Cultural deficits and other woes ...

It was such a small thing, really, but if so -- why on earth am I still thinking about it after all these hours?

We didn't get to Strybling Arboretum after all due to circumstances beyond our control (garage man didn't have the car serviced in time) so we had to find something else to do with the hours we'd set aside. The trip to San Francisco has to be carefully planned in order to avoid commute traffic hours and the window on that closed around noon.

So it was off to Oakland and an art exhibit I'd wanted to see for weeks. We stopped off first at the African American Library and Museum at 14th and Castro streets downtown in a cluster of historic buildings reclaimed and lovingly restored fairly recently. The old building is an architectural gem and the new use (of the old main library) is appropriate and timely in light of changing demographics in the city. The exhibits, however, are almost non-existent, or, are so scant that there's a general sense of elegant empty space when you climb that beautiful staircase to the second floor and find so little to see and honor. I suppose it's a museum in progress and much will unfold in years to come.

But what troubled me was to come a bit later when we stopped in at the Joyce Gordon Art Gallery a few blocks away, where there was a fine show featuring the work of Keba Konte -- photographer/visual artist. Keba does fascinating work in mixed media that incorporates his fine photographic subjects -- blown up and transferred to reclaimed old wood pieces by some process that I don't quite understand. I've watched his work for years now, and find it always exciting and most original.

It was in another room of the gallery that the incident that's been following me around today surfaced. There were three large paintings of familiar figures from the jazz world tastefully displayed. These were the icons of the genre. My friend asked quite innocently who they were? I was amazed! These were quite good images of Sarah Vaughn, Winton Marsalis, and Dinah Washington. I thought for a moment that the likenesses might not be quite sharp enough to be instantly recognizable -- but it wasn't that at all. A minute or so later I realized that he'd never heard of any of them. Not one. Here was that weird place where African American and European cultures are galaxies apart. He'd have instantly recognized any of the old masters (Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, et al); these were the greats in his world. They were universally accepted as the icons of music -- but in his world. Without a name plate, none would register in quite the same way in black America; except in that part of the community that had studied classical music. I cannot imagine anyone in my world who wouldn't instantly recognize the 3 jazz artists in those portraits. They are world renown, celebrated throughout Asia and on the European Continent a well as in Africa and the Middle East. How could this be?

It's something observed some posts back -- the fact that if a white person expresses ignorance of jazz it matters little, "..only a question of taste." Though were I to stand before paintings of the great European masters showing no sign of recognition (never having ever heard of them) it would surely be interpreted as a cultural deficit on my part and would have sent me to the back row of life to sit among the rest of the unwashed!

Maybe I need to be seeing this as a grand opportunity to do some bridging. Thus far I've been benefitting hughly from visiting both the visual and performing arts venues with someone steeped in the arts. It's been a rich experience and I've been loving every minute of it. Taking the time to follow the critic's columns in the NY Times and the New Yorker is new for me, and has been enriching to a life too long caught up in the immediacy and chaos of the political world.

It may be time now to check out the deficits in his experience. We're surely in sync politically -- both addicted to MoveOn, the Jon Stewart's Daily Show, AlterNet and GoogleNews, and that's gratifying. It means we can start most conversations in the middle of the third paragraph. It helps to not have to feel uncomfortable or defensive about my continuing activism. But there are obviously places in his life experience that have been left virtually untouched as both a second generation American and as a scientist serving in the academy both here and abroad. I'll need to be far more open about those places where our lives have followed divergent paths -- and where there are clear differences that need to be recognized and negotiated. Otherwise, I'm sure to find myself beginning to drift away and back to the place where there are fewer bridges to build or oceans to cross toward understanding.

It's one of the places where age, indeed, does seem to make a difference. We're both probably too close to the end to want to squander precious time and energy trying to bring into alignment impossibly alien lifestyles. I'm finding that I've had far greater access to his world than he's had to mine. So it will be my task to forge the links, I suppose.

How on earth will I ever make him realize that -- if every bit of black influence were to be magically removed from America's music -- there would be nothing left but Lawrence Welk! That may be the most accurate measure of the powerful influence of America's black classical music; Jazz. That those who have created, shaped, and re-created this brilliant art form over all the years can go unrecognized is an indication of how much we've suppressed those influences and of how effectively we've expropriated their work so that the infusion is now hardly traceable to its black roots.

"...Jazz is the only truly American contribution to the world of music." How many times have we heard those words expressed by those who shape opinion and guide the destiny of visionaries who define reality in the world of the arts?

Much to think about ... as always.

Anger has abated and life goes on ...

The anguish flushed out by Michael's death gave way to nesting bird calls, spring blossoms, and blue skies, and a quick return to today's headlines that dwarf's all that's gone before as I share concerns with the rest of my country about our administration's behavior in the world. Funny, I can be passionately African American for short bursts of time, but my pure and unadulterated "American" patriotism does tend to crowd out all but the most egregious offenses against "my people." when the need arises. I'm just as defensive about this nation as any other, maybe even more so because of the great sacrifices and indignities suffered by my ancestors over the centuries. Our investment in this country is huge -- as are my demands that we live up to the promises made so long ago by those slave-holding sexist old dead white men. Despite all, they laid the groundwork for one grand social experiment -- one that needs each of us to protect and defend ferociously. It was never more than a skeletal framework, maybe, and must be re-created by succeeding generations in order to hold and keep operative. I keep reminding myself of that each time the paralyzing anger rises and chokes off my breathing as it did from time to time this past week.

I remind myself that there was Mt. Shasta, after all, and Ashland and NIAD and Dorian's fascinating artwork -- all in the foregound to keep me whole.

Life has a way of thrusting me into the future day after day and there's less and less time to look back. But the lessons are there in a past that holds as much wonder and pleasure as it does pain.

Have been invited by the National Park Service to speak before a national gathering of educators on April 3rd. Will be recalling my World War II experiences in Jim Crow America. I've become the Park Service's reluctant Rosie -- to my surprise, and will be brought out again to utter the unspeakable. It may mean something that the country is finally able to hear those stories alongside the innocuous Rosie tales of ladies holding up the homefront while the men battled overseas (all to the tune of "Little Brown Jug"). It's becoming easier to allow myself to publicly stand up against the conventional stories in favor of re-invigorating the lessons that should have been learned and were not always.

Participated in a phone interview with the West County Times -- they're doing a story on NIAD and Dorian (along with other artists, I believe). A reporter and camera person visited with her the day before at class. It was interesting that the call came as we were visiting the Art of Living Black exhibit at the Richmond Art Center. It was easy to walk around in that environment and relate Dorrie's work in context while talking on my cell phone -- a sign of the times.

Received a call from one who is organizing a major demonstration at San Quentin Prison in relation to the impending execution by lethal injection of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. His last appeal was turned down by the Ninth Court of Appeals and only the Supreme Court now has the power to save him; or action by the governor. We're hoping that enough doubt has been cast to allow this state to re-instate a moratorium on the death penalty. Maybe the increasing number of exonerations and the re-examination of death row cases has changed the climate in the nation and change is now possible. But it will mean returning to the emotional roller coaster of the debate again. It seems such a short time since the last vigil ... .

But today we-re going to visit the Strybling Arboretum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Been anxious to see the glorious butterfly section and the orchids collection. There are things in life that feed the soul -- the arts, the theater, music of all kinds, and the natural wonders. To let them pass without notice is to shorten one's life, I believe, and reduce one's supply of inner-ness with which we learn to withstand the chaos and continue to grow until time runs out and we become a part of the all again.

It's spring!

Michael Robert Finney, AKA Langston Wright
1950 - 2005

It was the Sixties, a time of great struggle and turmoil that marked us all -- willing or no.

Michael was a child of relative privilege with a beautiful, bright, and charming mother and a father who was one of the first and rare African American members of the city police department. His life should have been predictable, easy. His father stood perhaps 6'4' but Michael was small for a man, standing barely 5'5" and barely more than 120 pounds, as I recall. He was tiny and wiry. His small body would not contain the giant soul and smoldering outrage that eventually erupted into the rage that would consume him.

In his senior year at the University of California at Berkeley his student activism (now deeply involved with a black nationalist movement) would scream out from the front page of the S.F. Chronicle, wildly kicking a helmeted Tactical Squad officer in a violent expression of youthful justifiable racial fury! He was a very young man of principle and ideals that would smother compromise and filter out caution.

We may never know what it was like to have been the son of a member of the SFPD at a time when the legendary Black Panthers were branding them "Pigs!" Black youngsters who were less than "black" had much to prove to their peers and many of the most ferocious nationalists whom I knew had the light skin and smooth hair of "the enemy." This surely fueled matters. It surely did for me as I moved ever more deeply into blackness during those years of unprecedented political change.

In a tragic incident that would separate him forever from those who loved him, Michael and friends found themselves involved in a fatal shootout, an airplane highjacking, and eventually landing in Cuba - where they found asylum and a new life among welcoming strangers. That was 33 years ago, I believe. He was not much more than a boy, the age of my middle son, Bobby.

For Joan, for me, for our very middleclass and largely politically moderate friends, the Revolution had come home. We were devastated! These were our children, and our passivity was creating chasms of differences that either radicalized us or increased the generational differences irrevokably.

I never saw Michael again.

Over the years since, he changed his name to a combination of two of his literary heroes, Langston Wright -- for Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, of course. He mastered the language easily and quickly and eventually evolved into one of Cuba's young intellectuals and worked for Radio Havana as a jazz disc jockey. He won great love and respect and continued to nurture his ideals in a new format, in a new language, and under a new political system. His family never lost the fear that -- on the day that relations were restored with the island, Michael would be seized and returned to the states and inevitable imprisonment. They both visited him as often as possible, and maintained a close relationship over all the years. He'd left a young wife and child here, but eventually created a new family -- with a new daughter on the island. His parents juggled their feelings and allegiances enough to embrace both families, and both were represented yesterday at the memorial service.


I'd been wondering over the past few days just how I'd handle my feelings about Michael. What could I say? I'd not seen him over all the years -- though it was certainly possible to have joined Joan in a visit at some point -- though there were my aging parents to tend and my mentally-retarded daughter -- and there was my deeply-troubled alcoholic son to agonize over... all excuses, I suppose, but quite real impediments.


Yesterday I stood to speak during the testimonies of friends and families:

"Let me place Michael in context," I said. "Visualize with me a piece of parchment upon which the names of a long list of unsung heroes are traced in milk. Invisible. Heroes one and all. Heroes because they were in most cases our best and brightest; "young, gifted, and black!" These were the idealists. The passionate. These were the children of the never-enfranchised; the hosed and beaten, with memories of lynchings and Klan raids. Their time had come -- as had ours. What they did not have were patience and restraint -- but they were young and uncompromising.

Make no mistake, these were the brave young souls who could not be harnessed; who would not bend, and who dared to hold out the spectre of the unspeakable -- the possibility of an armed Black rebellion before a nation stubbornly deaf to our pleas and in the throes of violent change. These were the Bobby Huttons, H. Rap Browns, the Stokely Carmichaels, Fred Hamptons, the Huey Newtons and Bobby Seales, the Malcolm Xs, and yes, the Michael Robert Finneys. It was these brave young souls who -- by their smoldering rage made peaceful change possible. They enabled the work of Dr. Martin Luther King. Without their unbridled youthful fury success may have been even more difficult to achieve. As the ever-present frightening alternative, they stood tall and fearless and threatening as they challenged white power.

One day, probably long after I'm gone, that parchment will be brought out of hiding -- lain carefully upon some grassy plot of ground under a warm sun where those invisible tracings will be burnished brown -- made clearly legible so that the moderates among us -- far removed from the pain and anguish of radical social change -- can finally embrace these heroes who gave their futures, their young lives, to the struggle for full equality that continues unabated to this day.

I find myself, an unrepentant elder without reservation, proudly eulogizing Michael this day, regretful of the years he spent out of the arms of his family -- but grateful to learn from those of you who remained close -- how gracefully -- how uncompromisingly he lived out the remainder of his short life. Amen."

And so he was laid to rest, though much of his work remains uncompleted -- and his successors in the struggle are now largely accounted for in the prison statistics of this nation. I strongly suspect that the pacification of the inner cities has been accomplished over the years through the proliferation of crack cocaine and heroin delivered by the same forces that tried to contain the Michaels of his day. Cynical? Maybe. But one would have to be unbelievably naive and/or blindly insensitive to not see a pattern designed to protect the majority from the rest of us. But I'm exposing more of my own anger than I wish to at this point, and should leave something for another time.
Meanwhile, today's young "heroes" in the uniforms of the nation, are away on foreign shores engaged in the legal killing of brown strangers and being made to justify this as an expression of patriotism or protection of our still seriously flawed democratic process, -- with many puzzled and frightened and increasingly cynical as they as often as not must fight for personal survival against young innocent people like themselves -- those who are fighting to free their country from occupation by outside forces; us. Their fast-fading ideals were borrowed temporarily from corrupt systems and leaders far far away in a Washington situation room -- from old men without the heart for the battlefield. And one of these new soldiers bears the name of my 18 year-old Jessica, the grand daughter who was lured into the military from her high school campus by persistent and aggressive recruiters -- and who cries today in boot camp in South Carolina where she is undergoing preparation for war against ...? It's hard to not see Jessica as more of a victim than was Michael, in many ways. At least that's the way it appears from here on this, the day of his eulogy. There's little fire in her belly. There is only that vague promise that four years from now she can come home again. She will kill her way into college, though the Armed Forces brochure expresses it quite differently, of course.

If you'll scroll back to song lyrics I wrote long ago, you may find Michael buried in "Little Boy Black," or someone very like him. It was a composite of Michael and a youngster I met in Chicago at that time, a member of the Blackstone Rangers.

Maybe I'll re-enter them here, but tomorrow ...

Gloria en Excelsis Shasta!

Home again in an exalted state of being. I've seen Mt. Shasta! Is there anything anywhere on the planet to compare? I do not believe for one minute that I could have lived in the shadow of that wondrous mountain and remained a lifelong atheist. To see it and have it follow you for several miles as you travel along Highway 5 is to give up all claim to any rational intellectual capacity. For the sake of my sanity and to not be pushed off the edge of the earth by the crazies of the world, I'd long ago given up all notions of religious belief or practices. I'd satisfied my spiritual needs in unorthodox ways and insisted upon the right to define meaning for myself. In the shadow of that mountain one can easily believe in fairies, Sasquatch, magic potions that bring love or damnation to one's enemies; all within the realm of real possibility. To say that I was awed was to understate the obvious. How else does one explain the fact that this 14,183 ft. natural monument stands completely snow-covered from top to bottom when no other site within range has any more than a dusting at the crest? We were almost blinded by the brilliance of the pure alabaster whiteness under an almost cloudless blue sky. It seemed almost translucent. For miles and miles it appeared to us from left then right then straight ahead as the road bent and ribboned as if made of serpentine -- as if built to purposely provide the illusion of being surrounded by this wonder. I will read now the myths and Indian tales that must abound in the literature of the sacred mountains. How have I missed all that?

On the drive north earlier in the week we ran into a soft rain all the way from Redding, California, into Oregon. That meant that we experienced a low cloud covering that completely obscured Shasta. It wasn't until we drove south yesterday in the warmth of early spring that suddenly there it was in all its glory! It was probably just as well. I'm not sure that anything offered by mere mortals would have been more than an anti-climax.

But I'd say that mere mortals did pretty well. Ashland lived up to expectations. It fueled my determination to find some way to work with others to enrich my city through the performing arts -- and by any means necessary.

And, yes, we did get to Ashland and Richard III, Shaw's Philanderer, the world premier piece -- By the Waters of Babylon, and the hilarious early thirties romp called Room Service, plus a two-hour backstage guided tour of the wonderful world of the theater as created by the Ashland Shakespeare Festival Theaters. We were accompanied on the tour by two of the actors we'd seen in Room Service -- and would see later that evening in Richard III. There was a minor disappointment in that Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is scheduled to open on March 30th so we missed the August Wilson play. Knowing that this magical world is a mere 5-6 hours drive north (and past Mt. Shasta!) helps to remind me that one day I'll go back at a different time of year and that the trip will be timed to catch Wilson's work.

Not sure who was holding the world together until I got back, but I can't say that it mattered a great deal at the time.


Today I will attend the memorial service for Michael Finney, the son of my dear friend, Joan, and my godson. He died in Cuba where he lived his entire adult life. There is the tragedy and the genius that was Michael -- who could never come home again... . A story for another time.

I need now to get out of my paper hat and back into my mourning clothes ... .

Jamey Foxx and other loves ...

Last post before trip to Ashland.

On Saturday we attended a beautiful evening of chamber music -- a string quintet of fine women musicians; two cellos, two violas, and a brilliant violinist, the concert master for the S.F. Opera orchestra. It was another performance of the Gold Coast Chamber Players of Lafayette.

It was also an afternoon spent in Walnut Creek -- our family home from 1950 through the early 70s ... birthplace of my personal formative journey through the Black Revolution in White Suburbia. There is much residual pain, still, but I'm finally confronting it with some feeling of having "overcome."

Tom lives less than a mile from the home that we built and where my children grew up. I've rarely had occasion to drive past the old neighborhood -- and, indeed, have purposely avoided doing so most of these past years since returning to bayside. On Saturday before concert time I found myself in a situation where I was not driving -- a passenger in his car that was heading up Boulevard Way -- past the house at 2501 Warren Road, on the way to pick up something at the art store that now replaces one of ramshackled small homes that once stood there in a small orchard, across the street from the grocery store (also long gone).

Strangely enough, all of the angst seems to have been used up at some point and my only response to passing our lovely old home was to marvel that anyone would have painted over a redwood house! How on earth ...! Also, noted that the swimming pool was no longer visible, but had been filled in with earth long ago. Many of the old trees had been removed but the interesting amphitheater-shaped site was as lovely as I recalled. There was just a twinge of regret, but nothing profound. I've lived a lot of life since those years with few regrets. This house had served us well and needs to be released now to yesterday.

The experience was still near the surface when after dinner -- as we drove the short distance from Walnut Creek to Lafayette to the concert hall I felt the rush of other memories: I began to tell him about the time that Bessie Gilbert (my closest neighbor and a devout Mormon recently from Utah) and I were driving home from a shopping trip. At the bus stop on the highway nearest to our homes there were about six African American domestic workers gathered in conversation while waiting for their employers to pick them up. I was at that time waiting for a new housekeeper to arrive from Nicaragua (friend of a friend) but had placed an ad for interim help. As if sizing up a group of slaves my friend remarked casually, "Betty, when you find someone, be sure she's not built like those. They have a hard time cleaning under the beds!" I sat horrified. She was not being anything more than Bessie, and she was my friend. I could find no words to push down the beads of perspiration that suddenly popped upon my upper lip and the flush to my face. Shamefully, I sat in a painful silence as she drove on in her innocence.

When I finished my little story Tom's only remark was, "...but you have to admit, Betty, you aren't really quite Black anyway, and I don't really understand your insistance being so identified." I found myself (now older and wiser) not willing to accept his lack of understanding of my point. My voice got louder and more insistent. "I am the great granddaughter of a slave. I am African American. Why can you not simply accept that?" I am now and have always been a child of the one drop rule. Nothing will change that during my lifetime. And I have no wish that it have it otherwise."

We arrived at the concert hall where we heard the lovely Quartet #2 in D major by Borodin and the Quintet opus #39 by Glazunov. I was the only African American within a mile -- may ten -- of that historic building, I'm sure, but the appeal of such music is universal, and I got lost in it as always. The Borodin served as the source of Broadway show, Kismet -- (Baubles, Bangles and Beads -- This is my Beloved, etc.)


Last night I joined black folks everywhere to watch Jamey Foxx receive his well-deserved Academy Award for that brilliant portrayal of "Ray." I was struck by his defensive posturing during his acceptance speech -- obviously, he was finding that he was being asked to identify as an actor and not as a black actor. He was being anointed by the industry and was finding it hard to accept this conditional acceptance. I heard myself. I felt his pain. I knew that this young man was having the same struggle I'd not quite worked through, even as late as this weekend.

As usual, the answer was lying right behind my eyes and surfaced shortly before sleep took over:

Those good folks (Tom included) were puzzled by us. Why on earth -- when the door was finally being thrown open for us to walk through to unconditional integration -- would we balk?

The answer for me is that subtle racism is hidden in the fact that it is the resistance to altering the wrong perception of what an African American is. Instead of adjusting to the fact that that those perceptions were wrong and needed to be adjusted to include me instead of moving me out of my racial group and leaving it bereft of what I may have brought to the whole. That is the problem. There needs to be recognition of the fact that black folks are as complex as any other group, capable of greatness on a par with any other. Instead there is the hint in that conditional acceptance that, "...we know that you are just as good as any other. We accept that. We no longer need to categorize you in a sub class of artist (person). But don't think this means that you can hold the door open for all your scroungy relatives. You're the exception. You've risen above the others and we recognize that."

Hogwash!

There are those of us who bust the stereotypes, but that doesn't mean that we're a separate class of human being. It only means that, like anyone else, we're all one-of-a-kind people and need to be seen that way. We also demand the right to identify ourselves and not be externally defined like children. Jamey Foxx need not have been so defensive had others not made a condition of his great achievement in the movie industry that he lose something essential to his being -- something that has shaped his life 'til now, and that will continue to do so despite arguments to the contrary. His humaness came through clearly in his brief acceptance speech, as did his forgiveness of those who've trespassed against him ... .It is that this made him transcend the obstacles placed in his path at earlier times in his life. He, as did others before him, transformed the ugly stuff into heart that fuels his work and his art. He and others like him may someday translate that into systems that will help others to overcome as well. At least that's what I seem to have heard him say, though my paraphrasing may be less than perfect.

And I suspect that the breadth of my musical sensibilities -- that embraces not only Borodin and Grazunov but that still has an even more visceral response to the artistry of Ray Charles, Billie Holiday, and James Brown -- may suggest something pretty important -- though that's yet to be defined.

Dogging perceptions ...

Spent a few days this week nursing a stubborn digestive tract irritation and -- simultaneously -- some anger I couldn't trace to its source. The two (as always) were related.

As mentioned, I'm scheduled to leave early on Tuesday morning for Ashland, Oregon. The first vacation I've had in more years than I can recall. I do believe the last was the trip with my late husband that took us to the island of Kauai for an extended stay in the mid-80s. Since he died in 1987, you can see that it's been ages. I did travel for a weekend or two -- a cruise to Ensenada and one to New Mexico. But those don't really count as vacations; hardly enough time to unpack my bags.

During those trips with Bill, Dorian was living in Santa Barbara at St. Vincents Academy in the safe care of the good nuns. She graduated at 18 at which time she entered Clausen House in Oakland where she'd moved up over the years to independent living status. That's all changed now.

Early in 2004 -- and for reasons brought on by state budget cuts -- we gave up her apartment, stored her possessions, and combined our lives here in my not-nearly-large-enough condo.

Due to my really complex work and civic life, though I've lived here for several years -- I don't know any of my neighbors except for passing them on occasion in the parking area. Not true for Dorian. She's here when I'm not, and is gregarious and open and speaks with everyone whether they're responsive or not. They are surely aware of her mental deficits. She's not been treated badly in any way that I can see, nor has she been isolated.

Dorian comes in each day from her art classes (5 hours a day, 5 days a week) and plops down her bags and immediately takes off to collect the mail (she holds power over our one key) then heads for the shopping mall just two blocks away. It's a ritual. She walks around a pattern she's set for herself, and visits with kiosk personnel and picks up sample cookies at the bakery and chocolates from See's Candy. Then makes a call home on her cell to reassure me that she'll make it back before dark (usually 3:30 or 4:00). This has become a ritual and serves us well. She's made friends with the security staff, and enjoys their protection, I'm sure. Where I don't know my next door neighbors, I have gone over to meet some of the folks on her route and assured myself that she wasn't abusing the system in any way.

Back to Ashland:

When I arrived back from Mendocino a couple of weekends ago after a heavenly stay at oceanside, and as I was getting my overnight bag out of the car -- my downstairs neighbor was just driving in. She's also a senior. She mentioned that Dorian had told her that I'd been away for the weekend and that she was alone with her cats. There was no indication that this was a criticism, but a just quiet remark in passing. But I felt gently chastised. Dorrie and I had been in contact by phone each night and David had responsibility for looking in on his sister.

For reasons I'm not quite sure -- I felt the sting of criticism. My neighbor was under the perception that I was an irresponsible mother who'd gone off for whatever reason, and left this helpless young woman alone in the apartment!

It had never occurred to me to take my neighbors into my confidence by telling them that this handicapped daughter had been living independently for many years in an apartment two towns away, or that she had been learning since her sixth birthday to live beyond the life of her mother by gaining independence over many years. That coming home after the experience of learning to depend primarily upon a team of case managers, social workers, therapists, and teachers, was a regression. That those professionals and I were still working to retain what we could of those lessons over those years -- by building in some times when she was left very deliberately alone to handle her life. I'd done none of that. They couldn't possibly know. How on earth could I tune them in now? It would seem so self-serving; much more related to my new male interest than to my daughter's welfare. I'd let it get away from me. And, I couldn't live with even the perception that I was being irresponsible. What to do? At that point my gastro-intestinal system took over and rebelled! Climbed into bed and pulled the blankets over my head and tried to sleep past the dilemma.

Since Dorian really enjoys having the place to herself, to hire a "sitter" would have offended her and appeared like a measure of mistrust on my part. She, after all, is a fully grown woman who uses every single modicum of brain power that she has, and does pretty well with that. That's more than can be said for most of us, right?

Finally, an inspired thought: She loves Kokee, David's 22 year-old daughter, and Dorrie's niece. Gave a call and learned that Kokee is free to spend the nights next week at our place. It only means late evenings to morning when she leaves for work and Dorian leaves for NIAD. No problem. David is around in the event that the terrorists strike Chevron-Texaco or Berlex Chemical just up the road apiece, or if the Hayward Fault decides to slip. Dorian will not feel babysat. And, I will feel free to fully give myself to George Bernard Shaw, William Shakespeare, August Wilson et al -- on the first carefree vacation in at least two decades. My neighbors will simply have to hold their fire until I get back. But there is surely a need to take the time to clue them in on life with Dorrie, at some point. On this score I've been neglectful.

So saying, I'm up and totally symptom-free, ready to attend an evening of award-presentions at the Richmond Main Street Initiative event this very evening. And a chamber music concert and dinner tomorrow afternoon and evening. Dorian has a Special Olympics basketball tournament all-day on Sunday, so it will be a full weekend. You may not hear from me for a bit.

I'm feeling cherished, valued, beautiful, and "young." I've about decided that "youth" is in many cases simply a case of arrested development. All are feelings that go on being felt even as the years pile on, and are surely not restricted to only those young in years.

It's quite possible that a lifetime with Dorian who's stuck in childhood in many ways, has spilled over onto her mother. My concept of youth may have been distorted by that experience. I live every day with proof that years may hold little meaning with respect to the maturation process, and, with little relevance to chronological age -- the feelings and the capacity for continual growth is widely varied and Quixotic at best.

Most of life is illusory, and what we make of it depends largely upon which end of the lens we're looking through at what moment in time ... .

Photo: Three little "beauty queens" in a contest on Treasure Island during the World's Fair. I'm the 17 year-old on the left, my cousins, Ruth (Warnie-Romine-Strange) and Elaine (Allen-Wilson) were two other runners-up in this news clipping. It may be interesting to note that the young lady who actually won the contest (the ticket-selling kind) would have appeared in the bottom center of the picture -- but she was neatly clipped out by I know not whom. (T'weren't I!)

Living History ...

Happened to catch a PBS presentation of a truly fine documentary entitled "The Tallest Tree in the Forest," a leisurely look at the life of the undisputed genius, Paul Robeson. What a treasure! This discredited American will someday grace the history books as one of the greatest Americans of his or any other time. I'm sure of it.

The jerky and sometimes almost inaudible pieces of film collected over many years by those with the foresight to see through the veil of slander that damned him gave an astounding picture of the man. Participating as narrators along with his son, Paul Robeson, Jr., were Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis, and a host of others who must have come together to share their history in common. These are also giants among black men of action and patriotism.

Robeson held a law degree from Rutgers University, was an All-American on the Rutgers football team, spoke seven languages fluently, was a concert baritone known and revered internationally, and led the black community in the earliest struggles against the bigotry that crippled the nation throughout the earliest phases. He opened up baseball by questioning its racial hiring practices -- allowing Jackie Robinson to be brought on as the first black player ever to be fielded. He challenged racial prejudice through the United Nations because it threatened our status across the world through hyprocrisy it exposed. Few would argue whether he was right in his criticism.

How does one ever know when the epochal events are interwoven with one's own life? I watched that documentary -- remembering marching in a picket line with Mr. Robeson in my youth. We were under the marquee of the Oakland Paramount theater where the disputed Walt Disney film, "Song of the South" was being shown. Later that afternoon we returned to Matt Crawford's home in Berkeley to have punch and cookies and to a playful game of "Spin the Bottle." Got kissed on the cheek by this wondrous man ... how could I have known?

Some time later my husband and I were in the audience at the Curran Theater in San Francisco to see Robeson, Jose Ferrer, and Uta Hagen, starring in Shakespeare's "Othello." It was my first experience with the work of Shakespeare. I knew little of "The Bard." I was only there to see Paul Robeson in performance. A kind of "supporting a brotha" kind of action. Funny. Again, how on earth could I have known?

It was like that evening when Mel and I and others -- at the invitation of one of our record distributors traveled to Grace Cathedral to sit in the sanctuary of that great edifice to experience Duke Ellington's first Jazz Mass (featuring Bunny Briggs in tap shoes floating before the altar as if levitating). It was when I first heard and responded to the magnificent "Come Sunday" featuring Johnny Hodges on alto sax. Small matter that much of the sound wafted up into the vaulted ceilings instead of out into the pews. I knew that the sounds I was hearing were making musical history -- but there was little understanding of just how important this worship service would be in looking back.

A few days ago I was invited to attend a film to be shown this very night at the Grand Lake theater on the shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland -- sponsored by Congresswoman Barbara Lee and honoring the memory of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. When the invitation came I recalled that it was at the 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami that we met. She was at that time the first woman to run for president of the nation, and the first African American woman to challenge the system by so doing. She was a small woman, not particularly impressive to one as new to politics as I was at that time, and even less knowing about the eastern movements. I know now that I slept through an important part of feminist history -- as well as African American.

Some years later, in the 80s, it was my privilege to house the Northern California headquarters for candidate Jesse Jackson in my building in South Berkeley -- and to recall now that we'd pretty much forgotten that it was (female) Ms. Chisholm who opened that door and not (male) Mr. Jackson. I was as guilty as anyone for the omission. We gloriously celebrated him for opening up the process to the under-represented, but failed to credit his predecessor in that role. Shirley Chisholm also preceded Geraldine Ferraro (vice-presidential candidate) in breaking through. We tend to forget that, too.

Makes me wonder now how future historians will look at these disturbing times we live in, and just how many times any of us have been unwitting participants in history while it was being created? Makes me want to -- even more than usual -- account for my actions by taking public positions.

How on earth can we ever know? But does it matter?

I believe that it does; critically.

Undelivered ...

This morning I discovered in AlterNet a column written by Christopher Rabb of Afro-Netizen. It was sharp and cogent and struck a nerve that sent me to his website to respond. The email was returned by Daemon as undeliverable. I felt frustrated. I wondered how many other African Americans who inhabit cyberspace simply knew nothing about this valuable resource, and that he had been "our" man in New York during the November convention as a credentialed blogger? How I wish I'd known. It may take years before we'll learn to organize using the power of this magical instrument and make of it the kind of political asset that it has begun to create in other communities. There has to be a beginning place. Maybe this is one of them. There may be other African Americans reading here for whatever reason, and just maybe they'll find a way to help to connect the dots between the various forms of "The Drum" so that our power can be expanded and enhanced. If anyone knows Mr. Rabb, do let me know so that I can add at least one more small fragment to the quilt he's been trying to create over what appears to be several years.

This was my message:

Dear Mr. Rabb:

"I'm a West Coast African American elder (83) who has been online since the Internet was called "The Well," and blogging since fall of 2003 (http://cbreaux.blogspot.com/)

I, too, am anxiously waiting for greater black representation among the
bloggers, so that through this magical medium, we can skip through the
generations of change by passing along the history that precedes current
struggles.

Those of us whose lives have spanned slavery, Jim Crow, the Civil Right battles of the Sixties, the periods of regressions that followed, have a duty to inform. I was 27 when my slave ancestor joined hers. She was born in 1846 and died at 102 in 1948. I was born in 1921. Just think of the history embedded in brains like mine; and the opportunity now to "download" that into the Blogosphere for our progeny to build upon. It's mind-boggling! But we're not only hauling around this genetic windfall but many of us are continuing to contribute to and mold history through activism and continuing influence.

Not sure how many of my contemporaries are "out there" and still coherent, but given the longevity that my own family enjoys, it would not surprise me a bit to find many. It's quite possible that those of us who are descendants of those hardy survivors of the Middle Passage carry strengths as yet unrecognized.

Delighted to have found you.

Betty Reid Soskin,
Richmond, California


If Afro-Netizen has gone dormant it would be a pity. Mr. Rabb has made an important contribution to black online political life and nothing would please me more than to become a part of that in some small way. I found his listed links to be an extension of my own. Perhaps you'll find the same. Perhaps one day I'll list the places online that I visit regularly; should that be of interest. That might mean that -- should we ever meet -- we can start our conversations in the middle of the sixth paragraph.

Watched an interesting discussion on CSPAN yesterday --

of an event that happened mid-week, I gathered, though I tuned in after it started and missed the introductions. The words weren't particularly new. I've been getting them in bits and pieces but the hysteria was simply too strong to allow them into my cortex. This time I heard both the words and the meanings. By the time I'd watched for a fair amount of time I could feel myself relaxing ... feeling as if someone had placed a hand on my chest and held me back from I know not what.

They were discussing the nation's gradual slide into Fascism (though no one used the word). They were doing a retrospective on the past years. What was different was that these were not the conspiracy theorists; the usual suspects. This was the honored mainstream "establishment." Their names were recognizable as members of wellknown think tanks, foundations, study groups -- and from both sides of the Atlantic. A number of speakers agreed that our present world-dominating stance had not happened yesterday or the day before, or even ten years ago, but had been a slow but steady meticulously planned takeover that started at least forty years ago. That was the point where I felt myself exhale. Of course. This critical debate has finally risen to prominence in the national consciousness. Surely this is the beginning.

The point was made that it took many years for Spain to come back from Franco and that the Soviet Union was still recovering from a succession of takeovers. Italy and Germany had been different in that their military losses had forced change almost overnight.

Seeing ourselves in this context was both frightening and sobering in that it removed the expection of having to restore our systems between now and the next election cycle. There is some small relief in that. I surely will not live to see how it all turns out. We'll need to re-educate our population before that restoration can even begin. The task is enormous and turning the juggernaut of Democracy is far more difficult than any other form of government, I'm sure. There's not yet enough recognition among our citizens that a change of course is needed at this point, and probably won't be until after we've suffered through the coming economic and ecological collapse that heads wiser than mine have forecast.

Though disturbing, the good thing about that discussion was that I finally could accept the fact that sharp minds with power were grappling with these issues, and that the corrective course is surely being designed even as we speak. These analyses helped me to see that the chaos is not total, and that we are not yet powerless. Progressive think tanks are pouring over the developments of the last administration and are preparing for the next. The wheels are turning and the pendulum has already begun to trace the arc toward the Left.

It will be hair-raising, I'm sure, but when the program ended I felt better -- at least in the moment. I can only pray now, that those flawed but wise old dead white men of vision who designed our Constitution and Bill of Rights will have placed enough "give" in them to rein us in one more time, and that by the end of the next decade, at least, recovery will be well on its way to restoring our freedoms -- and will have removed the threat of a nuclear holocaust from the rest of the world.

But, it's not a good sign that Camilla and Charles have now relegated stories on the Middle East to page seven!

I'm fast becoming an escapist;

losing any ability to connect with the headlines. I cancelled the subscription to the local newspaper months ago and haven't missed it -- and I'm a news junkie. I scan the headlines in the Washington and New York Posts daily, giving more attention to AlterNet and TruthOut, but skipping all but the editorial columns much of the time. At some point the day-to-day outrages have so fueled my fears that even the Six O'clock News fails to draw me in anymore. However, I never miss the Daily Show and Jon Stewart's outrageous satire. Maybe the indirect view is less frightening for me. It's so hard to tell the real from the unreal now, and made-up news is less crazy than what is coming out of the Capitol. The final blow was to discover that "made-up news" is also coming out of official sources and paid for by taxpayer dollars, at that. It's becoming even more difficult to tell where to place one's trust in news sources than ever before.

I continue to wait for reactions to come from leadership -- from anywhere; the arts, the state capitol, Washington, city hall, county seat. I'm beginning to suspect with increasing dread that much of the nation is precisely where I am; paralyzed with fear and no longer able to respond. And this is probably just as true for those blue cities caught in red states. This must not be!

I keep reminding myself that what is happening to us all -- worldwide -- is a runaway global takeover by hostile forces (yes, I know that's wild talk), and that crossing the point of no return on the environmental breakdowns can only be topped by the impending economic collapse, and the resulting panic and devastation of the planet. I also remind myself that such words would have been seen as hyperbole only a short time ago, but now are highly possible -- and my grandchildren will not be spared, nor will yours.

Today I will prod myself into acting somewhere beyond my self-imposed limits. Last night I was in the audience at Berkeley Arts Magnet school where my two youngest granddaughters are students. The innocence of those children, the hope shining from the faces of young parents, convinced me that giving up and continuing to cede power to forces beyond my control has never been a valid response. I must return to the old ways of acting on pure faith that invisible others are out there waiting for me to help to shoulder the burden of change as in the past, and that I'm still capable of doing so.

Whistling in the dark may be all we have left, but whistle I will! (At least until the next awful disclosure, appointment, or act of aggression.)

Oh, word has come from army recuit, granddaughter Jessica, from the South Carolina Boot Camp. She's terrified, angry, disappointed, and wants to come home. At 18 she is just one more youngster who yielded to the temptations set forth by the recruiters in the inner city, and exemplifies the new "all volunteer" army. This will take more than whistling... .

Just a thought in passing (my computer):

Realized upon reading that last post that I'd coupled the name Vivaldi with Billy Strayhorne and Duke Ellington. Any reader might see that as odd, in a way. Surely these could not be seen as peers, or could they? In my world the answer is a resounding "yes!"

His daughter is a very fine musician who doubles as artistic director of a great chamber music group with which she performs. She plays viola, magnificently. Have attended her concerts and am struck by how disciplined and exact is European music; so unlike that which I've heard and/or participated in for most of my life. I was never serious musician, but surely possessed a knowing and educated ear with some small talent to match. I've been creating music since childhood, and performed with those with greater expertise than my own on occasion. Most of my own music comes from somewhere deep within; is not intellectual. Not learned. Simply "known." I'd always believed that what I knew, everyone knew.

For me, there is a clear difference between black and white cultures. White (European) culture seems to reward adherence to what has gone before. Faithful emulation of style and substance in the arts provides the measure of worth. The great masters have already made their brilliant contributions, and (like the bible to the Christian), are the paragons -- provide the template -- for what follows down through time. The "translations" are quite literal. Interpretation is subtle and can rarely be detected by the untrained ear, but only by those educated to the original presentation of a composition by the composer.

On the other hand, Black culture tends to reward originality,innovation, and creativity. We continue to set the pace in the arts (particularly music), and to create the road map for others to follow. Until recently, one would rarely hear any new black artist rise to prominence without having created some new sound or pattern or beat. The Billie Holidays and Duke Ellingtons and Charlie Parkers and Ella Fitzeralds each brought individuality (style) into the music, and set new standards for their imitators. It seems only since the world of black music has been effected by its commercial worth that this has changed. What can be "marketed" now dictates what rises to the top and not what is a strong new direction by some innovative vocal or instrumental artist. The marketplace is changing the criteria slowly but surely. But "the beat" within us will survive even market trends, I trust.

We're continuously creating and re-creating language from the streets, the music, dance, decade after decade, and having an effect upon the cultures of the rest of the world despite all. Hip Hop has replaced bebop and fusion of my time, and ushered in this worldwide phenomenon that the young people of every country now reflects back to us.

I cannot believe that any "great master" at any time in history could have -- as did choirmaster Terrence Kelly -- molded that choir at his illustrious father's funeral into the stirring "instrument" that could perform the thrilling soul-piercing original rendition of "Steal Away" that brought unshed tears that remained for hours afterward -- waiting for release and finding none. There are no words ... .

It's occurred to me in sitting in the audience in (middle American) Lafayette, that if my friend or his daughter has a deaf ear for or lack of understanding and appreciation of Jazz or Hip Hop they are seen as expressing their personal "taste" in music. On the other hand, if I have no ear for or understanding of chamber music or the symphonic works of Haydn, it tends to be seen as a cultural deficit -- a flaw in my education or training -- and surely indicates my level of sophistication.

This also may simply be associated with my declining interest in European cultures over the past several decades, since re-discovering more of African sensibilities. But it gives me some inkling into the distances still to be negotiated between worlds, and of my own need to continue to locate the bridges -- and cross them when possible.

Home again from a restful weekend at Mendocino... .

The contrasts in my world have always been somewhat extreme, but never more so that at this moment. Driving in a warm springlike rain into the Anderson valley with the two-lane road pretty much all to myself was a departure from the crowded freeways that I weave through day after day in the auto-polluted cities. Seeing bright pink blossoms of trees meant to bear and not simply ornamental as they are here just outside my door in Richmond. Fields of what I've always thought of as Scotch Broom but am told is a similar but highly invasive plant that is threatening to crowd out native flora all along the coastal plains and valleys, but whose sharp yellows today make up for the varying greys of the rain-laden skies. The drive up Highway 128 -- through the redwood forest of the Navarro river was fragrant and greening for spring... beautiful! But the promised heavier rains would come soon, surely ... .

Last week I stood shoulder to shoulder at the retirement party for Judy Hart, the superintendent of the new national Park. It was a gathering of Richmond's inner circle -- the mayor and city council, reps from state and federal office holders, good friends and still-living "Rosies" (I believe there were at least three of us present. Still have problems relating to being named among that group.) The reception and dinner were held at Salute (should be an accent over the "e" but can't find it now), one of my favorite restaurants -- and one of the few in the area appropriate for more formal events. A lovely place on the marina sitting comfortably amid sailboats of Richmond's more affluent and with a fine cuisine and a story that needs telling:

Ten years ago this month, "Memby," a stunningly beautiful young woman from Ethiopia came to this country as an immigrant and single mother. She spoke no English. She found a job in this lovely resturant doing whatever needed doing and learning the business as she tended tables and greeted guests. She placed her young son in a Catholic school then worked 3 jobs simultaneously to support them both. About 18 months ago -- after working incredibly hard and saving every penny -- she bought the place, lock, stock, and cuisine. Without changing the menu or the fine service that had served the previous owners so well for so long, she's managed to do the impossible. Memby's is a story worth telling. She's has not yet been celebrated as is warranted by her performance.

Were I a member of the quaint village of historic Mendocino, I would know nothing about Memby, I suppose. There are so many like stories in Richmond, stories that I've been privileged to discover over the years. These heroes and heroines people my life and enrich my days. They provide the balances so needed when the headlines scream out the sensational day-to-day deaths and near-deaths. The sensational feeds upon itself and it all begins to make up the tension that I feel drop away as I hit that place in the road -- just as I leave the last trees of the redwoods -- where Highway 18 merges with Coast Highway #1 -- where the Navarro meets the ocean. I can feel the fear drop away and my jaw loosen as I free the bite that I had no idea I was holding ... .

This time I turned off Porgy and Bess by the Houston Opera Company. Those familiar sounds had filled the car all the way from Cloverdale -- pressed the buttons that opened the window on the driver's side -- and filled the car with the scent of decaying leaves and salt sea spray. Made note of the fact that "Eden" in Mendocino was but 4 and a half cd's from Richmond, and that Porgy and Bess was not appropriate here. Vivaldi would have been a better and Ellington or Billy Strayhorne even better than that. On the way home I'd plan my listening experience more carefully. Recalled in the listening to Gershwin's masterpiece that the last time I'd seen this opera I'd found it racist for the first time. Written by someone outside the black experience -- and despite the beautiful score -- it was a reminder of a time when the stereotypical was the order of the day, and losing myself in the arias (Summertime and Bess, you is my woman now" no longer worked well enough to erase the pain we were then covering less than effectively. I hated Crown but saw Porgy as pitiful and less than heroic ... as I wanted my black icons to be. No Martin Kings here, only the Cab Calloways.

Wonder if anyone is thinking seriously of writing the score for the story of Tupac Shakur or Diallo or Nelson Mandela? Wonder what the differences might be? Maybe somewhere behind prison walls there is an opera being carved out against a wall with some carefully-hidden and fiercely-guarded prison-made spoon handle ...

With such a high ratio of blacks incarcerated, it is probable that a fair number are from the population of the visual and performing artists. Wouldn't I love to know what those figures are ... and how to reach them.

Oh, the stories!

But that's not what I wanted to talk about today, but time has past far too quickly and there is catching up to do ... more later.

Photo: One of the cedars that flanks the driveway and forms the gateway of "The Timbers," the only home that I've ever known that rates a name of its own. It is most fitting. it's situated on a bluff 80 feet from the edge of the ocean and is one of the most beautiful places I've ever known.

Message to Him:

What a glorious celebration of a life! The large church was filled to overflowing with music lovers, old friends, relatives, students, and a mass choir of about 80 voices of all races and ages -- singers that he and Terry (his son) had worked with over the years. They raised the roof with soulful gospel music, spirituals, and the best jazz I've heard in years. The elite of the Bay Area's musicians (Peter Barshay on bass, John Santos on congas, Babatunde on drums and John Stewart on keyboards) were there in praise of Ed's life. Wish you could have been there to hear the music and the eulogies.

Ed Kelly's music has been heard the world over, from his years of study at the prestigious Berkley School of Music, to concerts in Japan, Switzerland, Paris, both coasts, and for the past 20 years or more from the classroom of Laney College in Oakland. His awards have been many, from Downbeat Magazine to the Bammies here in the Bay Area. He was named Humanitarian of the Year by the Black Gospel Music Academy a few years ago, so his fans and admirers were countless and today filled the church of his lifetime with a loving and melodic sendoff into eternity.

All of the prominent Bay Area black preachers were present and accounted for, led by Rev. J. Alfred Smith, Sr., Ed's pastor at Allen Temple Missionary Baptist Church -- his eulogy was very moving and heartfelt -- a proper balance between the sacred and the profane -- gospel to jazz, though today jazz was accorded full status as Black America's classical music. Today jazz was sacred. I'm so glad to have been in that congregation. Even sang out a few "Praise the Lords" and "Amens" along with the rest of the brethren. (Atheism doesn't hold up terribly well in the black church.)

Not sure I'll arrive until late afternoon tomorrow, surely in time for the art show openings. Saturday is a big day at the store and I'm not at all sure that David can get away to pick Dorian up from practice. It will add some miles to my driving -- having to go to Oakland and back, but I'll be ready to roll shortly after noontime. Should arrive between 3:00 and 4:00 if the traffic is relaxed and easy. The rest of this day will be spent doing last minute tasks in order to leave Dorrie set up for the weekend without me. Will probably get little sleep tonight since I do tend to get burned up by anticipation -- been true ever since I was about six. Christmas was a disaster until I gave up on Santa Claus much later than most kids, actually; ever the dreamer optimist.

Guess I've gotten past my eulogizing now and can get back to living concerns again, like civic meetings, matching socks, and feeding cats. Will get out of my mourning suit and into my blue jeans and tee shirt and catch up with things I've neglected for the past few days.

Hope you're well and that your tests show nothing worrisome. While I'm in my temporary state of religious bliss, will send up a few prayers of support, but I don't think there's much chance that I'll be heard. Sinner status will be reinstated just as soon as I get out of my mourning clothes!

Fondly,

Betty

In an eerie case of "death comes in threes,"

yesterday brought the third announcement. It's the more bizarre because about ten days ago I woke from a disturbing dream in which the only characters were my mother, father, and sister -- all three died years ago. I wondered at the time if this was a foreboding of events to come, or, if it indicated something more personal -- a premonition of my own death, maybe? I rarely recall my dreams so this made it the more troubling... .

Yesterday, barely minutes after I wrote the last entry there was a call from Joan, a lifelong friend whom I see rarely now. I was one of her grownup friends when she was a teenager and I served as godmother to her first born son, Michael. I have two godsons, Lyn and Michael. It was Lyn's father who was memorialized on Saturday.

While a student at U.C. Berkeley during the Vietnam War, Michael left the country for Cuba in a period of deep disillusionment and nationalist anger. He was a student activist during the turbulent Sixties and one of the casualties of the civil rights movement. He was handsome and bright and talented, and eventually became one of Cuba's young intellectuals with a radio program on Havana radio to much acclaim. He could never return to the US, though his parents and sister visited him on occasion, but I've never seen him again.

Joan was calling to tell me that Michael had died two weeks ago. It had been a brief illness. Michael had died of cancer of the esophagus -- the illness that had claimed Joan's father's life when Michael was still a baby. The anniversary of that death and Michael's was but a single day apart. Joan had flown to Cuba for services and wanted to let me know that their friends here were planning a memorial in early March. I was stunned! She sounded calm and sensible as I've always known her to be. No hysteria. But it's been a while since his death and it was only I who was unknowing at this point. Michael was the age of my middle son, Bob, and memories of them as children rushed back in these moments as I tried to catch my breath. It felt like a full blow to my body, and it hurt as if I'd been hit squarely with an invisible fist!

When I cradled the phone I sat for a long time sitting still and feeling relieved that it may now be over; the cycle of death. This was the third. No more, please. Let this be the end.


This weekend I will drive to the north coast to be with him. I'm telling myself that this is as much for Dorian as for me -- building up muscles for independence again. We've both regressed since she returned home, and I'm becoming more and more "Mama" with each day; infantilizing her into the role of "child". When she was still in her Oakland apartment, we'd worked out a nice relationship as super-friends, but that's been fading fast. She is delighted to have our condo to herself for the weekend, and I'm trying to not allow myself to see this as a self-serving strategy designed to free me to exercise my rights as woman. I'm not too sure that I have the answers yet, but we both appear to be enjoying a little distance in our relationship, so I won't question too closely.

In two weeks he and I will drive up to Ashland, Oregon, for 6 days -- and this weekend will serve as the dress rehearsal. Haven't told her about that yet. Not sure why, but maybe it has to do with not wanting her to have so much warning that she can plan mischief of some sort to get into while I'm gone. (Obviously, I'm not fully confident, right?)

The special bus service will pick her up each day for NIAD where she will spend her five hours. David will check with her each evening. She's a great mother to her two pet cats and considers them her children. They will need tending, and she's never been neglectful. (Not to worry, Mom!) I'll notify her caseworker and teachers that she'll be alone -- and that should do it.

Besides, the death cycle has now ended, hasn't it?

Here's to life!

Passages ...

Attended a memorial service on Saturday -- the day after the Rennie Harris dance performance -- and the contrasts were stunning.

The setting was the nursing home where my friend, Henry "Buddy" Sims, spent his final three years of life. As the godmother of his only son, Lyn, this was a service I dared not miss. Properly dressed in my only black pants suit I managed to arrive promptly for the two o'clock service -- to find myself in a room with my contemporaries -- mostly strangers with whom he'd shared his last years. There were also his relatives, most of whom I'd not met before and at least two widowed friends.

The thing I remember most about Buddy was his enthusiastic two-finger jazz piano duets with anyone who could handle the bass end of the keyboard -- and his inventive dance steps. No one could boogie like Buddy.

I realized in looking around that here was my age appropriate group, yet I felt out more out of context here than I'd felt last night at the Yerba Buena Center; strange. I have no sense that I'm trying to escape the aging process. In many ways I'm probably more aware of the inexorable passage of time than ever before. What's different? Could it have been the nursing home setting? There were so many in the room with walkers and attached to oxygen tanks and wheelchairs ... felt a shudder. I realized how fortunate I've been for such a long time; blessed by excellent health and continuing energy with which to move through life without the hindrance of some chronic illness to contend with.

It's quite possible that the fact that I've not stopped working has added to my stamina -- but there's surely something more to pay attention to. Wish I knew what it was ... .

It's genetic, I suppose. Long-lived parents and grandparents surely account for much of it. One thing is perfectly clear, at least. Despite arguments to the contrary miscegination surely did not foul the gene pool!

Given any luck at all, a favorable response to global warming, a world eventually at peace, continuing safe journeys on the roads, I may make it to the century mark as did my mother, Lottie, and greatgrandmother, Leontine Breaux Allen. But that's a crap shoot these days, and the odds are not great, I think.

I think that I'm less afraid of death than of dying. Its not that I'm all that courageous -- it's simply that I've never been able to imagine the state of non-existence ... .

On Friday of this week there will be another memorial. This time is will be another dear friend, masterful jazz pianist, Ed Kelly who died a week ago after a long battle against a devastating stroke. This will be different, I think. The service will be held in a large African American -- Allen Temple Missionary Baptist Church in East Oakland. Every musician for miles around will be in the congregation. There will be great music and I'm certain that his life will be celebrated magnificently. His son, Terence, is the director of the internationally famed Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. Ed often accompanied the group so surely they will " ...make a joyful noise onto the Lord."

I will surely feel less age-isolated in that congregation since folks of every age and gender will share in that celebration and the music will erase all of the insignificant differences -- all except the love we shared for Ed and one another during his lifetime.

In a way I'm looking forward to this experience. It will be inter-racial, inter-cultural, but firmly rooted in Black culture. It will be rich and memorable, and I will be nourished for having been a part of it.

Wish Buddy could have attended. It would have been his cup 'o tea ... .

Sensational performance!

Rennie Harris is a brilliant performer...

and his dance company is astounding in what it brings together. The show is called "Exploring Outsider Art and Street Culture in Facing Mekka." The company is Rennie Harrie Puremovement. Astounding! The subtitle is "Imagine a whole new way to see. Life Amplified!" A more apt description could not be found, I think.

There were drummers, singers, film against towering screens, dancers who used the entire spectrum of movement from street dance to house dance to acrobatics to break-dancing to ballet and African-influenced movement. There was even one young musician who used only voice in an unbelievable range of sounds -- a page taken from the Bobby McFerrin songbook but expanded beyond belief. Gutterals, percussive bursts, screams and shrieks, with body movements accenting sound in a way that announced to the world that Hip Hop is indeed a worthy art form, one that now circles the globe and permeates much of the emerging art forms. Anyone who has allowed themselves to limit the definition to rapping (a single expression of a vast new world of expression) is missing something profound and as important as Dada-ism, Impressionism, Surrealism, etc. There are some new young masters making their mark in film, music, dance, and poetry (known as "spoken word")under the banner of Hip Hop. San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, and large cities in between have embraced this exciting art form, and others will follow in time.

Rennie Harris, DJ Spooky, presentations by entrepreneur Russell Simmons all appear to be the leading lights right now. Their work is raw, audacious, and bold, often pushing the edges of propriety -- but then that's the role of the artist in society anyway, and always has been. And they're working from the pallette we've left to them as legacy; a legacy of unbridled violence from a constant stream of televised hatred fed to them in lieu of time and attention in a world often too busy for nurturing parenting.

In watching the show on Saturday night I realized the power of the dance as a way of dealing with profanity in ways that doesn't crash up against our hot buttons in quite the same way that speech does. Yet I saw in the multi-media backdrop fire and water and violence and guns and heinous cruelty and charging dogs all reinforced by a foreground where dancers contorted their bodies grotesquely to a cacophony of sound that was abstract and dissonant, raucous and magnificent! Had all of that been delivered in words I undoubtedly would have shut them out in the attempt to protect my senses. Dance exposed and delivered every emotion and at a feeling level that could penetrate my resistance without destroying me. It was amazing ... !

It also occurred to me that -- in this show that was devoid of sexual innuendo (almost always erroneously associated with Hip Hop) -- the new pornography is violence. But that's been true for a very long time now, hasn't it? Films and television exploit it quite freely, and we do little more than complain mildly and soothe ourselves with the belief that this is a freedom of the tawdry that we must defend as a privilege granted by the 1st Amendment, of course; and I agree. Maybe the answer is what young people are doing with it; transforming it into poetry and music and paintings and dance and reflecting it back to us for reconsideration in a plea for peace and love. If you listen closely you can hear that in the work of Eminem and others.

They're crossing racial and cultural lines to share their concerns and it's working for them. Below the age of 30 the young in urban areas show every sign of having eliminated racial bigotry from their world. The celebration of Black culture is universal in their world, and without apology. It's no longer a case of expropriation of a culture, but a crossing over of lines of separation with a full understanding of their own shared history and the "sins of the fathers" that may need atonement.

If we can keep the world from blowing up at the hands of those who make claim to fundamentalist religious beliefs, this supposedly profane generation of true believers may yet save us all.

Meanwhile -- if you live close enough and can get tickets to any of the upcoming Yerba Buena Center for the Arts dance performances this spring, do so. The Robert Moses Dance Company and DJ Spooky are both coming soon to the YBC. The Black Choreographers Festival at Project Artaud Theater, also in San Francisco comes February 11-13 with a Sunday family matinee performance. It should be really exciting.

Have been thinking over the weekend about contacting the Richmond Art Center director about the possibility of creating a program of performing arts tours that people here might subscribe to. Wonderful way to begin to build an audience for bringing shows here at some point in the future.

But for now there's work to do, like sorting laundry ... .

We've recovered nicely, thank you.

Confidence back in order and paint brushes at the ready.

For those who emailed to ask for photos of Dorian's Tsunami, I'm still working on it. Managed to send one set to a friend, but it was a bumbling attempt without the proper settings so they were not the thumbnails I'd anticipated. Really feared that her computer would crash from the overload! She did reply, however, to say that they'd arrived safely. Will try to export into CbreauxAnnex as soon as I figure the process, so patience is the keyword here.

Today I'll attend a memorial service for a very old friend from my teen years. These rites are frequent these days -- a problem associated with octogenarianism. Reminders of one's mortality and the need to live with intentionality now. But then I'm not sure that I haven't always done that anyway. Nonetheless, there's that reminder to treasure the days while mourning those who precede you into nothingness... .

That's this afternoon. Tonight I'll attend a Hip Hop Concert at the San Francisco Yerba Buena Center. An artist named Rennie Gaines, I believe, and someone we'd like to bring to Richmond at some point for a young people's concert. Though I've still not been able to convince the powers that be to turn me loose on the Centennial, as much as I'd like to. Meeting with some co-conspirators to explore ways to get this city to take advantage of this upcoming 100th year anniversary as a way of marketing itself. Wonderful opportunity that may be squandered while we continue to stumble around trying to recover financially from a period of bad decisions that drained the city coffers and caused widespread dissonance within the community. We're on the mend now, though, and I firmly believe it's time to begin the celebration, later working our way up to dancin' in the streets!

In the background is the dull drone of the world at war and my apprehension at Jessica's departure sometime this week for Boot Camp. Frightening thought....

Then there's that reminder of Iran/Contra with still another name from the past -- Elliott Abrams -- moving into position in the second term cabinet of this erratic, arrogant, and (I believe) war criminal president. Scary words to type in, but as I did so I felt a surge of anger and outrage. What a terrible thing to believe about a leader and an administration that holds the power of life over the entire world!

It is at such times as these that I envy Dorian's innocence; her inability to feel the uncertainty and terror that I wake to many nights. Then I feel the weight of responsibility to "get it right" for us both as the days unfold and I send off my letters, click petitions online, all in an admittedly weak attempt at addressing events so far beyond my -- or anyone else's -- control.

But tonight it's the Yerba Buena Art Center and an experience that may provide a look at the world that we're growing into -- the world of the young, those who will hold the fate of the nation (the world?) in their hands before long. Given the state of public education and the justice system, one can only hope that there are enough balances created by the new technologies to prepare them for leadership adequately and quickly enough to save us all. I've met some amazing young people recently, and am hopeful. The new generation may have to wrest power from those reluctant to step away from center stage. Sounds a little like revolution, doesn't it? I hope that's not what we're moving toward ... but I'm no longer sure how the drastic changes demanded to alter our disastrous course can be accomplished without drastic measures.

I think I need to stop writing now. Not sure of where I'm going, and it's troubling to entertain such thoughts, even casually.

Life does have a way of balancing the score and keeping us humble.

Dorian's great artistic triumph has now to be measured against one of those incidents that grays the hair and encourages nightmares.

As has been a new "tradition" dating back to a few weeks ago, I drove out to the suburbs to spend the day with the man in my life (new Wednesday commitment). On the drive home my cell phone rang and at the other end of the call was a distraught Dorian. She could hardly speak. It seems that as she was washing her brushes at the sink -- just before the end of her day at NIAD, there was an unprovoked attack by a young man who suffers from autism. He struck her on the right side of her face near the eye and again on her back before staff could intervene. In the process her glasses were damaged but not nearly as much as her pride and self-confidence.

He is someone who attends the program only two days a week and apparently has an attendant who accompanies him on those days. NIAD is a relatively new experience for him and he's still learning to navigate a system that has rules that he's ill equipped to either understand or comply with.

Dorrie, on the other hand, is confident and reasonably talented but lacks the mental capacity to understand autism, or, the reasons why anyone would be so out of control. The damage to her psyche was far more serious than the blows she received, though today there is still soreness and some swelling. We managed to get through the evening relatively well (once I reached home from my tryst) except for my own feelings of guilt at not being available to her at such a time.

Almost instantly as I logged off from her hysterical call, the phone rang again. This time it was from one of the staff at NIAD feeling just awful and fearful of my reaction (I'm sure), and needed almost as much reassurance as did Dorrie. I listened as well as I could while weaving through rush hour traffic, and told her that the miracle was that Dorian has reached maturity without ever having had such an experience before. Considering the population that wonderful program is working with (so beautifully), it is small wonder that they manage to balance all of the disabilities that fill the studios without experiencing anything more serious than this. As soon as I was assured that Dorian had not suffered any real physical harm, it sounded as if they'd handled it well and that I could pick up the rest of the pieces when I eventually reached home.

She was waiting at the door with an icebag on her face and tears streaming! However, despite all -- it took no more than an hour or so to make things right, and we did.

The offender has been suspended (unfortunately since he probably needs the program more than we do) and won't return for a week. He was made to apologize for being out of control, but that may beyond his power to feel -- even though the process needed to be gone through for his sake and for the sake of on-watchers. The staff tried to make it clear to Dorrie that his actions were not caused by anything she'd done or said, but I'm not sure that she could understand that to be any more true than he was to actually feel his apology. Makes me wonder about the emptiness of some of the practices that we've put in place to handle such events in our attempts at socializing the afflicted. He'll continue to feel threatened by having been placed in a program he doesn't yet value, and she will be fearful of his rage because it is irrational -- too much for even the professionals to deal with confidently. Tis a dilemma.

But, while I was still half asleep this morning under my down quilt -- I could hear her up feeding her two cats, packing her lunch, brushing her teeth, and by the appointed hour -- setting out to wait for her bus. I drove over to NIAD at noon time to pick her up to get the eyeglasses repaired (to get rid of this evidence of the traumatic event)and found her well into her new sculpture (something that defies description at this point, except that I hear the word dragon) that has her excited again. We've weathered another storm, and it won't be the last.

However, I'm planning to take off for five days in early March for Ashland, Oregon, to see several plays. It's important to me. This was going to be another attempt at exercising Dorian's reconstituted independence. I was reminded that there is always the unforeseen -- impossible to plan for or guard against. I have no doubt that she can handle being alone again, but I have a new worry to deal with. I'd give almost anything to feel just a bit less responsible. As is almost always the case, I'll have to try hard to turn down the panic buttons and give her the chance to deal with life on her own. Keep reminding myself that David is completely reliable and caring and that the risk is small.

We'll both survive.

Besides, she's been asked by a NIAD staffmember if she'd like to try to design a logo for Special Olympics -- for a postcard to be used by the local groups (I presume). This may have simply been something offered to distract her from the trauma of yesterday, but it doesn't matter. The request validates her status as "artist" and she may opt for that over "victim." Some get trapped at that place and never recover. She has a lot of good credits banked from the last art show and can draw on them now to maintain herself. My biggest job may be to stand back and let that happen and to convince myself that "the world" will continue to do the right thing by her. One day that will be her only buffer and learning how to navigate the social system now is vitally important.

I'm trying to make myself see this an another opportunity for growth and to keep my "mothering" from getting overblown and undoing all the good work we've done over the years.

Life goes on.

Can one create a tsunami as sculpture?

Of course not. Any fool knows that. But Dorian didn't, fortunately. Her mental deficits do not allow her the power of reason or judgement. It's in the arts that such deficits may become assets instead of handicaps. There are lots of "cannot do" areas in her life, but not within the walls of NIAD, where with clay, paint, glue, fabric, etc., all things are possible. The rules that govern so much of the rest of the world stop at the front door, and dream life becomes easily accessible, and a group of great teachers stand ready to help artists to see the possibilities in any chosen medium. It's a truly magical place.

We weren't prepared for the power of the exhibit on Thursday evening. Dorrie's wood sculpture was fantastic! Have no way to describe it except to say that it probably measured about 40 inches in length and stood perhaps 18-20 inches high and was composed of brightly-painted small bits of wood shaped into indescribable abstract suggestions of chairs and tables and other artifacts of life. There were no people (presumably post-wave). One end consisted of a single sheet of down-sloping wood painted in blues and greens and stopped by a wall she'd created to hold back the "water". She explained that the higher elevations were to give people a place to be where the waves wouldn't get them. It was all there. It was chaotic in feeling in almost florescent oranges, reds, yellows, and blues with shapes going in every direction as if wave-tossed. It was a tremendous work, and probably all inspired from the endless repetitious news coverage of the historic tragedy. It was a stunning piece of work that surprised everyone who stopped to visit her exhibit.

I felt so grateful that an imaginative instructor had chosen to not dissuade her from tackling something so abstract and impossible to create as her first attempt at sculpture. I can just imagine Dorrie saying, "I'm going to make a tsunami," and a less wise teacher saying, "no, dear. We should first try making something more familiar -- maybe a snake or an ashtray, or something ...". Instead this young woman said, "sure, go for it!" And she did. There's a message here about the danger of lowered expectations, a problem that's all too common these days.

There's that quality that Dorian enjoys that I often envy. Like the bumble bee who is not aero-dynamic and doesn't know that it can't fly -- does it anyway. Dorian has no way to know that one simply cannot capture the power of a tsunami in bits of wood and glue, so has the freedom to "soar" artistically.

There was more magic in the faces of the guests at the reception who stared with wonder as they viewed her creation. Maybe she freed us all just a bit, at least enough to get us through the weekend, and another round of horrors from the war zones.

Her Tsunami will be featured in NIAD's summer show in June, and she's now officially assuming the title of "Artist."

Makes me wonder how one measures talent and ability as expressed by people like Dorian Reid and her 22 year-old friend, Ingrid, who suffers from cerebral palsy and paints wonderful landscapes from her wheel chair -- holding her paint brush between her teeth ... .

And, no, the work at the S.F. MOMA was not better, only different.

There are more dimensions to the arts than many of us can perceive, I think.

Photo: Dorian Leon Reid, Artist studying at NIAD (National Institute for Artists with Disabilities) in Richmond, California.