It is here that I find the balance to a life so often strained by too much, too often, too filled with intensity and purpose... .

Last weekend I drove up the coast -- through Marin County, past Santa Rosa and through Cloverdale - into the long approach to the Anderson Valley with its miles of curving roadways past Boonville and Philo -- through more miles of orchards and vineyards, into the redwood forest -- then -- to the blue Pacific with its unbelievable expanse out to the horizon with its suggestion of eternity!

I do this as often as time allows and at the end of the long 3-hour drive I find him waiting - fulfilling his promise of sunsets and salt air and peace. With the latest copy of the New Yorker and tea and toast with marmalade in bed with the large skylights over the bed changing its program from starlight to wisps of drifting fog to clouds and -- an occasional swooping hawk or a stray gull warning of a storm far out to sea -- for just a fleeting moment... .

There are long talks about cabbages and kings, friendly "fierce" debates over today's developments, speculations about the upcoming presidential election, and the dire financial picture that seems far away and less threatening in that setting.

It takes less and less time now, to become aware of the world dropping away and in its place a serenity to which I'm unaccustomed and which I don't always trust, but that I'm beginning to understand as essential and attainable when I stop long enough to look and listen ... . I remember Sister Corita Kent's admonition in an art piece of the Sixties that said, simply, "don't just do something, stand there!"

Until, I realize that there are those for whom this is normal. Everyday. Proving by the sheer magic of this sublime state of being enjoyed by so few in my experience, that the ocean and the redwoods are as real and as close and as accessible as we allow them to be.

Time at this stage in our lives is all the more precious. I can no longer afford pride nor lack of time or dedication to purpose to steal this birthright that we owe to one another as sentient beings.

This is the place where the magic lives -- and where beauty is tangible -- and where the illusion that time is eternal holds irrevocably true. Where there are no remaining doubts that we're each an element in the universal all. It's where I can go to experience what forever looks like.

Such is the friendship that I've found and cherished over these past years ... .

There have been days when the fear of the fragility of life brings quiet terror, but the feelings are fleeting and are quickly replaced by the joy of the moment. It's in such moments that time becomes painfully relevant and finite. A moment when there is so little future to look forward to.

Now is truly all there is.

But then we've always known that, of course. The acuteness we're experiencing demands that attention be paid to just how it will be lived -- now that we're where we are on the continuum.


So we drove high up into the mountains -- high up into the giant old-growth redwoods -- later returning back down along the magnificent coastline from quaint Westport past the Pacific Winery to Fort Bragg and home again to Mendocino ... and the panic was dissipated.

I called it motion sickness.

He couldn't know that it was the cold cloying fear and profound sadness of inevitable endings ... .

A very special Saturday -- another one-of-a-kind day of surprises ... .

Today started in its usual Saturday way with a leisurely cup of tea after sorting laundry and selecting the first load ... then musing absently about just what I would write today ... choosing to edit instead of create -- separating what was originally one lengthy piece into two quite separate entries (see below) and making myself another post for this date.

By 11:30 it was time to stop procrastinating and get back into uniform to return to the office for a prearranged visit with a group of young people who make up the newly-formed Home Front Youth Corp. I wasn't exactly sure what was expected of me, but their instructors (Rangers Elizabeth, Carla, and Craig) were already there and I was to slip in to do whatever my part required.

When I arrived they were viewing videos of the World War II era -- Rosie was the centerpiece - but our little DVD of "Lost Conversations" was also to be shown (as I now recalled) and I would probably be expected to lead a short discussion afterward. Easy. This was something that has become fairly automatic and requires little preparation.

It went well. I could feel the connection that I've now learned to wait for and not try to force in any way. The young people were receptive and the films shown were interesting.

That lasted all of 45 minutes leaving me with a feeling of being all dressed up with no place to go until I got into my car and remembered that Dorian had mentioned a show at the Richmond Art Center (now under renovation) where she'd heard that there was something I might like to see. She'd grinned mysteriously in the telling -- and I guessed it might be related to the piece that Rodrigo and I had participated in a couple of weeks ago. Maybe they'd produced some stills that I might be able to see. I recalled that this was a part of the community program opening soon. Would that be today? Maybe. I'd stop by and take a look.

Walked in to the Center to find a meeting in progress. It was a meeting of the Richmond Art Center's Board of Directors who were in the process of electing new members and preparing for the opening of a new show when the meeting ended. I was motioned to a seat and slipped in as inconspicuously as I could but felt just a little out of place. There were many in the room whom I knew in one context or another, and it was soon comfortable and I felt a little less like one who'd crashed a party.

As the meeting ended a raffle was held. (Virginia had slipped a raffle ticket into my reluctant palm and urged me to take part.) In the way that happens on very rare occasion to those of us who "never win anything" I found myself the recipient of first prize -- a $100 contribution toward an art class of my choice! Incredible! Been wanting to do this for years, but never felt the time was right and it seemed so totally self-indulgent. But after all, Dorian is a NIAD (National Institute for Artists with Disabilities) artist and this would give us something new in common. What a wonderful gift! This I will do, and soon.

In addition, a noted muralist, John Wehrle, a board member came over to tell me that he had received the commission to create a new giant mural at the primary gateway to the City of Richmond (Macdonald Avenue off I-80). He is using a number of identifiable community people in his mural and would like for me to be one of them. At first it felt a little dishonest since there are so many members of this community who have lived here all their lives and have given so much. Though I've spent most of my entire lifetime in the San Francisco Bay Area, only the last ten or so years have I lived in this city. He waved away my limp protest and I agreed despite those very temporary feelings of guilty pride.

To his comment that he would be giving me a call "one of these days" to make arrangements, I laughed with "...don't wait too long. I no longer buy green bananas!"


Photo: The marvelous fish sculpture that adorns the entrance to the Richmond Art Center is being removed in order to be cleaned and restored to its original splendor before being lowered back into its place high over the entrance to this great art center. There is no comparable arts facility in all of the Bay Area and beyond.

2nd Photo: The very active arts community seen here at the opening of the annual "Art of Living
Black" exhibition that has become one of the great events this city features.

I've not written for days, and it was certainly not for lack of material ... .

To the contrary, It has been more a case of allowing feelings to amass without relief for lack of the time to record them. It's always this way. I remember what I want to say while idling at a stop light crushed in afternoon traffic; while standing in line at the bank; or squeezing avocados at the green grocers ... then the thoughts slip into what should not yet be "the past" and are lost.

Some of those are hard to write about for other reasons. There is the new but (apparently) ongoing (past two weeks) strange brief relationship with a professional photographer. When I've worked through and understand it more fully "where the words go" ... I'll write about it.

There are also some after and still burning effects of the Eugene O'Neill/Paul Robeson festival still suspended in the air and being processed. Interesting. What has followed over the past couple of weeks is reaffirming that growth doesn't stop with age. The experience of "All God's Chillun Got Wings" has provided a way to grow beyond my presumed limits. Silly? Maybe not.

In subsequent conversations at a recent luncheon with two friends who attended the last of the 3 performances I learned that "Chillun" (as do most of O'Neill's works) turns out to be autobiographical as well. Yes. That had completely escaped me - though I pride myself on a good sense of both theater and literature, and some familiarity with the body of the work of this particular playwright since becoming associated with the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Site -- at least peripherally through my own work with the NPS.

I'd missed so much while preoccupied with the racial implications. The Robeson role of Jim Harris had blinded me to the main story that I should have been able to see had that not been so. I missed it.

Learned over lunch (yes -- goat cheese, cherry tomatoes, and arugula, grapes and melon, with fancy crackers) that the lead characters; Jim, the submissive black husband; and Ella; the abusive schizophrenic white wife had been given the names of the author's parents; James and Ella O'Neill. (I'd failed to notice that and it is a key to understanding the play.) Or that Ella's obsessive determination to prevent Jim's ever attaining his goal of becoming an attorney mirrored O'Neill's father's acting ambitions, though he did reach limited success over the course of his career. One can surely guess at Ella's effect upon his ambitions over the course of their troubled lifetime together. The real life Ella was addicted to morphine. I'm familiar enough with the narrative of their lives but had missed the metaphor. Maybe I need to go back and -- using this broader perspective -- read the troublesome play again. This time free of the effects of the emotional effects of the "n" word. Obviously, the layering of realities that characterize O'Neill's work is why we honor him as American's greatest playwright and why the Pulitzer would be awarded to him for a 4th time.

I might have missed all that had it not been for the conversation over lunch with two friends who were not "of color" and who were therefore free to have a broader view of meanings, and to experience the complexities that were lost on me. I find myself wondering how often in life I may have allowed the narrowing of an experience simply because I was unable to get beyond race?

On the evening that my friends saw the play the talk-back between the audience and the cast lasted a long 40 minutes. Everyone came away with good feelings that some kind of threshold has been crossed, and that "Chillun" (with a Q&A) should be performed far and wide. That its presentation was extremely timely, and that the nation is finally ready to move -- together-- into these conversations. I'm so proud of the National Park Service's role in helping to bring this work out of mothballs and back onto the stage -- and of my own role in acting (albeit) briefly as consultant to the project.

Maybe there were lunching ladies throughout the valley last week -- and, just maybe, we were all moving ever closer toward a kind of atonement.

I think that I'll look back on this year's Festival as a pivotal place in my theater learning curve. The ability to see the human story -- somewhere beyond the racial story may be something I can share with my grandchildren in some casual way. But then they're growing up in a very different world than the one that produced my generation and may have been spared the limitations I'm sensing in myself.


Photo: From this year's production held at the Village Theater in Danville, California.

So much, so fast, so all-consuming ... A lovely month of special days ...

This weekend brought with it the 2nd Annual Home Front Festival, an event still in the process of becoming. One day we'll look back to see just where new traditions were born, and find the beginnings of "custom" and "practice." I suppose this is how it happens. Maybe it's no more complicated than the fact that -- for reasons unknown -- I always climb into bed from the left side even though I sleep alone. Reasons are now lost in time and "custom" takes over, even when the experience no longer provides any rhyme or reason.

Faith Petric, our 93 year-old "Rosie" was phenomenal! She is a tiny woman with a twinkle in her blue eyes that hints of the mischief that's barely hidden. She sang labor songs and Woody Guthrie pieces and performed a duet with my son, Bob, called "Why am I painting the living-room?" that was so wonderful that I felt giddy knowing that it was all being videotaped for posterity. Faith received her plaque (beautiful!) graciously and will take off tomorrow for Ireland where she will be visiting her daughter who lives there. I suspect that she'll be singing in some Irish Pub, surely, and not too long after she de-planes!

This is a woman to marvel at; a life to celebrate, surely. She has positively influenced several generations of young people, my son Bob, among them, and has enriched the lives of a steady stream of adoring singers and musicians who've gathered at her home in the Haight-Ashbury on Friday nights for almost fifty years. What a lovely woman is Faith Petric!

Photo top left -- Faith Petric and Bob Reid singing together.
Photo: mid-right - moi with Steve Gilford, our show's co-producer and Kaiser Permanente historian. The other co-producer was Marian Gade of the San Francisco Folk Music Club.
Left photo - Bob Reid, singer song-writer, horse-trainer and eldest son, father of Rosie.

On Thursday -- while standing in awe (as always) in that cathedral-like expanse of the Craneway of the venerable historic Ford Building ...

I envisioned an event that's been forming in the recesses of my mind for a very long time now.

The Craneway is such an awesome space; one that invites imaginings of places I've seen only in art books and dreams but have treasured since childhood; places like Chartres, the Sistine Chapel, or the Louvre. I'm at such a late stage in life now that any thought of actually seeing such wonders has slowly evaporated into a void -- well beyond the realm of possibility. But this Albert Kahn-designed magnificent cavernous daylight-filled 400,000 sq. ft. architectural wonder captures that little girl sense of awe and it's all I can do to slow my breathing and keep my jaw from dropping each time I find myself standing in its towering vastness.

Recently there was an announcement by the developer of the recently-restored Ford Assembly Plant that the legendary choreographer, 90 year-old Merce Cunningham, has come out of retirement long enough to create a site-specific piece created to celebrate the public launching of (newly-re-named) Ford Point. It's being co-sponsored by Cal Performances and (learned from a disappointed dance enthusiast) is completely sold out! (And I neglected to order tickets!) The performance is scheduled for early November.

On impulse I dashed off an email to Eddie Orton, the building's developer and a casual friend, with a suggestion I would never in a million years have made before Octogenarianism became my new religion a few short years ago. "Eddie, Merce Cunningham is an inspired choice -- but I'm anxious for you to see the work of choreographer Joanna Haigood of Zaccho Dance Theater for the next big one. Look her up on their website and tell me what you think."

Each time I squint through eyes cast skyward while standing in the Craneway I imagine Joanna and her daring dance company suspended on a web of cables performing their aerial act -- using the full dimension of the emptiness of that huge structure and giving life to the totality of the air space in the beautiful ways that aerial dance inspires. I'm breathless just thinking about it! (Yes, that's Joanna suspended from the face of the old Ferry Building clock in San Francisco - 1995.)

His email response was almost immediate (surprisingly) inviting me to raise the possibility with the Craneway's manager, James Madsen. I couldn't tell whether there was any real interest or whether this was his "don't call us, we'll call you" response. It turned out to be quite real. Had a brief whispered exchange with James yesterday while in the building with a small group to discuss sound requirements for the upcoming Home Front festival, and learned that he'd gone to Joanna's website as suggested and saw the same potential that I see there. He suggested that we get together to talk about possibilities. At the moment Joanna is on a plane bound for New York for a performance in a dance charrette with "Dancing in the Streets" next weekend, but was reachable by email and responded magically within moments with enthusiasm!

Do extraordinary things happen in this crazy casual way at times? I suppose so. Maybe they happen when we get old enough to speak out for the things that matter to us with less of the hesitancy of youth and a sense that -- if we're going to make a contribution -- even when they're purely whimsical -- we'd better do so right away or it may not happen -- ever. Maybe -- if we don't -- the unique gifts that each of us one-of-a-kind people brought with us into the world at birth may be lost for all time.

Besides, people listen now in ways that suggest maybe we've earned the right to be heard.

I do plan to be around to see Joanna and her company defy gravity as if propelled by silken wings through that magnificent space -- in a show that will rock the dance world and fulfill my every childhood fantasy of soaring above the earth! And to do so as if I'm not too terrified of heights to board the elegant outside elevators that look down on the Atrium at the Embarcadero Hyatt Regency!

Might we call that vicariosity? If this isn't a word ... it should be. It's surely as descriptive as Dorian's disastrophe.

... and I've forgotten to tell you that after one reaches the age of 87 a body is entitled to create one's own vocabulary, too.


Photo: Photo from "Main Frame," a recent piece created by Joanna Haigood. To read her statement, click on this image to enlarge. Use the Zaccho link under my photo on the left to reach the website for more information. By way of explanation; I once served briefly as a member of Zaccho Dance Theater's Advisory Board.

One festival completed and one to go ... The Second Annual Rosie the Riveter Home Front Reunion is but days away ... .

This is a photo taken at last year's event, and those are some of the hundreds of Rosies who came from far and wide to celebrate together. They came with children and grandchildren in a grand reunion weekend.

This year our "poster girl" is 93 year-old still performing folk singer, Faith Petric, who worked in the Hoboken shipyards during WWII. She is a legend in the folk music world; a friend and contemporary of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, and the late Malvina Reynolds of "Little Boxes" fame -- a friend Faith and I shared. We currently share kinship with my performing son, Bob Reid, an ardent admirer of this amazing woman.

This year's reunion will be a celebration not only of the Rosies, but will bring together the music-makers of the folk music world as well. Faith is one of the founders of the almost half-century old San Francisco Folk Music Club with members scattered throughout Northern California. Members of the club will spend the day with us and they'll bring their voices and instruments with them to the newly-restored and magnificent Ford Building (now called Ford Point) where we will spend the entire day in song.

I will be properly uniformed and hatted along with my ranger colleagues -- with special duties as one of the co-hosts for the stage show. I'll also do impromptu interviews among the members of the audience with my roving mike. Last year those Rosies almost wrestled it away from me -- they were so eager to tell their stories. This year should be the same, but this time I'll be better prepared for their enthusiasm; hopefully. We'll see.

That's the weekend of October 5th here on the beautiful shoreline of Richmond, California. For more information, check out the Home Front Festival website -- or the Richmond Chamber of Commerce has a link to the information as well as a schedule of the weekend of activities. One day I predict that our Homefront Festival will rival the New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations, or, the Mummer's Parade in Philadelphia. (Jus' you wite, 'enry 'iggins!)

Congressman George Miller (seen here welcoming the crowd at Kaiser Shipyard III) joined the festivities.

All-in-all this has been an extremely busy several weeks. Squeezed in among all the usual and unusual busyness was another birthday. I'm at that stage in life where birthdays now come every six weeks. Funny how that goes ... .

Mostly, it was just another Monday. I'm increasingly grateful for each one of them.

It took a mere 80 years, but I think we've made it, Mr. O'Neill ... .

Unlike your ugly Broadway premiere in 1924 when bomb threats, angry audiences, and outraged theater critics spat upon your play, Black and White theatergoers sat together in a small village theater in a trendy suburban tree-lined public square and experienced your controversial "All God's Chillun Got Wings" without incident. In fact, we shared the evening without being either defensive or confrontational. And it wasn't because we'd cleaned up your dialogue or ducked the hard questions. It was because in our era we've reached a place where the social order has given way to possibilities unheard of ever before in history in this nation that rose from a shameful history of human slavery to the very serious possibility of an African American ascendancy to the presidency of these United States! And it all has happened within the lifetimes of just 3 women in my family, my ggmother, Leontine Breaux Allen; 1846-1948 and enslaved from birth until she was nineteen; my mother, Lottie Allen Charbonnet, 1894-1995; and me, Betty Charbonnet Reid Soskin, 1921-present.

Last night's modest small town evening of theater was a triumph; so much more than I'd dared hope for. Admittedly, it was a self-selected audience of those who have an interest in both O'Neill and Robeson so may be atypical of the general suburban population. Nonetheless, in some strange way we were all (those of color and not) witnessing events from the same side of the social barrier and that is new. We are, indeed, living in a new day. We've crossed into unexplored territory and from this place a new world is coming into view.

At the end of the one-act play the cast joined us from the stage to talk about what we'd seen. I was still not comfortable with the content. "Chillun" was not redeemed by moving into dramatic form. It was disturbing to me in the reading and seeing it performed did nothing to make it more accessible. All I could think of was the tragedy of Paul Robeson, a proud black man whom I'd had the honor of meeting close up and personal. In fact, I was a part of a small group of young people who picketed the Paramount theater with him at the opening of Walt Disney's Song of the South which he believed to be unforgivably racist; and I agreed, even as a late teen. He was tall and stately and proudly black! He was a close friend of Matt Crawford, an old friend and a political activist I knew through my involvement with the Berkeley Co-op Movement. That weekend a group of us young people had gathered at Matt's to meet Robeson -- prior to our picketing assignment. We sipped pink lemonade and played "Spin the Bottle" and I received an innocent kiss on the cheek from the great man. Visions of that Sunday afternoon came back while watching the pitifully submissive character of Jim Harris on stage last night.

I wondered how Robeson, that powerful man; that proud black Adonis could have ever crushed himself into the role of a meek and submissive character, ever? I'd had a chance some years later to see him act as the iconic Moor, Othello, against Jose Ferrer's Iago at the Curran theater in San Francisco. That's the way I'll always remember him. That role with its ornate costumes and regal settings was in keeping with the Robeson of my memory. I cannot imagine what it cost him to play the role of Jim Harris for 100 performances ... and how such roles helped to fuel his eventual anger against a system which produced such tortured people.

During the Q&A when the play ended, the cast was wonderful in expressing their feelings about the roles they'd just played. The candor they showed freed the audience to be equally open and honest in their responses. The actor who'd played Jim opened by telling us how much he hated Jim in the beginning, but of how much he'd gained in the process of learning to understand and accept this cowering man of little pride. The rest of the cast was equally as candid and I felt a deep and abiding sense of gratitude that the O'Neill Foundation had trusted us all enough to bring all this together and with enough blind faith that we could handle it. I'm ashamed that I lacked that kind of faith. I was prepared, last night, for anything other than what we found -- a readiness to have those long lost conversations ... finally.

The National Park Service, the O'Neill Festival Committee, and director, Eric Hayes, are to be congratulated for taking on this bold experiment in theater and bringing together the human elements that gave it the social and political significance that it deserved.

You may rest easy now, Mr. O'Neill. And you, Mr. Robeson, your uncompromising courage and painful sacrifices may have gone a long way toward producing our new political reality.

Sleep well... .

Tonight's the night ... and I'm so-oo-o on edge ... .

Eugene'O'Neill's "All God's Chillun Got Wings" will be staged at a premiere with reception this evening. I'm sitting here pretending that I'm not concerned. Not true.

It feels as if all that I could have done was achieved, but my fear is that it will be another missed opportunity to engage the Danville community in a meaningful dialogue that may bring the understanding that the great playwright and his star, Paul Robeson, were seeking.

The subtleties are easily missed. I'm not at all sure that I was able to adequately raise the awareness necessary for this to be anything more than either a polite exchange of niceties, or, a surface conversation that won't bring us (me!) past the "n word" utterances. I so want to see myself as sophisticated. Knowing. Erudite. Beyond hurt feelings over mere words. Down deep I'm not at all sure that's true. And if it isn't...what does one do?

Read a brilliant article today written by Tim Wise. It was carried in AlterNet; the subject being White Privilege. It was penetrating in its simplicity, and easy to toss off as something meant for those others. I'm sure that most of tonight's audience would deny the concept as applying to their lives in any way.

I may easily be one of a very few persons of color in tonight's audience.

By the end of the evening -- I will probably be firmly in the camp of "other."

Maybe that's what is so disturbing ... .

Tomorrow I'll let you know how we fared.

Photo: Eugene O'Neill in his study in Tao House where he wrote his most penetrating prize-winning plays. This is now a National Park site and one of the four parks within our management orbit.

It was Friday morning ... last ... when my office phone rang ...

It was program director, Sanjit Sethi, from the Richmond Arts Center asking if I would be willing to participate in a program involving teens; what did I recall about the first time I voted; would I be willing to be interviewed on camera, "... no more than 20-25 minutes." Did a quick mental calculation of just what commitments lay ahead for the rest of the day -- and, "yes" it was, of course.

The interview was scheduled for five o'clock. Never mind that it was the end of the day at the end of a long week and that energy was running on empty ... but I do love youngsters and a refusal just wasn't an option.

Arrived at the Art Center just as the program director was getting out of his car. My young interviewer was nowhere in sight, but arrived soon thereafter. It was Rodrigo -- and such a soft-spoken gentle soul he was. He was wearing an Amnesty International tee shirt and a jaunty leather hat. He appeared a little shy but open and direct with an earnestness that invited respect and suggested the seriousness of the experience. Fatigue magically dropped away and we were soon at work. We sat in straight-backed metal chairs with cameras aimed at each of us -- under intense lighting that served to blur the presence of the others in the room. They soon dissolved into the darkened background and then there was only Rodrigo ... and me.

Rodrigo's first question was "when did you first vote?" and I was surprised that I couldn't recall just which president that was. I stumbled and stuttered for a minute and came up with something. I remember now that my first vote had to be for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, surely. I was 21 and it was mid-WWII. It had to be. But I answered pretty tentatively. Since I have never ever in life missed an election, they've become not much of an event -- just what one does as a citizen. After all these cycles it is a non-event in my life despite the excitement experienced with each election.

In a few minutes the conversation began to flow as if rehearsed. The questions were real because his face told me that my answers were important to him. We talked with two cameras recording our conversation for almost a half-hour. The time flew by. The passion that underlies my civic life kicked in at some point and we connected, my young interviewer and me. I wanted him to know how much the electoral process meant to me and it was clear that he was interested in knowing. Would that it were always so easy to span time and generations. It comes rarely, but I felt it in those moments. I've certainly experienced times when the spark refused to ignite and words held little life. Not this time. This time the words met in mid-air ... .


I learned from the director as we were leaving that this was a community arts project that involves pairing adults and adolescents in these unedited conversations around the issues of the electoral process and that sometime in October -- prior to the November general elections -- under the sponsorship of the Richmond Main Street Initiative those interviews will be blown up and projected against the walls of adjacent buildings in the old downtown in a gigantic multimedia public art display.

I had no idea.

It was an memorable experience for me -- and maybe for Rodrigo as well -- an experience well worth sharing with the community.

More 1972 Democratic Convention images ...

How little we knew ... We believed that world peace was still attainable because we'd finally made the world safe for democracy, hadn't we? How painfully naive was our generation. How fortunate for us that we'd lacked the ability to see into the immediate future so had no idea what awfulness lay ahead for the nation and the world.


It was August of the following year. Dorian had been enrolled in a fine boarding school in Santa Barbara (St. Vincents) and Bill and I were in the Queen Charlotte Islands on a two-month visit to a Haida archaeological excavation. Those beautiful islands belong to British Columbia, and make up an archipelago about a hundred miles out into the Pacific off the southwestern edge of Alaska. They're called, "the Misty Isles." They sit in the warm Japanese current -- fog-bound much of the year so are carpeted in a lush green giant form of velvet moss that covers everything and seems to muffle sound. I remember being told by someone that on occasion one of those large green glass balls used in Japan to weight fishing nets mysteriously washes up on the shores... .

It was from here that we watched President Richard Nixon boarding the helicopter in his farewell to the presidency and public life. We were quietly sipping coffee in a diner near a small field hospital. We were gathered around a television set with a small group of physicians and nurses on a break ... not far from the Zellerbach paper and giant timber mills. We all watched in silent disbelief. I can remember the feeling of deep embarrassment for my country as the shameful drama unfolded on the small screen there before these stone-faced strangers.

Perhaps, for the first time that I can recall, I was feeling American -- not hyphenated. Perhaps this was true because it was my first experience of being outside our nation's borders and into the world where hyphens were of little meaning. And, oddly enough, under these circumstances, it wasn't a good feeling. And, why on earth would I have been feeling ... what? Guilty? Of what awful crime? I was clearly a participant in whatever shame we were seeing before us; strange and puzzling. I'm not sure that I ever worked that through. But it's clearly related to the feelings I get when newscasters announce "collateral damage," or, "friendly fire, and maybe its simply the price of citizenship; of being a part of the whole. A reminder of the responsibility of being a member of 'community.' Maybe its what drags me out of bed each day - still - to try to "... promote the general welfare in order to form a more perfect union."

The euphoria of Miami felt so far away by then -- but I remembered wondering how different it all might have been ... but it was a part of that kaleidoscopic life that makes up my existence. All of the heady experiences of the convention and its aftermath that had been so hard to crush back into the ordinariness of daily life was by then distant -- unreal -- as if it had never happened at all. Subsequent events tended to erase even the most indelible of memories.

...until these past two weeks as it all came rushing back as though from yesterday ... and the tears ... and troubled sleep.

Are we any closer now than before?

Will this new generation of hope and noble aspirations catch the brass ring? Will my progeny get to exist in a world at peace? Will they know that I was one of those who -- in microscopic increments -- helped to move my grain of sand toward the illusive goal of peace in their time?

If I didn't believe in the marrow of my bones that humankind is evolving toward eventual unification I'm not sure I could go on living. But by now I'm too much of a realist to try to envision a world existing in relative peace within my lifetime.


Top left: Presidential Nominee, Senator George McGovern receiving a bouquet from delegate, Betty, for a photo op.
Bottom: Arriving with other delegates at the airport. The California delegation was bused to the Doral Country Club in Miami Beach for the duration of the Convention.

Reminders of days gone past ...

This past week of back-to-back political conventions were reminders of one of the greatest of adventures as lived in summer of 1972. I was one of those relatively few citizens lucky enough to have been chosen by my congressional district to represent them as a McGovern delegate to the Democratic Convention at Miami Beach.

Lay awake last night remembering and thinking silently in the dark that -- on the day of my birth -- I may have been granted more life to live than almost anyone I know.



Reading back through these entries accumulated over many years -- re-visiting the archives though only rarely -- it's hard to escape that notion ... and to not feel more than a little guilty at the embarrassment of riches even after factoring in a fair share of hard places and emotional down times that had to be lived through along the way ... .



Photo: top right is a photo with Alaska's Senator Mike Gravell (yes, one of this year's presidential candidates) who figured with Daniel Ellsberg and the Beacon Press in the release of the Pentagon Papers -- but that would come sometime later.
Lower photo: photographed sitting in the California delegation during one of the floor sessions.

Met today with the "Uppity Ladies" of the International Red Hat Society. What a hoot!

They arrived in full regalia (meaning purple-garbed and red-hatted) ready for an official Betty-led walking tour of the Rosie the Riveter Memorial in Marina Bay Park. I loved it!

There were three veteran "Rosie's" among them, plus one very interested young man who happened by and joined the party. There were also two women I've known for many years from Seniornet, an online AOL cyberspace community each had wandered into years ago. For Liz and Dee and me it was particularly meaningful. I knew them far better as virtual friends -- and by their user-names, but this was so much better. Learned today that Liz had worked for the Key System rail lines during the war. They'd both materialized into live bodies when we joined others from nearby communities for lunch from time to time, but we've not been in touch for a very long time.

90 year-old Julia had worked for 30 years in the defense industry in a sub-contracting firm in Stockton, California. Her work had to do with electrical wiring of the vessels that were later brought to Richmond's Kaiser Permanente shipyards for assembly. She told her story proudly about having worked on 100 PT boats, one of which carried President John F. Kennedy into battle. She was a delight and was as animated in the telling of her stories as anyone could have been at half her age. She's in this photo in the grandest red hat of them all (seen here at the far left). Her little stories enlivened the walking tour considerably.

The most exciting aspect of these experiences at the Memorial is when an invisible light turns on behind aging faces and frail and halting "Rosies" remember and are young again and re-living those days when the world needed them and when they'd responded and proven their worth as workers. Young again for just this single moment in time ... They'd "done it!" And someone has finally remembered ... .

Re-living those years with my contemporaries carries a special pleasure, and though I'm doing far less interpreting now than before, I thoroughly enjoy doing so when someone makes the request for me as guide. I'm far more involved these days in public speaking and field work, with occasional writing and committee work, but these human contacts with the women of my era are the most rewarding.

My favorite moment in today's experience was when a 4 year-old "pink hatter," who came along with her grandmother and who'd hung in as much as she could during the more formal parts of the guided tour. (She was far more interested in the countless geese who own those greens.) As we gathered at one of the picnic tables after walking the time-line -- for a short summary lecture, she stood by very quietly. I'd forgotten that Emily was there, actually. As we ended the question and answer period she came up beside me and said quietly and very seriously, "...you sure tell a good story."

Not sure anything can top that, folks!

So many loose ends to tie up ... so little time ... .

If you've been left wondering what in the world happened to the Eugene O'Neill/Paul Robeson issues; most of that has been accomplished and accounted for:

Managed to get Jesse Douglas Allen-Taylor of the Berkeley Daily Planet to write a great prologue to be read from the stage before the opening of the curtain for act one (hopefully) and also inserted into the program for the audience to have and to hold. Would copy it here, but have a feeling that the content should be held until after the performances. I'm totally satisfied with the way it all came out. As planned, there will be a facilitated Q&A at the end of each of the 3 performances that will allow audiences to debrief and exhale before leaving the theater. In that way, O'Neill's work will have accomplished what it was meant to accomplish -- a deeper understanding of a troubled time in the not too distant past. It will also offer a chance to measure social change between the way life has evolved since 1924 when "Chillun" was premiered on Broadway to threats of violence, and life today as lived in Danville, California.

How I'd love to be able to post here a brief but critical email exchange between the play's director and the author of the prologue described above. It struck straight at the heart of the debate when the director questioned the writer about his comment about this being a "flawed script" as compared with merely a troubling play. The director expressed a deeply sincere interest in their expressed differences. What followed was priceless and struck at the heart of those questions about racial intermarriage that have escaped expression except when approached through the arts where troubling truths can become accessible. When I can get their permission to do so, I'll post it here. I suspect that we're somewhere in the middle of this conversation, but it probably can't be hurried for the sake of coherence. Life unfolds as it will and there remains much to tell in this story.

The intention was always to use this controversial play of "All God's Chillun Got Wings" as a way into conversations on race that I'm increasingly convinced we're ready for. That was not merely my concern but was the shared goal of the committee, the director, the cast, and me. I feel affirmed in that belief.

My work with the O'Neill committee is now complete, I believe, and today I'm back to leading a Saturday morning tour for the Uppity Ladies from the Red Hatters Society at the Rosie the Riveter Memorial in Marina Bay Park.


Since my last entry -- and at their invitation -- I've met with the Koshland Fellows of Hunters Point in San Francisco to talk about their plans to create the Hunter's Point Wayside Walkway that will begin the telling of the story of Hunter's Point shipyard's role in World War II. What an evening it was! This group of remarkable young woman leaders were excited about bringing their history into the growing story of the great mobilization of those times and are using the model provided by what we've done in Richmond in our Bayside Trail markers documenting that history. I brought along a copy of "Lost Conversations" which was well received, and presented the Betty version of the story of the home front to an appreciative audience of activist women.

Richmond's scattered park sites are providing the national story in microcosm, and the rest of the Bay Area is now taking note and adding their voices. Bechtel Corporation's MarinShip from across the Bay is participating in the 2nd Annual Home Front Festival the weekend of October 5th in Richmond. April Harris, Ph.D. of Santa Rosa Community College has begun the work of documenting that history with a group of excited residents of that community and other educators. Those untold stories will now get an airing and what has until now simply been "the past" will be moving into a revered place as "history" as this park and a relatively young city slowly but surely comes to life.


Photos: 3 of the 9 Bayside Trail markers that ring the shoreline in Richmond from Ford Point to Shimada Park. Together they tell the story of the homefront. It was a project of the Richmond Redevelopment Agency and was the result of over a yearlong study led by historian, Donna Graves, that created the concept and saw it through to completion. I served on that advisory committee and am pictured here with Antonio Medrano, with one of the 18' markers. We're currently in the process of doing a similar installation for the "under redevelopment" Macdonald Avenue -- the "old main street' of the city.

The Audacity of Faith ... .

Photo: Click to enlarge.

I didn't know them well, but, I did attend an Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity dance at UC Berkeley's International House with Jackie Robinson after one of the football games between the Bears and the Bruins ... .

such a warm, wonderful, and truly handsome young man. But that was several years before either of us had married and -- I was young and pretty -- probably not a day over 18 -- and it was just a Saturday evening date with an out-of-town high-profile football hero(click to enlarge).

I remember his speaking of Rachel, the young nursing student he'd met while attending UCLA and later married in 1946. My very own halfback (whom I later married), Mel Reid, at the time was engaged to someone else, though we'd been friends since I was fourteen.

Truly exceptional women married to famous men tend to get lost in history. This beautiful young bride, Rachel Isum Robinson, is such a women. I wonder if anyone ever has given thought to what those awful years were like for her when her young husband was being literally spat upon and publicly humiliated? I've often wondered how Rachel managed to hold onto her sanity.

Before their marriage (during WWII in 1942) Rachel studied nursing during the day while working as a riveter in an aircraft factory at night, though if one were to ask, I would guess that Rachel didn't think of herself as "Rosie the Riveter" any more than I did at the time. Rosie was symbolic of white women in the home front work force.

Jackie spent the earlier years of his baseball career barnstorming with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. At the time of their married in 1946, Jackie was playing with the Montreal Royals farm club in preparation for the move up -- a move planned and executed by Branch Rickey. Jackie joined the Brooklyn Dodgers as the first black athlete allowed to enter the major leagues in 1947, only a year after their wedding.

Those thoughts rose again for me when Careth handed me the 8"x 10" age-yellowed envelope from the Joseph collection. There were a dozen or so photos of Jackie and Rachel's wedding in the envelope. They were so young. So vulnerable. They were so traditionally American -- two youngsters who chose to be the sacrificial lambs in a baseball world that showed few signs of being civilized or even properly socialized. I can't imagine what that would have been like for her. It was his choice, but it would be her life as well. And she was the support he desperately needed in order to survive in that unbelievably mean world of professional sports.

Corporate leader, activist, professor, nurse, wife, and mother, Rachel Isum Robinson is a woman of enormous accomplishments, her own and those achieved jointly with her husband, Jackie Robinson who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947 when he played with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Together the couple supported numerous causes, but particularly civil rights in and out of the sports sphere. Since her husband's premature death at age 54, Ms. Robinson has used her ability and his legacy to further the causes they so ardently supported.

A career nurse, Ms. Robinson earned her masters degree in psychiatric nursing worked as a researcher at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Department of Social and Community Psychiatry, which she held for five years. Ms. Robinson then became Director of Nursing for the Connecticut Mental Health Center and an Assistant Professor of Nursing at Yale University.

Following the death of her husband in 1972, Robinson incorporated the Jackie Robinson Development Corporation, which had been founded to build housing for people of moderate and low incomes. A year later, Ms. Robinson created the Jackie Robinson Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide scholarships and leadership training.

After years at the head of the Foundation's board, Ms. Robinson stepped down as chairwoman in 1996. That same year, she authored "Jackie Robinson An Intimate Portrait" published by Abrams Publishing Company. Robinson has received numerous awards including the Candace Award for Distinguished Service from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Equitable Life Black achiever's Award and the Associated Black Charities Black History Makers Award. In addition, St. John's University, Springfield College, MacAlester College, Boston College, Suffolk University, New York University, Connecticut College and the University of Massachusetts have conferred upon her honorary doctorates.

Ms. Robinson has two children and ten grandchildren.

Can you imagine a more illustrious background than this word picture gives us of Rachel Robinson? Can you imagine the waste in human potential we've endured over the years as women like this were dependent for recognition upon the reflected glow from their famous husband's public image? Or to be asked to share his shame and humiliation by virtue of sharing his name?

We've had a lifetime to view the Jackie Robinson story through his eyes -- but in looking at these historic photos -- can we begin to see those awesomely cruel years through hers?

Still excited about our most recent discoveries from the E.F. Joseph photo collection ...

Remembering what a huge crush I (and every other young female jazz fan in the Bay Area) had on Jimmy Lyons of Monterey Jazz Festival fame. He hosted the late night (all night?) radio jazz show from San Francisco, and set the bar for all the disc jockey's who followed. It was therefore no surprise to find him photographed as Sgt. Jimmy Lyons, producer of "Jubilee" for US Armed Forces Radio during WWII.

Jimmy died more years ago than I can recall, and his passing was mourned across the music world. Remembering him brings back to consciousness all the others who reigned supreme during those years; San Francisco bassist Vernon Alley, tenor saxman Jerome Richardson, Nat and Duke and Hamp and Ella and Sarah and Dinah and Carmen and Shirley Horn and the singer who inspired them all, Billie Holiday. All of those now existing only in memory are given a tiny spark of life again as I view their images here. But they've left a huge legacy in recordings and film for us to enjoy and to learn from.

Those were the days when black artists set the pace and created the sounds that defined jazz. It's hard these days to hear white voices defining our music while our kids -- almost totally bereft of music programs in inner-city schools have had the tools of their culture eliminated from curricula -- leaving them with little more than their mouths and a beat. With that they've continued to create the world phenomenon of Rap and an exciting Hip Hop culture.

I've become quite expert at being able to discern whether an artist is black or white by their sound. It's a game I play while driving ... and I'm rarely wrong. It's also true that black voices are now few and far between. We've all but disappeared into obscurity -- one of the unanticipated outcomes of integration. The transitioning stage was obvious during recent years when we became the back-up singers for white performers -- then slowly -- we began to disappear. Think Paul Simon, Sting, Eric Clapton, etc., the trend moved slowly, but in the end jazz disappeared into "the American Musical Melting Pot," and the best of truly innovative black jazz artists returned to the choir loft with a few exceptional young black players archived into the conservatories. Our best music has since remained there in the black church with few exceptions. Think Take Six, Kirk Franklin, the late great Thomas Whitfield, one of the greatest gospel/jazz pianists and composers of them all.

I shed tears of real grief recently while viewing the prize-winning film, Faubourg Tremé; watching a young black trombonist turned drug addict arrested for parading on the streets of New Orleans without a permit! This, in the place where jazz was born a couple of centuries ago -- created by young self-taught musicians parading on those same streets in my father's and his father's times in the Tremé. When jazz no longer comes up from the streets and alleys; from late night rent parties and wakes for the dearly departed; from the back rooms of saloons; when there are no longer any raw edges to explore and survive -- that's when we will hear only white musicians still playing the Charlie Parker/Count Basie/Duke Ellington charts of the Forties and Fifties. It is then that Jazz -- the most dynamic form of American music will have passed into oblivion.

But what is there left of the Jimmy Lyons legend? I don't recall that he was a musician yet his life was devoted entirely to being the translator, the agent, the recorder, the historian, and the producer of those jazz greats whom we remember best. It was Jimmy Lyons and his Monterey Jazz Festival that catapulted jazz to unanticipated heights -- out of the clubs and onto the world stage. Montreaux and Newport and all the others followed, but Monterey was the first and the greatest festival of them all. And Monterey was the brainchild of Jimmy Lyons.

These still photos from Jubilee are so wonderful to see after all the years ... I'd almost forgotten ... .

And bless the late and most prolific Emmanuel Joseph for capturing our times in this precious collection of his life's work - and bless Careth Bomar Reid for rescuing this priceless legacy of the images that chronicle our lives and times so vividly.

It might easily have all passed unnoticed ... .



Photo: at the group's far right an unidentified performer, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, Jimmy Lyons, Nat "King" Cole.
Second photo; a very young Lena Horne, Jimmy Lyons, singer Thelma Carpenter, and Frank Sinatra.

Historic script turns up in the stunning Careth Bomar Reid/E.F. Joseph photo collection ... .

This 17-page original script for the US Armed Forces Radio show, "Jubilee" was suddenly there in my hot little hands on Saturday. In this photo Lena Horne is holding it in her hand as she works with Eddie "Rochester" Anderson from the famous Jack Benny Show on mike. Not only the script, but in the same yellowing manila envelope were still photos from the same studio session; multiple pictures of the producer, Sgt. Jimmy Lyons (noted deejay and creator of the Monterey Jazz Festival); a very young Frank Sinatra, Slim Gaillard, the Nat "King" Cole Trio, the Jimmy Mundy band, singer Thelma Carpenter, Lionel Hampton, child prodigy pianist Sugar Child Robinson, composer (and not related) Earl Robinson -- (writing partner of Yip Harburg of "Over the Rainbow" and "Strange Fruit" fame), and Harry "The Hipster" Gibson. These were the "rock stars" of the entertainment industry during the early years of WWII.

The script is fascinating as it is written in the "jive" idiom of the day and is generously sprinkled with words and phrases that defined the world of jazz at that time. Every word brings memories of seeing the Nat Cole Trio for the first time sitting in the dimly-lit tiny but chic 365 Club in Hollywood; the place to be seen. He'd just started to be noticed having recently recorded "Straighten up and fly right" and "Sweet Lorraine". I remember it well and felt 18 again for just a few minutes there; holding that crumbling script in hand and noticing in one of the group shots the back of Nat Cole's patent-leather shiny "conked" hair (a story for another time). Oh how young we all were! The emancipating introduction of natural hair styles for African Americans was still 20 years into the future though common in European countries. We were still torturing our hair to try to emulate white straightness and "good" hair as opposed to "bad". I'd almost forgotten ... . Oh how far we've come -- to a day when Oprah can talk on camera of hair textures as style choices rather than indications of political attitudes.

At this "Jubilee" airing for the armed forces Lena sang "Lover Man", Frank Sinatra performed "The House I Live In" with the composer, Earl Robinson, interviewed as well.

There are so many memories to be re-lived and cherished ...

Were we ever so young? And, yes ...

where did the time go?



Photos: 1) Script, 2) Eddie "Rochester" Anderson with Lena Horne, bottom left, Lena Horne, Frank Sinatra, bandleader Jimmy Mundy. These and many more from this Jubilee show are among those referred to in this precious studio script. They are the property of Ms. Careth Bomar Reid by whom all rights are reserved.

Today the Road of Life was full, hard to navigate, and with a few more potholes than usual ...

Patience has been wearing thin and I'm not all that sure it isn't due to a combination of aging and one too many times around the block. The landscape is by now so familiar that I'm less willing to slow my pace and wait for the laggards to catch up. Sound familiar and creepily old?

Of course, one has to assume that what goes along with such an attitude is a kind of glazing over of the eye and a know-it-all toss of the head -- something to be avoided at all costs but nonetheless real and not in keeping with team-playing. I guess I don't do "team" very well these days. That's unfortunate since those with whom I spend my days are of necessity dependent upon collaborative efforts and consensus. Guess I'm not doing "collaborative" very well, either. In fact there are times when the new words and re-phrasing for old ideas and concepts just don't work for me. It means that I have to slow down long enough to interpret from the last time I heard them and what they may or may have not meant in that decade. They are constant reminders of just how little is really new.

It may be that I've simply taken on more than is possible without something having to give. There's an emotional component to my work with the Eugene O'Neill piece that may be costly to the psyche. Re-visiting issues of racism at a time when I'm being called upon to contribute as an objective consultant may be more than a body can manage without some minor slippage.

In the midst of all this comes next weekend's Reid family reunion -- the coming together of (mostly) the young. Each such occasion is moving me closer and closer to the edge, or so it seems. I'm now among the oldest (can't remember anyone older in the entire bunch) and that's disconcerting. I'm beginning to subconsciously respond to the very alive memories of those who are missing ... so many now ... more than those who will be present for the festivities - and all the busyness in the world can't push away the march toward those end days.

Maybe that's what's behind the recent rise in my "annoyance" levels. I'm becoming withdrawn -- working diligently in my cubicle -- putting together the string of words requested for a meeting with some Oakland contacts that are needed in the long range development of our parks. We'll need 3 things (a)"Betty, send us a comprehensive paper on your understanding of what is needed; (b) then a list of people or groups we'll need to bring together in order achieve your objectives; and (c) then a list of the steps we'll need to get us there." Sure. Easy. Time consuming. Necessary.

Accomplished the first paper (5 pages, single-spaced) in preparation for our one o'clock meeting tomorrow afternoon and today will work on the rest.

But first I need to deal with the right-in-front-of-my-face issue of details of the programming for the October 5th Home Front Festival and my mind is elsewhere ... .

I know that the need is great to expand a constituency for our parks that will outlast the changing political structures of the surrounding Bay Area cities. But then I remember that even thinking about such things may be way beyond the expectations of my lowly position. I'm not always sure that "community outreach" means reaching this far out. This is "superintendency" stuff, or at least "chief" of something-or-other in park-speak, right? But my long and deep experience in working with the political process in a former life as a state assembly field representative taught me that without educating the public to the importance of historic preservation (or any other issue needing addressing) through which to give these projects life -- we're at the mercy of constantly shifting mayors and city council members. Elected officials are often reluctant to adopt projects that will take longer to complete than their current terms of office since they don't enhance the resumé one iota -- and if it doesn't fit on a bumper sticker... well! Besides, long-lived people tend to have long-ranged views of the world and I'm no exception. I know that without an aware and engaged constituency few urban parks could be created or survive. As in most of our political lives, the initiation point may be Washington, but without the support of the local community, much of our representative's best works might well wither and die before coming to fruition. Tomorrow's meeting is in the interest of long range planning.

But now it's time to shut down my computer and get to the office so that I can deal with things I'd rather not do ... like figuring out whether I can get my co-workers to agree to extending our October 5th 2nd Annual Home Front Festival program an hour at the far end and eliminating the first hour so that all of the performers we're engaging will have time to get their mikes situated for the best effect and amps set properly ... and, and, and.

Argggghhh!!!!!

(... wishing my cubicle had a door!)