with only the sounds of an occasional skateboarder passing through the carport ... I enjoy the sounds of young people at play.

Thinking about that 20-24 year-old Betty who was daunted by that interview and that's beginning to become clearer.

That period in history was a time when our world got completely turned on its head and evolved into a ten-year period of redefinition -- not only for me -- but for all of my relatives and friends. You might imagine what it would have been like for those of us who had lived in the pre-segregation West. While we'd grown up with full knowledge of the curse of racial bigotry, we lived above it all, in what might be called affinity groups (affinity communities, I suppose) in much the same way that Italian-Americans, Portuguese-Americans, Irish-Americans, etc., lived their lives. We shared cultural celebrations in our various neighborhoods, but had our own African-American Creole-based rich culture to identify with.

There were clearly differences, but I certainly had the feeling that we were together by choice, and -- though our parents were -- for the large part -- the service workers of the times, and fully aware of "their place," my generation enjoyed a rich social life well controlled by our parents, who planned our activities and guarded us from harm to the extent that they could.

There were coming out parties (quite formal), tennis tournaments that brought out the opposing teams from Southern California, beauty contests and picnics and skating parties. Public events such as big band concerts brought everyone out to dance to Duke Ellington, Jimmy Lunceford, Jazz Festivals. As a young teen I traveled to San Pablo Park in Berkeley with Papa George to watch the traveling colored baseball teams play to packed stands. The campuses (San Jose State, U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State, Sacramento State) all had very active fraternities and sororities that added to our academic and social lives.

At that time there were no more than about 17,000 African Americans in the entire northern part of the state, including Sacramento, with several families as far away as Guinda and Marysville to the North, and Seaside and San Mateo to the south and west of us. We were spread throughout the East Bay and San Francisco, with many families having arrived in California around the turn of the century.

When World War II began and the great migration brought over 100,000 southern whites and blacks into the Bay Area almost overnight, we were simply buried under.  Everything changed. "Gentlemen's Agreements" with respect to housing became formalized, and Jim Crow restrictions -- once only covert -- became the prevailing systems of operation.

To that point, other than the time when my high school drama teacher -- after a fine reading I'd done for the part of Maria in Maxwell Anderson's Winterset -- kept me after class to explain why she couldn't give me the part because I'd have to play against a white boy ... I'd really not seen much real racial prejudice. Besides, I'd been too busy having a great time with my own friends, separate and apart from my (white) school life.

Small wonder that 20 year-old Betty didn't have the words to describe life in those years. The transitions were dramatic, and the changing context in which our lives were being lived was overwhelming. Someone once told me - much later in life -- that it was really hard to feel superior to folks who simply refused to be inferior. That would pretty well have described most of us. We were a pretty confident bunch, many of whom grew up to be the community leaders in the decades following the war. But someone had shuffled the deck, and we found ourselves co-existing and in competition with educated and accomplished African Americans from all over the country and the world who had followed in the wake of the great Black migration of war workers from southern states..

This was long before the Civil Rights struggles of the Sixties, and the advent of Dr. King. And a new ethos was evolving in the black community, and many of us were hearing the "Negro National Anthem" for the very first time. It was a tumultuous period of change for us all, and in many ways, the radical changes were costly. They also brought a new reality that replaced all that had gone before.

It was in 1950, five years after the war's end, that we built our home in Walnut Creek, and tried to return to an earlier and less complicated time. That was not to be. It had never occurred to us that the term "middle-class African Americans" exists only in the minds of middle-class African Americans! A nigger is a nigger is a nigger in the minds of whites. And we became the "first black family on the block" of middle-class and upper-middle-class whites who had moved into the valley to escape the scourge of the black migration. Little did we know how much pain that would bring. And my husband's family had come to California during the Civil War. Our children were 4th generation Californians.

(See California Black Pioneers Page)

Not sure of the years, ...

but it was during the period when Bob was just out of high school and off for the summer in Big Sur country. Our mutual friend, a Universalist Unitarian minister, was building a home high above Palo Colorado Canyon with the help of several men. Bob was the youngest of these; perhaps 18 at the time.

It was a hot summer evening and a group of us were seated on the deck of the poet, Ric Masten, and his wife, Billie Barbara. The deck looked out to sea from a point high on the mountainside. Somewhere between the Masten home and the ocean -- down the steep slope -- I was aware that Bob was asleep in his sleeping bag on the site of the new foundation; among foxes, and heaven knows what all. I wondered at his fearlessness, if that's indeed what it was.

Ric and I had been trading songs all evening, he with his 12-string and me with my much-loved Martin guitar. We appeared together in concert from time to time at colleges and churches and thoroughly enjoyed sharing our latest works. It was a magical time. I was aware that night of the added accompaniment of the chorus of frogs in the background as we sang. Somewhere among my old tapes that are no longer playable, is one of that evening... .

Wrote this song for Bob (not sure he's ever heard it):

The Man Now Come to Stay

The mornin's past and noon can't last and evenin's on its way
the babe has gone, the boy moves on toward man who'll come to stay
I'll sing my song to pray him strong and bless him on his way
the mist hangs high becomes the sky and ocean's born today!
the babe has gone but boy lives on in man who'll come to stay.

the mists enshroud conceives the cloud and ocean's born today
the babe has gone, but boy lives on in man whose on his way
the man now come to stay

I believe that I was able to silently release Bob that night from the Masten's deck overlooking the Pacific, to become his own person. Which is not to say that we ever really sprang totally free of our moorings, but to the extent possible -- I was keenly aware of myself as the archer's bow from which the arrow is catapulted out into the world -- with a fervent prayer of hope that he would survive the launching.

Dorian is still caught in the bow strings, and David's lived a song of his own.

Kept waking in the night ...

thinking about Dorian's song, and that there were grammatically incorrect lines ... and wouldn't you notice?

Reminded me that a few years ago I went through a videotaped interview for the Rosie the Riveter project -- it was an oral history project of the University of California, Berkeley.

For a while the interview went fairly well. Then -- after a while -- I began to feel a resistance building and silences became more frequent. Felt the tears begin to well up behind my eyelids at one point and I asked the interviewer to please stop the cameras.

What was happening was suddenly clear to me. The interviewer was asking questions about the mindset of 20 year-old Betty on subjects about which that young woman was simply unaware. At that age my social conscience had not yet been awakened. That was to come much later. "How did you feel about things like segregation" held no relevance for me, that is, unless I borrowed generously from the much older and wiser woman I'd since become. What an impossible thing to be asked to do. It placed me in direct conflict with myself.

Once we restarted the camera with an understanding that -- if this was to have any authenticity -- I'd have to be allowed to say "I don't know" or "I can't recall" when appropriate. Everyone agreed. Since I knew that others were participating in these interviews, I've since wondered how they handled this?

It was so with "Orange-Magenta." The temptation was to take the lyrics apart and correct the lines that experience tells me are awkward. I won't do that. You'll have to know that -- when I'm speaking from Betty of an earlier time -- you'll simply have to make allowances for her innocence.

Song written for Dorian ...

a very long time ago. Maybe not so much for her, but about her.

Orange-Magenta

Verse:

 
I'm here at my easel as I've been for days
my hand is so eager -- my mind in a maze
I find no beginning -- my canvas is bare
I'd say to my colors (if I thought they might hear)

Chorus:

Lavender, rose, pink, you're twilight and dawning
blue, please help me bring the sea!
green slash with yellow my hillside's spring morning
brush please help my finger see!
black cry my sorrow, purple my longing
white breathe my ecstasy!
orange-magenta, you come without reason,

crimson, you're for love to see.

black cry my sorrow
purple my longing
white breathe my ecstasy!

all of my rainbow so vibrant before me
would that I, too, could be
orange-magenta and be without reason,

crimson just for love to see
crimson just for love and me ....

Might be better understood if I told you that Dorrie was born severely brain-damaged and functions in the retarded range. In many ways she's a success story, using everything she has to work with and in some amazing ways, and with a puzzling ability to display flashes of intelligence that has always fascinated me and kept alive the possibility that -- if I could just "crack the code" -- there just may be some way to reach inside and diddle with the wiring ...

But that is not to be, and I've always known that, of course. Instead of living always with the "what ifs," we've found a way to create a relationship that is a combination of mom and best friend that works for us both most of the time.

At the time that this song was written she must have been four or five. We lived out in the valley in a lovely home on a wooded acre with a creek running through. I was a very lonely young mother with four kids and a very busy husband who left us to our own devices most of the time while he ran the small but (at that time) successful business that supported us well.

He was a good man. He had a troubled wife and he surely didn't know it.

When I wrote this song, the problems (that later led to divorce) had deepened, and I was feeling envious of my blithely innocent little daughter. Feeling unfulfilled in my personal life, yet enjoying all of the trappings of a successful marriage was tearing me apart. Living with conflicting truths is the more troubling when one is surrounded by a world of those for whom that concept is inconceivable.

I believe that it was about that time that I began to have a sense of just how much there was yet to be known, and of how far away from even temporarily sustaining answers I was. Maybe that's where adulthood begins ...

Dorian was/is orange-magenta. She was a beautiful child who had no "reason," and needn't be concerned about it. I knew that I would spend my life preparing her for being left behind to live in an unsympathetic world. The thought of that was overwhelming. It still is.

Learned from a caring friend ...

that the little poem was not written by James Whitcomb Riley nor Eugene Field, but by England's Edward Lear! And it was available here online all the while -- waiting to be rediscovered. Just visited the website and felt a rush of pleasure as my mind leapt ahead of my eyes -- line by line -- through the poem -- all the way to

"...and they danced to the light of the moon, the moon,
they danced to the light of the moon!

(Thank you, Anne,)

 

I

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea     In a beautiful pea green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money,     Wrapped up in a five pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above,     And sang to a small guitar, 'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,       What a beautiful Pussy you are,           You are,           You are! What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

II

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!     How charmingly sweet you sing! O let us be married! too long we have tarried:     But what shall we do for a ring?' They sailed away, for a year and a day,     To the land where the Bong-tree grows And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood     With a ring at the end of his nose,           His nose,           His nose, With a ring at the end of his nose.

III

'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling     Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.' So they took it away, and were married next day     By the Turkey who lives on the hill. They dined on mince, and slices of quince,     Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,     They danced by the light of the moon,           The moon,           The moon, They danced by the light of the moon.

It all came back in a rush. What a lovely piece it is, and so worth remembering. Will read it to Alayana and Tamaya the very next time they're with me.

I'm wondering now if Shel Silverstein wasn't my contemporary Edward Lear? I so love children's literature, even now. Spend many a Saturday morning listening to NPR -- hoping that Scott Simon and Daniel Pinkwater will do one of their marvelous readings from some wildly imaginative children's book.

Which brings up a truth I discovered some years ago -- someday I'll share those thoughts more fully, but for now ...

I've found that one of the magical features of aging is that all of the Bettys who ever were are alive in me still. Depending upon the circumstances or the need -- one of me emerges fully formed. Apparently, 9 year-old Betty popped up to place herself between me and the freshening pain of Rick's loss. Fascinating, isn't it? Am I alone in this? And I don't mean to infer that this is in any way pathological. I am not schizophrenic, only complex, I believe. But complex in a way that is probably universal.

It's late and I'm feeling well-used and deservedly tired.

Nite...