Transitioning again ... ?

Having outlived most of my peers, and living into a period sans models to go by, it can be dizzying.   Feels as though I'm out here in uncharted waters, alone, and without  map or compass ... .

What changes will I be facing when "Sign my name to freedom" is published in February?  How on earth will I blend multiple roles -- that of author of a first book with a dance card fast-filling for book-signings; as the subject of two films, with my current role of "historian without port folio" or degrees, but with a growing following of those hungry for a true accounting of WWII Home Front history?

Photos by Carl Bidleman

Over time, I've grown into that role, and with it, have found fulfillment and honor.

With the film releases sometime next year, audiences will discover another Betty, the artist whose compositions will form the sound track for one of the films.  What effect will that have on these final years?

This week I will be meeting with Marcus Shelby, a great musician/arranger who directs an important youth program locally, a music program that I'll have the chance to introduce my songs to -- and who may, under the directions of the filmmaker and music director --- do the actual arranging and create the accompaniment of said soundtrack.  How exciting is that?

This week I will listen to songs rediscovered and digitized by Bryan Gibel, filmmaker, for the first time in forty years with the music director, as the listening-to is being filmed.  Can hardly imagine how that will go, or what will happen when old Betty is re-introduced to young Betty via audio tapes from 40-50 years ago ... .

Meanwhile, on Tuesday I will become the subject of a PodCast created by a Kaiser archivist, a brilliant professional with whom a close professional relationship has developed, an amazing and supportive National Park Service superintendent, and a host of others that have blended lives with one aging woman long after she passed her "sell by" date!

My wish for an ending of life that means simply disappearing into the art of others, may be more real than not.

What a way to go!

But not yet.

There's still work to do.

It's one of those lazy Sundays, and going out into the smoky air is not recommended for elders ...

...so I'm trapped with memories of the recent past; memories to escape into ...

This beautiful little evening bag bearing a Paris label was an anniversary gift from Uncle Raleigh Koker to his wife, Aunt Emily.  Emily (affectionately known as "Nanny" within the family) was great-grandmother, Leontine Breaux Allen's eldest daughter, and the childless daughter whose home had always been welcoming to each Allen son or daughter as they left St. James Parish for school in the City of New Orleans.

Aunt Emily gave the beautiful silk beaded bag to my mother's younger sister, Vivian, at graduation from Xavier. Vivian lived with the Kokers throughout her college years.  Much later, Aunt Vivian passed the little bag along to me as a gift.  I then gifted my eldest granddaughter with it on her eighteenth birthday.

At the national tree-lighting ceremony in Washington, D.C. two years ago, I was clutching it in my left hand while holding the script in my right as I introduced President Barack Obama to the country on national television.  In it was the precious coin bearing the presidential seal that President Obama had slipped into my hand when we were introduced moments before.

Aunt Emily Allen Koker

My granddaughters, Alyana and Tamaya, who accompanied me on that trip, had decided that it would be an important element to add to this event, and, just before we left our hotel room for the ceremony, Alyana silently slipped it into my hand.  Obviously, they'd gotten the message of the importance of legacy.

The pearls were a gift from my husband, Mel, given on the day of our wedding in 1942.  I'd given them to Alyana when she turned 18 with a letter explaining their history, that in a former life, they'd been loaned to (white) Susan Sanford, the daughter of a friend, and a college student member of SNCC, to wear under her T-shirts as she taught black children in a Freedom School in Canton, Mississippi, in Freedom Summer '94.  This was a simple way for me to have "presence" in that history.  Susan returned the necklace when she returned, and I could imagine that they'd kept her safe through that perilous Civil Rights struggle in which those 3 SNCC members were killed by the KKK.

The girls brought the little necklace along tucked into their luggage to Washington, and the pearls were inside the little beaded bag in which the presidential coin would be placed.

All of this fell into place seamlessly without prior planning or a warning ...

All that history, all those generations, all that love ... .

Rose at the ungodly hour of five-thirty this morning ... for the Atlantic interview ... .

Of course it was scheduled for eleven o'clock on the East Coast, but my appearance would be by WebEx online, and I would be sitting before my computer being piped into a meeting room somewhere in New York.  (Will wonders never cease?)

As luck would have it -- due to a glitch -- it all came to naught.  The gremlins (should I update that to trolls?) rose to the occasion, and for reasons unknown, we just didn't ever arrive in that room in any form whatever after a brief non-appearance.  My participation never rose above the level of eavesdropping.

It all began weeks ago when the call came from the magazine inviting me to come to New York to participate in the second annual "New Old Age" conference."  Since this was not NPS-related, I would fly as my private citizen self for a few minutes appearance, then return to work jet-lagged for days.

Jessie Li, the Atlantic's representative and I chose to have me interviewed, instead electronically, which was easier on their budget as well as the old bod.

Yesterday we did a rehearsal, kinda, as their techie, Jessie, and son, Bob, and I did a practice session where Bob experimented with lighting and downloading the program that would enable my participation.  Maybe mastering this program would mean fewer trips in the future, and that could be an advantage

This morning I logged into the meeting successfully (Bob flew off go Seattle for a concert last night).  Magically I found myself in an empty room somewhere in New York, with an occasional passerby crossing in front of the cameras, but little activity otherwise.

I was welcomed and instructed to listen to the audio of the panel that would precede my being patched in, and my interviewer would introduce me promptly at 8:00 a.m. (PDT).  So far so good.

As I listened a strange thing began to happen.  I started to feel more and more irrelevant.  The women in the discussion must have been the ages of my children ( 50s & 60s), and the issues being discussed were things I'd not thought about for decades (to color or not, to be rid of white hair, for one).  As I listened, I became keenly aware of the fact I'm living a life that is so far out of context that the issues being discussed seemed alien.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, as it turned out -- when my introduction was announced, through some failure on either their end or mine -- I was disconnected.  A few minutes later -- after a long silence announced the disconnection -- Jessie Li phoned with an embarrassed apology.

I felt oddly relieved, but also strangely rejected through no fault of my own.

In a way, my "New Old Age," was not represented in this forum.  It really sounded like the same old questions being asked by a new generation, but maybe that impression would have changed had I listened through to Norman Lear, who was the panelist who would bring the conference to a close in the afternoon session. I absolutely adore Norman Lear.

Heard just a bit of chat about the ever-fascinating Helen Mirren from the panelist from Allure magazine, but the audio faded out before completion, and there were only bits and pieces to hear.

Oh well ... .

Teach-in held some surprises ... 

... not the least of which was that over 60% of the University of San Francisco's student body is made up of women.  The audience for this seventh annual Teach-in on Diversity was largely female, and I sensed an atmospheric difference.  May have been my imagination, but it was clearly evident, at least to me.  Wonder if college campuses across the country now reflect this change?


I'd been invited to participate as a member of this year's panel of amazing young leaders, with me living out of context, again, as "the oldest park ranger in the National Park Service"  I now freely admit that I'm growing tired of that label, largely because it reminds me of those occasions in the Fifties and Sixties when I was introduced in suburbans settings as an African American woman to audiences who might not recognize me as such -- when, then, as now, that may have been the least important fact about me.  But I do admit that it IS a fact.

Isabella Borgeson: National slam poet and spoken word artist, community organizer, teaching artist
Carlos Menchaca: NYC Council District 38 representative and USF alumnus. New York State's first Mexican-American elected official and Brooklyn's first openly gay office holder.
Leroy Moore: Poet, founder of Krip-Hop Nation, co-founder of Sins Invalid, and member of the National Black Disability Coalition
Betty Reid Soskin: The nation's oldest National Park Ranger and long-time activist

What an exciting event this was!  

Isabella is a feisty lovely young Filipina poet with a passionate delivery of the spoken word and an irresistible story to tell.  Would have loved to see her sharing her poetry among other poets in an evening when the context was other than prescribed through sociology, but where art defined the show. She had stashed her papers at the end of the long table we shared, which placed them within reach as she stood at the microphone ... and the urge to rifle through them for more was so tempting, but this was not the time ... .

Carlos is a handsome young Latino elected official, and it was impossible to not view the future with hope after listening to his brief talk.  Will watch his rise, as surely this is a young man with a bright future ahead.

Leroy Moore is an unapologetic disabled writer/poet/activist living on SSI whose stories of worldwide travel seeking greater support and opportunities for others are both touching and profound.  He is speaking for those whose lives have been made the more difficult by physical limitations.  Leroy has suffered from cerebral palsy, but has surely lived a lifetime of purpose and achievement despite all.  It was impossible to not think of my Dorian as he spoke, and of my hope that his voice is helping to give shape to her future.

Moore was seated next to me and whispered that he'd been in my audiences on at least 3 occasions in the past, and I was reminded of how much I've allowed "audiences" to become less than personalized -- and vowed to change that if at all possible.  Maybe that's the price we pay for celebrity. It has been so hard to think of myself as such, but maybe it's inevitable, and there is need in the future to adjust to this new reality.  Maybe in the past he was buried in the audience where I would have not have met him.  Surely he is now among the unforgettable.

What an honor it was to again find myself among young leaders -- and to be accepted without hesitation -- as if age were merely a number ... .    

Being in the connecting-of-the-dots period in life ... .

...brought together people and thoughts that became bookends this weekend:

One late summer evening a disheveled unshaven man appeared at the doorway of our Grizzly Peak home.  Bill was down the hill attending a seminar at Padma Ling where he was doggedly pursuing his studies of Tibetan Bhuddism after seeing patients all day.  The man asked for Bill, and not for Dr. Soskin, so -- despite his appearance -- I assumed he was a friend from the university and feared him not.  Explaining that Bill was "down the hill" and was expected to return within the hour, led him down to the library to wait among the books and returned to whatever I'd been doing before the interruption.

I was later to learn that I'd welcomed Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg, the eminent Harvard social scientist and that he was seeking Bill's counsel at a troubled period in his life.  This would be the first of several extended visits from his campus home in Boston to our guest room in the Berkeley hills, and the beginning of a period of inquiry that has fascinated me throughout life.  It is the Kohlberg theory of the Six Stages of Social Development.  There were memorable conversations over the breakfast table where 3 long time friends, Len Duhl,  Bill's best friend (and the best man at our marriage), psychiatrist and at that time serving as head of UC Berkeley's Department of Public Health, Bill, and the man I would come to know as Larry Kohlberg would stretch my always open and inquiring mind to its limits and beyond.

Why does this come to mind now?

I was reminded by what was happening throughout the country as the result of our president's controversial response to the social protests of athletes, coaches, and owners of football franchises nationwide.

Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)

1. Obedience and punishment orientation

(How can I avoid punishment?)

2. Self-interest orientation

(What's in it for me?)

(Paying for a benefit)

Level 2 (Conventional)

3. Interpersonal accord and conformity

(Social norms)

(The good boy/girl attitude)

4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation

(Law and order morality)

Level 3 (Post-Conventional)

5. Social contract orientation

6. Universal ethical principles

Number 6 refers to the act of Civil Disobedience, the concept that describes one's willingness to act on principle without reference to existing laws or regulations, but willingly accepting whatever penalties one incurs in the process.

Under Kohlberg's theory, Number 6 is the highest order of social development.

Maybe reading more about Kohlberg's theories -- which were built upon Piaget's earlier work -- might help us to understand what happened over the weekend, and the extent to which the capacity for each side of the debate to hear beyond that of the other may be nearly  impossible.

Funny how such things remain with us over a lifetime, isn't it?  Spent hours last night on the Internet pouring over Larry Kohlberg's teachings and found them still instructive and clarifying.  

Kohlberg's life ended tragically a few years later, but I've never forgotten that initial encounter at a time of self-discovery and change.  

It's official ... Amazon has the book listed ... .

... and I can hardly believe it.  I'm the author of a first book! Still, here's the cover, and the copyeditors at Hay House New York are completing their work, the photos are being selected, the book jacket in the design stage, and a release date of February 6, 2018 is the date.  It is being held for Black History Month.

This will mean, of course, a major course correction in my life -- with some changes under consideration -- after all, gotta stretch these final years in all ways possible.  Feel, sometimes, like it has needed the elasticity of a rubber band to accommodate all that I've been adding-on in this final decade.

Need to be realistic, though, life is now viewed mostly in my rear view mirror, and any sense of future has vanished.  Living with all of the turmoil of a normal life now added to by a strong and urgent  determination to continue my work with the National Park Service while needing to make room for an expanded schedule to accommodate what is now new and untested.

That work will continue to be the anchor around which all else will have to fit.

That little Berkeley store Mel and I started back in June of 1945 -- and that is still standing after all these years under the guidance of our son, David -- will host the launching of my book.  Reid's Records has been limping along for all these years -- mostly on fumes from the pride of ownership and legacy -- in a time when "records" are now back there stored with gas lanterns and the old drip coffee makers, and the awesome power of a behemoth of a mega-company, Amazon, with which to compete.  Impossible?  Nah.  Try tellin' that to David.  Some dreams take more than one generation to crush, even modest ones. For the sake of family, we're thinking of a book signing somewhere in Berkeley or Oakland.  We'll just ignore the existence of Jeff Bezos and his Amazon!  Family comes first.  (Reids Records, 3101 Sacramento Street, Berkeley, CA 94702 - 510.843.7282, email - reidsrecords@yahoo.com.)

We'll  invite Tavis,  of course, because it was he who made this book possible.  It grew out of the PBS interview a year or so ago.

After that we'll fulfill the book-signing schedule that I've agreed to in my contract with the publisher, and let whatever future is left fend for itself!

Open letter to Antifa (antifascist) because I don’t know how else to speak to you ... .

Your hearts are in the right place, folks, but your use of violence is a misguided strategy that begs correction before you do any more harm to the cause of freedom.

Know, first of all, that there is nothing new in these times; those vile chants, hurtful words, shameful taunts being heard from the Far Right are painfully familiar and almost archaic to most of us.  The only thing new is that the whole world is hearing that hurtful and vitriolic rhetoric for the first time — those voices have been amplified by social media and have become embarrassing to most ordinary folks of whatever race or ethnicity, many of whom were born after the dreadful struggles of the last quarter of the 20th century.

We should be grateful that the masks and dreaded hoods are down and the white sheets have been set aside in a new Era, and that those misguided souls are now neatly packaged and properly labeled under Alt-Right, KKK, Neo-Nazis, Militiamen, White Supremicists, etc., and are no longer hidden in plain sight — hidden in the pin-striped 3-piece suit of the local banker, the starched white apron of the admitting nurse, the insurance salesman, my children’s teachers, the local librarian, the Beat Cop, the gas station attendant, that bartender, and the social worker, all silently barring the way into the normal pathways that defined our lives in hostile white communities throughout the country.  They've become brash, audible, and unapologetic.  They are by now often armed and dangerous.  But they've become visible!

Those dissonant voices must not be driven back underground.  We’re all safer for their being out where they can be heard and countered with voices of Truth.

Grant them their Freedom of Speech.  Attend their meetings in peace.  Listen to what may, hopefully, be the last gasps of the Confederacy.  This is our history, and it needs to be processed if we’re to grow past the centuries of shame of it.

Attend, listen until you can no longer do so with dignity — then, and only then, stand, turn your back, and leave quietly.

If you do this successfully, and if my suspicions are right, by the time their program ends the hall will be empty.

It would be so sad if we’ve only replaced those dreadful white hoods and sheets with black masks and hoodies.  What a step backward that would represent!

I’m so aware that I’m now living in the future that I, and countless and nameless others, paid for through unbelievable pain and suffering in the tumultuous Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies.  I’m living in that future right this moment, with the full realization that I helped to create it!  My basic human rights have been affirmed and I can now join others in the fight to protect and defend our Freedom of Speech.  That’s progress in the never-ending struggle to form that more perfect Union.

Democracy will always be a work in progress.

We so outnumber the Fascists at this point in history, that their effect upon public opinion has been hopelessly blunted.  We must seize every opportunity to continue the work toward full equality and justice for all.  We can do this, but not with you skulking in the shadows.

We have nothing to hide.

Lest you are left with the impression that it was all pain and suffering ...

This photo was taken while on a family trip to Yosemite, with Bob standing above, and the third reason for facing into that violent political storm of those years, Dorian, being introduced to pollywogs.   In looking back, she has attained so much over time, and today has achieved a level of independence hardly dreamed possible back then.

Because we've had the good fortune of living into the future that our cruel sacrifices at that time were helping to produce, and to have done it consciously and with a purpose, looking back has detoxified so much of what we lived through that those experiences have formed the basis of my work at the Visitor Center.  For reasons unknown, I've been able to transform the inner rage into revealed Truth, and through that process, am pretty much at peace in a nation still at war with itself.

Little did we know that I would spend these end years as a national parks ranger.

Our home in the Diablo Valley

Feels like I've been to hell and back ... .and I've survived to tell about it ... !

I'm not certain what I expected on Sunday -- as I waited to be picked up by a volunteer driver from Indivisible Berkeley.  I'd watched the gatherings being staged earlier in the day at Civic Center Park, and admit to some apprehension while watching the violence that began to mount, the arrests, the multiple units of  police from not only Berkeley, but borrowed from surrounding cities.  This was going to be momentous.  Berkeley, the home of the Free Speech Movement of the Sixties, was now the center of this latest onset of the Alt-Right, KKK, the Militia Men, madness, and I was as caught up in the anxiety it produced as anyone else.

What on earth could I say at this Indivisible Berkeley gathering?  I knew that the mid-day events would be where the greatest actions would happen, and for that I was quietly grateful.  Even my track shoes -- when you're approaching 96 years -- are no guarantee of safety!  I'd done all this back in the Sixties and Seventies, and was far more fit then, though at 116 pounds dripping wet, I can pretty well hold my own, even now.  But our event was being held in a church from 5:00 'til 9:00.  I figured everyone would be pretty much heading home by then and there was little need to worry.

Upon arrival I was ushered into a large meeting room where there were many whom I recognized from an earlier time of political actions.  They were greyed and maybe a bit  more rotund now, but these were the stalwarts who'd spent the past years since we last met sending out thousands of postcards, stamping envelopes, scanning lists and completing thousands of phone calls related to various elections cycles, they were still here, still working hard to bring justice and equality to this nation.

I was assigned to a front row seat reserved for speakers and it was only a few minutes before it all seemed all too familiar.  The faces.  The subject.  The potluck dinner laid out in disposable aluminum trays on long tables out in the hallway.  All of it now a blast from the past!  It was hard to smother the grin that kept threatening to spread inappropriately over my attempting-to-be sober face at the thought that any moment now we would all burst into Kumbyah and I would find myself once again among like-minded folks like me, all feeling righteously placed together in the here and now.  Even the subject  - unclear until this very moment -- which remained unclear as my name was announced and I joined a youngish Rabbi (openly Gay) with a cause of his own,  but who seemed willing to ad lib whatever might be required of us, as was I.  Together we approached the platform to begin our panel. The surprise for me was that I'd been here before.  There was really nothing new here.  I'd lived all of it long ago.  I've lived long enough to have entered re-runs!

Not one vile thing being shouted over past weeks by the Alt-Right was new for me.  The thing that changed was that the last time I'd seen this kind of poison being spewed publicly was back in 1953 at a time when I dared to confront the ugliness full-faced and found myself in a situation where I was defending a young black couple who were trying to move into a housing development in Pleasant Hill, California, and attended a meeting of the Improvement Association -- sat among them for an interminable period of time as they spewed bile that was so vicious -- all because they hadn't recognized me as one of the "undesirables" (niggers) they were attempting to keep out because my skin color is ambiguous.  Just two miles away, my family had been living under threat for two years as "... those niggers on the corner of Warren Road and Boulevard Way, yet here I was not recognized.  I was there (in my innocence) to tell them that I understood their feelings, but that this would soon pass and they could not prevent those two young people from assuming their civil rights.

I interrupted one of the most vile statements I'd ever heard, "... if we can't get them out any other way, we can use the health department on the basis of the filthy diseases they will bring in!"  It was at that point that I stood up and walked to the front of the room, seized the microphone, and spoke for about ten minutes before breaking into tears  and running out to the parking lot to my car.

I've written that experience here in this blog (available if you'll type in that little white search bar at the top left corner, Pleasant Hill.  It should pop up.

The major difference between then and now is the fact that -- like many other brave young black families across the country we were paying a heavy price for daring to defy the naysayers and cross those barriers, exposing our children to what was then the "Alt-Right" of our times.  We were doing this, each alone and isolated, finding our way painfully but with determination toward an America that we knew underneath it all, existed, and was changeable.  And we are no long alone and isolated.  Our numbers have increased immeasurably, and growing with each day.

Arrival at the Miami Airport - 1972

Social change was happening so fast in the Bay Area that the same community that forced our little family to live under threat of life and limb, 20 years later sent me to represent them as a McGovern delegate to the Democratic Convention in Miami in 1972.

The only thing that was different on Sunday was the fact that those awful words are now being heard throughout the country through social media, and everyone is now able to hear them  There's nothing new for us stalwarts who survived through those painful years.  Nothing could be more damaging to the body politic than for us to drive those voices back underground.  They must stay out in the open where they can be confronted with Truth.

The issue is less racial equality at this point for those of us who served as the vanguards for change, it is Freedom of Speech, which must be protected for us all.  We've moved past our personal struggles for basic human rights to this more abstract level of principle.  Those marchers in our streets are of every race and ethnicity known to man. That's a kind of progress we don't seem to have recognized yet. I want those dreadful words to get wide coverage so that everyone can, experientially, gain the knowledge that only a few of us were struggling through over that painful past.

We are paying for the mis-education of white folks who truly believe in white supremacy, and have never been more threatened than in these times when such beliefs are almost impossible to defend.  The numbers of the enlightened have grown so far and so fast while their numbers are diminishing -- the fears must be devastating!

Sons, Bob and David, 2 of the 4 reasons for facing 
directly into the storm.

I say, not only allow those voices to be heard, but attend -- silently -- listen to them attentively (as I did in the Fifties) then -- when you can no longer endure it, walk out with your back to the awfulness back into the light.

I'm strongly considering the possibility of attending the upcoming Ann Coulter gathering on the UC Campus.  I suspect that I was inoculated against her kind of corrupted thinking long ago.

On Sunday it all became clear for me.  My generation did it's best with much to celebrate, but what we failed  to do was to leave a clear pathway to the future we were wanting to see.  We left a void that Antifa has begun to fill in.  Those young people's hearts are in the right place, but the only way to counter this particular brand of poison is with more speech, not violence.  Violence is always counterproductive.  We don't need it.

The work must go on.

Wish I could convince them that there were lessons learned, and that the changes we've been working so hard for have already happened.  And, yes, even after that long and traumatic struggle to overcome without losing my soul, this I still believe.

Look around you!

If you're not feeling fear and uncertainty this day  ... .

you're just not paying attention.  And less because of what we're seeing, but for what is being left out.

I'm hearing the pundits speaking of the "two presidents" as if the one who alternately appears before  his audiences  seeming "unhinged," and fearsome, as if we aren't instead seeing the war between the speechwriters and a president who refuses to be harnessed by custom or prior "presidential" expectations.  The speechwriters are losing out to the Disrupter in Chief, and nothing on earth can save them, or us, from his ego-serving antics.  

Make no mistake.  There is only one president, and this is the one who appeared in Arizona two nights ago.  The other (the speechwriters) tried again to gain a foothold in Nevada this morning, but turned out to be just a weak imitation that is by now over-shadowed to an alarming degree.  

My fears are based not as much in this presidency, but upon that which has been unleashed throughout the nation through an unwillingness to listen and learn that which lies beyond the base to the rest of us who did not support his candidacy, and feared precisely what we're now seeing emanating from the White House.  

To those of us who have reason to dread those words, "...let's make American great again," because we cannot imagine a time before recent administrations when the fears were not greater, I say you're not alone.  We are the many who are quite comfortable in whatever skins we're in, and ready to defend the gains so valiantly fought for over decades of struggles for justice and equality.

I am feeling less and less a part of the WE, as THEY begin to move out of the shadows into their former roles of faux supremacy in an increasingly flawed system of governance.  That must not be allowed to happen.

This weekend I will participate in the gathering of Indivisible Berkeley as a private citizen exercising my right to do so.  I will add my voice to those of others with whom I've probably marched in many a demonstration in times past.  Together we will, peacefully, try to set an example for others by giving voice to restoring calm, but not at the expense of our right to counter the repressive antics of the Alt-Right who is expecting to gather in downtown Berkeley to test our resolve and challenge our intent.  Our nation's future may well depend upon our ability to do so without adding to the promised chaos they hope to bring to our area.

Six degrees of separation ... ?

During the Nineties -- shortly after acquiring my first MAC -- I caught the genealogy bug and dived into creating my family history.  It was all-consuming, and gratifying, and there was so much to learn through that process.  (See the Charbonnet Pages in the links in the Archives on the left, for paternal line and California Black Pioneers for maternal records.)

Started with my maternal line, with my great-grandmother, Leontine Breaux Allen.  She had been the mainstay of my family since it was in her little house beside the levee of the great Mississippi that my mother, her siblings, most of her aunts and uncles for several generations had their beginnings.  My mother's mother, Julia LaRose, died there when my mother was but 7 months old.  She was raised by my great-grandmother, as were her three half-brothers and a sister.  Mamma figured heavily in my childhood and adolescence.  She died when I was 27 years-old, married with children of my own.

One learns early in the search that names can be problematic.  Not only is this complicated by the fact that slaves generally took on the surnames of their owners, or the plantations upon which they'd spent  much of their lives before freedom came, but because of a lesser-known reason:  During the 1800s through the early 1900s most ordinary folks were pre-literate.  This means that schooling was not widely attainable, and less so for non-whites.  For enslaved black folks, to learn to read had to be a deeply-held secret punishable by the lash if discovered.

Therefore Leontine, born into slavery in 1846, and enslaved until freed by the Emancipation Proclamation at 19, spoke only a patois of French, and (as far as I can tell) never learned to read or write.

Public records such as the Census were conducted by scribes who had to be literate, but who were strongly dependent upon oral data in order to fulfill their requirements.  Many of those records were kept through the Catholic Diocese, and I'm grateful for that since in Louisiana, those church records go further back into American history than the public records of some States.  The Church was central to the lives of all, and those diocesan records at Baton Rouge are filled with history.  They held the dates and places of most of the people's rites and celebrations, and could be the most powerful sources for opening into hidden family histories otherwise unattainable.

Marriage certificate of slave-owner, Eduoard Breaux
to Leontine's mother, Celestine "of no last name",
dated  1963, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation

Since the people of the times were pre-literate, those records reflect the countries of origin of the scribes, and Louisiana had seen a successions of rulers from other nations over its colorful history.  It was settled by the French under Napoleon, taken over by the Spanish for a time, became the reflection of "the known World," long before this became a country.  New Orleans, Louisiana, and St. Augustine, Florida, were established cities long before we became a country, long before the Revolutionary War of 1776.

For instance, my maternal line started out in Loudon, France, when Vincent Brault departed for the new world and landed in Nova Scotia for a few generations,  when his first descendants traveled to Maryland, then -- with the consent of the Spanish governor of Louisiana -- landed in St. James Parish, Louisiana, where the Breaux settled for all time.  These were the Acadians, now called "Cajuns."

Those scribes -- collecting their census data each decade from pre-literate villagers -- entered those names as they could, phonetically.  One is warned that Breaux, for instance, might appear in census records as Bro, Braud, Brau, Breau, Brault, Breaux, etc., depending upon the native language of the scribe. (Bro, Spanish; Braud, German; Brau, German; Breaux, French, etc.).  This turns out to have been an important thing to know in building my family history, since -- depending upon which years I was tracing, our family surnames varied accordingly.

Imagine how surreal it became as I peered through the looking glass of my life down this rabbit hole when valiant star-crossed young Heather Heyer met her death fighting for her cause in Charlottesville last weekend, and I found myself staring into the face of her mother, Susan Bro, on the small screen of the television set in my Richmond, California, bedroom!

I know ... .

Full circle?

Perhaps.

... surreal, but mostly because -- after hearing Susan's brief, uncompromising but prideful response to the tragic loss of Heather -- lovely and so dedicated to her cause of supporting "liberty and justice for all" -- it was clear that the two of us could easily sit down over a cup 'o tea and start our conversation somewhere in the middle of the 14th paragraph, probably the number of generations twixt Heather's and mine!

Were this another time, I might just glide over this coincidence muttering under my breath about "small worlds," but at 96 I've no time to waste, and with the last item now completed on my old bucket list, connecting with Susan Bro tops the new one.  I want to touch lives, somehow, with this amazing, courageous, and wonderfully giving woman on the chance that we are cousins but 6 degrees of separation apart, if that would serve the purpose of providing some comfort in this time of great sorrow.

"Every time these cyclical periods of chaos arise, the opportunity to re-define Democracy rises with it ... ."  

It is then that we gain access to the re-set buttons, and the time comes when the platform is re-created upon which the next generation of newly-minted Americans will stand as they assume the responsibility of forming that "more perfect Union."  

We're now at another such time; a time of generational change.  They've been occurring rhythmically since 1776, and each such period has led to a higher rung on the upward spiral of this ladder of the great American Experiment.

I'm awed by the newly-emerging young people now surfacing courageously and defiantly.  They're turning up everywhere and in some of the most unlikely places.  Some of them have found their places where it counts -- in the media, in government, in the legal professions, as educators, and they're eloquent and daring.

And, it is We who are the Leaders we've been waiting for; those who have lived long enough to be able to bear witness to a past of earlier victories in the long struggle against injustices and inequities. Look around you.  We're here.  We may not look like the image in our heads of what leadership should look like; we're old and infirm in some cases, but were still kickin’, still viable.  

There’s nothing new here, guys.  

We're wearing whatever the skins we're in proudly, and without apology.  We're scruffy and denim-clad (but that's now been usurped by the invaders who've come out from under their sheets), and so varied in racial identity by now that our race is fast-becoming little more than a political choice, but that's less important with each day that dawns.  Some of us even find ourselves among the unlikely class of the "privileged," and who'd have ever believed that?  It would not surprise me to run into those I met at Telluride at the MountainFilms Festival last year, those with the time and the financial resources to bring to the great changes now needed by the rest of us.  Everything's up for grabs.  The Democracy is on the move, again, and this time we're taking giant leaps toward a more ethical and moral future made possible through advanced technology.

The animated debates are being conducted -- not on Public Television -- but on the cable news channels, in the unlikely voices of folks like James Murdock, owner of the Fox News Channel -- arguing against the presidential outrages, and for the taking down of statues of the defenders of the Confederacy!  Those unscripted panels responding to the outrageous pronouncements emanating from the White House are unprecedented in their candor.  The masks are off.  The painful and formerly ill-formed festering boil of centuries-old White Supremacy was finally lanced indelicately in full public view and now we have only to wait to see if the poisons can be contained before their destructive diseases have the power to destroys us all. 

I say, there's little that's new here, except for social media.  Those of us who have been marginalized for centuries, whose stories have been muted, expropriated, or silenced altogether, have lived into a time when the masks have been pulled down and the awfulness has become visible to all.  There's no place left to hide.   And we've lived into a time when the price paid for those omissions in our history books have produced a generation of Americans who truly believe that this nation was formed by and for them -- the White Christian -- and there has been little evidence to tote out to refute their claims.  They've been allowed to believe that "Humankind" is generically white, and that the rest of us are exotic,  "sumthin' else", to be related to custodially.  

This defines the fundamental failure of our system of public education.

There is still denial from high places such as that displayed in the voices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in all their uniformed and be-medaled glory expressing outrage with the words, "... our values were firmly established in the year 1775, and ..." without including the fact that those Armed forces resisted racial integration until the year 1948!   Or any recognition that among those defiantly and proudly marching in that Tiki-torch parade chanting"Jews will not replace us!," were many returned veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!  Until we've begun to exhibit a willingness to share our complete history, there will be lingering skirmishes to get through, ... but one day at a time ... .  

Every sign that I've seen over the past several days would suggest that we far outnumber the Neo Nazis, and that their desperation -- so clearly evidenced by their armed presence in our midst -- is going to be defeated.  Their obvious motivation is based in fear and hatred, the last dying gasps of the Confederacy are being heard in angry shouts, but also in tragic and petulant whining ... "so sad." Is there a more perfect way to describe His Orange-ness?

We cannot hate them out of it.  That's a loss cause.  We can only make them irrelevant by refusing to allow ourselves to waste energy fighting against bad ideas.  We must replace what they're expressing with better ideas.  Meet across town in huge numbers in Unity Festivals!  Have our artists, poets, musicians, orators, come together and raise their voices in Love and Hope.  We've done it before.  We brought down a failed presidency and ended an unpopular War in another surge of change.  We can do it again.    

We must not be cowed nor discouraged by this last gasp of what history will someday define as the feckless Age of White Supremacy.  Humanity cannot be sustained under such an erroneous assumption, because that will take us all into the planetary realities that can no longer be denied, but that must be faced now for the sake of human survival.

I will join with others (in civvies, of course) over this coming weekend in Berkeley, San Francisco, Richmond, and wherever else another voice is needed against this most recent threat to our country.

See you at the Festival! 

Living life in italics ... once again ... .

Perhaps it's this dreadful cold that I've been host to for the past several days.  Maybe the doubts have been creeping up over past weeks ... and I've failed to notice 'til the wrestling with these painful coughing spasms that are not yet subsiding.  But whatever the reason, I've rarely felt more confused and bereft than over the past few hours when I'm struggling with the need to hold the world off until the coughing ceases, and the need to respond to two calls for my participation in both MoveOn's local vigil in support of Charlottesville's protestors, and, another received earlier in the day for me to "say a few words at Indivisible Berkeley's Vigil and March from Finnish Hall to Civil Center Park in Berkeley.  Both demand answers, and these are my compadres, right?

I'm facing the fact that -- even if my physical condition allowed it -- I'm not certain just what I would say because throughout the day confusion has been building as I watch transfixed by footage coming out of Charlottesville, and pundits spouting their usual bilge that tends to want to assume that they're on the side of the angels, and that there is a (majority) constituency for their view.  But is there?

One statement -- repeated by many -- stood out this day, and that is -- "This is not who we are!"  Oh?  Is that what we really believe?  I'm not so sure ... . and maybe I should be.

You see, I believe that we're Morris Dees and Fanny Lou Hamer, Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe, but that we are also George Wallace and David Duke, and, Steve Bannon and Donald Trump. The trick is to find room on the planet and the nation for us all to find ways to live together in peace.

Maybe the beginning place would be to stop being in denial as to just who we are, and to begin to deal honestly with how we process our national history for succeeding generations so that the legacy is carried over with integrity.  There must be an acceptance of our mistakes and a sharing of lessons learned, generationally, so that our democracy will continue to serve as intended by those imperfect white men who conceived it for those "like them."  That's a tall order, right?

It was with a jaundiced ear that I heard the eminent Senator Orrin Hatch indignantly come down hard on the thugs in Charlottesville with the statement that his brother, who was lost in WWII fighting Hitler and the Nazi, in a war to save the democracy that was fought with a segregated Armed Forces!  It was a war that cost 54.8 million lives, worldwide, and the contradictions have never been included in our history books, nor in the national narrative.  

In watching those young thugs -- they were expressing the worst of us -- true, but they were also exhibiting what happens when we've denied our essential truth in favor of an unsustainable myth that serves no one:  The Myth of White Supremacy.  Their expression of entitlement is now being exhibited with the symbols born of those with whom we fought 70 years ago.  What we've allowed ourselves to believe is that we are the saviors of the world, and that this justifies whatever we do that serves this self-deluding image. And that image is undeniably "white".

What in the world are those of us who deviate from that mistaken national image to do with that?  I've never been able nor allowed to be a part of that "We."  As our diversity is embraced and grows, the generational changes will shift, and become more true, I believe that.  It is this belief that sustains me in my work.

Many generations of living with slavery, Jim Crow, inequality in most areas of civic life, has ingrained in us the idea that White means power, and that in order to gain that power we must learn to emulate the behaviors, ethos, attitudes of those who have established themselves at the top of the food chain, but deep down we know that we bring with us differences needed for balance in a nation still forming in this grand experiment.

To the extent that we are successful at retaining that which is buried deep in our DNA; our basic humanity-- and can combine that with the gifts brought in by other world cultures, we can refresh and revive the American Dream so that it retains its vibrancy for generations to come.

Meanwhile, in the words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King:

"Either we will learn to live together as brothers, or we will surely perish together as fools."

Receiving honorary doctorate at Mills College, May 2017

After hours of watching accounts of the horrendous actions coming out of our Capitol last week ... .

I lay awake for hours doing what I've not done for a very long time, maybe ever, doing "what ifs."

What if I'd found my life's calling much earlier so that I might have taken advantage of the resume that has been accumulating in this tenth decade?  What if I hadn't been a "late bloomer"?  What if I'd been born much later at a time when women's roles were less limited -- that I'd been encouraged to attend schools of higher learning instead of defining myself only in relation to the men in my life?  What if?

Perhaps -- in these final years -- I would be in a position of such prominence and such relevance that my voice might be one of those listened to in high places, as it is right now, unexpectedly, but at a time when life is ebbing and power as well, as prescribed by expectations that continues to mute the voices of elders.

Finding myself being quoted by others, learning that my PodCasts and interviews are being used in colleges and universities -- in Women's Studies, Issues of Diversity, Civil Rights, etc., is both astounding and hardly believable when I allow myself to dwell for even a few moments on the unlikelihood of such a thing.  So I quickly discount such news as nonsense, until -- in a quiet moment just before sleep -- the reality dawns, and I am lost in wonderment ... .

What about the little Bettys still out there in the inner cities and backwoods of the country, young women of color, yet laboring under the crushing weight of low expectations; undiscovered and still lost in the fog of poverty and undeserved shame? Though we're witnessing a great increase in the numbers of brilliant young black women, especially in the fields of Law and Communications these days, it will take a generation before the inadequacies and injustices have been brought into line with the promises of the founders of our Democracy.

In a nation that places so much stock in white privilege, are we continuing to sacrifice our democracy's human potential in favor of economic gain and the acquisition of wealth?  Does that not doom us to what we're experiencing right now?

Visiting lecturer at Humboldt State University, 2012

Maybe those who have suffered for centuries from the denial of the values upon which our democracy was founded are more sharply aware of their worth than anyone else could possibly be.  Maybe the pathway toward salvation does not run through Wall Street after all, but through the giant sequoias and ages-old canyons so precious to our predecessors on these lands; the Indians.

... and to think that -- at fifty when I married Bill Soskin, who was at the time Dr. William F Soskin, university research psychologist of note, I entered the world of the Academy thinking, " ... if I know all that I know, can you imagine what they (those Ph.D's) must know?  After all, they've had access to years and years of study that I've completely missed."

You know what?

... after a brief time I'd learned that Bill and Friends knew everything there was to know about a tiny sliver of what-was-to-be-known, and that that was about all.

Disillusioning, that.  Still is.

Wish I, or some other wise person, might have found a way to channel Chief Joseph, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Fanny Lou Hamer, Sojourner Truth, or Harriet Tubman to lead us out of the weeds we've found ourselves hopelessly entangled in as the Ship of State flounders in seas of seemingly insurmountable world conflict.  Wonder just what it was that all of these iconic beings shared in common ... surely it wasn't economic status or academic achievement.

Would it not be a major contribution if one could figure out that common denominator, and how to infuse that into humanity in these troubled times?

Maybe then we could find the key to forming that illusive "... more perfect Union."

It IS as suspected, once you find yourself on the world's radar, it becomes self-generating ... .

... this honoring thing.  After your ninetieth birthday you begin to get awards for being able to tie you own shoes.  It must be, otherwise how do I explain this to myself:

Yesterday just ten minutes before I would be due in the theater to give my regular Thursday at eleven presentation our deputy superintendent suddenly appeared from our headquarters offices to whisper into my ear that there would be a delegation of ten officials from the National Parks Conservation Association arriving to attend my talk, and that they would be presenting me with an award at the end of my presentation.  (No pressure, right?)

As is usual, shortly after my Thursday morning arrival at ten through the rear entrance to the Visitor Education Center, more friendly strangers had begun to gather for the eleven o'clock ranger  program.  Ordinarily I immediately go to a front desk computer to collect the overnight accumulation of emails and ignore almost everything else until time to go downstairs to be miked-up for my talk.  This morning was no different.

I normally enjoy a kind of momentary lull during which thoughts are collected for another event.   About a half hour is spent sitting unseen at the Bay-facing windows behind a large exhibit to watch the lazily passing sailboats from the nearby yacht harbor, or the occasional daring wind surfer ...  before facing another audience.  Since I work totally from memory, extemporaneously, using no notes or script, the mood I bring with me into that room allows access to the memories I must again bring to life. It tends to work well, that is, unless something unusual upsets expectations.  And that is precisely what happened.

Yesterday, 15 minutes into my program, there was a temporary interruption after the arrival of 8 people from another special group which included 3 severely disabled people in wheelchairs escorted by attendants.  Everything completely stopped so that a few members of the audience might be moved so that some seating could be removed in order to accommodate those in wheelchairs.  Concern about the earlier "special" visitors was soon lost in the face of this new challenge.  Of course it was all easily handled by capable rangers, and we soon picked up where we'd left off just before ... .

The program soon got back on track after the adjustments had been made, and when it closed at the end of the hour the special delegation from the National Parks Conservation Association approached to present me with a folder containing a letter from Ms. Theresa Tierno, CEO and President, announcing that I'd

"...been selected to receive the prestigious Robin W. Weeks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks from NPCA in recognition of the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park."

and further:

 ... We would be honored to publicly recognize your contribution by presenting you with the Winks Award at events planned for Wednesday, April ll, 2018 in Washington, D.C. "

with Terry Tempest Williams at the Mountain Film Festival at Telluride

Ms. Tierno's letter continued with a description containing a list of past recipients; "filmmakers Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, Ranger Shelton Johnson, historian Douglas Brinkley, authors Terry Tempest Williams and Nevada Barr, and more recently Jack Stewart and Colton Smith of ABC's Rock the Park and Creative Action Network founders, Max Slavin and Aaron Perry-Zucker."

By the time my talk ended with the Q&A, and the delegation from the Conservancy approached to make the presentation, it held all of the surprise factor that had been originally intended.  Somewhere in the middle of that unexpected interruption, I'd become so completely taken with the process of bringing those new folks into the room that any fears I'd been feeling had dropped away, and the room had become the blend of friendly strangers, as is ordinary to that space.

Despite the number of times this process has now been repeated I remain equally humbled and puzzled by the acclaim that has found me -- hidden away quietly in my small community -- doing work that (maybe) only I could do; do you suppose?  Work made possible through lineage from ancestors who were 'buked and scorned" at an earlier unenlightened time in our collective American past.

How grateful I've become for whatever triggers life has provided that allows me to give voice to those who came before.  As time progresses, and as it tapers down toward infinity, my connection with that dark past grows ever brighter and the more easily translatable.

Maybe it is that which deserves the recognition for which I've become the vessel ... .