Thanksgiving - "over the river and through the traffic" ...

Holidays no longer hold the same power as they once did for me. In these days of far more funerals than christenings, awareness of who is not at the table becomes painfully sharp. There's no longer a need for a children's table. Our youngest are now old enough to sit with the grownups -- it's been several years since we've needed a highchair. The next wave of babies is not yet here. We're all aging ... .

Noticing the competitiveness of everything around me today. ESPN is bringing football from every quarter of the country into our living room while on other channels are featured re-runs of the new genre of reality shows that are the epitome of "you're out" television. We've turned everything into competitions for favor, for money, for careers, for oil and stocks and bonds and elective office, for a place in the chorus line, 24-hour slot machines, for cosmetic surgery, for a spot on the catwalk, and finally, for King of the World!

Remembering the day that I sat high up in the bleachers at Edwards Field, University of California at Berkeley -- overhearing a conversation between two men who coached Special Olympic athletes who at that moment stood far below at the starting line -- in their blocks and ready for the 100 yard dash. "Working with the retarded is difficult," says one, "... you have to teach them to look down as they run. If they catch a glimpse of runners in the next lanes -- they will simply run alongside." Maybe this is a more natural way of performing -- at least before we're taught to compete."

Remember laughing some time later as I watched the San Francisco Bay To Breakers marathon with all of its craziness and color. Here were thousands of people of every size, shape, sexual orientation, skin color, wild costume, running alongside and loving it. The real runners ran far up ahead (the Kenyans, of course) seriously competing for fame and fortune. But it was the nutty ordinary folks who walked, ran at any pace, laughed and joked until they reached Footstock in Golden Gate Park and the great party that followed.

Dorian and her equally handicapped friend, Chris, are in the livingroom watching the Thanksgiving Day parade while I do the chopping and mixing in the kitchen. They're talking about their up-and-coming Special Olympics bowling tournament where they'll be lucky to break 75 out of a possible 300 but will come home bedecked with ribbons and tee shirts emblazoned with the Special Olympics logo. And every other athlete will do the same as they've done for many years.

I'm aware of the number of email pleas for contributions to organizations I respect and admire -- created by political allies whom I trust -- and am aware of the ultimate competition for power those pleas represent. If I answer them all appropriate to my trust and sense of rightness, I'll need another job or a far higher salary. I'm helpless to respond, except in a token way and with the hope that there are enough small fish like me doing what they can to support this nation in what may prove to be the final competition before we collapse into non-relevance and another more worthy national competitor moves forward to take our place in the world arena.

Is there nothing for which we are not willing to write a rule book and offer prizes?

Dance Sport as an olympic event?

Have we lost our collective First World minds?

Photo: Special Olympics swim meet. Dorian is third line in this March of the Athletes, 2005.

Worked through something of importance this weekend ... .

Beethoven's Fidelio experienced in juxtaposition with brilliant jazz violinist, Tarika Lewis, and the renown John Handy on saxophone dueled to a neat finish this weekend. What a convergence of arts and culture this was for me! I'd never have dreamed ... .

The opera was a combination of sounds and spectacle and craziness of a kind that sent me into giggles -- alone in bed late on Saturday night. The music was wonderful -- once I allowed myself to shut out the 275 pound mezzo contralto playing a "lad" in duet with a lovely delicate and svelt young blond ingenue whose father was an African American baritone in a blond/grey wig and all singing in German!

Following the libretto provided on screens on either side of the great opera house stage proved pure folly since opera is apparently not about libretto at all but about music. And casting is not about obesity but about purity of tone, stage presence, and projection. And once I stopped trying to force it to make sense -- closed my eyes and rode the waves of Beethovian music -- it all worked. But I had to work at it. There's an inescapable intellectual component that doesn't quiet easily. A major cultural difference.

This evening there was another family memorial service. This was the younger sister of Dorothy Reid Pete who died recently at the age of 90. Florence was 88. Her only daughter, Joan Tarika Lewis is a brilliant violinist -- a jazz violinist. She's toured the nation and the far east with the famous saxophonist, John Handy, who played for us this evening. It was a memorial service like no other. Tarika is active in African drumming and dance circles so the evening was filled with both as her friends joined in the celebration of her mother, Florence's, life. They were in colorful African costumes. There was a traditional Libation ceremony that reminded us all of that which binds us together across the ages.

The discovery for me was that here in this room the experience of music was purely emotional. Visceral. No thinking here. Just feeling and letting it wash over me. I could anticipate the notes before they were played. I know this. Here were both the notes and the music!

For the greater part of the evening (it was held at Geoffrey's, a smart supper club in downtown Oakland), 15 mm films from the family's archives were shown on a large screen -- while the musicians improvised.

There were scenes from their early marriage and when Tarika and her late brother were very young. Florence's husband and Tarika's father, the never-defeated light-heavyweight champion of the world, John Henry Lewis, was shown in one of his historic bouts. He died in 1974. This was truly the end of an era for their family. This is the family of Mel Reid, my late first husband and the father of our children. I'm still a celebrant when the occasion demands. This is my tribe, too.

As an aside, I can't recall the source of the saying, but it may have been Atlas who claimed that he could lift the world high in his bare hands if he only had a place to stand.

On the drive home I realized that this is what African-Creole history and culture are for me. They're my place to stand. All else flows from that.

This I know.

Photo: Don't recall the year, probably in the late Sixties. I'm in the lower right with guitar -- back to camera. The other musician is visiting from the Caribbean. Cultures blended nicely that night. These were Unitarian-Universalist friends of the Mt. Diablo Church. These were the best years just before my return to Berkeley in the early 70s.

Thank you, Donna. A reminder of how it was ... .

A dear friend and important historian dropped by for a meeting today and in the process dropped this news clipping into my hand. She'd been rumaging around in the Berkeley Main Library and run across this article. It was archived from the now extinct Berkeley Daily Gazette and is dated March 28, 1985. The words of the writer evoke such memories. The article is a reminder of life as I was living it at the time -- and rings quite true -- even in hindsight.

(This is a thumbnail. Click on it to open.)

Contrasts can be dizzying if one thinks about it too much ...

Woke this morning to the sound of Scott Simon's voice on NPR introducing a piece on New Orleans by one of the staff whose home was/is there. It was a fine piece with appropriate sounds in the background and the proper mix of humor, irony, and pathos for what exists no more. The images from my architect friend, Tom Butt's (not my special friend, Tom) report on his recent professional visit to Louisiana and the many photos of desolation that he included blew open memories that I thought had dimmed out long ago. Hadn't realized how touched I was by those images.

The replay of the hurricane of my childhood -- the one that uprooted my family and deposited us in Oakland, California, in 1927 has come into sharp focus again. I was six -- old enough to have the trauma renewed but more in feelings than in fact. Each time I read of the plight of those dispersed out into strange environments (like Creoles in Utah) something stirs deep inside that I can't quite get at ... .

Comments by this morning's reporter continue to resonate -- "... in a city that was only recently 80% black, that percentage has been reversed. Everywhere I look there are white people." And, "...the hotels and inns that remain are no longer filled with the visitors who used to come to share our culture, but with FEMA personnel and workers and agents." Though the voice was that of a white woman, there was obviously pain in it for what once was -- and hope that somehow it will all be restored. She sounded both nostalgic and resigned to the unknown future of her/our city.

My family never returned except for occasional visits to see Mammá, yet much of the culture is still embedded in my psyche -- at least through my own generation. Sadly, little if any of that was transmitted to our children. My parents mourned the loss, and it was in the mourning that their love of New Orleans and the music and the food and the superstitions and zest for life was given to us. It was fragile. I didn't know. Should have taken better care of it.

When looking through old fading family photos since Katrina, I'm discovering a freshening of memories. Something beyond nostalgia ... a kinship with today's scattered souls who may never return -- but who may not find today's world any more kindly than it was when my parents left. In many cases (especially since we witnessed the lack of caring over those endless days when corpses rotted away in gutters) there's strong evidence that our fate -- even in a time of brutal segregation -- we were luckier than those now dispersed into unknown futures. It is yet to be acknowledged that at least 5000 people are still unaccounted for. There has been no final count announced. I suspect that there will never be.

I also think of all those little Bettys caught in the aftermath of Katrina -- warehoused in strange cities -- lost to the vagaries of ghetto life, uprooted from poor schools in the south and tossed into poorer ones in the north -- with resources withheld or skimmed off by corruption in a system not yet free of the blindness of racism -- damned by low expectations and consigned to the least of all there is. Such thoughts demand that I participate in the saving of the children -- all children -- and in the saving -- save myself.

But as it was with my own life -- change will come. That it will be as profound a change as I've lived cannot be seen at this point. Change is irresistable; controlling the shape of it is unfortunately a collective thing -- demanding implementation by us all. Individuals have little power over the form it takes or the speed by which it moves. Yet, that little girl who arrived with hurricane-devastated parents in 1927 survived. There are remnants of a culture still influencing my life. The Catholicism and the French patois were casualities, but the jazz and the deep pride of being and the gumbo and jambalaya and the joie de vivre lives on, and for that I'm grateful. Perhaps that's why I cling to the uniqueness of my Creole (black) ancestry -- it's always given more than it took away. And I'm still adding to it -- though often despite a strong resistance to the constant threat of expropriation by the dominant culture.

Tonight we'll have dinner at Tadich's in San Francisco's financial district -- then on to the San Francisco Opera. The performance will be Ludwig van Beethoven's "Fidelio." Though not hard-wired for either symphony or opera, I find myself more and more open to listening keenly in the hope of making connections to the store of music of a kind that I feel rather than hear. I'm discovering that -- from time to time -- some universal is tapped into -- and that spiritual knowing kicks in ... and the music and the fine arts and the dance strikes some universal something and I'm on the inside -- with the composer or the artist or the dancer -- and there's the feeling of home. The feeling is rare -- but having felt it at all and at times emulating it -- the possibility keeps me ever searching in galleries and on concert stages and dance pavillions ... but mostly in the music of Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, and Shirley Horn, still. But at times now, also in the strains of Sibelius, Borodin, or Mozart or a Quaker choir singing "Tis a gift to be simple ...". Maybe the connection has to be made with something already within me, and after so many years -- what's in me grows richer and more complex with each day.

What's in me -- the starting place -- was/is my black Creole history and culture.

Photo: Papa George (Allen) standing beside his little shotgun bungalow that housed us in 1927. In the row just below him are Aunt Vivian Allen (Jernigan), Cousin Annabelle LeBeouf (Therence), my mother, Lottie Allen Charbonnet; Papa's sister, Great Aunt IsoBel Allen LeBeouf Warnie, Cousin Vernon Therence, Jr., Cousin Ruth Warnie (Strange), my sister Marjorie Charbonnet (Brooms) holding my younger sister, Lottie Charbonnet (Fields), Cousin Dick Therence, Cousin Josie Warnie (Duncan), and in the front row with scratches all over face, me.

Thinking of how stubbornly I cling to my black identity in a changing world ...

Read back through that last entry and could easily see how irrational it must read to others. And, it probably is. I've over-simplified wildly, but it felt good leaving my fingers ... and maybe that's all I needed -- to feed the words off the ends of my fingers just for the hell of it!

Thought earlier this evening about yesterday's Youth Symphony concert at Allen Temple Baptist Church. It was an afternoon performance of young classical musicians combined with the 100 voice Oakland Symphony Chorus. Loved every minute of it, most of all the Borodin.

At first I felt resistance to the music -- as though I needed to hold out against this European art form - but I couldn't. Beauty is not confined by such boundaries; and it was beautiful!

The concert was held in the 5000-member Baptist church in East Oakland in a cluster of buildings that takes up an entire city block. I remember Allen Temple from my childhood -- it was born in a small converted private home a block away from this site and pastored by Reverend Marion Wilde for many years. The grammar school that I attended is right across the street from this church. The home where I grew up is three blocks away. These are the streets of my childhood. It is now a crime-ridden very low income primarily African American ghetto. When I was a student at Highland elementary -- the community was largely second generation Portuguese and immigrant Irish. At that time there were probably only 20 or so black families living east of Lake Merritt -- and we were scattered throughout the greater area.

The Del Monte cannery hired most of the women in our community, and later National Biscuit Company. The men were employed by the huge Chevrolet Plant on 73rd Avenue and Foothill Boulevard. The biggest day of the year was Holy Ghost Day celebrated at the Portuguese hall on 71st Avenue with its colorful parades and banquets that involved us all, regardless of race or color. We were big on St. Patrick's Day, as well. We knew nothing of Kwaanza. This was long before Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. It would be years before I'd know of Harriet Tubman, James Weldon Johnson, or Sojourner Truth. I was introduced to Langston Hughes in the school auditorium of Elmhurst Junior High on 98th Avenue when he read his poetry in an assembly. All of this ran through my mind as I listened to the Borodin symphony -- a strange juxtaposition of cultures and memories. How the world has changed.

On this day in Oakland, this auditorium held an audience made up of 75% non-blacks. The huge symphony chorus was all white with a single exception. The youth orchestra was led by conductor Michael Morgan (African American) of the East Bay Symphony. The young people were European-American and Asian with one or two African American kids n the mix. I wondered about that, and why more of our children were not into this music?

Oakland is reputed to be the most racially-integrated city in the nation. That this many white people (there was standing room, only) would attend such a concert in the heart of the black community to listen to symphonic music for an afternoon might be a rarity in middle America, but in Oakland it all works. We truly do celebrate racial diversity -- and we've been at it enough years so that it's now effortless and unself-conscious.

So why then am I still so defiant and insistent upon defining myself racially?

Photo: "Jesus Loves Me" painting by Varnette Honeywood (1983). A gift received long ago from my son, Rick, 1945-1997.

Been thinking about those Nubians ...

It seems highly unlikely that the truth would be so simplistic, but could it be? Is the reason that there is such reluctance to credit black people with having created written language, mathematics, water systems, etc., simply coming from the earliest examples of racial bias? Is it so hard to imagine the greatness of the earliest of scholars coming out of one of civilization's earliest universities at Timbuktu and spreading throughout the known world from the great continent of Africa? Admittedly, the greatest advances came from the African continent from people of color -- but in a scholarly way were discounted because "...those people were not black."

I can hear him now. Bill. Insisting that it was the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, who brought us the beginnings of civilization as we know it (all assumed to be other than black). But what about the contemporaneous social and technological development taking place across the world in the Americas? What about the Inca, the Olmec, and the Maya? And what about Asia; what was going on in China eons ago? Isn't it quite possible that human beings were achieving similar advances in farflung parts of the world simultaneously?

Just because Europeans were the eventual victors in the great human struggles -- and created systems and processes for measuring human progress -- does that necessarily mean that they were right in all instances? The simple naming and creating of categories as a means of understanding human evolution -- isn't it possible -- that those systems and processes simply don't hold up against rapidly advancing humanity?

Having grown up in the "One Drop Rule" world, it is almost impossible for me to not know that everyone who is swarthy of complexion is partly African. It seems so easy for me to understand that those who settled farthest north (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, etc.) are blondest, fairest of skin, with downy covering over their bodies for warmth in the extreme cold of the polar regions. Or that people who settled in the Mediterranean coastal areas and around the Indian Ocean -- were darker-skinned than those farther north in European areas (Germany, England, Slavic regions). All one needs is a color wheel to watch the shadings as they naturally occur from the deep southern hemisphere to the northern polar regions.

How can one accept the reality of Lucy being the "Eve," the first known ancestor of humanity -- excavated from deep in the earth of Kenya -- and not be able to see that civilization sprang from that region as well, and that all human progress evolved through populations of black peoples over the millenia?

The radical changes wrought by populations on the move from the slave trades have done much to change the natural order but it's all there to see. Present-day mobility is completing the cycle of change. People like me and mine may be the beginning of the end of racial designations, I suppose. Race is becoming little more than a political choice. I have no idea what that will mean in terms of how we'll reorganize the world.

By the simple naming of racial groups Europeans have believed it possible to define us -- but always in relation to themselves. The black Sadu of India, the black-skinned Aborigine of Australia, Fiji Islanders, many Middle Easterners, Egyptians, Nubians (yes!), are all described as other than black African in circles we moved in during the university years. That left us with the Ubangis, the Bushmen, the Zulu, etc., who were inevitably depicted in loin cloths carrying spears -- as uncivilized (according to new world standards) and cannibalistic, primitive, taught to say "Bwama" in the presence of the white colonial powers. Having removed all others from the pantheon of the enlightened -- it was assumed that nothing but ill came from those of darker skin.

Great pharaohs of Egypt -- the thousand year dynasties -- great mathematicians and scholars and, yes, scribes were people of blackness but now reclassified under new rules written by the victors, as history has always been documented. (One day I'll have this conversation with Howard Zinn -- "A People's History of the World".)

Not sure this sheds much light on a very complicated age-old problem, but at least it's helped to organize my thoughts for another bout with Tom over the issue. I suppose that his doctorate will cut through my arguments like a machete through warm butter -- but I'll feel better when I've taken a shot at it -- again... .

Photo: oil on canvas painting by an artist (whose name I can't decipher) from Zimbabwe in southern Africa. It hangs on my livingroom wall near the fireplace.

The New deYoung Museum is stunning!

We drove to San Francisco yesterday afternoon to get a first glimpse of this spectacular new fine arts museum in Golden Gate Park. The reviews are in and consensus is that this is an architectural triumph and worthy of its place among the world's finest. The crowds are still large, but it's so spacious that it's not a problem.

The main exhibit (until February 15, 2006) is the collection of "Hatshepsut; From Queen to Pharaoh" and is wonderful. The gold objects, travertine (Egyptian alabaster) bowls and cosmetic containers, breast plates, necklaces (one made of 1400 tiny gold beads!), lifesized sandstone figures recovered from tombs where they were stowed centuries ago for the millenium and all magically brought together from many parts of the arts world for us to see.

Now this is context. When one can get this timeless ageless glimpse of humanity across a timeline of literally thousands of years, perspective is unalterably changed. Even the wars of our times are diminished. And it's quite obvious that much of human nature has remained unchanged. We were seeking the path to eternity lo those many eons ago -- and settling on answers strikingly similar to those found today in many parts of the nation and the world. The belief that one could "take it all with them into the next world" dominated how life was lived. It occurred to me that we've codified the practice into statutes that enable us to -- if not take it all along -- at least to pass it along to our heirs. Instead of the alabaster jars, jeweled collars, golden sandles and finger guards and toe covers, we do it with real property and family heirlooms, and best of all -- estates that guarantee status for those we leave behind while we tune our harps and test our wings before the throne of The Almighty.

An awful lot of us still believe firmly in our ability to transcend this life and guarantee ourselves spaces in some faraway Heaven overseen by a God created in our own image and who respects our biases enough to see to it that we're not troubled with having to deal in the hereafter with those unlike ourselves. Or so it would seem from that life-changing visit to Corpus Christi Catholic Church in New Orleans as an impressionable teen. I've never really forgiven the fact that seating was segregated in a church built by my grandfather. This was one of the earliest memories of the feeling of being the only grownup in the room; a feeling I would recognize many years later as I sat in that school auditorium in the front row while the principal and faculty performed a minstrel show in blackface on the stage before me. I was the mother of the only black child in the school -- and he was only eight.

I was particularly interested in the Nubian scribes who were prominent in the Hatshepsut exhibit. There were a number of these learned and highly respected men shown in paintings and at least one huge sandstone sculpture of such a scribe. My friend again tried to explain to me that -- despite the ebony skincolor -- Nubians were not black; an ongoing dispute. I remember having such arguments with Bill years ago when I would insist that those in North Africa -- including the Egyptians were more closely related to me, racially, than they were to the caucasian world. How on earth could they not be? Anwar Sadat might have been my Uncle Henry if I had an Uncle Henry! (White folks foolishness!) This was the continent of Africa, after all. And here it was again, Tom is a gentle man who would rather not enter into such a debate with me -- but who looks resolute and unconvinced -- smiling tolerantly and benevolently but clearly adamant in holding to his own learned opinion. Because it was such a beautiful exhibit in such a beautiful place -- I continued to hold my ground but did so wordlessly. We were at an impasse. We'll hash this one out one day in front of his fireplace with the rain sounding lightly on the copper roof at his home in Mendocino. I've not given up -- only temporarily silenced.

Meanwhile, the fine arts are many faceted and my favorite artist these days is one Dorian Leon Reid of the National Institute for Artists with Disabilities (NIAD). Dorrie will love this Exhibit. We'll visit soon, and I may learn something from the way she incorporates the experience into her own work. She's fixed on cats and there is little more arresting than the Egyptian graceful and mystical depiction of the cat. These are her Speedy on steroids!

But today I'll attend the memorial service for dearly departed lovingly remembered Lucretia Edwards, a woman adored by all who knew her; another reminder of the passage of time and of lives.

Photo: "Apples" by Dorian, painted last year. It hangs on the wall of my kitchen and brightens both the room and my life each time I catch a glimpse of it when I flick the light switch on.

A collective honor... ?

Of course. This amazing honor is being awarded on my watch, but was earned by all of the family women -- my enslaved greatgreatgrandmother Celestine of No Last Name, her enslaved daughter, Leontine Breaux Allen (our beloved Mammá); my own mother, Lottie Allen Charbonnet; Aunt Alice Allen Hymel, St. James Parish educator; the trickster, Aunt Vivian Allen Jernigan, of all of the women of the preceding generations ... good thought. I can say proudly, "look how far we've come!" And just maybe it will provide some guidance for the younger family women I'll leave behind when my time is spent. The years of researching family history and rebuilding the lines of connection bring with them a heightened sense of context. Thought of in that way, any false pride drops away and in its place comes a rare feeling of entitlement. Now I can write that bio. The "favorite photo" I've chosen is one taken when I was in the process of beginning the second half -- somewhat past fifty. That Betty was still in possession of a full head of hair and with eyebrows not yet descending over eyelids! The molting process was still years away.

When making the choice from an array of old photographs, I found myself wondering if this indicated that I saw fifty as the point at which life crested? Nope. It was only a fleeting thought. I'm keenly aware that the trajectory is still being defined, and that I've never felt quite completed -- still in the process of becoming. But my physical self as viewed objectively was probably at its peak at that point in time. This picture was taken on the day that Bill and l were married in the early 70's. I felt loved and whole and real and feisty and the camera caught every bit of it.

And speaking of such, word came this morning from a friend; a member of Richmond's city council and a noted architect who is in New Orleans as a part of a team of experts investigating the mold and structural problems left by Katrina. When Tom announced his assignment, I asked if he'd look into the fate of a couple of the buildings my father and grandfather erected many years ago. This morning it came -- the Phoenix is rising (see photo)! Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home has survived 4 feet of floodwater and is again operating. One day before too long, those jazz funerals will be wending their way to and from burials at St. Louis Cemetery as they have for the past century.

I've still not made meaningful contact with scattered family members, but at least I know that life is continuing, and that the legacy of Charbonnet is still a strong part of the identity of that city and its culture. Am hopeful that as things begin to slowly return to whatever form normal will take in the coming months and years, there will be a coming together of now dispersed family members.

That reminds me -- I must try again to reach cousin Louis Charbonnet and his family through the Mid-City Carriage Company. Have kept up (online) with continuing coverage on the fate of his heroic workers who saved the horses and mules -- and know that those animals that survived are stabled out of state awaiting restoration of their New Orleans home. The French Quarter will surely see those horsedrawn carriages again along Bourbon Street before too long -- a symbol of life as it once was lived in one of the most interesting and oldest cities in the nation.

I know that because the culture is in my DNA. Time and the distance have done little to diminish it.

Photo: Sent by Tom Butt as evidence of the survival of Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home.
Photo on the right is explained in body of this entry.

Work grows more intense with each day ...

...but maybe that's not what's happening at all. Maybe it's the sense of urgency about running out of the power to actualize all that's collecting in my mind -- that never-ending "to do" list may collapse into itself at some point like some black hole ...

Something else is beginning to color my days; it's the sense of some new quality of 'listening' to my words by others that wasn't there before -- and that I'm beginning to place demands on myself that words not be squandered into nonsense but that they be worthy of the attention given. Crazy? Does that mean that I'm in danger of becoming stilted? Pompous? Perhaps, but it goes along with the fact that I'm beginning to amass honors of a kind that make me want to peek behind myself to see if some more worthy soul is standing there waiting ... and that I'm blocking the view ... .

Perhaps my world is trying to say to me that it's time to leave the stage and make room for some unannounced successor. On the other hand, the excitement of feeling relevant still, and with the ability to join with others to bring the forces of change together in meetings and receptions and on picket lines and at demonstrations and civic meetings is heady and makes retirement still some faint goal for some distant future.

I'm still feeling effective and stirred by contemporary issues as if time has ceased to exist and that I'm caught in some undetermined age group -- somewhere between 35 and 70, surely not 80 or beyond. All of the Bettys are operative still, each rising to the forefront as the occasion demands. Now and then I catch sight of myself in a mirror or a reflection in a storefront window and my mother looks back. It can be jarring. This is surely the reason that some women opt for cosmetic surgery; to bring the inner and the outer selves into some reasonable alignment. I'm beginning to understand that.

My personal appearance has been relatively youthful for such a long time that the temptation to tamper with it has never been an issue. But now I'm beginning to notice that everything is beginning to fall, that my eyebrows have dropped closer to my eyelids and the feathering over my top lip .... What used to be freckles are now fullblown age spots that defy all attempts at coverage -- (don't believe the hype). And the hair! I will not succumb to wig-wearing -- but the hair-count is miserably scant -- and each time I draw the comb through my brush and toss away those collected in the bristles I know that there will be no replacements. Hair follicles are finite -- one of life's fundamental truths!

I worry now that my wardrobe is no longer reflecting my age. Am I dressing too young? Having no detectable changes in body shape over a lifetime, there has been little reason to buy clothing. I'm now past the age of acquisition so my wardrobe is perhaps 20-30 years old now -- except for the purchase of a new sweater or Levis now and again. Maybe I'll look around for the modern day version of that little black dress that was always the mainstay of my wardrobe with my long-dormant string of pearls ... that should reflect agelessness, right?

If this all reads like trivia, know that it has to do with my inability to put into words here how humble I'm feeling at having been announced as one of the honorees for the year 2006 by the National Women's History Project (NWHP). Having participated in the Mills College Conference on "Women of the West" a month or so ago, I have some sense of just how prestigious an honor this is. When I visited their website a moment ago and read through the list of women previously honored I could scarcely breathe!

The announcement of the year 2006 honorees is scheduled for November so I'm late. I need to return this form as a followup to the letter of acceptance I sent two weeks ago when notification came. Instead I'm sitting here stunned into silence and so awed by the honor that all I can think of are all of the stupid ways that I'm unworthy, like sagging eyebrows and terminal molting!

I came to my computer this morning to begin to put together the bio they've requested and to select a "favorite photograph" to accompany that -- and instead find myself sitting here feeling tearful, filled with humility, and totally unprepared for what this means. I'm so intimated by all of it that I'm having an extremely hard time following through. Does one ever feel worthy of such honors?

Maybe a trip to Nordstrom's for a new hat will take care of the qualms ... .

Or not.

(Stephen Sondheim -- Elaine Stritch, where are you?)

Photo: Another unbelievable day. This one in 1995, being presented with "Woman of the Year" plaque by Ms. Gail Wilson, wife of Governor Pete Wilson, before the California State Legislature. I didn't tell my family but drove the 78 miles to and from the Capitol alone and unheralded by those I love. Spent the day in that strange world being feted with no witnesses to share the experience with. Why? Maybe this year I'll change that. Maybe I've already overcome the reticence by posting it here.

To: Betty Reid Soskin
From: Steve Hurst
Subject: Quote from you for Richmond Chamber of Commerce Magazine/Directory
Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 11:17:58 -0800
X-ELNK-AV: 0

Hi Betty

Looking around my cluttered office today, I had one of those "Ah ha!" moments. I found your card.

I am designing and producing the next magazine/directory for the chamber. I suggested that we include quotations from individuals along with their portrait to show the diversity of the community.

I would like for you to tell me in a couple of paragraphs (I know you have volumes to speak) what it is you like about Richmond.

The purpose of the magazine, aside from raising revenue for the chamber, is to cast a positive image of Richmond to the business and residential community, as well as promote the image of the city to businesses and individuals considering a move here.

I'll search through my archives for a nice shot I've taken of you, but I may request taking a few newer shots for the image I want to project.

Thanks

Check out my websites


STEVE HURST
www.stevenart.com – Graphics, Photography, Paintings, Websites
stevehurstclocks.com
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Will this do? Gave it lots of thought, and it feels right.


"Having lived a long lifetime in several areas of the East Bay I've experienced the distinctively differing cultures that these adjoining communities represent. After living for extended periods in Oakland, Berkeley, Walnut Creek, El Cerrito, then Berkeley again, I've found Richmond the most challenging, the most interesting, with more opportunities to help to effect change than in any place that I've ever lived. As a political and social activist with a restless need to join with others in giving shape to the future, this matters greatly to me.

Despite the contradictions -- at times Richmond is totally provincial and "set in her ways"; treating newcomers much like Cape Cod treats its summer people -- and at other times she feels so open -- malleable -- yielding to the forces of change in ways that threaten her ability to form and maintain a civic identity. She feels like a city ever in the process of becoming -- never quite there -- so there's still time to help in the shaping. That's a completely different environment than one might find in San Francisco, Berkeley, or Oakland; all cities fully formed. Here, I see opportunity everywhere I look. The hope to join with others in re-creating the world we want to see seems more likely to be realized here than in any other place that I've known."

Betty

Photo: Taken last Friday at the ceremonial relocating of the old World War II Whirley Crane that served in the building of the victory ships at the Kaiser Shipyards. It was an event of historic significance that moved one more piece of history onto the site of the Rosie The Riveter/Home Front National Park. 11/4/2005

Epiphany.....!


Was startled out of sleep this morning. It was another of those moments of knowing; and it was suddenly all-of-a-piece; the last several seemingly unrelated entries plus some bits and pieces lived off-screen and away from this keyboard -- pieces that fell into place in a mosaic of clarity:

• Life in South Berkeley as a full-fledged struggling black merchant,
• The years of being radicalized by the contrasts inposed by my double life as female merchant while simultaneously living as an empowered faculty wife at the university.
• Being privileged by having my life in the cauldron of the innercity balanced by the ability to return every evening to a lovely home at the topmost ridge of Berkeley, above the university and on the edge of the pastoral wilderness of Tilden Park ...
  
• while those I faced from behind the counter remained each night to be impacted by the sounds of gunshots, fear, police sirens, poverty and crime, in daily lives lived against impossible odds.
  
• New talk of a curfew for youth in Richmond, and
• The pending execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams.

Crazy melange? You're right. I'm not even sure I can get it unsnarled in a few words ... .

Yesterday I was about to drive out to meet Tom in Walnut Creek when I discovered that my wallet was missing. Recalled that it was probably left on my desk at work on Friday and detoured from the Hilltop area through downtown to pick it up. The drive took me down Macdonald Avenue past Fourth Street park with its usual number of mostly scruffy-looking men "chinnin'" as Papa George would say. Grinned to myself in realizing that -- were I driving past Pete's Coffee or Starbucks in a white neighborhood I'd have seen men socializing. Here, I saw men loitering. I drew to the stop sign at the corner of Fourth and Nevin and noted that the men on two of the corners leaning against the store windows were clearly younger and far more animated; playful. But my CNN-conditioned mind easily translated the scene into one of drug-dealing. An easy trap. Was reminded of South Berkeley in the Seventies, and of how differently my mind read such scenes then -- when looking from inside the belly of the beast and not as an outside observer. Here, I was not a member of the community of the Iron Triangle. These were not youngsters whom I knew or cared about except in the abstract. What else was different? The element of fear. I'd grown past that in those life-changing years in South Berkeley. As that thought surfaced my hand automatically reached toward the door lock.

On the drive to Walnut Creek -- out San Pablo Dam Road past the reservoir -- through the brilliant red, gold, deep greens riot of colors of autumn, my mind locked on the contrasts almost as automatically as my fingers had on the lock button only moments before. Wasn't I only minutes away from upscale Orinda where my friend, Felix Polk's, life had been smothered out by Susan (also a child of privilege), and where that wealthy 16-year-old Goth had savagely murdered the attorney's wife in a fit of fury? Why had the fear not followed me here? Was it because here those awful crimes were seen as an anomaly; against logic. Why was that? Was it because as a society we've set up the conditions in both places that predicted outcomes. If so, the solutions to the problems should be as predictable, shouldn't they? Why were they not?

That handsome 16 year-old enjoyed a disproportionate share of resources, an SUV, the best schools, a room of his own, every gadget technology can offer, books, travel, summer camps, parents with the strong educational backgrounds, professional achievement. They had the time, the energy, and the financial resources to satisfy not only their children's needs but wants as well. Where on earth could that reservoir of disembodied rage have found a place from which to grow? How could this be? We have every right to wonder. Even though he was clearly a juvenile, his name was released to the press but there was no mention of his family connections. Protective attorneys? On the very first report of his arrest the newcaster mentioned that "his sister had been tragically killed not too long ago," as if to explain his actions and give him an excuse for unspeakably tragic outburst of rage. Only later was his mother identified and implicated but only because she'd been arrested for aiding and abetting in her effort to protect her child. This is clearly a child of privilege. There were the usual explanations from neighbors and friends of "...this is such a peaceful community. How could this possibly have happened here?" And in a way they're right. It's a complete mystery.

On the other hand, we have an African American youngster from whom health care, parental guidance; recreational resources, school counseling; from streets that crackle with potential violence; with halfway houses and methodone clinics to pass on the way to and from school; with drug dealers to sidle past; and, often without enough food, or money, or attention; and too much responsibility for younger siblings; and often without anyone at home who understands the demands placed on you by teachers who haven't a clue about what your life is like on the outside or how relevant are the teachings you're expected to absorb ... and besides, he or she looks nothing like you and speaks another language. And one day you graduate from highschool against all odds and enter college. How could this be? Conventional wisdom would surely have predicted prison, right? The fact that many of your friends didn't make it to adulthood but as often as not died in a hail of bullets within a few feet on these same streets is a factor in how you see the future. To climb past the low expectations of those who dominate your life colors your own expectations of yourself and cripples ambition and smothers dreams ... .

How much are kids born to their fate? White privilege would surely have cast the lot of our young Goth differently. What was the missing ingredient that produced the monster? What inner strengths brought this innercity youngster past the chaos of life around him or her and into the mainstream?

In a way, Stanley "Tookie" Williams is living out the norm for black males. The supreme court, the attorney general and the governor are expected to fulfill societal expectations by denying clemency. This would be another norm. The expected outcome for troublesome black youth.

His execution will solve nothing because there is no understanding of or solution for the problems that sent him to prison as a young man. How much wiser to hold him in a life sentence without the possibility of parole where we might plumb his mind for answers to the cul de sac we've created for ourselves in our inability to understand or address the problems of youngsters from his world. He has proven his ability to grow beyond the confines of prison into greater understanding of the problems that sent him there. We have not.

Little has changed in South Central, except that Williams has quieted much of the gang violence through his quiet work from Death Row. The work that brought him to the attention of the Nobel Prize committee will surely die by lethal injection with him and we'll be the poorer for it.

The expectations for our children -- depending upon whether they reside in the Iron Triangle, South Central, Orinda or Columbine -- or any of the white communities where school shootings have taken lives -- are profoundly different. We're capable of producing monsters anywhere -- as anomalies. Have we yet learned the lessons of Columbine?

Can we allow ourselves to continue to use our innercities as a catchment areas for the breeding of violence? Must poor youngsters be forced to continue to swim against the tide of fortune when -- by shifting the lens ever so slightly -- we might see new solutions and begin to build hope for a new future? Will we one day learn that cultural and emotional deprivation are the hidden causes of much of the violence in the world of our young of whatever racial background or economic class? Will our children eventually spring out of the adult-imposed pathology, as they did in the Flower Child era of the Haight-Ashbury days -- seize the world and make it their own again?

After having picked at this through for much of this day, I find myself wondering -- not about how many violent gangs have been produced in the Iron Triangle to boost the kill rate for this year -- but at the miracle of the many who have managed to overcome the environment of destruction to which we as a society continue to confine their young lives.

Our children may have to wrest their world from us in order to save it.

At the moment, we're leaving little upon which they can build.

Maybe they've seen the future and are in dispair of what they see ... .

Photo: The work of CAA/ICU student, George Scott Braley © 1998. Co-Directors Mat Schwarzman and Juana Alicia at Urban Arts in Oakland, California.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams ... execution date now set ...

December 13th has been named as the day when Stanley Williams, San Quentin Death Row inmate, is slated to be put to death by the State of California. His plea for clemency was denied by the Supreme Court and he is awaiting word from the governor; his last possible chance for commutation of the death sentence. The crime for which he is being executed is for the killing of four people -- crimes that he strongly denies having committed. What he does not refute is the fact that he was the co-founder of one of South Central L.A's most notorious gangs, the Crips.

There has been ample evidence of a trial that was rigged; a jury that was not of his peers; evidence tampering; inadequate legal representation; jailhouse snitches from those trading his life for lessening of their own prison time, etc. There has even been the recanting of one of those who is now serving time again in a Nevada prison, and wanting Stan's forgiveness for having lied for his own gain. But that's not what disturbs me and is making sleep difficult to fall into ... .

Some years ago while working for the state, I was invited to be a member of the entourage of Ms. Winnie Mandela who flew from South Africa for a five-day visit to San Quentin to see Williams and to bring visibility to his case for clemency. This would be my first visit to the inside of the prison, having been at the outer gates with others at earlier protests of the death penalty from time to time. This time would be different. I had no idea what I'd find, but there were moments prior to that day when doubt that I could do this at all rose to throb in my throat and shallow my breathing. On the day of the visit, I found myself driving across the bridge -- inadvertently past the exit and into San Rafael -- then having to turn around and drive back to the entrance. A sure sign of subconscious resistance.

The visiting party was an interesting one. In the party were two members of the press, John Gioia, a county supervisor; Barbara Cottman Becnel, the extraordinary woman who is William's co-author in a series of children's books and his long time defender (featured in the film "Redemption" starring Jamie Fox); Ms. Mandela, a pastor of note, and Betty, representing a member of the State Assembly.

Having only experienced Death Row through television, I was expecting to be standing behind bulletproof glass with a few of the more notable visitors speaking to the prisoner through a wall telephone. I was not prepared for this large noisy visiting room shared by many denim-clad Death Row prisoners seated around large tables with their families, including a number of children. Stanley Williams spoke with us freely. Everyone looked so ordinary. Stan was a warm and very unlikely murderer, and that was in striking contradiction to the truth as we'd known it.

We'd been screened carefully for contraband before entering. We'd been warned prior to coming not to bring in writing implements, for women not to wear bras that contained underwires, had removed everything for close inspection including shoes in the reception center -- no cameras or tape recorders. Preparation for entering had taken hours since -- oddly enough -- it was Ms. Mandela who couldn't get past the metal detectors despite an embarrassing numbers of tries, and eventually a call to Sacramento to the attorney general's office when she became furious and threatened to leave without completing her mission. The problem took more than an hour to resolve and never revealed the source. I'd arrived earlier than the rest of the party and sailed right through; but I'm sure that it was because the African American guard greeted me upon arrival with, "...well hello Ms. Reid! Get any new releases in this week?" He was a Reid's Records customer, though I hadn't recognized him. In our community this carried more caché than my state creditials.

Stan has since been nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize and once for Literature. His work with children through the books he's written to discourage gang violence has been life-changing for kids around the world. His website (that he's never seen) is maintained by Barbara Becnel and has had hundreds of thousands of hits. He has been the leader of a movement to bring peace to innercity streets, a movement that started in South Central but has spread across the nation and the world.

All of this may seem an eleventh hour conversion and a cynical ploy to avoid the death penalty, but not if you've met Stan Williams or read his writings. I have. Barbara and I are friends. I've been with her when she presented him by telephone to groups working for a moratorium on the death penalty -- in hushed rooms where his gentle voice was miked to speak to the issues without guile or with no sign of desperation or a wish to extend his lifetime in a prison cell unnecessarily. One has the feeling in listening to him that his wish is to allow himself to be used in the interest of savings others. His native brilliance is apparent and stunning to witness when he speaks. His use of language is terse -- to the point, and honed from years of having to say it all in small bursts of time on collect calls to Barbara from the prison.

How can this happen? In a similar way to that which transformed the life of President Nelson Mandela. Of William's 26 years on Death Row, 7 were spent in solitary confinement. Seven years without human contact re-creates the mind, I believe. The young man who was sentenced early in life was now someone else; a phenomenon replicable in monastic life where it's entered into voluntarily. I don't believe we have any notion of what it means to have only one's self to interact with for such an extended period. Is it possible that we become the instrument of our own redemption under such conditions? I believe that it was out of that experience that peace was attained and out of which his books began to emerge from bits of paper passed through to Barbara and eventually published for children everywhere to help them to escape the tragedy of his own life gone so terribly wrong.

I recall in those moments in that place that the music, the poetry in me, always rose from my dark places. That a kind of touching bottom brought a reactive lunge upward and a kind of epiphany that burst forth in some creative form that was not otherwise available to me. Could this be universally true?

On December 8th there will be the start of a weeklong vigil at the gates of San Quentin. I'll join with my friend, Unitarian-Universalist minister, Rev. Paul Sawyer of Pasadena , Mike Farrell, Tom Hayden, and others in the Movement for a Moratorium, hopefully. We'll start with a prison-gate-church-service at ten o'clock and will remain a constant presence (in teams) until midnight of the 13th -- unless there is a stay -- and a promise of a re-visiting of the issue of a moratorium on the death penalty. It's time to join with attorneys, pacifists, concerned young people, compassionate policy-makers, the Innocence Project, former gang members, and any one or group that has begun to see the imbalances and injustices of a system that's lost its way.

The irony of living in a time where the indiscriminate slaughter of so many civilian men, women, and children in Iraq -- not to mention our own young men and women in a war so few of us can understand or justify -- is inescapable. That we can compartmentalize in ways that allow for such cruelty thoroughly confuses the concept of "Intelligent Design" and reinforces my belief in a random universe. It seems far more likely that the concentration of corporate power has derailed democracy and ushered in the frightening possibility that Man has created God in his own image, an image tragically wanting and manipulated by the powerful at will.

That "The State" can create and maintain a Guantanamo or Abu Graib, a California Youth Authority where recently 4 kids have died and where the need for reform is denied by those who have to power to change it. Where claim is now made that my country has endorsed torture as a part of its arsenal of war; and that we've formed a network of places, worldwide, where anyone can be held endlessly without charge and tortured at will. That this has become a nation that justifies the right to kill in our names under the guise of capital punishment, or war, or in defense of ..., or eventually -- because our oil is under their country!

Upon leaving the visiting room that day -- Stan reached out for a hug. Without hesitating for an instant, I hugged back. Intuition had taken over. In that moment, he lost the stigma of pariah and I'd allowed him to become a very human being whose fate I cared deeply about.

I need to rent "Redemption" at the video store before December 8th. It's been long time since that experience. I need to renew the truths that prevailed that day at San Quentin -- when all doubt vanished and I knew.

Knowing can be so fragile ... .

Photo: Ms. Winnie Mandela signing autographs at the Laura Hunter Tutoring Center in North Richmond. We'd just returned from visiting with Stanley "Tookie" Williams at San Quentin's Death Row.

Worried about my soul?

X-IronPort-AV: i="3.97,265,1125892800
d=scan's08,217"; a="923897159:sNHT19952876
From: H"Howdy"
To:
Subject: been reading your blog ...
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 20:34:15 -0400
X-
ELNK-AV: )

You have a riveting web log
and undoubtedly must have atypical & quiescent potential
for your intended readership.
May I suggest that you do
everything in your power to
honor your encyclopedic/omniscient
Designer/Architect as well
as your revering audience.
As soon as we acknowledge
this Supreme Designer/Architect,
Who has erected the beauteous
fabric of the universe, our minds
must necessarily be ravished with
wonder at this infinite goodness,
wisdom and power.

Please remember to never
restrict anyone's opportunities
for ascertaining uninterrupted
existence for their quintessence.

Best wishes for continued ascendancy,

Dr. Howdy


To "Howdy"
From: Betty Reid Soskin
Subject: Re: been reading your blog ...

Dear Howdy:

You are obviously unhappy with my humanism and would wish that I were able to acknowledge the God in whom you believe. You describe him/her beautifully and I might do well to pay closer attention to the "honoring of that encylopedic/omniscient Designer/Architect." Yea verily ...!

However, to do so would rob me of the richness of my own search for meaning. It might cause me to accept the notion that truth is little more than curiosity satisfied. Life has not led me there, but instead has presented me with the intelligence, the imagination, the willingness and the courage to go it alone. Such a quest is far too important to leave to others.

I may be wrong. That's the risk of being human, and I'm enough of an agnostic to feel that the God in whom you believe so fervently is capable of loving enough, is understanding enough, and forgiving enough of my inability to act on faith, alone. I suppose -- in a way -- that I've lived my life as though there were a God, and as if I've gained unwittingly by sharing in some unknown state of grace. Life has been good.

I'll stick with Darwin, Einstein, Hawking, Emerson, et al, until I have more years and fewer miracles to try to explain to myself from the standpoint of Intelligent Design. The natural world provides more than enough wonder to satisfy my spiritual needs. I'll leave the supernatural to others to ponder.

Thanks for taking the time to let me know that blogging is reaching someone besides my own family.

Sincerely,

Betty

Photo: The Pacific as seen from a bluff in Mendocino. Wondrous!

Another resurrection day ...

Had forgotten for a moment that death comes in threes -- and Dorothy Pete, Lucretia Edwards, and Mary Otani obviously formed the triad. Can put that kind of introspection aside until the next cycle unfolds. I can stay in that place just so long before natural exuberance takes over and I'm again feeling the zest for living -- pressing against the edges of consciousness -- and back in the swim doing a reasonable breast stroke while pushing the river.

Despite what feels like the starter version of a cold, all sorts of wonderful mind games are going on in my head. Some were stirred by something I wrote a few days ago about those "...visions of a lifetime now being realized, finally," and about how exciting that can be.

Like inner cities across the country -- abandoned and left to rust and ruin as habitat for those who can afford to live nowhere else, Richmond suffers its urban core. In our city that part of the old downtown is situated between 3 railroad tracks, in "The Iron Triangle." The district is infamous in many ways. The crime stats match the level of need and is predictable by the lack of recreational resources for its young and mostly African American kids.

Prominent as a presence and a major negative influence on the lower end of the main street is a Rescue Mission that serves as a place for the depositing of troubled souls who struggle against drug addiction, alcohol abuse, and parollee status. It's safe to say that few other communities would accept such an enterprise, and that the county allows for little opportunity for objections. Add to these the homeless of all races who drift in and out as pressures wax and wane. Poverty and the aura of failure are the common denominators in this environment. In such a social climate, the pall of potential danger hangs over everything. The drug trade is highly visible and ever-present on street corners and in the park where dealers work with impunity and relatively little interference from the police.

I remember in the late Sixties when our little store -- in a similar area in Berkeley -- was being broken into so often that my young husband started spending his nights sleeping in a back office with a loaded rifle beside his cot. He could no longer afford to come home to suburban Walnut Creek at night -- the 28-mile drive made him vulnerable to break-ins and his desperation and paranoia effected our life together and contributed to our eventual divorce.

At one point he drove to the police department to demand better surveillance but was told by the officer on the desk "... it's convenient to have an area like this. When something happens in other parts of Berkeley -- we know where we can most likely pick up the culprit." The city was practicing an informal policy of crime containment -- and our building was right in the middle of their catchment area. Of course. I recall that the county methadone clinic was established within two blocks of our corner -- putting the addicts right in the middle of the "candy store," and no one saw that as inappropriate either for those being served or for the youngsters in the community and their families. At that time there were 11 halfway houses located in the city, 9 had been placed in our very low-income community. The cynicism is inescapable.

Richmond's historic downtown stands less than two miles from the National Park's interim reception center and -- should be set aside for historic preservation and restoration. Market forces and the redevelopment agency may deem otherwise. I don't know. If we follow the lead of many like communities, city government may well opt for one more unimaginative generic shopping district. What a pity that would be! What a missed opportunity. There is little recognition that this part of the city will be living in the midst of a national park soon, and that there are implications for related economic development that can help to redefine a civic identity that has suffered for years from poor image and disastrous crime rates.

One of my dreams is to find a way to help to create in the Iron Triangle an African American Arts & Entertainment District. The city still has a 40% black population mostly concentrated in the Iron Triangle, with the legacy of the Home Front WWII history. We need a memorial to those workers and to the artists who -- through their music -- enriched a time of persistent painful racial struggles for these hastily transplanted hard-working black folks.

That history involves a rich legacy of black music; both blues and jazz. During the war years Tappers Inn, Minnie Lou's, and the Savoy in North Richmond hosted the likes of Jimmy McCracklin, Bobby Blue Gland, Lightnin'' Hopkins, PeeWee Crayton, Wynonie Harris, Joe Liggins, T-Bone Walker, Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Otis and Little Esther, Howlin' Wolf, etc.  Richmond was the West Coast mecca for traditional blues that arrived with the great migration of African Americans who came from Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma to work in the Kaiser shipyards -- and had little "home" to return to.  How did I know?  Because we opened Reid Records in South Berkeley on June 1st of 1945 to satisfy that demand for the expressions of black culture that arrived with them.

Many of the bluesmen and women stayed on at war's end to earn their way as chauffers, waiters, porters, red caps, maids, during the day and to make their music at night for little or nothing in the small storefront clubs that sprang up along the coast over the years. Their music, their techniques, their aura, didn't. That traveled overseas over the next 3 decades to find a home in Liverpool, London's East End, Paris, Amsterdam, and Sweden until the music later re-entered our country through the artistry of Eric Clapton, The Beatles, Keith Richards, etc., and swept the world to great acclaim and created great fortunes for those artists. Janet Joplin, Elvis Presley, and later, Bonnie Raitt, adopted the music and relayed it back to audiences who'd refused to accept it from the original black artists, but couldn't resist its power when expressed by whites. Of those musicians, Raitt, Clapton, and Richards have been foremost in crediting those who inspired their music and created their careers. To their credit, all three have tried consistently to honor the debt.

Somewhere in the world there needs to be a marker for the art form. Richmond is the natural center for the establishment of a Blues Hall of Fame. Here's our complement to the new national park; a world destination. It needs to be a place where the entire African Diaspora can be celebrated in a museum, rehearsal and performance spaces, workshops for set-building and costume-making, art galleries, cafes, small shops for souvenirs, clubs and restaurants that feature the great variety of African and African American arts and cuisine from Gullah to Cajun-Creole, Ethiopian, Ghanian, Brazilian, Cuban, South African, Caribbean, etc. Were I a child you'd have to beat me off with a stick!

We need to make it a place where we can celebrate our heritage and where non-blacks can come to learn. We need to have a place to grow new young black artists so that the music will not continue to be delivered by derivatives. We all (not only African Americans) need our children to know of this legacy and to be enriched by it. We need the arts passed on by those black masters still living among us before it's too late, and there are many such scattered around the West Coast and looking for somewhere to land. (Are you listenin' E.B. Wainwright and Johnny Tolbert?)

A friend once described to me a plan whereby artists from all of the disciplines were given partially subsidized live/work spaces in a district like ours -- this, in exchange for the sharing of their gifts with children in the local schools. Since most dancers, painters, sculptors, potters, weavers, musicians, etc., who live by their art have such a difficult time making ends meet, subsidies are essential for survival, but what they have to barter is priceless. When I think of a time when a critical mass of such creative people become a part of this community by living among us and sharing their talent with our young, I'm ecstatic!

The Iron Triangle can be transformed. We can replace degradation with creativity and new life. We can begin to stop watching our backs because our children might also have their eyes on the prize of new possibilities. African/American "Have-Littles" would again have a sense of place and might stop waiting around not-so-passively for gentrification to sweep them off into some other place where no one else wants to be now that they've lost those "jobs that nobody else wants to do." We can claim dignity by restoring the pride that now exists mainly in our places of worship, but that should move out from Sunday to enhance our weekday lives. The best jazz in the world now comes from the choir loft and has for years -- but only the most hip are aware of it.

And best of all, our children can learn to identify the artist within themselves.

Yes!

If Dorian has the capacity -- given her mental deficits -- what about all those youngsters who are fully functioning but deprived of that spark of life and direction and hope?

It could happen ... but I'll need to strike a Faustian bargain with the devil for another 20 years!

Or not ... .

Photo: My younger son, David Allen Reid, current proprietor of Reid's, here seen at age 14 listening raptly to his teacher, Jim Stein, playing the blues in classtime at Pinél, a small private school named for the great French psychologist/educator. Both Dorian and David attended this Summerhill-inspired school in the Alhambra Valley near Martinez, California.

Tossed between too many options ... .

All I need is a good 45 hour day. Fitting my life into the current time frame just isn't working. No matter how I arrange my days, each midnight I fall into bed leaving behind huge pieces of work incomplete or barely begun. Maybe that's true for everyone. I don't really know. It's either that, or it's that I'm spread too thin at a period in life when there's simply not enough of me left to go around.

Work goes well. The sense of urgency grows with each day and is accellerated with each death of one of my contemporaries. Among the most recent losses were Lucretia Edwards, credited with leading the struggle for public access to the Richmond shoreline, and Mary Otani, whose path through life connected with my own in political activism. We were both active among the Unitarian-Universalists and with Consumer Co-op members in Berkeley years ago. Most recently Mary and I were founding members in the very effective collaborative, Vision-2000, which successfully worked toward a living wage for all city contracts and is currently working hard on the issue of just-cause evictions. Both these activists will be sorely missed by the communities so enriched by their dedication to guaranteeing the quality of life for us all.

Mortality is now palpable -- a constant fact of life. But it's not particularly morbid for some reason, just more demanding now than before. I'm less concerned with when or how the end will come, but with an occasional fleeting hope for an easy exit. Maybe this sensitivity to the relentless passage of time will lessen as days go by. But meanwhile, there's work to do and it doesn't appear that my replacement has turned up yet ... at least I haven't yet noticed her lurking anywhere in the background.

Talked briefly with son, Bob, last week and said to him in passing that I was (as usual) doing too much and that I seem to have reached a place in life where so many of my wildest visions are now being realized ... and that I've finally accumulated the skills and the contacts and the experience to make real things I'd only dreamed of over a long lifetime. I'm being entrapped by the seduction of the possible. I said to him, "...there is so much happening that I feel sometime that I'll simply explode into the next dimension at some point -- from the sheer excitement of that realization!"

His answer was, "...but, Mom, what a way to go!"

Yes!

Photo: These three seeds were sent to me years ago by our friend, Lama Wangdor, in a note from Rewalser high in the Himalayas on the occasion of our marriage. They've always held a mystery for me. Have never known what would grow from them. They've served as a metaphor for all of life -- complete in their being. They represent both the beginning and the end of life -- as we all do. As fragile and as delicate as they appear to be, they as we -- are star stuff.

Another homegoing ...

If one lives long enough the number of deaths begin to overtake the number of births -- and funerals begin to overtake wedding events. It's the life cycle, and has been so since the beginning of time. This month brought the final days of Dorothy Marion (Reid) Pete whose 90th birthday we celebrated last year -- followed in only a few days by the arrival of Jessica's firstborn; a little boy. Those are the everyday miracles experienced in all of our lives. The story of Harlem is not:

During the beautiful memorial service for Dorothy, her son, Geoffrey, shared this touching and extraordinary little story of the deep relationship between his mother and her little cocker spaniel, "Harlem."

Dorothy was in her 91st year-- after a long and dedicated life -- and had been failing rapidly over the past several months. She was being lovingly cared for at home by her three sons, Geoffrey, Gregory, and Dennis. Gregory had taken over the role of primary caretaker in her final days.

Harlem had been her constant companion for years. During the memorial service a soft knowing giggle ran through the congregation when Geoffrey reminded us how -- whenever any one of her friends picked her up for an errand or churchgoing -- room in the car had to made for Harlem. He lived in and as Dorothy's shadow.

As she became more frail in her final days, Harlem was leashed so that he wouldn't be in the way of the increasing medical and personal attention that she now needed. Gregory et al were there to give her a soft landing into whatever afterlife her faith provided, and there wouldn't any longer be room for Harlem, obviously.

On the day of her death and cremation, Harlem was finally allowed off leash where he'd been kept near the kitchen -- tied up and isolated. Geoffrey thought it right to allow him to roam free for a bit after such an unaccustomed confinement. After a time Geoffrey looked out and called. No Harlem. A few hours later he'd still not returned. As the night wore on more time passed and still no Harlem. There was cause now for real concern. The little dog was not accustomed to the streets and could be in jeopardy.

In the morning the telephone rang and it was the voice of a kind stranger who had found and identified him by the phone number on the identification tag on his collar. Harlem had been found miles away from home wandering in the vicinity of the Chapel of the Chimes, the crematorium where Dorothy's remains ... .

Some things defy logic, and rightly so and are the stuff of legends.

This one was true -- and the cause for a deep silence that followed the telling of the story against the bank of flowers (mostly red roses) that framed the teller of the story.

Dorothy would have loved it.

Photo: Dorothy as she looked when I first knew her in the late 1930's. She was the sister of my husband, Mel's, father. She was the first African American secretary hired by the YWCA's main branch in downtown Oakland, California. She was also the first African American administrative aide to successive pastors of Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church. Dorothy's ancestors arrived in California during the Civil War and have contributed significantly to the building of the West. To learn more about them click on California Black Pioneers under my photo on the top left.

Andrés' response to my last entry ... another reality spoken for ...

Received this email from my friend. I've received his permission to share this note with you.
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Betty: I have certainly also thought about the issues you raise in your comments and I would have to say I try to not think nationalistically. First of all I am convinced we are one species, the human species. Race is an artificial social construct just like religion and nationalism. I also, as a person of Mexican ancestry, am a product of colonial "racial mixing." The Mexican nationality is wrapped up in an idealization this "mestizaje", or racial mix, that is the contemporary Mexican. At the same time the "Indian" heritage is revered and yet still they remain at the bottom of the social and political ladder.

Every country in Latin America and in North America is still grappling with the continuance and legacy of the injusticies of the colonial systems. Racialization is one of these issues because it becomes a proxy for economic segregation. The varieties of "racial admixtures" will become rare remnants. In the meantime, economic issues will be argued in terms of these artificial constructs whose only reality occurs when people buy into them.

In Brazil, which has more "African Americans" than the US, more Japanese than any country outside of Japan, the largest Arabic population in the Americas and various ethnic European population groups, Afro-Brazilian people identify the opposite of the US. It is not the degree of blackness that defines one, but the degree of whiteness. This is a result of Brazil's own experience with these same forces, which include even a higher degree of "miscegenation" for a longer period of time. A survey was done by a university in Brazil in the 1990's and they asked several thousand Brazilians to define themselves racially. They received over 250 self descriptions.

The book, The Brazil Reader," has that essay. Also, Nicholas Vaca's book "Presumed Alliance" about African American/Latino political conflict in the US lay out important issues to initiate just the dialogue you suggest.

Food for thought ... .

Paz, Andrés
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Indeed it is, Andrés. Realized as I wrestled with the issue that I've lived most of my life within a 30 mile radius. With a family that has been on this soil since the late 1700's, I have no real connection with any other land - except theoretically and politically. Were I dropped off somewhere on the West Coast of Africa I'd undoubtedly feel as alien as I sometimes feel here at home, despite a fairly sophisticated grasp of the issues. There's a cost to being "everything." You have flashes of being nothing. Maybe I envy your strong cultural identity at a time when mine is being diminished day by day. It may be as simple as that.

Andrés speaks from a far deeper place in himself that resonates with a homeland and home culture that is at least a psychological "back door" in the event that retreat is ever necessary. Perhaps that explains why I cling to nationalism while he speaks authoritatively from an international perspective. Maybe. Reading his response made me feel embarrassingly provincial, but the feelings of justification for those feelings remain despite all.

Maybe it's irrational. Purely emotional; but just maybe those are feelings shared widely enough with other African Americans that they need to be taken into account. There is an emotional component that may be buried in that place in me that waits for recognition of wrongs done in times past to those who preceded me on the planet and whose genes I'm ferrying through this life, and to wrongs I've had to live through without recourse. A legacy from slavery? Is there some invisible x mark on my forehead or buried in my DNA?

But even more important is the frustration that I feel when confronted with the need to distinguish between the displacement of black service workers and immigrant's rights. The discussion invariably falls into the subject of race rather than hold to the economic considerations. I can readily agree that race is an "artificial social construct." Whether or not we "buy into the concept" is not an option, but a factor of our existence. That simply doesn't get me beyond the fact that the service worker industry has changed complexion now and that race was a critical factor in this dramatic transformation -- to the advantage of immigrant workers and to the detriment of African Americans. What makes it even more insidious is the fact that one reason we can't get a handle on the problem may not be because it's a race thing at all, but is actually based in the superficiality of skin color, alone. And maybe the irrationality is not in me at all, but in the European colonialist psyche.

I'm just glad that my feelings about the racial aspect of it are enough in check that they don't spill over into personal relationships. I know that the fault lies elsewhere and not with other people of color. I simply don't know what to do with them except to express them with candor, with hope for understanding, and enough companions without that mark of unresolved pain to help by bearing some of the pain of my growth.


Left photo: Mother's eldest brother, Herman Allen and wife, Marie Gaudet Allen sitting in the large expanse of meadow where the Mueller's dairy cows were often pastured (Circa 1917). When I was a little girl in the 20's and 30's the iron foundries moved in and replaced these greenlands. I'm glad that I knew them as the staging area for my childhood.

Right Photo: Aunt Marie seen here near Papa George's little bungalow on 75th Avenue in East Oakland -- in the shadow of what is now the Oakland Coliseum. This Creole woman could as easily have been the aunt of Andrés. She surely reinforces his arguments about the nature of the artificial social construct. (Click the little photo open to enlarge.) (Circa 1918)