CBreaux Speaks

2012-01-25T14:18:00.000-08:00

Drug-sniffing dogs in middle schools ... ?

... and what on earth would that have to do with this picture? Everything. A nation that has given up on its children has become suicidal, lost its way, and abandoned all hope for the future. Have we gone completely mad?

And why is so much of the available funding for youth services found in the budgets of law enforcement? Would we be having better luck if (as before) those funds were again used to staff our recreation centers? Everything shuts down in the early evening; except the kids!

How did we get so far off track, anyway? Is no one else disturbed by the sight of police cars parked at high schools, routinely; high schools in my city that have the outward appearance of prisons? Schools with their metal detectors that long ago -- for budgetary reasons -- gave up counselors and school nurses in favor of this? Both positions provide prevention, intervention, and might go a long way toward eliminating the need for police on campus. Resources for youth are often dependent upon their being defined as "at risk," and rarely as entitlements -- as it was when we were young.

The taxpayers of California, by refusing to allow the raising of taxes with which to fund much-needed services for children, have allowed education to be gutted of all those things that brings kids to school each day, and sustains their interest in remaining in the system. Music, the Arts, electives of all kinds; school clubs, athletics. The schools have lost their relevance to many young lives by the time they reach their teens, and by ninth grade 49% have dropped out (mostly Black and Brown youth), or been transferred into the prison system where the costs of upkeep are astronomically higher than it would have been to educate them in the first place!

This is not true in the suburbs where parents have formed support groups and foundations which financially support a full array of enriching programs like science fairs, music and fine arts, (yes, and counselors, and school nurses) that school districts in my part of the county simply cannot afford.

School districts receive funds from the State based on ADA (Average Daily Attendance), so those dropouts determine what moneys come into the district, so where the dropout rate is high, resources continue to shrink and essentials (like textbooks) disappear into some bottomless chasm of need.

If we're not going to educate the electorate, then we'll have need to control it; hence drug-sniffing canines.

How sad that we've come to this.

I need to find the relevance in my work, and where it interfaces with the critical needs I see all around me. So far today that relevance escapes me ... .

... I'm at home feeling depressed. Not a usual state for me, yet there's something familiar about this mood, enough so that I think I might be reaching for justification to match the feelings. Can't find anything in my immediate past, present, or future that warrants "the Blues," so I may be borrowing heavily from the news reports, all devastatingly unreal.

Maybe I'm having leftover blahs from watching the State of the Union speech last night, and being aware of how much game-playing goes on at such a high level, and understanding just how much the lives of ordinary citizens (yes, and children and youth) depend upon what's happening in that Chamber. That, combined with the unbelievable nonsense going on in the primary races where candidates whose constituencies appear to represent such a thin slice of the electorate ... it's surreal!

Oh well, maybe tomorrow... .

2012-01-22T11:09:00.000-08:00

Had one of those crazy flashbacks this morning -- of another Betty at another time ... .

It was while getting into my clothes for a day at home, and just as I was slipping a cotton turtleneck over my head (and the label caught in my hair for just a few seconds) the long-forgotten image rose in full color with all of the affect of the embarrassment I'd felt at the time.

I was attending a gathering at Mt. Diablo Unitarian-Universalist Church where I was an active (and usually smartly-dressed) member. I was moving comfortably and confidently among friends when a smiling woman gently pressed my elbow with the words, "... Betty, that's such a pretty dress, and I can only imagine how much more beautiful it would be with the label on the inside!" Yes, you guessed it. In my rush to get my children ready for Sunday school, I'd somehow turned it inside out, and hadn't noticed until it was brought to my attention. That friend should have been rewarded for the gentlest most tactful handling of a delicate matter, but all she got was my awkward "Oops!" followed by red-faced giggling that echoes still as I think back to that morning so long ago. A quick trip to the restroom took care of the problem, and after a few moments -- my dignity had been restored.

Were that to happen at this stage in life I'd have immediately made an appointment for a brain scan and lived for days in mortal fear that I was the one-in-eight living in the early stages of dementia (one-in-two after the age of ninety.) In the past few days I've read reports of the projections as Alzheimers explodes in the aging population. It seems to be only a matter of time ... .

Yet ...

(Now where do you suppose I left my car keys?)

Photo: Dorian at age eleven, and Mom about to leave for church.

2012-01-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

I may finally be coming to terms with having become a "public figure" ... .

The role is an awkward fit, and sometimes an inconvenience -- particularly when I find myself in the checkout line at the Safeway supermarket on the way home from work and in uniform. The admiring glances stolen by young girls stiffens my spine a bit, and quickens my step through the aisles, but I'm not confused by the differences between respect for the flat hat and for the elderly woman under it. The National Park Service has earned its honors as "America's best idea," (a la Ken Burns). It's when the local PBS Channel has aired the documentary, "This is Us," for the umpteenth time the night before, and men and woman from my generation feel their spines stiffen in reflected glory of one of their own still being in the game ... and getting away with it after all these years ... then a different sort of effect pops up; equally complimentary. But at the end of the day, "celebrity" wears thin, and hunger pangs begin to take their toll on the old psyche as I try to decide what shape my pasta will take this day, and which spaghetti sauce -- and a new-found weariness creeps into my smile and it comes less easily as I begin to feel watched ... .

You can imagine the feeling last Wednesday as I stood before an interracial audience hosted by the African American Leadership Network of Safeway Stores at their corporate headquarters in Pleasanton. I'd been invited to be the speaker for their observance of Dr. King's birthday. As I was escorted to the Green Room in their grand auditorium, I learned that the day's presentation was being televised for the entire Safeway television (nationwide?) network, so that those who could not attend would have access to the hour-long program "On Demand" from the archives wherever they are and whenever they wished. Wow! What one earth did I have to say that should warrant such coverage? Surely it's time to pay closer attention to preparing my remarks, and to stop depending upon the power of memory. Did I not owe my hosts more than that? But since my improvised talks have always been enough, could I not be risking whatever success I'm experiencing by simply sharing my truths as I recall them -- and not becoming so self-conscious that something of value gets lost?

The experience was unsettling enough that -- as I was grandly escorted to the car laden with a huge bouquet of about two dozen long-stemmed yellow-red-tipped-petaled roses and two tickets to the new Tuskegee Airmen film, "Red Tails," I somehow failed to notice that their portable mike attached to my belt with the wire clipped to my lapel, was hidden under the armful of roses. This was not discovered until I was back at my desk 40 miles away in Richmond and a colleague called attention to my strange "jewelry." (It was returned in the morning.)

In February I will be guest speaker at IT&T Corporate Headquarters in San Ramon. Maybe by then I'll have come to terms with this public person I've gradually become ... but I don't believe we have time enough for that to happen. Maybe this is a case of "if it ain't broke don't fix it." Maybe it's a mistake to try to become who they think I am. That might be very difficult to accomplish at this late date. I'd need another lifetime to figure out just who that is.

2012-01-16T16:30:00.000-08:00

It was the fifth Annual Day of Service in my Richmond community -- in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday ... .

I'd been invited by Doria Robinson, the director of Urban Tilth, the lead nonprofit on the Richmond Greenway project, to "say a few words" at today's ceremony.

Arrived early to find things in the usual chaos so typical of volunteer organizations, but it was friendly chaos of the kind that delivers positive outcomes rising from well-intentioned strangers coming together in a common cause. There were young people, children leading parents; elders lending advice when needed; members of the City Council led by the Mayor, the Vice Mayor; environmentalists sprinkled among members of uniformed National Park Rangers as well as Forestry Service folks.

I was struck by the fact that here was that future that Dr. King had sacrificed his life to bring about. We -- in one of the nation's working class under-employed and over-foreclosed cities where barred windows and protective fences are the common denominator -- we are living right smack in the middle of it!

The Greenway runs for about 2 miles along a long-abandoned railroad bed now developed into broad walks and bike paths where the community made up of several school sites nestled among modest low-income homes and showing hints of seeds bursting into a premature spring and (finally) maturity in some of the perennials from earlier plantings. The Greenway is blossoming with gardening projects of various kinds on land ceded by the city for the purpose.

There are flower gardens with ornamental plantings which need no excuse for being except the pure art of providing color and "spirit"; vegetable gardens that provide work for volunteers and free food for tables of anyone in need, and medicinal herbs introduced from older cultures. Today, about 400 folks from every age, race, and ethnicity joined in the effort by planting 60 donated fruit trees in the Edible Forest; planted hundreds of native plants, and built wooden boxes for raised beds -- necessary where soil remains contaminated from WWII war-related industries. And, I was invited to do the "first dig" in the soil for the planting of a mighty Legacy Oak Tree (expected to stand for at least 250 years) that will stand among them. What an honor! As an example of Civic Engagement (code words from the Park Ranger's Manual), this was priceless.

Richmond and communities like it across the country -- cities with challenges rarely experienced in the suburbs -- are most often depicted as "communities of need." Rarely are they viewed as living laboratories where diverse communities are in a constantly changing grand experiment -- testing the meaning and efficacy of "democracy" with newly-arrived immigrants adding the element of "hope" where it needs renewal for the disaffected, disenchanted, underprivileged and under-served who have found refuge here over many generations of struggle. You won't find members of the 1% here; the system is working just fine for them. It is in these communities that this system is tested and challenged and often found wanting. It is out of our discontent that change is born and generational adjustments are made.

Today I saw "Democracy" in all its glory actualize the King Dream of years ago. We did what every generation must do -- what nation's around the world are rising up at the risk of their lives to achieve -- we are re-creating democracy in our time. Every generation must do so. Ours is not presented to us on stone tablets nor handed down by powerful family dynasties. It is dynamic and must be critiqued and challenged constantly if we're to sustain the freedoms spelled out in our founding documents. It's messy and chaotic. There will always be false prophets, flat-earthers, disbelievers, but we will prevail despite their lack of faith in our institutions. You want neat? Then try a dictatorship.

Dr. King's greatest gift to this nation may have been his insistence -- through personal acts of civil disobedience -- that this was/is the highest form of patriotism.

Today's diggers and planters define who we are, not the crime stats we're constantly defined by. Those Marines who so horrifically desecrated the dead by their unspeakable acts no more represent me than do their counterparts in an earlier time define our white citizens of today; those who came in family groups with picnic baskets to celebrate the brutal lynchings of blacks in the deep South. Unfortunately, such unenlightened folks will always be with us. But it is we, and not they who define Democracy.

We're seeing the "rockets red glare" of that re-creation in the Occupy Movement. I truly believe that, and I'm beginning to worry that it is being derailed by those who don't recognize the signs nor understand the powers of our process of governance... .

2012-01-09T19:34:00.000-08:00

Klondike Solitaire as organizer ... .

Over the years I've developed a foolproof system that keeps me relatively well-organized and productive in the work place. Only problem is that -- from the outside -- it may appear very strange, indeed.

Here's the way it works: When my mind goes on overload and the bells and whistles begin to sound -- as though a collision of ideas, concerns, and just plain worries is about to occur, I go up to the menu bar and click on "Solitaire," and as soon as the virtual cards begin to form a game, serenity returns. It serves just as well as a good sip of white wine clears the palate for the next course, or, it's as though in some way I've pressed the reset button on the computer of my mind and everything defaults to "factory setting," and I have a neatly erased brain to work with. Works like a charm. Doesn't take more than a single game, actually, rarely two (2-3 minutes at most). A form of meditation? But -- whatever it is -- my co-workers must think I'm really a flake wasting the government's time and accomplishing little. I suppose the natural conclusion might be that I haven't enough to do; au contraire -- it's that life is closing in and this is my defense against the inevitable collision.

That happened the other day when our superintendent walked up to my cubicle with a question and there I was -- playing! Embarrassing.

What he didn't know was that I'd been editing the text for a pull-up display panel for the new Visitors Center which required re-visiting what I could recall of the labor unrest in the WWII wartime industries which (I claim) incubated the modern Civil Rights Movement ("no more than 350 words at 3rd grade reading level, please"). It was as I was wrestling with this that a call came in from our attorney about Dorian's ongoing Trust procedures; then moments later another from a young student wanting an interview for a paper she was writing on the Rosie Memorial; and the smashup was about to threaten my well-planned but slowly disintegrating morning.

Went up to Menu and selected Favorites where Klondike is stashed for just such an emergency, and had just begun to clear the palate, hit the reset button, and go back to factory settings when he popped up unexpectedly.

I wonder how others handle such times? Maybe that's what water coolers were for, right? At least that's what I suspect happened at some earlier time. Maybe Klondike is what we graduate to as the years pile on -- and the water cooler has disappeared in favor of the small bottle of spring water forever on call beside my handy-dandy but obsolete hopelessly dried-out little bottle of White Out. Maybe Solitaire is a form of "shelter in place" ... .

I suppose these are the differences the passage of time brings... and I doubt that it's unique to this late-blooming park ranger.

Maybe one day I'll suggest that Solitaire be included under best practices in the Interpretation Manual for all park rangers.

Maybe not ... .

Too weird!

2012-01-01T12:56:00.000-08:00

In sharing personal history with visitors to the park these days ...

... I'm finding myself increasingly moving away from what I once perceived as "black" history, toward an insistence that our story be seen as an important American narrative. The change in my thinking began upon realizing the critical role played by black southerners whom tradition had forced to step into the Mississippi gutter when meeting a white person on the sidewalk. Those folks played a major role in shaping the times and the future. And, that as the result of an aggressive recruitment of workers into the war industries -- particularly in the Kaiser shipyards -- where they found themselves literally catapulted to the "front of the bus" 10-12 years before Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott (1954-1955), and incidentally, becoming the catalyst for irresistible and enduring social change.

This unfamiliar spasm of at least limited respect and civility surely bred a new burst of hope in this new place, and may have started the surge toward full equality which radiated outward into the nation to become the modern Civil Rights Movement. The more research I do; the more refreshed my memory; the more certain am I that -- from their humble efforts in an era of relatively powerless Jim Crow institutions -- it was that heroic generation of blacks who altered the course of history, and forced a redefinition of Democracy for all Americans.

I guess this is on my mind because I'm speaking before audiences of major corporations (Safeway Stores, IT&T Employees, major labor unions, etc.) in the coming months, and that it's in January (the MLK remembrances), February (Black History Month), and March (Women's History Month) that I'm invited to share history that is largely dependent upon opinion; mine. That's a huge responsibility since I don't pretend to be an historian. I'm sharing what is purely subjective -- yet it is I who has been given the microphone ... and the audiences. It is sobering. It is humbling, and it is awesomely important that I measure up to the task; yet it is difficult to feel worthy of the privilege.

I find myself wondering if this isn't partly a woman's natural reluctance to accept the mantle of leadership, even at those times when it is obvious that it is we who are leading?

More about this in weeks to come ... .

Photo: banner for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

2011-12-26T11:34:00.000-08:00

How in the world .... ?

did this poster get from the wall of our office onto the Internet? It turned up in my Google Alerts this morning when I clicked on it to find myself standing before this Ron Black poster designed for the Shotgun Players' production of the Marcus Gardley play, "This World in a Woman's Hands." This show was staged to critical acclaim a couple of years ago in Berkeley.

That control of one's image has long ago been lost is a given; but the number of times I've begun to confront myself without warning can be pretty disturbing, depending upon how that image is used.

Don't misunderstand; I love Ron's work, and am delighted to be associated with its message, but the use made of it by the group whose name I hesitate to repeat suggests a more strident attitude than I'm feeling at the moment. Maybe I've simply been mellowed by the holidays and, just maybe, I'm experiencing a shift in thinking ... .

Perhaps it's just a question of aging while having outlived my rage without losing my passion.

Need to give this some thought -- when the scent of pine needles and peppermint candy canes dies down though. I seem to have been overcome by "Peace on Earth Good Will Toward Men", at least for the moment.

2011-12-25T14:17:00.000-08:00

It's still there, only it's been bought by Neiman Marcus who wisely kept the magnificent towering tree ...

When I was a teenager, dating, Christmas season was not officially in until the trip to see if the great Christmas tree was in place at the City of Paris on Union Square. It was a real tree, of course, and not the perfect artificial one we're standing under here. (Though I wonder if artificial can ever really be perfect?) I suppose the scent of pine is piped in ... . It's been decades since that trip by ferry across the Bay -- (pre-Bay bridge) -- dressed to match the occasion (which meant hat and gloves, of course) officially ushered in the season with a spray of English holly in one's lapel -- and for the more daring -- a sprig of mistletoe in one's hair.

This year Peter, Tom, Pam, and I completed the pilgrimage 'roun' the Square to the sounds of Christmas bells and cable cars clanging their way up Powell street toward Grace Cathedral where memories of my late husband, Bill; dear friends, Bishop J. Kilmer "Kim" Myer, elegant silver-haired Deacon John Weaver and his Jean, popped up unceremoniously as the ghosts of Christmas past ... . The taxi we hailed climbed to the top of California Street to return us to our car parked at the bottom when the circling-the-Square was ending; an almost forgotten decade that has pretty much dropped out of conscious memory until now.

The meaningful past tends to leap back to Mel and the kids; Tinker Toys, Tonka trucks, Lionel trains, innocent cap pistols (some things have changed; ominously), new cowboy hats; and those midlife Christmases tend to get lost. Maybe it's because it's my children who have prevailed and continue to define life for me. Christmas needs children, doesn't it, even when your baby is eligible for AARP?

This, after a bountiful crab dinner at Tadich at the foot of California Street near Battery ... and yet another set of decades to account for; new friendships, persisting hopes and dreams, and so very much to be grateful for. Can Christmas be any more beautiful in New York or Paris? If so, don't tell me. I treasure these snow-less street scenes of the Bay Area beyond all reason.

Merry Christmas All!
Photos by Pam's cell phone camera

2011-12-17T17:20:00.000-08:00

I'm (more or less) firmly back under my hat, but just barely -- at times ...

Had no idea what it would mean to have to deal with the less disciplined part of myself (the artist), but maybe it was for just this reason that she remained buried for so long. I'm daydreaming and fantasizing, and "what-iffing" for long periods of time, except for those times when my work -- which is so compelling -- intervenes. That's when all of my "Bettys" come to full attention, and my mission takes precedence.

... as on a recent day when members of the ROHO (Regional Oral History Office) of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley brought a small delegation from the United Arab Emirates to visit the park and a bus tour with me as interpreter. Aisha Bilkhair, Ph.D., Director of Research & Knowledge Services, headed the group. When I learned that it is Dr. Bilkhair's responsibility to re-create and document the history of her young country through the capturing of oral histories of those still living, I felt the current of new excitement. I learned that she and her assistants travel to Berkeley to work with the ROHO staff, and that this was one of those purposeful trips.

I recognized this as precisely the task before us in recapturing the history of the Home Front years 1941-1945 of WWII, a period only now being documented and recorded through the work we're engaged in, in collaboration with the Bancroft Library and its staff of researchers and historians.

I felt a surge of pride and a deep sense of the privilege we're being given by the National Park Service, and a new appreciation for the responsibility this demands to be accurate and honest and to imbue the work with authenticity -- a fading resource available to us mainly through the still-living veterans of the great home front mobilization of WWII.

... the fact that this Muslim woman from the Middle East has been given this important mission to accomplish at a time when the impression in the West is that women would not be chosen for such an important work was a revelation to me. That a woman of color at such an advanced age in the West -- would be working for a federal agency in a position such as mine was undoubtedly as surprising to her.

We do live in a time of collapsing stereotypes, do we not?

Meanwhile, I'm working hard to climb back into my box, but each day I discover ribbons, sparkles, and confetti spilling out as I find myself humming under my breath ... re-imaging that road not taken ... but maybe this, too, shall pass ... . (a gig at some upscale oasis in Dubai might not be too shabby, right?)

Note: Aisha Bilkhair Khalifa, Ph.D., a Fulbright Post-Doctorate Fellow at Harvard University (2005–2006) holds degrees in Filmmaking, Electronic Engineering, and Ethnic Studies and a doctorate in Arab Gulf studies. Her main research interest is the African diaspora in the Gulf region. Specific areas include spirit possession, women, youth, and the transformation of identity. Recent publications include “Spirit possession and its practices in the United Arab Emirates” and “Secrecy and the circulation of knowledge among Gulf African Musical Groups”.

Oh what I wouldn't have given for a leisurely evening probing the mind of this amazing scholar from faraway exotic lands! My work allows me to touch lives with oh so many fascinating scholars from an increasing number of other cultures. My options at this stage in life seem limitless.

2011-12-14T11:05:00.000-08:00

Dorrie's Art with Mardi Gras beads

Another necessary step taken in the "taking leave" process of aging ...

Yesterday Dorian and I drove out to a nearby town so that she could meet -- for the first time -- members of the Trust team who will be responsible for her life after my death. It went beautifully!

I'd carefully avoided building too much anxiety before the fact by too much preparation. She has been aware that a Trust has been created, but its purpose was never defined so that her expectations wouldn't involve her having to lose her mother in order for her team to take over responsibility for the decision-making. The goal, for me, was to try (before I become infirm and therefore unavailable to her) to have the luxury of setting my successors in place in order to have a chance to witness her life as it will be lived when I'm no longer here. Given any luck, some of the dependence will have been transferred to others before that happens, and therefore lend less disruption to her life.

I've never wanted to have my sons responsible for her since the added weight upon their lives might one day be experienced as a burden. I want them to go on loving and caring about her into the foreseeable future, and that might be jeopardized were she perceived in that light. They have their lives and families, and I've carefully protected their love for her by assuming all of the responsibility myself. It was an investment in all of our futures. We've arrived at this point with an unbroken bond that may be sustainable with professionals bearing the responsibility for decision-making on her behalf. Her brother's will ultimately take my place as guardian ad litem when signators are needed, or in acting for her legally, but the team created as her Trust are staff members in the law firm of highly-reputed Attorney Stephen Dale whose practice is designed for the sole purpose of serving the physically and mentally handicapped. They will assume the major guiding role in her future.

Dorian's team consists of an investment counselor, an attorney, and a day-to-day adviser. She remains a client of the Regional Center of the East Bay, one of a chain of agencies created and supported by the State of California under the Lanterman Act. The RCEB will continue to provide case management, fund her NIAD education, and auxiliary services as needed.

Yesterday, Dorrie met with her team, and as her session ended she came out to the parking lot where I sat waiting in the car with some quiet fears -- to announce that her team understood the importance of Special Olympics -- a real concern for her. She was glowing! She explained who her "new friends" were, and came away with a fairly good idea of what a Trust is, and of its role in her future. Allowing her to experience this session alone, made them her team and not her mother's. That is precisely as it should be. My first baby steps out of the foreground and into the background of her life has been successfully accomplished.

My feelings as we drove home through the lovely and newly greening Alhambra Valley were of contentment. Another step has been taken to insure her safety and security -- even as Governor Jerry Brown was announcing on the car radio that substantial budget cuts were unavoidable and would kick in as mandated by conditions set forth last summer in order to gain enough votes for passage. These would be in education, elder services, and for the developmental disabled ... .

... and maybe now I'll have time for those tango lessons and riding my new bike .... .

2011-12-13T17:02:00.000-08:00

About that press conference aboard the USS Iowa on Wednesday ... .

There is something sad -- and maybe a little comic -- in an old battleship that has been resurrected from the Mothball Fleet to live again as a tourist attraction. Those 18 inch guns that once blazed menacingly at whatever served as the defined enemy at any time have been silenced, I believe, for all time.

The men aboard on Wednesday were obviously reverent and awed in her presence. I guess it was the gender gap that caused me to have to hide my amusement when standing 'neath those big guns -- reminding my irreverent soul of the phallic symbols they so ably represent, symbols of male dominance over the seas? Such thoughts could not be repressed, try as I might.

Wonder how those who sailed her into battle in an earlier time would feel about today's drone jockeys -- contained safely in a capsule of some kind -- somewhere in Colorado while bombing faraway places -- over an ocean away -- with little regard for lives lost.

Where do we find the heroism in that?

Nonetheless, it was impossible to not feel the drama beneath our feet on those decks so soon to re-enter history, this time as a naval museum, a reminder of days past when heroism was differently-defined.

Photo: Ellen Gailing

2011-12-11T09:37:00.000-08:00

... and just what other human being do you know who received a bike for her 90th birthday?

Yes, as a complete surprise and at the top-of-the-evening, I was invited into the room with, "we have something for you," and there it was sitting in all its orange and yellow splendor in a side room at Nexus -- my bicycle!

My friends and park colleagues (plus Rosie, my southern California granddaughter who couldn't attend) picked up a collection and made the purchase weeks ago. It had apparently been hidden away in an attached storage building outside our administration building waiting to be sprung at the concert.

It was almost too much -- and all I wanted to do in that moment -- was to crumple up in a heap and weep for pure joy!

... an unforgettable evening that still resonates daily just before sleep each night and probably will for all of the nights yet unborn ... .

2011-12-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

Diva Days ... now truly in the past, ... maybe ...

... except that on the morning after my dream concert, the owners of Nexus -- the beautiful Buddha-filled site where the performance was held -- invited me to sing the National Anthem at a press conference aboard the USS Iowa, the battleship moored in the Port of Richmond undergoing repairs before sailing south for a new life as a naval museum. The event was held in commemoration of Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day; December 7th. We old battleships are seeing a resurrection of sorts, right?

Alas, it was an honor just a tad too far and I regretfully declined. Not looking to extend my now reinstated temporary career as an over-ripe chantoosie, and, not seeing any possible way to sing myself through the National Anthem without tripping and falling on my face, I said no to this great honor. Singing before an audience of lifelong friends in celebration of my birthday while raising much-needed funds for a program that has meant so much to me and to Dorian was a very special thing -- to be treasured for all time. Adding another facet to my now more-public-persona than I'd ever dreamed of or wished for, I felt in danger of over-reaching and that would be tragic.

I did attend the press conference as a part of the National Park Service delegation, however, and explained to our hosts when asked, that I might have said yes had he invited me to sing "America the Beautiful." And, you know that might not have been so easy to refuse. I've always so loved those lyrics ... .

especially those brilliantly instructive lines in the second verse:

"... confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law."

Magical!

2011-12-04T12:26:00.000-08:00

Then and Now ...

More photos ... .

In the weeks leading up to that incomparable evening there was the opportunity to work with Tru Peterson, a brilliant jazz guitarist who is a graduate of Boston's Berklee School of Music; a colleague of Wynton Marsalis; who toured for a time with the folk legend, Joan Baez, and later with jazz singer Cassandra Wilson; and is currently teaching and performing in the Greater Bay Area.

We had four evenings of working together at my home in preparation for my appearance before a live audience -- 4 evenings of feeling the years drop away -- and for the first time in about 50 years I was going to sing before an audience! I had no idea what would happen, but the experience became increasingly important to me as the time of the concert neared. Now is a time for integration, and bringing more of my "selves" together in what is surely my final decade has almost become an obsession.

I'm not at all certain that -- had it not been for the support and encouragement of my son, Bob, I'd ever have followed through. He was insistent and loving and probably should be recognized as having been the motivating factor in this great adventure. Bob, along with his music partner, Margaret Miles, appeared together with me on stage for the first time. I think I've always seen Bob as living out those inherited music genes that I'd so long ago disowned. He is a natural performer who has lived his music with passion throughout his life.

A "Mom sandwich!"was created as
sons, Bob and David, spontaneously
bounded onto the little stage!

In the beginning I felt tentative and for brief moments wished I'd not committed to exposing myself to ridicule (one friend aptly called it the "cringe" factor). My voice seemed to have shrunken to a whisper, and I was rushing the phrasing and could see that Tru was having difficulty reading the level of my musicianship. I don't think that either of us doubted for a minute, though, that it was still there, though suffering from sheer panic, surely.

That evening I was surrounded and embraced by friends, some from a time when I was ever so young -- composing and singing -- and many who had no idea that this was ever a part of my life, but who only knew me as a community activist, political ally, wife and mother, and -- more recently -- park ranger; certainly not as poet or singer. How would the revelation of the long concealed artist in me affect the rest of my life? I'm guessing that I am the only one concerned with the question. It probably held little importance to anyone else, and I'd wake the day after to find little has changed. And, you know what? That's precisely what has happened.

The goal of raising enough funds to make a significant donation to NIAD was more than met, thanks to the support of so many friends and family (and a few strangers) who filled the room to overflowing!

Life is spectacular, thank you!

Photo by Ellen Gailing

2011-12-03T12:34:00.000-08:00

Tru Peterson, an extraordinary guitarist, and moi
performing before a sold out house!

It's been a long long time, has it not ... ?

So much life in so few months -- crowding out blogging in favor of just enjoying the living of a remarkable life.

How will we ever catch up?

Maybe a few photos of the now-in-the-past

"Road Not Taken"

concert? What an evening! Wish you'd all been there ... .

I have so few unrealized dreams remaining; I seem to have lived them all.

... but today I am due at the Boilerhouse Restaurant at Ford Point to provide interpretation for a park tour for 80 visiting trade unionists from around the country -- in just 45 minutes --

.. more later.

Photos by Ellen Gailing

2011-10-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

Now here's a tribute I can relate to. It's all a question of scale!

A ranger colleague was browsing Craig's List for bike listings and ran across this one and forwarded it to me. It made my day -- actually several days!

It comes unsolicited from someone I'll never meet, probably. I cannot imagine such a serendipitously more delightful tribute from one with nothing to gain. My name on a bike riding around San Francisco carrying some unsuspecting admirer and fellow-activist, presumably.

I wrote the person who placed the ad to thank him/her for not painting over my name -- wishing I could afford to buy it to set in the middle of my living room with a lace doily draped over the handlebars, just because!

2011-10-10T20:14:00.000-07:00

54cm Road Bike - $275 (marina / cow hollow)

Date: 2011-10-04, 10:18PM PDT
Reply to: sale-vgfsr-2633304535@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

This awesome bike is on sale because I need the money for rent and it's a little big for me anyway. It's a 54cm vintage american eagle road bike with a rock solid lugged steel frame. No dents or dings but a few chips in the amazing orange color.

The best part of this bike is the artistically crafted lugs, there is even a heart designed in the top tube. The bike is clean, new tires and grip tape. The last owners painted the name Betty Reid onto the side of the bike, named after a powerful civil rights activist of the 60's. Check her out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Reid-Soskin.

Hard to let her go but let me know if you're interested!

it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 2633304535

2011-09-11T14:01:00.000-07:00

Watching and listening to how others memorialized September 11th against the background of our local experience reinforced the rightness of our observance here at home ... .

Found myself silencing my radio early this morning -- feeling mercilessly exploited by media insistent upon drawing a cynical bow across every emotional string in my patriotic soul!

To have participated in Tuesday's ceremony in which a master sculptor introduced his decade-long love-based response to the World Trade Center's horrific tragedy drew upon the positive responses within each of us, and transformed the rage and fear into an instrument that would evoke our very best selves in answer to those who wished to destroy us.

But there have been moments throughout the day when I was reminded that proximity is surely a factor. We on the West Coast didn't witness the carnage. Surely our emotions would have been deepened had the TransAmerica Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge been struck with an equal loss of life. Surely our fear and anger would have been heightened, and recovery less easily achieved.

Yet --I've found myself wondering whether there isn't an overt attempt at freshening the case for continuing to generate a rationale for a profitable and never-ending state of war ... .

... but it's difficult to believe that there would be enough cynicism among us to support such a state of being -- or is it?

2011-09-10T11:10:00.001-07:00

2011-09-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

Telescoping time ...

Attended the history-making unveiling of the Mario Chiodo sculptures in Henry J. Kaiser Park in downtown Oakland on Tuesday. This was the first installation of what is a monumental work of art entitled, "Remember them; Champions for humanity." When completed it will consist of 25 figures of those who have set the patterns for the best that we are as a nation and a world.

Among the honorees were in most cases descendants of those honored, added to by those still living. Please go to Mario's website for the complete story and photos of the event. The sculptures were inspired by the tragedy of September 11th and took ten years to complete. The centerpiece stands 40 feet tall and will be installed during the first part of 2012. I can hardly wait, having had a chance to visit his studio where the work is proceeding on schedule.

But -- can you believe these photos (taken with Shirley Butt's cell phone). They were taken at the studio party after the unveiling ceremony. The lovely young blond woman shown on the right is Juliana Roosevelt, granddaughter of President Franklin Delano and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (Juliana's grandfather is one of the figures). Above is Ruby Bridges -- shown in the monument as the 6 year-old courageous little girl who integrated New Orleans schools during the early days of struggle to integrate our public schools -- and under the protection of the National Guard, remember? This drawing is from the Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover that inspired us all. Here she is all grown up; an attractive, passionate, and articulate young woman who was in town not only to receive her honors at the unveiling, but to be present for the dedication of a bronze statue of herself that Mario created for the Alameda school that has been named Ruby Bridges Elementary in her honor!

... and here I am spanning the generations with these three iconic young American women.

... and that's not all. The great American hero of Japanese descent, Fred Korematsu, who valiantly fought against the unjust internment of his people during WWII for which he received the Medal of Honor from President Clinton, and who is also one of the 25 figures -- has a beautiful social activist daughter, Karen Korematsu (seen here in red). I felt surrounded by reflected greatness, and found myself wondering just how one shares such experiences so that they radiate out into the ether and enter into whatever it is that sustains us all?

So many generations since the time of their family ancestors (and me), but Chiodo managed with his magnificent sculptures to capture the essence of what it means to be human -- that potential for greatness which resides in each of us, and that -- for the most part -- lies dormant; untapped. In an odd way, those giant figures -- though dwarfing those of us who stood in awe before them -- were extraordinary ordinary people -- their humanity made manifest not only in these great bronze images, but in the aura of their descendants as well, if only because we endowed them with inherited greatness. In our quiet conversation, Juliana spoke with humility of how many years it took to ease her way into her iconic surname -- and that she has only recently felt -- not only the honor of being a Roosevelt -- but the heavy responsibility the name imposes.

Wish I were a poet at times like this. But there is out there somewhere, a word artist or musician who will one day sit in the shadow of those stunning figures and give voice or notes and lyrics to what is beyond my ability to express; will marry their artistry to that of Mario Chiodo and the result will be magnificent beyond measure! I'm certain of it.

And, most meaningfully, what is not extraordinary in Oakland and the Greater Bay Area is the fact that we were all together as equals in a social situation, something their illustrious ancestors could hardly have dreamed of. During the time of Bridges, Roosevelt, Korematsu (only 70 years ago - less than my lifetime), I cannot imagine under what circumstances this would have been possible. Regrettably, this probably can't be said for some parts of the country or the world still, but here -- in this place -- though unspoken, differences are no longer merely tolerated, but celebrated.

This brilliant sculptor, Mario Chiodo, has marked the place indelibly where this, above all else, is the living truth.

2011-09-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

2011-09-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

Calls have been coming in for days from friends asking about my upcoming 90th birthday celebration ... .

There was one from Kathy, the co-creator of the musical "Rivets" and the producer of the Vagina Monologues we appeared in a year or or so ago; from Joan, of Supervisor John Gioia's office, from our Chief of Interpretation, Morgan, from colleagues, Lucien and Elizabeth; and assorted other caring friends and family. I just kept bobbing and weaving for reasons unknown. I've known the day was on the horizon, but I've held the public's attention for some time now, and echoes of the commencement at the California College of the Arts are still ringing in my ears (I've not been able to watch the CD of that event to this day. I may never come down from that one).

Kathy provided a way to approach the occasion that may work: She said, "think of something you'd really like to have happen; some benefit for a favorite cause ..." and then I remembered my political friends who regularly hold birthday celebrations to retire campaign debts or to fund raise for the next election cycle. Could there be something here? And I found the answer was "yes"! I drove to Michelle's Visitor's & Convention Bureau in Point Richmond to begin to commit before the impulse vanished in thin air. She agreed to help, when she returns from Burning Man next week.

With September's calendar already bulging with commitments of the grand opening of the long-awaited Maritime Child Development Center and the unveiling of Mario Chiodo's brilliant sculpture, "Remember Them; Champions for Humanity," leading to the 4th annual Home Front Festival in October, there simply isn't time to even think of birthdays, even my own. Besides, what I'm considering will take a good deal of planning. Interwoven through those epic events is my participation in an evening at St. Marys College, and various guided tours and meetings in preparation for all of the above.

First, I'm creating a group to plan what will be Betty's "The Road Not Taken Concert." How's that for hutzpah? If you've been reading this blog for long, you're aware that there was a time when I flirted with a career as a singer/composer. That I appeared from time to time as a kind of singing poet in institutional settings (colleges, churches, sometimes coffee houses) and that during that time I'd been "discovered" by a number of record companies but only once was tempted enough to fly east for an audition for Max Gordon of the Village Vanguard in NY. I left my kids with Georgia Wiseman, our friend and housekeeper, for two weeks while I rehearsed with jazz pianist, Paul Neves, at a Hartford, Connecticut nightclub but opted to return home to my family abruptly -- the night before the scheduled audition. My friend and sponsor, the late Henry Hampton of Blacksides Productions out of Boston (and also the creator of "Eyes on the Prize," the groundbreaking PBS series) was deeply disappointed, but understood eventually. I'd left behind 4 children; 3 young sons and a special needs little girl -- and a failing marriage. A career as an entertainer was simply not worth what it would mean to my family.

Over the years that followed I successfully stifled Betty the Artist and opted to live off my other "edges" and found them sufficient to satisfy my needs. I moved out of the suburbs and, eventually, into a new marriage and left her pretty much behind.

So, all that is to say that I'd like to have my son, Bob Reid, who is an entertainer, along with his lady, Margaret Miles join me in my "Road Not Taken Concert" where I will sing publicly for the first time in about 40 years! I'm sure there's not much voice left, but I know the beat is still pulsing away, and I can work with that. Besides, expectations could hardly be lower(!) than for one entering their tenth decade. And, maybe we'll all be pleasantly surprised. I'll locate a jazz guitarist and maybe an acoustic bass (rhythm section?) among my friends in that world, and begin to rehearse soon. We will stage a benefit for NIAD (National Institute for Artists and Disabilities); Dorian's arts program. We will present the NIAD performing artists in their new 10-minute original play based on a Japanese folk tale that is wonderful and must be viewed by the community as a part of the evening's offering.

Why is it important to do this? I've thought about that and have come to the realization that by performing again I will be stating -- if only to myself -- that the life choices I've made were the right choices. Look where they've taken me, maybe to that honorary doctorate I received last spring. And that there was enough "Betty" to stretch over more life than one might possibly imagine. That we all are capable of whatever is demanded of us. And that the alternatives for each of us are limitless.

2011-09-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

MAC is out of the box and we're back in business ...

Not sure there has been a break of this length in blog entries since September of 2003 when all this started. But the old faithful computer died and needed replacement -- and whaddyaknow -- a state tax refund check with almost enough to cover a new I-Mac arrived in the mails several days after a techie assessed the situation and sent it to the recycling bin. It has served me well, and it was a surprise to learn that an eMac might be considered too ancient to be fixed when it seemed to me to be fairly new. Has it really been years since Steve Jobs strode across the stage at Mosconi Convention Center in San Francisco to announce its birth?

But now that I'm back in business with 1000% more technology at my fingertips than I know what to do with, let's see where we are. And -- once I've gotten over the wonder at this high-powered genie's ability to deliver such undreamed of magic, I'll get back to blogging.

This time I signed up for all of the bells and whistles and you just may find me standing at the Genius Bar at our local Apple Store along with all the teens of this millennium checking out how to use Garage Band and I-Movies -- and am I really ready for Face Time? (Caught sight of myself by accident last night and almost fell off my sea green ergonomic office chair!).

I may not just be the oldest park ranger in the National Park System, but that might extend to the Apple Genius Bar as well.

There was a moment when the "child" who was my salesperson was explaining that -- if I would bring my old Mac in with the new one they would do a data transfer free of charge -- but that this would take about 3 days. I laughed and answered that at my age (90 in 3 weeks), time was one of the few things I didn't have much of, and that they'd have to do better than that. I was flattered when he looked at me in disbelief, but he obviously paid attention because the very next morning (Sunday) there was a call to say that Mac was ready to be picked up.

Every night since it arrived -- instead of writing -- I've been sitting here slack-jawed in awe at the wonders that I've lived to see, and wondering what I could possibly write that is worthy of the art of the technological geniuses of these times? Then I'm reminded of the geniuses who brought us television, and of what we've done with it over the past decade (arggghhh!). Maybe my words, after all, are worthy -- and if not, at least might spark someone else to be, and who could ask for more?

2011-08-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering whether I've met with some "disastrophe" ...

The answer is yes and no. The old Mac was acting as if it had developed some terminal illness -- unlike its owner -- and had to be replaced. It has gone to the MacStore for the data transfer to the new one and I'll not make entries until sometime midweek.

Meanwhile, life goes on and we're gearing up at work for fall programming and a full schedule of activities, and -- and life is good.

2011-08-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

Worked in all-day sessions with a team of historians, filmmakers, rangers, exhibit designers, and others for 3 days of advanced planning last week ... .

The filmmakers were here from the East Coast, and were with us for 3 days working on the third draft of one of the films that will become the 30 minute movie that explains the park to the public in the new Visitor's Center (opening early next spring) in the Oil House of the Ford Assembly Plant on the scenic Richmond shoreline.

On Wednesday, the designer's of the Visitor's Center exhibits met with us in long and intensive sessions going over the printouts and making the inevitable changes; sharpening the details; and bringing it into being after months of dreaming of the day ... it's all becoming real now, and is exciting!

It was during the session with the team creating the exhibits that an important insight pushed itself into consciousness -- but I didn't fully see it until long after we'd ended the discussion. Isn't that always the way?

We were considering the various sections of the Visitor's Center and the exhibits being designed. It was in the "Rosie the Riveter" section. (There is a Home Front section, and a City of Richmond section, plus a theater below.) I'd envisioned somewhere among the displays a screen upon which (like a screen-saver) there would be multiple head shots of those women who were the inheritors of the legacy of "Rosie." You've all seen her, "We can do it!," in a polka dot bandanna with arm bent showing her strength and determination. (I personally prefer the Norman Rockwell image of the beefy sassy Rosie with her foot resting on a copy of Mien Kampf.)

In my imagined exhibit there would be a mosaic made up of tiny images of many women who -- in the decades since WWII have made their way into careers and made major accomplishments in every discipline: Sally Ride and Mae Jemison, astronauts; Christiane Amanpour and Rachel Maddow; Bella Abzug and Jessica Mitford; Oprah Winfrey and Julie Taymor and Toni Morrison; Barbara Jordan, Shirley Chisholm, Nancy Pelosi, Carly Fiorino, Dolores Huerta, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein, Mayors Jean Quan and Gayle McLaughlin; Gloria Steinem and Annie Liebowitz; Mia Hamm, the Stanford women's basketball team; Supreme Court Justices O'Conner, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor; a helicopter pilot flying over Iraq or Afghanistan; that race car driver at Nascar; firefighters, policewomen, park rangers; Betty Friedan and Katherine Graham and Adriana Huffington; and yes, some bus drivers, some girl scouts and Rosie's Girls, Spelling Bee winners, ferry boat captains, West Point cadets, army admirals and generals, that Episcopal Bishop, and (yes) Sarah Palin, and Michelle Bachmann (I'm an equal opportunity dreamer); and as many as we can crowd into a background with tiny images that would zoom into the forefront in one fleeting moment to fill the screen and invite murmurs of recognition from viewers. You get the idea.

I want to bring Rosie out of the past and into the present and the future. And I want to write her into history as this history is being created! Over the succeeding decades since she emerged as a powerful public relations symbol to bring women into the workforce, Rosie has evolved as has the nation and its attitudes, and has become more inclusive, many-hued, and in some cases a space helmet, hard hat, or hijab may have replaced that red polka-dot bandanna, but she still represents woman on the rise toward full equality. In the immortal words of poet Maya Angelou, " ... and still I rise!"

This is the trajectory I'd love to project on a screen. I'm more concerned with this more dynamic image of Rosie than of erecting a mausoleum to the now white-haired Rosies who answered the country's call in WWII; we who've served as role models for her continuing march toward autonomy and independence; and who should now find immortality in the inspiration that we provided for those who climbed onto our slim shoulders for the continuing ascension in the decades that followed. Maybe it's honor enough to see ourselves reflected in them and in their achievements. I certainly do.

I heard another ranger's voice caution from across the conference table, "... but Betty, we don't want to use iconic women. After all Rosie was an ordinary worker." And, of course, I would agree -- and Elizabeth's words stifled the imagery and I gave it up for the moment; as deflated as a long-after-the-party-ended red balloon.

When I fell into that quiet moment just before sleep that evening, I realized that it was at just this place in the process that women get dropped out of history. We complain and decry the omission, and don't seem to remember that men celebrate their icons, build institutions to them, name buildings after them, do "Halls of Fame" to honor them, but rarely do we women do so, and there's something fine about that. It speaks to our inclination to want to be perceived in the aggregate as modest -- self-effacing -- but that doesn't make history, friends. It is in just this kind of situation that the deed is done, and we women fail to promote ourselves at the cost of being erased from the history books as we've been over the centuries. And maybe, just maybe, it's not a conspiracy to be dismissive of women at all, but women's natural reluctance to self-promote.

The team has returned to the East Coast, and the planning sessions have ended for now. Isn't that always the way? But maybe there's still time to make the point. I'll just bet Molly MacGregor of the National Women's History Project would understand and applaud -- but then maybe I'm just making too much of it.

We'll see. If it still seems important next week when our suggestions for revisions need to be submitted to be forwarded to the designers -- I'll act on it. If not ... .

(I'd love to get some feedback in this instance, if you'll look just under my picture on the left side of the screen -- top of the list of links to send me an email. You, too, can help to build a new urban national park, if you'd like.)

2011-08-07T14:47:00.000-07:00

It's all over ... the Mediation ...

... and I've not posted the results because I had no idea how to communicate what happened. I'm not even sure at this point. Maybe it suffices to say that the justice system worked to deliver only winners. The greatest winner of all was my daughter, Dorian Leon Reid.

I cannot help but believe that everyone in that mediation process felt good about where it all ended; most of all our attorney who told me afterward that, at 21, this was the case that he entered the field of the law to serve. The judge was a gentle, reasonable, sensible man in whom I felt complete confidence from the moment we first met at the "up" elevator in the lobby at City Hall.

"Mrs. Soskin?"

"Yes."

(How did he recognize me? We'd not met before. Maybe he'd visited my blog for background and recognized me from my photo? How else would he have known?)

On reaching the 4th floor, I was introduced to the team of defense attorneys gathered around a large conference table; the representative for the city attorney, the police officer of the car involved in the accident -- there were probably 8 men in that conference room -- but as they introduced themselves -- I saw nothing in those faces or shake of those hands to fear. It was like the experience of the testing sessions last week where we met for the first time the orthopedist and psychologist, both selected by the defense attorneys. They were pleasant and competent professionals in whom I had complete faith. In the second conference room were just the two of us, Dorian's attorney and I.

I've never been involved in legal proceedings before, but from this experience, "the Law" and "Justice" are both alive and well, and worthy of the public trust.

What was expected to take the best part of 11 hours ended up settled in less than 3. Though there was the process to be honored by two legal teams in two separate conference rooms with the judge moving between with each new factor to be considered; offers to tender; decisions to be pondered. By the end of the process Dorian's future appeared brighter than at any time in our lives. The independence and autonomy that I've spent a lifetime trying to establish for her were assured in one fell swoop! The settlement will go into a trust fund secured by a respected trust attorney who specializes in serving the developmentally disabled community, and her mother can finally exhale!

The cost was high, and Dorian will pay by having her physicality impaired in addition to her significant mental deficits to contend with for the rest of her life, but, ironically, as the result of this settlement she accomplished for herself, accidentally, what I could never have achieved in her name; not in two lifetimes! Fate is capricious, unpredictable, but in the end we can live with where it led.

... and there was a hidden bonus that occurred only after the session ended and on the long drive home. This amazing outcome had been accomplished without my involvement. A fine attorney had worked successfully on her behalf. I don't believe I uttered a word beyond those mumbled during the polite introductions. My role as " Guardian Ad Litem" all these months has consisted of occasionally reading and signing papers, delivering various materials as requested, and accompanying Dorrie for testing. The entire proceedings had shown "The World" responding to Dorian without her mother's intervention. Is this an example of interactions with "The World" after I'm no longer living? "The World" I've been so reluctant to trust with her life since the accident? It's true that she was not physically present in the room that day, but her interests surely were, and those interests were properly presented and defended by total strangers; defended objectively and fairly.

It was at this point that I became danger to life and limb on the freeway as the tears of relief -- waiting for a lifetime were now released. I began to brake in heavy commuter traffic -- and pulled off Interstate-880 at the first exit ramp and headed for the nearby waterfront where I sat for an hour absently watching a graceful windsurfer through tears of pure joy -- and being totally at peace ... .

I'm so grateful to those legal and medical professionals who deliberated in good faith. There were no winners to declare nor losers to mourn -- only competent and compassionate men responding to a regrettable situation that none of us would have wished into being.

Now maybe Dorrie's mother will go arrange for those tango lessons!

2011-07-31T12:36:00.000-07:00

Dorian and I weren't the only family members enjoying the sky this day ... .

Checked email a moment ago to find a lovely photograph of my vacationing granddaughter, Rosie, standing on the rim of the Waimea volcano (the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific") on the island of Maui -- making bubbles!

When have you seen synchronicity illustrated more beautifully?

2011-07-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

Another week has passed, and today is Saturday and the day of the 26th Annual Kite Festival on the Berkeley Marina ... .

Dorian and I will get out our sweats, warm hooded jackets, binoculars and cameras -- pack a picnic lunch -- and head for the marina. We'll spend the morning lying on our backs with eyes cast skyward, and if we're lucky, there will be not only kites of every possible description, but wind surfers and graceful sailboats to wonder at as well.

This afternoon at one o'clock I have a tour to guide for some members of the cast of "Rivets," starting at the SS Red Oak Victory and ending at the Rosie the Riveter Memorial; a full day in a week of full days. But for now, it will be kites on the Green!

There are small rewards in life, one of them is that precious blue placard for the handicapped prescribed for Dorrie that proves to be almost equal to valet parking. It means that we'll have no need to consider the walking distance from our car to our destination; at times a real challenge.

Received a call from New York from the son of a childhood friend earlier this week informing me that his mother had died in late June. In my busyness I'd not heard. He was inviting me to her memorial service on August 20th here in Richmond. A momentary flash of guilt clouded over as I remembered that the last time we talked by phone (perhaps in late May), she sounded so confused -- hardly knew my voice. I'd noticed when we last visited that her hearing was failing. I stopped by a day or so later, rang her doorbell, and felt almost relieved when there was no answer. Jacqueline was in the hospital at that time, and I didn't know. I made a silent pledge to myself to stop on my lunch hour in a day or so to visit with her again; a pledge I failed to keep. Having recently learned of another friend, Careth, on the eve of her eightieth birthday suffering a stroke, I felt a chill running along my spine, and invisible bumps along my lower arms. Survivor's guilt?

But today is kite day on the Marina, and the last time Dorian and I attended this great event was a few years ago on the day that we delivered the remains of her beloved cat to the Berkeley SPCA for disposal (see post for July 31, 2005). She woke that morning to find that Speedy -- who was pretty old and had been ailing -- had died during the night and was now frozen board-like into a lifeless lump. Dorrie was devastated!

On the return to Richmond we saw them, kites of every size, shape, and hue dancing high against the cloudless sky. Hoping to distract her from the feelings of loss, I impulsively slowed and pulled off the freeway to double back to find a place from which to watch. We parked and walked along the road (this was before her accident and she was not yet needing a walker) where we soon found ourselves following the huge Sunday crowd to find a place where we could lie on our backs for the next few hours of pure joy! I watched Dorrie's delighted face as the kites soon lifted her spirits skyward. It didn't take long. She asked if Speedy could see them ... .

Maybe kites will work for me today.

Later: A dirge has been sounding all morning in the background of my mind; a feeling of disquiet; life-dulling disembodied overwhelming sadness. And once settled on our sleeping bag (remembered seeing it in the trunk of the car, luckily), and lying on our backs watching the sky dance of an amazing array of kites -- suddenly the tears began to flow as I remembered that this is July -- the one year anniversary of the death of my younger sister, Lottie. It was last year on the Day of Remembrance of the Port Chicago explosion in 1944. I'd worked at the ceremony. On arriving home from Concord, the call came from my niece to let me know that Lottie had died that morning in approximately the same time period as the ceremony; some time between eleven o'clock and noon.

This year's commemoration ceremony was held last Saturday, and though I was aware of this sad anniversary, I've been able to fend off the affects until now when it, uninvited, rose to consciousness to be dealt with and tucked away.

Just as the tears began to flow Dorian shouted out urgently, "Look, Mom, it's a cat!" And looking up there she was, a black and white "tuxedo," a large kite replica of her beloved Speedy complete with four legs and tail and prancing kitten-like on the winds high overhead -- to Dorrie's total delight!

Then came the hugging, the rolling on the ground, and the laughter at the absurdity of it all!

2011-07-28T13:44:00.000-07:00

And finally ... .

35. What specifically encouraged you to pursue the path your life has taken?

Answer: My life has been neither planned nor predictable. It seems to have not been "a" life, so much as a series of incarnations that recurred in 10-year cycles starting about the age of 40. Every decade appears to have served as an opportunity to re-invent myself. However, that's only seen in retrospect, and none of the roles in which I found myself (beyond those of wife and mother), were in any way planned or anticipated. I've tended to live life in a constant state of surprise. It has been one grand improvisation, and for that I'm grateful since I'm still waking up to new days to own, and fresh expectations with each new sunrise.

36. What do you get to control as far as the development of the park goes?

Answer: Not sure how to answer this question since it's not so much a question of control as there are opportunities to influence events through my participation as a "first source asset." I bring those with whom I work a sense of the era of WWII simply by having been a part of it. That my role is atypical of the experiences of other women of those times by virtue of being a woman of color, my presence as a member of the interpretive staff provides an element that's otherwise missing from the narrative. The reality as we lived it is so much more powerful than myths that we've created to describe that era. But I'm also an American woman (sans the hyphen), whose life experience in many ways reflects the human experience of my generation, yet with greater complexity than most. It is through those aspects that I feel that I'm helping to shape this national park, and with the full consent and support of the National Park Service. And much of that comes not so much from "doing," but simply through "being."

37. In the face of the racism and sexism you've experienced in your lifetime, how have you channeled that into courage and motivation for change rather than into fear, anger, or violence?

Answer: Haven't a clue. I believe we grow and evolve in direct relation to how early in life we develop the tools with which to survive and prosper. I'm not sure just when the transition came for me, but somewhere along the way I outlived my rage without losing my passion. This has enabled me to look beyond the insults and outrage in most cases, through the gradual realization that none of it was deserved, so that I didn't have to own it unless I so wished, or was going through some temporary vulnerability. My race may have been your problem, but rarely was it mine.

I once overheard a friend remark to another mutual friend, "it's really difficult to feel superior to one who refuses to be inferior!" She was referring to me. I grinned to myself because I knew that Eleanor really "got it," and that she was both bemused and relieved by her own insight. I rarely remember "owning" the negative, and more likely felt empathy for those who didn't realize my worth as a person and as a potential friend. I credit those with whom I "grew up" in the turbulent Sixties -- at a time of re-definition and activism that has guided my destiny ever since. For at least 2 decades during those years I lived a life of affirmation. That period may have provided the cushion against hate that I'm enjoying through these final years.

38. What social justice do you hope to see in the United States before the end of your lifetime?

Answer: I'd give almost anything to see an end to the broken system of justice that's been so crippling to the nation; the shameful incarceration of so many young black and brown youth; to see the necessary corrections made to the system of public education that has been all but demolished in our time; an end to capital punishment -- the need to end the insane policy that causes us to kill people in order to show that it's wrong to kill people! And, world peace can't happen soon enough for humankind, but I'm fearful that there's little hope of that occurring any time soon for reasons beyond comprehension.

Lastly, I don't envy your generation and the problems of climate change to solve. I look forward with fear as the signs of melting glaciers and rising seas becomes more threatening with each day, and, as the scientists warn of irreversibility (a dreaded word!). But it may be helpful for you to know that the models for how to solve the emergency of your time may well lie in studying how my generation met with the emergency of its time. It was in the period of the Home Front mobilization (1941-1945) that, under Franklin Roosevelt, we formed ourselves into the great Arsenal of Democracy which produced (in Richmond) a workforce of 98,000 unskilled Americans -- and built and launched 747 ships in 3 years and 8 months led by the visionary industrialist, Henry J. Kaiser, who had never built a ship. Together, despite having to do so under the badly flawed social system that ruled our lives at that time; we helped to save the world from the brutality of Fascist domination. We know it can be done because my generation did it. There is little doubt that yours can, too, given a more enlightened nation achieved through many decades of continuing social change, and unimagined technological advancement at your command. How can you not?

Had it been possible to choose the era in which to spend my time on planet earth -- even with the often bitter challenges it presented -- I would choose my own, 1921 to whatever time of exit. It's been a great run. I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

And in the words of the great Stephen Sondheim and his muse, the much-beloved and celebrated Broadway diva, Elaine Stritch ...

"I'm still here!"

2011-07-28T12:25:00.000-07:00

Home from work today waiting for a plumber to repair one of life's unexpected contingencies; so while waiting I'll continue our conversation ... .

29. What advice would you give a woman who is trying to make a career in a basically all male profession; for example engineering?

Answer: I'm not at all sure that I could give advice to anyone since my life experience did little to prepare me to do so. However, at this late date I find myself in a somewhat gender-specific role of a park ranger among a staff made up, primarily, of young men -- and all that seems to matter is that I do my job with integrity and to the best of my ability. Maybe that's all there is to it, at the end of the day.

30. How exciting is it to see the world change so greatly in such a short period of time? Is it exciting? Or scary? Interesting? The inventions ... mannerisms of people ... war tactics ... how we treat one another ... cell phones ... have all changed dramatically since the early 1900's.

Answer: Having lived such a long life that "change" and "progress" seems to have happened with lightening speed! Looking back -- it all went so fast -- and so much of it with little advance warning. Hope lies in the fact that so much has occurred over my lifetime that has thrust us forward. I have the eerie feeling at times that I'm living in the future that I helped to create as time began to fold in on itself!

Having grown from Betty the Little Girl for whom Christmas took 365 endless days to return each year -- to Betty the Elder for whom Christmas now occurs every six weeks, is dizzying. The illusion of time is stunningly under-appreciated. I'm as fascinated by Einstein's Theory of Relatively and Stephen Hawking's black holes and parallel universes as I once was at the mysteries of the virgin birth and the resurrection, and with little need to choose between, but to consider them as acceptable conflicting truths for those who so believe.

Much of scientific theory and religious belief I now think of as the way in which various civilizations have explained the nature of the universe to themselves down through the ages. I suppose that one of the hallmarks of maturity may be an increasing ability to live comfortably with uncertainty, though I'm less drawn to religious thought these days, and more to the continual unfolding of Darwin's Theory of Evolution and to current studies of an expanding universe. I'm struck by the way that science projects forward with hypotheses to prove or disprove which thrusts the edge of what is known ever forward -- while religion continues to reach back in time for its references, and measures new discoveries by how well they fit into belief systems set in antiquity; centuries before written language was widespread. People of goodwill have debated interminably which of these leads to salvation, and I'm sure that it will not be solved in my time; but at this stage, I opt for the scientific approach, even though I can barely grasp the meanings of current writings from the sages of the academy. I'm more intrigued by their mysteries.

Cell phones? Who on earth could ever have predicted such a thing? I came from a time of two tin cans connected by a string!

(I'm not sure that my answer bears any relation to the question posed, but it's where my mind went -- maybe to the inner change that is the more important to me.}

31. You mentioned that one of the reasons you began your blog was because you had a particularly hard time reclaiming the history of the women in your family. Could you please illustrate a little more on your process of discovering those stories, if you were able to, and some of the reasons why you think those stories in particular were harder to uncover? How do you feel that the loss of women's histories within families affects the broader narrative about women in history?

Answer: There's no mystery about why women are so hard to trace; their names changed through marriage, and in the event that there has been more than one marriage, the mystery deepened and they became lost. If this is true in the search within families, one can imagine how it affects the story of women in the larger society. As an amateur genealogist, it was frustrating, thus the birth of my blogging so that future family researchers might have the benefit of not only my life story, but all of those female ancestors whom I've been able to place into the record.

32. In one of the videos you tell a story about a high school experience you had in drama class. Specifically you mention how the teacher, though obviously stunned by your performance, wouldn't cast you because of your race. You mention that your reaction to this as thinking, "Oh, of course, how could I have thought otherwise?" I guess I was just wondering how experiences like this have affected you, and whether or not you think that the societal messages you received as a young black woman are similar to the ones received by young black women today? If you believe they are different, how would you describe the change?

Answer: I suppose that my response to the situation had to do with the fact of my acceptance and understanding of the difficulty of her position. I can remember there being such mixed emotions at the time, but I was not mortally wounded by the situation (though it was burned into my memory where it remains to this day). I understood both her recognition and appreciation of my performance and her regret that she couldn't handle a confrontation with the prevailing attitude at that time in that community. There was little for me to do (since I felt personally supported by a teacher whom I truly liked and respected, despite the circumstance in which we found ourselves), but then immediately switched to a class in public speaking where such a situation might be less likely to occur. It was a matter of needing self-protection, and taking control of a matter that I had no answers for at the time.

I'm not sure that a young black woman of today would tolerate such an assault upon her dignity, and stifling of her ambitions. I'm certain that she should not since doing so only invites further abuse. But then, the institution is on the side of today's student. At that time it was not.

33. Why do you think there's a negative connotation to the word "feminist" in mainstream America, even among women?

Answer: Haven't a clue. Maybe because the declaration of emancipation of today's women upsets the status quo and re-defines the traditional role of the men in their lives as well. But that's only a guess. About the women for whom the word "feminist" is not acceptable, that's less understandable, but at least in my experience the anti-feminist women also tend to be relatively conservative in other matters.

34. How difficult was it to get substantial information in regards to your family tree?

Answer: Surprisingly, it was extremely easy, given the availability of Internet access which introduced me to the Mormon's Family History Center with its tremendous resources and volunteer assistance to the amateur researcher. Once the search begins and family names are entered into the system -- the mysteries begin to unfold and -- added to that, other researchers from everywhere begin to find you and for comparing notes and, over time, unbelievable discoveries begin to be revealed. I've found related family researchers across racial lines in all parts of the country and the world. At one point I was sent 26 generations of my maternal line by a family researcher in Louisiana. To have lived into such a time so rich in possibilities is almost unimaginable.

35. As long as you've been in your line of work (as well as your lifetime ) what is the greatest change for the better (or worse) that you've observed as far as the evolution and a result of social justice and CRGS (critical race, gender, and sexuality studies) activism?

Answer: The changes have been monumental -- more than one might have imagined even over such a long lifetime. The rate of change has accelerated dramatically so that generations that use to be measured in lifetimes are now measured in 5 years or less.

My grandfather could tell my father what the world would be like when Dad reached adulthood -- and it would pretty well be realized as predicted. My father could predict and prepare his children for what our world would be like, and to a large extent, he was right in what he envisioned. The changes that occurred between my birth and those of my children were so extreme that the world they inherited from my generation was no longer predictable. My grandchildren are living in a world that -- even with my admitted intelligence, sensitivity, and intuitiveness -- is a total mystery to me and, I believe, to my generation -- the rate of change has so dramatically accelerated over time.

(This conversation is almost over. Will conclude with the next post)

2011-07-27T19:20:00.000-07:00

Continuing conversation with Humboldt State University students ... .

22. How has knowing a living relative who experienced slavery firsthand affected your personal identity?

Answer: Mammá's persona was present throughout my childhood by virtue of the fact that the relatives with whom we lived most of my younger life had all grown up in her little house along the levee in St. James Parish in Louisiana. Papa George, her eldest son and my grandfather; my mother, aunt, and 3 uncles who were her grandchildren, plus many cousins, made up my world until I was about twelve. Upon arrival in California in 1927, (with the exception of the cousins) we all lived under one roof in Oakland for a time.

There was a constant stream of stories that gave form and personality to my great-grandmother long before I met her for the first time as a teenager.

Strange. I can't recall ever hearing stories about how slavery affected her life, or for that matter, slavery as a subject never came up at all until I began to learn about it in high school while studying the Civil War era. The shame of it must have been unspeakable; visceral. The pain of it must have been equally so, and denial may have been the key to survival.

Even then, I can't remember having made the connections with my own family's experience. Those facts may indicate how little even some African American families have processed that history. That white families have not done so should not be surprising. It is a shameful chapter in our national story, and one that needs to be exorcised in order for the much-needed healing of the national psyche to begin.

23. In an interview you gave regarding your role as a park ranger, you said you felt it was your job to promote important conversations. What types of conversations were you referring to and are there any topics that you believe to be as important that maybe you do not have the chance to cover as a ranger?

Answer: I find that -- if I allow myself the freedom to express whatever rises in the course of the telling, either on a bus tour or on a walking tour of the Rosie the Riveter Memorial -- there is a connection between me and those who are in my charge at the moment. There are variations that rise up each time, and, though the truths have been long-hidden and sometimes troubling -- I'm always aware of the distance we've all come over the past 67 years on this journey toward eventual freedom and greater equality. Each experience I've had over the years has brought me further along the path toward a deeper understanding of myself and of those with whom I interact as an interpretive ranger.

Since my work doesn't make up my total life experience, what other "important conversations" occur fall into other areas of a very complex daily existence.

24. In a video you mentioned not listening to the voice inside you. What was the voice telling you and why did you ignore it?

Answer: Probably different things at different times. I would have ignored it depending upon how vulnerable I may have felt at the time, and whether I felt strong enough to listen and be guided by it.

25. What specific experiences led you to advocate for women's rights?

Answer: I've never seen myself as an activist in the feminist movement, nor have I ever advocated for women's rights, specifically. I've often found myself marching for human rights -- in which women's rights are incorporated -- or for peace and justice, or against the death penalty, but rarely have I been drawn to the cause of women in particular. Not sure why that is, but it is.

26. When African American women were admitted to work in the shipyards, was their work different or more difficult than the work being assigned to white women? Taking racial segregation into consideration, what was the difference in treatment of black and white women while performing industrial work?

Answer: I had no experience working in the shipyards. I was employed as a clerk in a Jim Crow (blacks only) auxiliary union hall, and never was aboard a ship under construction. In fact, I never saw a ship under construction. Therefore I have no firsthand knowledge of the working conditions of those women -- black or white -- who were in that world.

27. I'm sure that she will continue her research in genealogy of the history her family, but as she wrote in her blog post the other day that she's "so afraid that it will remain unfinished even as this amazing American family saga continues to unfold ...". Should this occur, have there been any family members or other relatives who have expressed interest in continuing or helping her out with this? Has she thought of compiling her blogs of research into a book or some sort of keepsake?

Answer: By now younger members of the family (both a son and a younger cousin) have been drawn into continuing the work. As they age, as happened to me, the importance of keeping it current and involving others yet to be identified will surely maintain it for future generations. I believe that no one is indispensable, and I trust that others will step in as the needs arise, if only out of enlightened self-interest.

I'm considering having my blog published in annual volumes by one of the online publishers soon (miracles of miracles!), so that the "keepsake" will be fulfilled for my family.

28. Even though women were asked to join the work force in helping to build ships and planes during WWII, was there any animosity from men not at war but working in the factories toward the women workers?

Answer: Of course. Though I had no experience in the workforce except as a clerk in a somewhat distant small office, the times and the social climate would indicate that the rapid changing of the traditional role of woman as caretaker and domestic helpmate to "Rosie the Riveter" or "Wendy the Welder" would have been threatening to the men who were surely uncomfortable by their presence on the job in what was seen until then as belonging exclusively to males.

That the women proved to be capable and in many respects expert at the non-traditional jobs they held proved to be more than some men could tolerate, and they acted out accordingly by being disrespectful. By the end of the war an uneasy truce was in place, but upon the return of the veterans -- and the need for them to re-enter the workforce, women were unceremoniously dismissed to two decades of watching Donna Reed and June Cleaver in aprons and high heels on television as models of society's expectations of the "weaker" sex.

(continued ... )

2011-07-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

A conversation across the generations continues ... .

15. Your blogging experience has evolved over the past seven years from speaking about the past and passing on to current events. Now your blogging is about day-to-day thoughts. What has influenced your stories?

Answer: I can't recall when it happened, but at some point my contemporary life became more colorful and interesting to me than my past life experience. From there the transition followed seamlessly.

16. Betty, in several of your online interviews our class has watched, you use the word "story(s)" a lot. This is the main theme of our class -- to examine the dominant narrative, and understand why the non-dominant narratives are so far and few between. When did you first become aware of your own family story and did you ever consider it a "non-dominant" (narrative) story?

Answer: I'm not sure that I have a clear understanding of the terms dominant and non-dominant narrative, so my answer may prove wide of the mark. Were I to guess at the meaning, I'd probably say that there was a time when my interest in family history was keen -- sparked by an upcoming family reunion during the Nineties -- and at that point it was surely the "dominant" narrative. That experience provided a context for my life and times that placed me squarely in the continuum of that history. I've since seen my life develop countless "sub-plots", each with a resonance of its own, but always -- in the background are those newly discovered ancestors who provide a sense of rootedness that serves to keep me grounded in the present.

17. Was there one specific event that made you choose to get into work with the Park Service, or was there a culmination of events that led to your employment there?

Answer: At the time that I became involved with the Park Service I was employed by the State of California as a field representative for a member of the State Assembly. As such, my work placed me right in the middle of the beginning processes that resulted in the creation of Rosie the Riveter WWII/Home Front Historical National Park. One of the scattered sites which forms the park (the Ford Building) had been built in 1931 upon air rights over state-owned land. This meant that there was a state interest involved. The park was legislated into being in Richmond, one of the 5 cities of West Contra Costa County which lay in the 14th Assembly District where I served as field representative to Assemblywoman Dion Aroner, and subsequently, for Senator Loni Hancock.

Over time, during another election cycle, my work with the State ended -- and by that time my connections to the park had grown into a position as a private contractor. This allowed for a chance to continue to help in the shaping of a brand new national park -- an opportunity not to be ignored. In the years since, my accumulated knowledge through research and the re-awakening of my own history of the era have made me a "first source asset," a rarity of significant value in these early days of park development. Since that time I've become an interpretive park ranger.

18. In the Story of Assata, written by Assata Shakur, she writes about a memory from childhood where her mother got her into a segregated amusement park by speaking Spanish to the people selling tickets. Assata's mother said that they were from a Spanish-speaking country and just visiting, and that they should be let in because they weren't black.

Answer: Then as now, parents tended to use whatever they needed to in order to gain access for their children. Mine were no exception. If it took the speaking of a foreign language to gain entry, they would not have hesitated for a moment.

19. You said in one of your blog pieces that your mother wanted you to learn Spanish instead of French because you may be able to pass as Hispanic and get a better job.

Answer: At that time this didn't seem the least bit strange to me, simply the reality that we lived. Then, as now, opportunity was often dependent upon one's physical appearance. Creole people were exotic racial mixtures and often took advantage of the ambiguity of appearance in order to move more freely in the society than those who were more clearly racially identifiable as being of African descent. It is with a great sigh of relief that this is much less true in our time, and mixed-race people tend to feel less compelled to identify as anything other than what they are; an amalgam of all there is, and a forerunner of a world to come.

20. Growing up do you feel like African Americans empathized with the Mexican-American experience, Asian-American experience, poor-white experience, or was their resentment between these groups. Has it changed today?

Answer: Growing up I wouldn't have been aware of such issues; it was such a different world then. The immigrants whose lives touched mine would have been largely Irish, Portuguese, and Italian. Mexicans, Central or South Americans, and Asians were rare in my schools or neighborhood. My childhood friend's parents were suffering the same financial hardships as mine (we grew up during the Great Depression), and were being served by the same welfare agencies and county health clinics.

In later years I've been troubled by the lag in my own acceptance of illegal immigration as a means of entry, and it remains a sensitive issue for me.

This coincided with the draconian legislation that ended welfare for all purposes, leaving the unskilled black labor force unemployed -- even for these menial jobs -- without a safety net, and largely dependent upon an underground economy fueled by the illegal drug trade.

While I was working for the State of California I tried hard to encourage conversations about the displaced service workers but was invariably frustrated by the fact that -- almost without exception -- those discussions disintegrated into talk about the problems being faced by a growing immigrant population who were entering the country illegally often at the risk of their lives -- for a better chance at life than was available to them and their families at home; or escaping real day-to-day peril from political unrest. I felt guilty for even bringing up the subject at times, and gradually gave up trying to call attention to what I saw as an unexploded time bomb that would grow over the years and spread disunity among those who could least afford it.

The question remains unresolved. Rather than turning their eyes toward the industries that were taking advantage of these marginalized groups, they were being made to feel competitive among themselves; to wrestle over inadequate wages, and to invite continuing abuse by not understanding and/or exercising their basic rights, and by allowing dissension to form where unity would have better served the interests of all.

Obviously, I've not worked this through, and am still chewing on the fact that I watched helplessly as the nursing home where my mother spent her last days replace their staff of black nurses' aides with a host of workers from the Philippines over the course of 3 months. I often wondered what became of those displaced black workers. And, I wonder at times, if I might be the only person who did?

21. Does this separation between marginalized groups like immigrants, African Americans, and women deteriorate the activism from being affective or make it more affective in your experience?

Answer: "Women and minorities." I'm uncomfortable when "women" are separated out as a distinct class from "minorities," which makes the woman as subject a white woman, since at least half the other classes of people mentioned (minorities) are also female. This suggests that the white woman is the generic and that all others are exotic. This may be where the problems begin. How we use language can and often does predict attitudes and outcomes.

(continued)

2011-07-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

Humboldt State University -- a conversation across the generations ... (continuing)

10. Working as a ranger for the National Park Service you get to share counter-narrative stories about the war effort. Do you feel that the government is making a concentrated effort to air these stories or that it takes the efforts of knowledgeable individuals such as yourself?

Answer: My experience with the National Park Service has led me to believe that the nation is finally ready to face the conflicting truths that have remained hidden for so long. History tends to slip into the "generic" when left without the complexities that occur naturally in life.

The mission of the NPS is to conserve and protect the nation's artifacts, natural resources, and stories -- and fortunately the home front era provides us with a rich store of women's changing roles, remarkable industrial feats, examples of conservation and reclamation, black history, dramatically shifting demographics, the shameful internment of Americans of Japanese descent, and much more -- but also that of average Americans struggling to move into a more equitable society while having to do so under an antiquated social system based upon white privilege that resisted change -- in stark contradiction to the very meaning of democracy. I'm not in this alone, but with an enlightened Department of Interior and an Executive Branch which supports and encourages that work.

11. Do you feel that living in the Bay Area gave you an advantage in defying the dominant narrative and in witnessing the full extent of social change over the years?

Answer: One must understand that before WWII, the Bay Area wasn't much different from the rest of the country, politically. It was in the cauldron of social change produced by the clash of conflicting values, attitudes, and customs brought into the Greater Bay Area with those who came to do the work that accelerated change and has continued to do so ever since. Living in the Bay Area -- at the very edge of the continent; in the place that witnessed the birth of the atom bomb as well as the creation of the United Nations; and at the onset of monumental social change that would dominate the next two decades -- living among those who arrived daily by the tens of thousands over the succeeding decades believing this to be the most liberal place in the nation - and by so believing, made it so. The Greater Bay Area is my definition of the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy, and I'm so happy to have been a part of it as it evolved, taking me with it. The Greater Bay Area's greatest gift may be that we lured the world through the seduction of the possible.

12. How important do you feel storytelling is in changing social structures and giving people of all races and genders a voice?

Answer: Storytelling provides models from the past that make possible a less precarious future by allowing us to preview systems and pathways from those who preceded us throughout the generations. I'm constantly surprised in these later years at how often those innocent childhood conversations with Papa George while gathering berries or tying string beans to their slim poles in the kitchen garden -- rise up to inform the course of my life. His mother and my great-grandmother, Leontine, known to all as "Mammå" was often the star of those stories, and to the extent that my life uncannily reflects hers in some important ways, -- and though she died eons ago -- her life is still having an impact on the present state of the union through the living of mine. Maybe that's the power of storytelling as I know it.

13. In the novel "Assata," Assata Shakur discusses various political groups, mainly the Black Panther Party. How important do you think political groups are in advocating and encouraging social change?

Answer: I cannot imagine the circumstances in which joining with others of like mind in pursuit of a common goal is not a good and proper thing to do. It is in the best tradition of our democracy to do so. To magnify one's voice by raising it in unison with those of like mind should be invigorating to the political process. However, lending power to ideas by acting collaboratively can be perceived as a threat to competing interests when there is an imbalance in political power; which has happened in the past with disastrous results. We saw that in the persecution of the Black Panther Party by CoInTelPro during the 60's. The disruption of young lives, the tragic loss of many through state-sanctioned violence from an agency out of the control of the people -- poisoned the political environment by consciously creating disunity from within and havoc from without.

I do not believe that this negates the need to advocate and encourage social change, but reinforces the need to be ever vigilant, and to expose and eliminate injustice wherever it may be found. But it might have been the high cost of attempting to do so in a nation not yet ready for meaningful change, and a reluctance to give up on the status quo.

14. In a video we watched entitled "2010 Women of Achievement, Vision and Excellence awardee" you stated that it was very important to tell the complicated stories and history that was behind Rosie the Riveter Park. How were you able to compile stories from all of the different areas of the park?

Answer: I once believed that there was a grand conspiracy to deliberately eliminate everyone but men from history. I've come to believe that what is remembered is dependent upon who's in the room doing the remembering. To the extent that women's history, black history, and that of "the poor and the powerless," are absent from those conversations where it is determined what is significant, important, or, "of worth" in a world dominated by male concerns -- each has been omitted from the record. History of the home front is rife with glaring omissions. Once I ceased to need to place blame, and saw the problem for what it was, it was relatively easy to begin to make the corrections. Once I found myself in the room "doing the remembering" and discovered that the supporting materials were easily accessible, and that all it took was to reach into my own truths and bring them forth in the belief that most were universal (I don't consider myself all that unique). Then I learned to speak in declarative sentences with clarity and authority that invited challenges from those whose views of that history varied from my own. (Out-living most of those whose memories differ from mine helped a lot!) Once I learned to trust my own judgment, my voice gradually became stronger and others began to listen with increasing interest.

Research also revealed that there has always been -- throughout history -- those who were trying to get it right, and that history has been largely written by those who didn't. Yet the patterns are clearly evident by the direction that our national compass has taken us in this, the 21st century. We have been ever trending toward fairness and equality -- freedom and justice for all, and, over time, the nation is gradually fulfilling the destiny set forth in those revered founding documents.

(continued... )

2011-07-24T21:30:00.000-07:00

More questions ... .

7. I read through your blog and got hooked from the start with all the rich language and moments of humor. There was one particular line in the post about the jury summons which said, "I know that this is one of the rights guaranteed by the constitution to any American accused of a crime. The only way those rights can be guaranteed is if ordinary people like me participate in the process. I have never, and I would never opt out," and I was really struck by that being most people I think are rebelling against the system -- want those rights but not want to participate to get those rights.

And I would love to hear her talk about that the aspects of life where one might have to put aside say whether you think the justice system is doing good or say whether you think you are just too busy because you know that to get other rights doing the things like jury duty are necessary even if you don't support the system whatever it may be.

Answer: I understand the questioner's cynicism about the justice system. I share it to a large extent, but to not participate for me is not an option. It is the one in place, and, unless we play our part within it -- we may not develop the skills with which to make the much-needed corrections, You can't make them from outside the system. Somewhere along the line I lost the sense that there exists some evil "they," and began to see an active (or inactive) "we" instead. From that point on, it became "my" imperfect justice system with need of my input.

8. After working as a ranger and being a role model and leading people on tours around the park which has so much to share and seeing today's teenagers, what do you think is the best way that we students can make a difference, and what do you see that has changed in the way students view the history that you lived through?

Answer: I'm not sure when I began to see myself in context -- as an American with a citizen's responsibility for the maintenance of the Democracy -- but it happened somewhere along the way. I would have wished that this had happened at some earlier time in my own history. When it dawned on me that Democracy is not a fixed thing created for all time by some "paternalistic old dead white guy slaveholders" who gathered together in Constitution Hall in Philadelphia to write the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but, that it's dynamic; a living breathing thing.

What they created were only the blueprints of the ideal they willed into being -- and in order to survive the rigors of a constantly changing and growing nation -- Democracy must be re-created by each succeeding generation, and modified only after much deliberation by the representatives of the people, the Congress of the United States; by the Executive Branch; and by the Supreme Court. It is this that my education failed to communicate adequately. Once realized, I found myself empowered by the knowledge that the Democracy was dependent upon each one of us, and what we do or fail to do, individually, shapes our collective future as a nation.

Looked at this way, the country and the world could not afford for me to sit around on my haunches doing nothing! My greatest fear is that your generation will not understand its individual responsibility of citizenship to not only learn to live with, but to be constantly creating positive change by participating in the most effective political system the world has yet produced. People of the developing nations are risking their lives daily in order to replicate what we have as a birthright.

We don't need to know which direction is "right," the secret is that the correct pathway is found in the balances between opposing political forces. Should the system yield to my wishes (of the moment) at any one time, it might not continue to serve my interests subsequently -- when I've become better informed and developed a different mindset. The greatest tragedy to befall our system of governance may be the gradual degradation of the multiparty system. The need is for more voices and varieties of opinion to be expressed not fewer, and more of us leaning in the direction of what we believe to be positive change with faith that unseen others are leaning with us -- all that, plus the swinging pendulum with the power to self-correct.

9. Why would the African American community volunteer to assist in the war effort (both as riveters and soldiers) for a country that has a history of exploiting them?

Answer: Beats me! But we did, perhaps in the hope that doing so might bring about greater respect from the nation. Instead, the horrible abuses went on and the disappointment and resistance to change produced the Civil Rights revolution of the Sixties. It was such an outrage to human dignity for black people to be asked to work, fight, and die to defend rights that we would not share in for another 20 years, but this produced a resistance movement that would change the nation -- not only for ourselves, but for all of those marginalized -- women, gays and lesbians, the physically and mentally handicapped -- and led to greater freedoms for many over the succeeding decades and into the present by forcing the country to confront it's hypocrisy and inequities -- it's brokenness.

(Continued ...)

2011-07-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

Humboldt State University questionnaire (continued) ... .

5. Are you pleased with the current situation of women and equality or do you believe there are major social and/or political changes that need to occur? If so, what are those changes?

Answer: I think we're still in the middle of the movement to empower women in the home, the workplace, and in society at large. We've gained in many ways, but there is still work to be done. In many ways the struggle resembles that of the battle to eliminate white privilege. No one gives up power willingly, and society still tends to favor males overall. It took a while to figure out whether woman's equality was a step up or a step down, since public relations campaigns have continued to confuse the issue for a significant number of women.

The trade-offs were unclear at first since, as an African American woman, I didn't perceive my oppression as coming from the men in my life (who were experiencing the same oppression as I) but from whites -- and largely from white women. In my youth, black women were employed as unskilled domestic servants in homes of white women who held the power over our economic lives -- and in many cases -- the same white feminists who now needed us to run their homes and care for their children so that they could realize their dreams for careers in corporate boardrooms! (Since that time they've by-and-large turned to the undocumented for such needs.) A whole lot of confusion reigned in those early days of the fight for gender equality.

African American women were slow to join the cause of feminism for those reasons, but as educational opportunities became more available; as doors began to open to women of color, it has been easier to join with other women to struggle for equality for all. Since we've begun to re-define roles, both genders have had to adjust to new expectations of one another and of ourselves. I think those hopes are slowly being realized, and, despite some casualties, I think we're making progress. I see it in the attitudes of my sons which falls light years away from those of the last generation.

I sometimes wonder, though, if the real casualties of the gender wars have not been the children? But that's a discussion for another time.

6. Which women (living or dead) inspires you the most? Which man?

Answer: The answer to this question has changed frequently, and in the early days could most easily be answered by the movie star whom I adored as a teen -- Kathryn Hepburn, of course. Then the darling dare-devil of the thirties, the ill-fated Amelia Earhart. But Eleanor Roosevelt's political and social leadership during WWII stands out as the heroine of most young women I knew. The spirit each of those mentioned separated them from the rest, but in looking back, each seems almost gender-neutral, don't they? I've never thought of that before writing those words -- maybe representing the perfect balance between Ying and Yang? Not sure.

It's also interesting that none is African American, but as a child -- I was "American," and made little distinction between races, except those that were cultural, I suppose. Those 3 women were universal in their appeal -- enjoying the admiration of most of the young women of my time.

My gutsy irreverent Aunt Vivian Allen Jernigan became my idol at some point - the most honest, compassionate, and generous person in my world as I approached young adulthood. Currently, Law Professor Lani Guinere and First Lady Michelle Obama would be hands-down my idols and exemplars. And, still, my ancestor and enduring family matriarch of those who remember, my great-grandmother, Leontine Breaux Allen (1846-1948). She survived the horrific shame of slavery with grace to produce succeeding generations of extraordinary people who've made impressive contributions to American life in the fields of education, arts and literature, in medicine, journalism, and the sciences.

The most admired man in my young life was my paternal grandfather, Louis Charbonnet, whose portrait hung in a battered gilded frame on the wall of our dining room. Though I was only 3 years-old when he died, his aura dominated life in the home of my childhood. He was an ironworker, millwright, engineer, and community leader, who left now-fading photographs of works in New Orleans that were monuments to his abilities, and to his generosity of spirit that caused the grownups in my life to speak of him in hushed tones.

(continued ... )

2011-07-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

A few questions we, the students of

WS 107: Women, History, Culture at

Humboldt State University,

gratefully and curiously submit for

Ms. Betty Reid Soskin's

consideration on this Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

1. I heard about the New Orleans flood in a sociology class last semester. To my understanding the government chose to bomb the levees in order to sacrifice one part of town and save the other from damage. What are your thoughts on the racial/socioeconomic injustice of this?

Answer: I'm sure that it was far easier for such decisions to be made arbitrarily in those days without reference to the lives and property that would be sacrificed than it would be today. Though that varies still depending upon how much participation occurs in the public life of cities and townships by representatives from all races, ages, cultures, and economic classes. In 1927 a few powerful men made decisions based upon the threat that the Mississippi's rising was having on those parts of the city which they controlled and protected.

Hurricane Katrina brought into focus the corruption and misuse of power that still remains in many places, despite the greater representation from a broader segment of the community, so that many of the problems of access to power have resisted remediation, and many of my relatives who fled the floods -- as our family did in 1927 -- have not yet returned to New Orleans.

2. Beside the future generations of your family, do you have anyone else that you're specifically targeting with your blog?

Answer: Not particularly. It would have been hard to believe that anyone but those close to me would have any interest in my thoughts in the year 2003 when I started this journal. After awhile it was clear that at least a few total strangers were following my blog, but it has never attracted more than limited interest to my knowledge. I would never have dreamed that university classes would be using these thoughts hastily posted at the end of my day in the quiet of my home as content for study! I've never received more than about 2 dozen comments over all the years since all this began, so it was not hard to believe that my "audience" was limited to my own family and a few friends.

3. In a YouTube video you appear in, you mention having not listened to yourself up until your midlife. I was curious about what made you listen--was it a growing/learning process, or a radical shift in your life that immediately changed your perspective?

Answer: It was a gradual thing that is only apparent in retrospect. I'm not sure when I noticed that others were listening -- and that I might be worth listening to. Maybe it was when I first was elected to serve on a board of some sort and my self-worth took a leap. At some point I became more inner-directed and ceased to be totally led by external forces. That came fairly late in life, though. Some of it came earlier from becoming a parent and needing to "know" for the sake of my children as they were depending upon my guidance. That can make one grow up in a hurry. At first I was not nearly as impressed by what I knew, but with how little was known by those around me compared to how much there was to be known. As these things came into balance -- as I started to mature, my own inner voice became louder and more insistent.

4. I read that in the 1960's you wrote and performed songs, many dealing with civil rights; what was that like and what role does music play in your life now?

Answer: When my daughter, Dorian, was born brain-damaged in 1957 -- and as she slowly began to develop cognitive skills, I noticed that she retained what I sang to her more effectively than what I said to her. I made up songs to match the rituals of washing hands, taking baths, putting on pajamas, and discovered an innate ability to compose. This coincided with what was happening throughout the country and with the advent of folk music, coffee houses, and civil rights marches -- all expressed in song. It was an easy transition into those movements at an age where composing and singing my songs provided a way for me to "travel" in my imagination without leaving home where I was needed by 3 growing young sons, two aging parents, the growing realization that my little girl would never reach adulthood, and a failing marriage. Through creating my songs it was possible to leave it all with Dorrie holding onto the hem of my dress; it was pure escapism at first, but when I listen to those tapes (never published), I'm impressed with how fine some of that music was.

And, no, I left "Betty the Artist" somewhere in the early 70's and began to live out of other parts of myself. My interest and enjoyment of all forms of music is still strong, but only as a member of the audience. I suspect that -- though there were opportunities to pursue life as an entertainer at the time -- it would not have in any way matched the satisfaction I found in living off my other "edges."

(continued next post)

2011-07-24T10:04:00.000-07:00

I recently ran across a sheaf of papers brought back last spring from the trip north for a stint as guest lecturer ... .

There was little time to answer during my talks, but in the event that some of those students are still reading here -- maybe I could respond in the hope that by so doing it may answer questions others may have had over time.

Besides, it helps to keep my mind off the Norwegian tragedy, and the 9th fatal shooting of the week here in the place where I live --

It's difficult to think of anything else ... .

Richmond’s Betty Reid Soskin makes the Sunday funnies in the latest of a series of honors

2011-07-17T22:37:00.000-07:00

Richmond’s Betty Reid Soskin makes the Sunday funnies in the latest of a series of honors

2011-07-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

One would think it impossible to forget the upcoming publishing of my debut in a Sunday comic strip, right?

... yet, that's precisely what happened. The West County Times columnist, Chris Treadway, ran a complete recap of "Life with Betty" over the past unbelievable months of honors. (Has it really been 8 weeks since the Morrie Turner tour?) It reads like a fairy tale for seniors! The whole story appears in Facebook, and came up on the newspaper's online edition when I clicked the mouse. Now I need to put on my shoes, turn down the oven temperature on the pork chops, and hit the newsstand for copies for my grandkids.

Had "Life with Dorian" not taken priority over "Life with Betty," this would never have happened, but there isn't always room for both.

... and maybe that's at least a part of the problem.

I'll have to thank Morrie Turner tomorrow; maybe send him a DVD of my songs ... and add him to the list of new friends acquired over this past year. Then I'll send a copy to our cultural resources staff for adding to a growing collection of "All Things Betty."

Whoever would have ever guessed?

(Someone needs to do a study of time as it manifests after one reaches the age of eighty. It's in the 8th decade that Christmas begins to recur every 6 weeks.)

2011-07-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

The level of intensity shown by that last entry is unsustainable ... .

Soon after re-reading Friday's writings (and feeling the catharsis which was almost an electrical impulse), I shut down the computer and eased all the synapses back into place and got ready to pick Dorrie up for our usual Saturday shopping trip.

Of course, with my new-found sensitivity to be alert for signs of residual trauma, I searched her face as she neared my car, but all I saw was a beaming smile as she busied herself with packing her walker into the backseat and depositing the cloth bag of whatever that accompanies her everywhere.

We first went to her bank where I parked outside to wait as she went in to make a small deposit to insure that she wouldn't be overdrawn (she'd received a warning in the mail). And, yes, her mother provided the "small deposit" to avoid the $35/penalty that would result if ignored.

We spent the next few hours in the supermarket as I noted how expertly she managed to make her way around the aisles to gather up the items from our list -- and though totally illiterate -- she has apparently memorized shapes, colors, and sizes of letters of her favorite brands, and though we were in a store we don't visit very often, the locations of products posed no problems for her. She apparently had through osmosis learned the categories of items that are displayed together.

Last night we drove down the hill to the community college where a musical, "Rivets," was being staged. It's based on the WWII Rosie the Riveter stories, and I'd promised to deliver 250 brochures from the park for distribution with the programs.

Dorian sat as if enchanted for two hours; and followed the proceedings on stage well enough to ask at one point whether I had been a "belder," (welder). She has a way of coming up with newly discovered words, but seems to have figured out the function associated with it, and only needs confirmation from me. Her vocabulary is sometimes more extensive than that of some of her caretakers. Dorian also has a flair for making up or adapting new words, and often they're an improvement over the original. For instance, her "disastrophe" is a case in point, and she uses it appropriately to describe awfulness that can't be described in any other way.

As we were preparing for bed on return from the college, as I was feeling for quarters left in the pocket of the trousers I'd worn to San Francisco on Thursday, my hand fell upon the 3 little cassette tapes that had been used by Dr. Smith during Dorrie's interviews. Our attorney had requested that I take a tape recorder to both examinations, but, being of another era, the one I took required tapes -- I didn't realize that there are now digital recorders. The first day with Dr. Becker, mine had stalled and resisted all attempts to make it work. He assured me that he would be recording everything anyway, and that he would send our attorney a WAV file of every word, electronically. I saw no reason not to trust him. My intuition has rarely failed me, and I had no reason to expect it to now.

However, during the 7-hour psychological examination the following day, my little hand-held model seemed to be working well, so Dr. Smith positioned it to catch every word, but had to interrupt his work each time to call me from the reception room to reset it as it clicked off, and after a couple of times it seemed wiser to not use it at all, but to trust that he would follow Dr. Becker's procedure. The two men share a suite of offices. He assured me that he would be sending his tapes along as well.

That meant that my hand had fallen upon the little tapes that held the partial recordings of Dorian's interviews. Oddly enough, I felt no wish to listen to them. What could I possibly learn that was not already known? She is, after all, a fully-mature adult woman (okay, so maybe not), but nonetheless - certainly with a right to confidentiality. Maybe even this late in life, there is need to reinforce the concept. She has no way to listen to them, I suppose, but she surely might like to know that no one else will. I gave them to her zipped into a small plastic bag this morning. Her attorney will understand.

If I'm lucky, I may be given a copy of their findings, and that might be helpful to getting us back on track to whatever level of independence may be needed in our somewhat limited future.

It's after noontime, and she's still asleep on the futon next to my bed ... that nagging suspicion returns that this is a symptom of residual trauma (clinical depression?), but all-in-all, I just may not ever see the forest for the trees. She will sometimes remain in deep sleep until 3 o'clock, then drop off at 8:30 or 9:00 and still sleep through the night. Still, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, alone in her apartment without an alarm clock -- she wakes and gets herself ready for the Para-transit bus to take her to NIAD for her arts program. Not sure how to read this. It's new. Though I've tended to see it as extraordinary fatigue due to the stress placed on her body due to reduced mobility. I've tended to allow the new behavior, in the belief that this, too, will pass as her healing progresses ... .

2011-07-15T21:20:00.000-07:00

Throughout my workday, the image of Sr. Corita Kent's colorful poster from the Sixties -- "Don't just DO something, Stand there!" kept flashing from somewhere deep inside ... .

Yesterday in Dr. Smith's reception room was my "Stand there!" moment, and I was helpless to resist.

For just a few moments while Dorian was with the medical assistant undergoing a 500 item true/false test (being read to her), the psychologist invited me into his inner office for some clarification of conflicting facts in Dorrie's interview -- nothing especially noteworthy, just some confusion around dates and times. But it was his questions about any signs of changes in her mental states that I may have noticed in the months after the accident. My hesitancy in answering his question puzzled me. I could feel the hesitation and mumbled something almost incoherent (or so it felt).

Her life had surely changed unalterably, and there had been traumatic injury, but why were the signs not obvious to me? After all, she'd been moved out of a group home, been through 2 rounds of surgery, been relocated 5 times (counting her move back home); before moving eventually into her own apartment; had lost her peer group; and had she really weathered all that without any visible effect? I consider myself an observant mother, but couldn't point out what must be quite obvious to others. Why was that?

Well into my reception room " 7-hour retreat" it began to dawn that I had done the thing I've spent an entire life trying to avoid; I'd filled in all of the "holes" in Dorian's life with huge chunks of my own! Because this has been an unusually productive period with many honors and rewards and meaningful work to do, I've been blinded by the reality that since November 27, 2009, I've given up the one friendship (with Tom) which provided a peer relationship. Those occasional lovely weekends at the ocean in Mendocino have ended; those occasional celebratory dinners at Tadich; visits to the DeYoung, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the occasional concert and/or play; walking the headlands, and wandering through the Mendocino and Fort Bragg art galleries; had all abruptly and unceremoniously ceased. I miss riding up and down the Coast Highway in Tom's little red Citroen
Duex Cheveaux - the "Geezermobile" and sitting around in the evenings arguing politics while looking up through the skylights at the incoming fog bank... .

For the first six months of last year I worked my regular hours and visited Dorian in various facilities every day -- sometimes twice -- bringing her yarn for her various projects and picking up soiled laundry or returning clean clothing. In June, she moved into my condo (returning to the group home was not an option - or was it?) where she remained for several months. Since moving into her own apartment about 5 minutes away from mine, she has no life except for NIAD and the time shared with me. Her weekends are all spent at my apartment. Her income is limited to SSA so I pay for a part of her rent and most of her groceries, and I've given up both cable service and my house phone augmented by liquidating some limited Roth IRA shares in order to do so. After all is said and done, could this not be the emergency I'd always been saving for? I've made my daughter dependent in ways that are new and really not healthy for either of us.

I've been anticipating every bump in the road, and providing cushioning against a world I no longer could trust with her life. Small wonder that I can't find signs of trauma in my daughter -- I've absorbed most of that into my own. Had I not been there to catch her as she fell, she would have had to use that social system that we've spent so much time preparing her for. She has more of me and my time than ever before in her life. I'm completely dominated by her needs, and I've failed her in that -- after granting her autonomy I've snatched it away to ease my own guilt at being off scene when she was struck in the streets -- guilty because she'd lain in a hospital bed beyond the reach of anyone; unidentified because she was carrying 5 different identification cards -- none of them current, and in a hospital in a strange town because her medical coverage had been allowed to lapse for 6 months prior to the accident! (All the responsibilities of her supervisors from the vendor operator, social worker, and assigned case manager. The accident laid bare a badly degraded system designed to serve the developmentally disabled.) I was out of cell phone range, 3 hours away, until Monday morning 3 days after the accident, when on the drive home my cell phone came alive with an urgent call from a strange voice of a male nurse, " ... does anyone at this number know Dorian Reid?, if so, please call Eden Medical Center and ask for Zack." Her group home supervisor did not know where she was because she'd been visiting friends in a nearby town for the weekend. She hadn't been missed until I notified the house of her whereabouts on Monday morning. The friends she was visiting with were also mentally disabled and living independently in an apartment in a neighboring town. They did not report her missing, but continued to try desperately to reach her when she failed to return. Her cell phone was lost at the scene of the accident. This I learned when calling her number to find the voice mailbox filled to its capacity with frantic messages ("Dorrie, Dorrie, where are you? Dorrie, call us, please!") a few days later. The phone was never recovered to my knowledge. It was her lifeline, had she had it she would surely have called me when she woke after the surgery. It was her connection to everyone in her life, and that connection was now hopelessly broken.

If Dorian hasn't displayed the trauma that surely she experiences, it's because of the regression that I've
gone through. She is still productive and is back in her arts program at NIAD (a Godsend!), but her mobility is now curtailed by a weight gain (25-30 lbs) and a less responsive body from having to use a walker and wear a leg brace, the chronic headaches, and losing her physical activities as a year-round Special Olympics athlete has reduced her social life to nil. (Could her excessive sleeping pattern be symptomatic of depression?) There are always weekends with Mom to look forward to, of course. And Mom can be so engaging; so resourceful; fun!

With a conscientious "Mom" anticipating her every wish, who's to worry?

So, now that I've "stood there," Sister Corita, what on earth do I do now? Dorian hasn't the mental capacity to know what is missing from her own life and little reason to want more independence or autonomy, but her mother needs her own life back, I think, and the sooner I can regain what little there is left of that -- the better, right?

I used to say that keeping distance between us and allowing Dorian her autonomy gave me the luxury during my lifetime of seeing how she would fare in the world after I'm gone. Told myself since she was a toddler that my job was to teach her to use systems, find her way through bureaucracies; social workers, case managers; that it was of far greater value to her for me not to provide answers but to direct her to others out in the community who could supply them in my absence. I created myself a role as "Mother as best friend." It worked, I thought. She surely fulfilled her part, and I truly believe she uses everything that she has and has been "maximized" as much as possible. She clearly has developed enough skills to get her basic needs met. I believe we've done all the right things, until now.

How on earth do I step back now, and trust the world with her life; yet that is precisely what I will need to re-learn, even knowing that she may not make it. She must continue to have the chance to try.

Maybe now that I've had that precious 7 hours to face up to the truths that I've masked all these months, maybe I'll be able to see the signs of trauma that she surely must experience. I've so needed to believe that she is alright, and my own world has provided so much distraction, a blessing, really ... .

Fortunately, I have my work, and - though barely adequate in these times -- my fiercely-guarded financial independence -- but we just may need to consider professional help to resume the direction toward that separation that is now eluding us, and that is so essential if I'm not to abandon her to impending "natural causes." I have so few answers at this point, and little confidence that anyone has.

There is so little time left to correct our course ... .

2011-07-15T08:34:00.000-07:00

Just hit the proverbial brick wall ... and I'm not sure what to do about it ... .

On Wednesday Dorian and I met with the orthopedist who was assigned to do an evaluation for the pending litigation having to do with her 11/27/2009 auto/pedestrian accident. I'm not sure what I expected, due to the fact that the only experience I've had over a lifetime having to do with attorneys had to do with my divorce which was amicable. It seemed logical to follow the advice of those professionally involved in such matters, and there were certainly enough existing records to draw from and the only confirmation of claims lay with examination of the one involved; Dorian. I could be of little help in this matter except as support for her, but only if needed.

I waited until about two days before to tell her about the two appointments (Wednesday orthopedic, and Wednesday, psychological) so that she would not be needlessly apprehensive. The truth as she could recall it and whatever impressions they could illicit through their meeting with her was really all she needed to provide. Ten years of marriage to a psychologist had perhaps prepared her mother, so it felt about right. I picked her up from her apartment on Tuesday night so that we would be ready for the drive to San Francisco early in the morning. She asked few questions, and seemed comfortable with the arrangements. On the drive over in heavy commute traffic, she was in charge of the GPS system and aided the robotic voice by repeating the prompts at each highway change.

Wednesday went well. The physician was warm and welcoming, and seemed well-prepared to receive her. In about 4 hours we were on our way home, and the only threat was the drive across the S.F./Oakland Bay bridge, which we navigated successfully (this had been the only threat I've felt in the days leading up to these appointments).

Yesterday's appointment turned out to have some hidden landmines:

The psychologist let us know -- even before we left the reception room to enter his inner office -- that this session would last for at least 7 hours! (He told us, as an aside, that the procedure normally takes 8 hours, but that we were starting an hour later than usual in order to accommodate our wishes.) We'd had no warning of this, and my minimal preparation of Dorian provided no hint of what this might entail. Actually, she's never undergone such intensive testing before in her life, so neither of us knew what this meant. It also meant that I'd not come prepared with a book to read or crossword puzzles to solve, and would be forced to do something completely foreign -- sit and think for 7 whole hours --uninterrupted! This is called "hitting the wall," and it would prove to be sobering, indeed.

But now I have to leave for work, and the revelations brought on by my enforced stoppage will have to wait until I get home this evening ... but I think the insights were profound; maybe even life-altering.

More later,

2011-07-02T15:48:00.000-07:00

The sculptor's name is Mario Chiodo, and his work is breathtaking ... !

... a visit to his Oakland studio on Thursday proved to be absolutely awe-inspiring. The figure shown here is the head of Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist Monk, and but one of the many figures who, together, make up the elements in this magnificent sculpture to be installed in Henry J. Kaiser Park in downtown Oakland on September 6th. This work has been ten years in the making, and the first phase is now nearing completion.

It stands 30' tall, and we were able to see the first of the four elements in the final stages of creation; being cast in bronze. This was a visit to the foundry where that work is in progress.

Another of the elements is a depiction of Maya Angelou (below), with little Ruby Bridges of the New Orleans school desegregation struggles standing below at the edge of this photo on the far left.

Standing in the presence of these imposing figures was overwhelming. There are -- at this stage, 25 in all, and another ring of local "extraordinary ordinary" people (not yet created) will accompany those shown in the original piece. Among the rest of the original cast are Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Chief Joseph, Mother Teresa, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Cesar Chavez, Helen Keller, Harvey Milk, Henry J. Kaiser, Ansel Hall, Abraham Lincoln, Malcolm X, and others. Chiodo's concept posits that these were ordinary people of every race and ethnicity who rose to make extraordinary contributions to serve all of humanity, and there is resonance in this year's Home Front Festival -- where -- coincidentally, we'd quite independently fashioned the concept of "Extraordinary Ordinary People" to serve as the theme of this year's mid-October festival. It's almost too good to be true, though obviously an idea whose time has come. But how do we make the connections? Which is why we visited Mario's studio, to meet him, and to try to figure out just how that might be ... .

What an amazing day of discovery and awe in the presence of genius!

Note: For more information, visit Mario Chiodo's website, or that of "Remember Them, Champions for Humanity."

2011-06-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

Not to worry ... .

I just may be -- not only the oldest national park ranger in the country -- but the only ranger yet hired into infinity!

My stay with the park service has been extended into the unknown future. I've been rehired, and this time it's not a "term" appointment, but designated as "permanent." And, the competing applicant was also hired. How cool is that?

Over the past days I've become aware of how uncertain I've been about my future. The fear that I would overstay my usefulness to this work that has become so central to my existence -- was causing me to distance myself from any notion that there was even the faintest possibility that my work has also been important to the development of this park.

Got caught up in strange conversations with my colleagues having to do with how I really could find alternative ways to spend my time; that there were still job opportunities waiting, and that they needn't worry about me; that the decisions-makers should really give full attention to the other applicant without feeling the weight of "taking care" of me. I never once felt confident that these were bright young people who are dedicated to the mission of the National Park Service and that the decision to keep me interpreting that mission was best for the park. I should have known. ... but I was so afraid that it might be time to leave and that my zest for this exciting work would prevent me from seeing it.

In my heart, now that the decision has been made -- I would agree. This has been a remarkable year in a long life that seems to have been preparing me for precisely this role -- how incredible! What a miracle that fate has placed me on the planet among those with whom I can now expand beyond even the limitations of age!

To hell with the tango lessons and chuck the kazoo!

I've been given new edges from which to carve out the rest of life!

2011-06-25T15:08:00.000-07:00

Recently found myself observing that -- as I listened to my favorite jazz station on the car radio ... .

that I hadn't heard an African American jazz singer for a very long time. Also, that black jazz musicians have virtually disappeared from the airways, or is it simply that I can no longer distinguish them from their emulators? I don't think so. Josh Redman still stands out as having an identifiable black sound. And, it doesn't take many notes into a song to be able to tell a black from a white voice -- no matter how hip or laid back the performer. There's a kind of quiet pride when -- alone in car -- Aha! I pounce on the imitators. And, yes, even Diana Krall and the inimitable Mark Murphy fail my test of the melaninian sound (and I know that's not an actual word - but it'll do for the purpose of discussion).

Somehow great American popular music gave way to overwhelming decibel levels, elaborate costuming, general messiness masquerading as costume, mosh pits, dramatic clown-like theatrical makeup and fright wigs; partial and whole nudity on stage, the smashing of guitars, etc., and over time, both the music and my finely-tuned ear got lost in the carnage of Rock and Roll!

While watching Lee Williams, traditional gospel singer from Mississippi in a gospel concert -- almost motionless and dignified -- dressed in a fine dark brown suit, white shirt, and handsome silk tie standing at the mike before a fervent black evangelical congregation, I was reminded of how far the general music world has moved from complex sound to appearance and marketing ploys to attract sales and new audiences. And today's white derivative musicians are working frantically to produce that wildly passionate 'call and response' still so natural and alive in the black church. It was exploding all around us as we swayed to the insistent rhythms at Parks Chapel that day. What I was hearing (and fighting the urge to dance in the aisle) was the age-old fundamentalist roots of jazz, the legacy that I've almost lost in the course of becoming acculturated into the American whole.

With Lester Young it was a simple pork pie hat; with Duke it was either a continental casual look or those formal tails swinging from the back of that piano bench, and Nat "King" Cole was the very essence of good taste -- right up to his time- and date-stamped patent-leather "processed" hairdo. Physical appearance didn't compete with the music, even for the women of jazz, the signature was buried deep in the individual sound of their music. I like to think that their style of dress was in keeping with respect for their audiences and their art. I also believe that a cultural marker was set by the style created in the jazz world that is still visible in today's black church where one would never be seen in torn Levi's and T-shirts in the House of the Lord, and where hats are elevated to "crowns" by the "saints" of the congregation. Traces of the jazz world are still reflected in both the sound from the choir loft and in the pews through the "call and response" and "the beat" of sung gospel. Black music has been powerful enough to stand alone with little need of enhancement beyond the artist's ability to deliver its message. Think the always well-tailored Wynton Marsalis for a contemporary example, and you'll gain some sense of the sacredness of jazz, and that this is, indeed, the black world's classical music.

The distortions emanated not only from the Rolling Stones and Kiss, but Cindy Lauper and now Lady Gaga in her infamous meat dress. It seems foolish to hear both Lauper in her day and Lady Gaga, currently, complain that their outrageous look is merely attention-seeking, and that when they're performing -- we should only pay attention to their art.

They've all been "commodified" (okay, so according to the spellchecker, I'm making up words again) to the extent that artists have for the past few decades been sold as packages, a package that must include a "look," so that the quality of the music has disintegrated almost beyond recognition. It's now almost impossible to comprehend either lyrics, or the intent of whatever they're offering to audiences beyond the sensational. At best, most groups are playing mediocre music -- all different in an identical way, except for those still writing and performing simple original music on acoustic instruments in a genre other than jazz or blues -- but those more clearly associated with the individual artist's life, and within the context of their own experience. I continue to find indescribable beauty in authenticity wherever it might be found.

But today Sonny Buxton has reminded me that all that good stuff is still available if I just tune in to a time when Jazz at the Philharmonic sessions were recorded for posterity. I've now lived into that posterity -- and can draw on all those musical treasures for the good of my soul. I've spent the past several hours just listening and remembering, and oh so many years have been tossed off in the process!

I find myself wondering when we're going to discover that those young black kids who might have become the Nat Coles, Lester Youngs, Mile Davises, the Charles Minguses, the Ella Fitzgeralds and Sarah Vaughns, are probably languishing in the prisons of the nation, completely unaware of the loss of the legacy that was theirs; while their imitators, the well-intentioned "derivatives," have filled in the vacuum left by their absence from the schools, the studios, and the sound stages of the country and the world? And there's an innocence about it all since I have the feeling that fine white musicians have expropriated black music to the point where it is now they who are defining the genre, and all without any awareness of what role they've unwittingly played in the process. Don't blame them, they were just "integratin'," and God knows that was the name of the game, was it not?

... and are we all not the poorer for the loss?

Top right photo: Billie Holiday with Duke Ellington at lower left.

2011-06-25T11:23:00.000-07:00

Thinking about jazz today as it plays in the background. It's Sonny Buxton's Mid-day Jazz ... .

Sat down at the computer this morning wondering just how I could possibly write about yesterday's bus tour and do it justice? It had been on my schedule for weeks though I'd paid as little attention to its approaching as possible without admitting to myself that there was some concern lurking in a corner of my consciousness that I might not be adequate to the telling of this history? Would they guess that I might be insecure in this time of such high public acclaim ... acclaim that I still question ... in those minutes just before sleep each night?

The teachers from Placer County school district under the leadership of the Department of Education (history?) at Sacramento State had arranged as a part of their week-long Bay Area experience, a day at Rosie the Riveter WWII/Home Front National Historical Park; a trip to Angel Island; one to Golden Gate National Regional Park at Fort Mason; and among them would be Professor Shirley Ann Moore of the black history department of Sacramento State. Dr. Moore was to give a talk following lunch that would prove to be an extension of my own presentation earlier in the day. Our work dove-tailed as if it were planned. We'd met once before as participants in a seminar sponsored by the University of California, but not where I had any kind of primary role to fulfill, so we were virtually strangers.

Also in yesterday's group would be recently-retired former journalist Tom Debley, historian from the Heritage Department at Kaiser Permanente corporate headquarters in Oakland. We will be working together on a project involving the Pullman story involving Ethel Dotson's little International Hotel over on South Street in Richmond. This would be the first time he would experience Betty the Tour Guide and self-proclaimed "historian." Wow! Two professional historians before whom I would be conducting 3-hour bus tour based on WWII history -- an era I'd surely lived through as a naive 20 year-old, but certainly not studied. As I've said, I'm not working from an acquired store of knowledge, only personal remembrances of the era of WWII; my personal oral history.

Early in our 30-minute orientation before boarding the bus I opened with, "you will be experiencing through me, a very subjective presentation of one who lived the experience, but in no way do I claim to be an historian." That being said, I almost immediately lost all self-consciousness or feeling of being inadequate to the task before me -- which meant almost 3 hours of being "on" with microphone before 50 passengers on a huge bus -- who magically were transformed into 50 pairs of eyes set in faces that expressed an avid interest and mirrored back to me expressions that assured me that it mattered not what labels were used, these were eager listeners to the stories -- and as such gave me more than polite attention. They were involved. As always, I felt the excitement of sharing those stories and, as always, they came alive for me as well.

But these thoughts are competing with the music of the jazz station, KCSM out of San Mateo, playing in the background. Maybe I need to stop and write them out of mind while they're fresh and clear ... .

The music also brings to mind, Dmitri and the fact that I've not yet had a chance to hear him again; maybe this summer he'll be coming to one of the jazz festivals; there's one at Stanford university tomorrow at 2:30 featuring a Tribute to Nat Cole, just maybe ... .Skipping over to the website I learned that the great Brazilian composer/musician Milton Nasciamento will appear some time during the festival ... .The only time I wish to be young again -- the music I'd love to live over again.

Maybe there is comfort in being reminded that there are at least two tracks to my mind, and that I can still entertain more than one interest at a time even at this age without losing it!

(Now I'm listening to a Slam Stewart solo with Slam humming along with his acoustic bass in a fantastic improvisation on Hoagy Carmichael's Stardust -- with solos by trumpeter Willie Smith, Lester Young on alto sax, and Lionel Hampton on vibes from a concert produced by Gene Norman in Los Angeles in 1947.)

I need to give this full attention, guys, sorry!

2011-06-22T19:49:00.000-07:00

If I ever wondered how it would feel to be 'cartooned,' the answer is in ... .

As I understand it, in the Sunday edition as published this will appear in full color and that day the little child characters will be talking about the figure featured in the Soul Corner.

Received a call today from the office of the city manager announcing that the mayor of Richmond's sister city, Shimada, Japan, is arriving soon with his entourage of about 16 visitors, and that they would like to schedule a bus tour for July 5th. That means working through an interpreter, of course, but that is far less daunting than you might assume.

I'm looking forward to another adventure in international relations -- and by that time I will surely have had some word about whether my contract is being renewed or if I should get out the kazoo and start humming!

In a few short weeks we'll be observing another Day of Remembrance at the Port Chicago site of the July 17, 1944 tragic explosion during WWII. That night 320 young American lives were lost. Everyone is deep into the planning of this second such event since the site became the 392nd unit of the National Park Service in March of 2010. It now has assigned staff and is developing programming that is bringing to light the little-known history of the mutiny trials that eventually resulted in the desegregation of our armed forces. (Enter "Port Chicago" into the search bar at the top left side of the screen - above the banner - for the full story.) The process took 5 years to complete, but it was a watershed in our history of social change that forever changed the nation.

But, for now, I'm needing to reacquaint myself with the stories of Japanese internment (120,000 taken from their homes and sent to relocation camps -- 70,000 of whom were American citizens), so that I feel competent to handle any questions that may arise on the July 5th tour. But, if I recall, last year when I conducted a tour at the Rosie Memorial for visiting students from Japan -- their professor told me that the internment is not taught in their schools -- so maybe I'm being overly sensitive. We'll see. But I'd want to be sensitive to the possibility that someone will remember ... .

I still do.

2011-06-19T15:41:00.000-07:00

Can you imagine ... ?

.., I was asked to serve as interpreter for a bus tour of the scattered sites that make up Rosie the Riveter WWII/Home Front Historical National Park. It was to accommodate a request from the director of California State Department of Parks and Recreation in Sacramento. The special guest was award-winning Morrie Turner, nationally-syndicated cartoonist (featured in over 100 newspapers), the creator of Wee Pals. He had been following stories about me and wanted to know more about my work and that of the National Park Service. Occasionally, he does a Soul Corner in which some person of interest is featured -- and it seems that I've come to his attention.

We spent 3 hours wending our way through the city while I told the stories of the WWII era and what was happening on the home front at that time. During the course of the tour I discovered that he'd grown up in Berkeley, that he knew my husband, Mel Reid, and that we'd crossed paths many times over the decades. He was wonderfully warm and engaging, and as our visit came to a close he presented me with his original draft of the pen and ink original sketch on Betty Reid Soskin that will be featured in full color in about 8 weeks in the Sunday comic sections!

Can you imagine being presented with an honorary doctorate and appearing as a cartoon character in the same summer -- or even the same lifetime?

Next thing you know I'll be dancing on coffee tables and playing my kazoo (which I'm practicing just in case my position comes to a close in a few weeks as my current contract ends)!

2011-06-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

...and i just had to say:

Regarding the lost inkiness of the night sky that you wrote of so thoughtfully on 11/2/07, I recalled an account of an old woman whose first reaction to a room lit up with an incandescent bulb was to exclaim “But what about the darkness? Where has the darkness gone?”

Some might think she was trying to comprehend the science of artificial illumination. But it struck me that she was really expressing a sense of loss.
She is not alone.

Diane
Richmond, CA

Every now and then souls touch, as may be the case in this exchange with an online reader who felt obliged to respond to something I'd written. In this instance, it was musings long since forgotten -- written on November 2, 2007 about the visit to my granddaughter's fifth grade class at Arts Magnet School in Berkeley. I was -- for the day, "Show and Tell."

This beautiful passage caused me to search the archives for the post referenced, and I found myself lost in space for the next hour or so; remembering those young faces and the feelings evoked by the experience of standing before that class for the Q&A. Those feelings were well-captured in the writing, and powerful enough to bring the experience into the present for an encore.

Rarely do I hear from readers, only a few times a year, and I tend to forget anyone is "out there." Odd, because I sometimes have the feeling that I do leave openings for dialogue, but then maybe not. I normally tend to be "uploading" into my own reality without any idea that anyone is listening.

Not so, apparently. Diane was on the same wave length -- even crossing time -- which allowed me to revisit something truly meaningful.

Upon reading her message and re-reading my 11/2/2007 post, I recalled that I'd never shared those feelings with Tamaya -- who is entering high school this fall.

I will send her to this post.

2011-06-08T15:10:00.000-07:00

Taking a breather ... but I'm glad it may not be permanent ... .

Learned last week that I've made the cut with Human Resources and am still in the running for an extension of my contract with the NPS. This means that -- at the resumé level -- where only the facts are being dealt with in assessing one's qualifications for a position (nothing about age or race involved), I'm still competitive. That, in itself, is a minor miracle. Next steps will be for the local staff to determine which of the remaining applicants from the national pool will best serve the needs of our park. One can only hope, but I've decided that I can live comfortably with whatever the final choice is. If another applicant can match or surpass my resumé, and have the added advantage of youth -- then the choice is obvious. But my record is a formidable one to measure up to -- and I say that with full confidence in those making the decision to have taken experience into account.

Took a week off to come down from the high of commencement and the lows of anticipated legal actions having to do with Dorian's auto/pedestrian accident of 11/27/2009 (and, yes, the case is finally working its way through the legal system). Our attorney has been working diligently on the case over the past months and, come July, Dorian has her first depositions with the examiners (orthopedic and psychiatric) to determine whether our claims are legitimate and just in a court of law. Fortunately for us, the accident didn't involve an uninsured driver, but in this case she was struck by an auto operated by the police department of a neighboring city.

She has unquestionably sustained permanent physical injuries (both legs fractured and two rounds of surgery - 4 nursing homes then rehabilitation that is on-going). The damages are more obvious with each day. The psychological damage in terms of increasing dependence and regression on both our parts is almost impossible to assess at this point, and I'm not sure that we can ever make up for what has been lost. And, after a lifetime of working toward leaving her equipped to live beyond my lifetime; those losses are devastating.

So, having meaningful work to do as this unfolds has been most important. I'm not sure that I'd have made it this far without having this amazingly worthwhile career in the National Park Service in a position where I'm confident that I'm making a difference. Helping to shape a new national park feels vitally important -- and to honestly believe that I'm performing a role that few people are as fit for as I -- well, that's about the best one can ever expect to achieve. It may not be superior qualifications, but that I'm one of the few left with the experience, physical strength, and who can still tie her own shoes! I've outlived all those whose memories differ from mine, so I've become an authority of sorts. Who's to argue with a dinosaur?

So, I'm tossing papers and stopping to update photo albums and re-reading old letters and articles and vegetating gloriously! But I wouldn't want too much of this idleness. I've got a world to save and a park to create ... and that takes staying in the arena at least until something better turns up, or, until the National Park Service decides to send me to the dugout, or into retirement, and/or Lawrence Welk Land where old folks go to dance and play kazoos!

Bottom photo: If there are no more days ahead, I'll always have the memory of being included in this mural by students at NIAD which hangs on the walls of the Chief of Police of Richmond, California, with that clearly identifiable park ranger right in the middle of it -- the one with the cigar extending from her left ear (that's my pony tail, actually).

2011-05-29T17:17:00.000-07:00

The sounds of revelry are beginning to fade ... banners stored away... and life is back to what passes as normal ... .

One would hardly think that so recently we were in the throes of celebrations that rival Mardi Gras and New Year's Eve rolled into one. Tossed the fading bouquets out of their temporary places on tables and desktops around our offices, and finally ... gradually ... life has become breathable again.

Monday morning I checked into my week's schedule to find that I was booked to give a talk for the womens's group at Downs Memorial United Methodist Church in South Berkeley on Saturday (that was yesterday). Actually I've been looking forward to this engagement since the church is in my old neighborhood and has an African American congregation. Its pastor at one time was an old friend, the late Rev. Roy Nichols, whom I remember most fondly. This was a rare opportunity to share my work for the National Park Service with an all-black audience, and that feels good. On Tuesday, 5/31, I'm scheduled to be the luncheon speaker for the Mill Valley Rotary Club in affluent Marin County. The audience will probably be mostly male and white. That provides an interesting challenge to deliver the messages of the era of the Home Front before vastly differing audiences without compromising the truth.

Also, in the interest of another personal project, I was scheduled to finally meet with Tom Debley, recently retired Kaiser Permanente journalist/historian/archivist, who will lead me through the process of researching a tiny 20-room hotel in Richmond that figures in the Pullman Company history. The International Hotel was a "Jim Crow" facility where porters stayed while the luxury sleeping cars were being serviced and stocked in the huge terminal on Carlson Boulevard and South Street before heading back across country. The Pullman Company served as a major employer of African Americans as laborers during the 20's through the 40's. The main Pullman hotel, where white employees were housed (a short distance away at the corner of Carlson), has been long since torn down with no sign that it ever existed. The International, on the other hand, still stands isolated and abandoned in a state of decay that is heartbreaking.

Fortunately, I've found someone willing and anxious, and who has the financial resources to purchase it for purposes of restoration, and since it falls well within the interpretive areas of my work (related to WWII housing for blacks), there is hope that we'll bring it back from the edge. It was formerly owned and furiously protected by the late Ethel Dotson. It was left to her son and only heir with whom we're negotiating its fate.

"... foremost of Ethel's concerns was an obsessive dedication to the restoration of the tiny International Hotel that housed black railroad men on their layovers prior to and during the decades preceding WWII. She continually called out for whatever action might be necessary to save this important landmark. My ranger partner, Lucy, and I visited her there one day and were treated to a tour of the 20 tiny upstairs single-occupancy rooms and the cluttered large reception room on the ground floor that reflected her personal taste for the flamboyant. She proudly showed us her collection of newspaper articles and vintage photographs that spelled out the history of her struggle to protect the building for posterity -- for the telling of this important Black migration story that preceded that of World War II. The stories of black waiters, cooks, and Pullman porters who discovered the West Coast and the Bay Area (as did the men of my own family) at the far western end of their railroad runs on the Acheson, Topeka & Santa Fe and Southern and Western Pacific rail lines -- decades before World War II."

(for the complete post see the entry for 11/4/2007)

If our work is successful, we'll provide justification for its restoration in order to be able to interpret the Pullman story. It is of value to the black migration story as it is one of the few remaining structures -- not destroyed by redevelopment agencies and/or loss of institutional memory.

On a related mission, I drove in on Wednesday evening to a meeting where members of the A.I.A. were doing a series of PowerPoint presentations from a list of endangered historic sites for re-consideration. Our little hotel is on that list. I sat through them all believing that it would come up, but they didn't get around to it at this meeting, but I've been invited to return in the very near future to make a case for its restoration.

Meanwhile, Debley and I have had our first meeting and I've received from the Redevelopment Agency a study of the Pullman Company that is fascinating as much for a profile on Bay Area labor history as it is specific to the story of the little hotel.

Now, would you believe that my 4-year contract (what's called a term position) with the National Park Service comes to an end in July? My job has been posted -- I've applied for it, again, of course -- but stay tuned. This all may fall to someone else to complete. As it works in the system, the decision is made elsewhere in the country from a national pool of applicants, and only if my application is in the final selection among those who are being seriously considered for the position, will I be re-hired.

If only the job had been posted with the proviso that "no one under 85 need apply." Or, "must hold honorary doctorate with a degree in the Fine Arts"! But that may be asking too much; do you suppose?

It may just be that I'll have to leave in the middle of this movie ... but ... in all fairness, I'm not certain that I'll ever know when it's time to leave ... .

It would be terribly sad if I stayed beyond my capacity to serve ... and how on earth will I recognize the signs?

2011-05-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

About my commencement speech ... .

Words actually do fail. In this case I was so overwhelmed by the size of that audience that I instantly froze! The plan was to thank a list of people starting with President Beal, Sanjit Sethi, the Board of Trustees, faculty, my family and friends, the students and Class of Spring 2011, and by that time the nervousness was (theoretically) to have subsided. Instead, I remember mentioning President Beal and then everything became a jumble!

I managed to give a speech -- and from the silence in that huge hall -- it must have reached the audience, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember a word of it! I must have uttered a reasonable series of words of some sort in a logical sequence, but everything seemed scrambled. After a reasonable length of time (maybe 10 minutes that seemed an eternity) I heard myself ending with best wishes to the Class of 2011 before returning to my seat (forgetting my folder on the lectern). At that point I found myself distracted by a parade of interesting, outrageous, wildly inventive, highly-varied, shoes on the feet of the graduates as over 400 of them paraded within 8 feet of my chair in the ceremony of acceptance of diplomas and stoles not unlike my own. (I'd leave the self-criticism until later.)

It felt as if I'd failed, totally, but as the grand recessional ended, I could see that the audience was not sharing my sense of failure. They were smiling and reaching out to me as I marched by. Somehow the words must have all come out in some coherent form - or surely it would have been evident in those smiling faces.

The later blow-up with Dorrie meant that there was no time to re-live those moments, or, to sort out those negative impressions, and I'm sure that the residual feelings of that failure to live up to my own expectations became confused with her accusations and added to my sense of being profoundly undeserving of this great honor; obviously bestowed in error! Yet, my family and friends had been glowing in their pride when we met after the program; I could feel it. Those balancing good feelings were lost in the melt-down -- but have since returned, and for that, I'm grateful.

It may interest you to learn that I've since "edited" that speech (having had it return in bits and pieces just before dropping off to sleep each night since), and it's now nearly perfect. Wish that had happened before the last time to have my say before the world had passed by; but maybe there were enough fragments in whatever came forth in those moments, and they'll have to suffice.

None of it makes any sense, but at the feeling level, there is fulfillment of a kind that few of us mortals ever experience; I'm certain of that. Maybe it's at this exalted level that life makes about as much sense as is possible to achieve -- but only if we stay on a spiritual emotional plane. It's fragile, and tends to fall apart until we go beyond the rational. But once there, the epiphany generates its own light and the brightness is blinding -- so much so that one can only hold on with a steadying and stunning parade of shoes ... .

On Friday I gathered up six original songs (written over 40 years ago) and burned them onto a CD ; enclosed them in cards of thanks -- and mailed one each to President Beal and to my friend, Sanjit. I'm hoping that these bits of myself which contain words of meaning carried by a really lovely young voice I barely identify with now, will communicate the gratitude that will follow me for the rest of this remarkable life.

Photos by Liz Fisher except for
Bottom left; Professor of Community Arts, and my friend, Sanjit Sethi, who introduced me to the audience and held my hand in the days leading up to the big event (the first of those taken by the assigned photographer).

2011-05-22T20:30:00.000-07:00

Niece, Gail Brooms Clifton, and granddaughter Rosie Reid Funk, Bob's daughter..

So Dorie and I did a "crash and burn," but now the air is cleared ... .

and the confetti and paper hats have been resurrected, and all because I finally had a chance to view the photos stashed in my camera -- and the images carried enough power to grant a re-run of all that glory!

Just take a look at these gems! And the promised shots of those taken by the professional photographer have not yet arrived -- can you imagine what those will show?

These were taken at the dinner on Thursday, May 12th, in honor of John Baldessari and me -- I'd almost forgotten in the agony of the past few days -- just how wonderful that evening was.

Left: Co-honoree, the world-famous photographer, John Baldessari. Six foot eight inches of creativity, with a resume that includes many prior academic honors. His photographs are in the Smithsonian collections.

CCA president, Stephen Beal and members of the Board of Trustees

My youngest granddaughter, Tamaya Reid, David's daughter.
I've not yet located a photo of her sister, Alyana, but I will.

Betcha thought I'd never recover, right? Not so.

The storm has passed, and life is good, again.

(Let's hope the quick turnaround between these last two posts didn't give you whiplash!)

Note: Click on any of these photos to view details.

2011-05-22T11:49:00.000-07:00

"The Rapture!"-- succeeded by the descent into Hell!

It simply didn't occur to me to not include Dorian in last week's events, though doing so was sure to produce some challenges. I long ago developed the ability to factor those in and make do with whatever results.

At some point in an earlier blog (maybe last year just after 4th of July?) I tried to describe the schizophrenic state I have to place myself in when she's included in my social activities -- the choice is between staying with my "normalcy" in relation to others, or, leaving her all alone in the chaotic world of intellectual deficits that she inhabits. The choice to stay in her world I've learned to make willingly, and to trust that others (who may read my behavior as socially withdrawn or deliberately isolating myself) to understand.

Without too much thought or planning -- and being preoccupied with my own over-the-top acclaim of the past months -- I took advantage of the fact that she was nursing a sore throat and running a low-grade temperature and excluded her from the Commencement dinner on Thursday evening. I admit that I felt relieved at not having to deal with tending to her at my time of celebration. I used the excuse that I had to attend a meeting in San Francisco (not so unusual) so would not be at home when she called to say good night, her usual nightly practice.

But she was with me all that evening in that I chose to wear one of her delightful creations (a black beaded, sequined, and appliqued blouse with her signature cats and flowers over black crepe trousers), and used them as a conversation piece in those (often difficult for me) small talk encounters that are typical of receptions. The choice served well since, in chatting about NIAD (National Institute for Artists and Disabilities), I learned that there was a significant number among the celebrants who were parents or siblings of the mentally-retarded or physically disabled, including at least one member of the Board of Trustees, and President Beal, himself.

When I returned to CCA for the Friday evening fashion show, I choose to wear my incredible Dorian-hand-painted "happy pants," which seemed appropriate since this was the California College of the Arts, after all, a school which supplied the interns who served as instructors at NIAD. Though her fever had subsided, there was no thought of taking her along since she knew that she needed to heal in order to attend Saturday's commencement ceremony.

So far, so good.

Dorrie's throat and slight fever subsided over the next 24 hours, and (of course) there was no question that she would be included in the great event of the day. I picked her up early on Saturday from her apartment and prepared her as far as I could with a description of what the day might hold. I'm not sure that I gave her anywhere near a full understanding of just how "honored at" her mother was to be, however. There was no clear way to do that, or at least I couldn't find one. An important omission, as it turned out.

The limo (sleek black Lincoln Continental) arrived at 12:15 as scheduled, and we were off. I'd tried to prepare her for this, and was amused with her remark as we rode in the back seat behind our uniformed driver that she'd been in a limo before, "... this is like Grandpa's funeral, isn't it?

She'd not been prepared for arriving at the Concourse and 4000 jubilant people gathered there -- with flashing cameras, strange people in black robes, unfamiliar cousins, friends, fellow park rangers, people who obviously knew me but who were completely unknown to her, nieces and nephews seldom seen, and her two brothers all in the mix. She must have been totally overwhelmed! Unfortunately, her mother, who is usually running interference, interpreting, and keeping close at hand, was too personally involved to notice the pressure building.

She managed to get through the celebratory dinner at a lovely East Bay restaurant following the ceremony, but just barely. There was her mother seated at the head of the table surrounded by proud family and friends, draped in "honorary doctorate stole" with bouquets being placed in water by the waitress -- wearing two leis draped 'round her shoulders, and being hailed like a rock star! My preoccupation with self in those moments made me insensitive to the storm building in the background.

We arrived at home in the early evening to a nightmare of reactions to the day.

"It's always about you, you, you!!!!! Justified or not, that has been disturbingly true over the recent past. It must have been just awful for her. She was now totally out of control and into a screaming rage! I'd completely forgotten that it was she who is the artist, and not her mother. Hadn't I always celebrated her for that? Had I invaded her world unwittingly? Was the wearing of her designs a mere exploitation of her artistry? Why on earth was all of the attention being centered on me? What on earth had I ever done (to her understanding) to deserve this amount of public attention?

Dorian's limited brain-power has provided her with no filters. She could not possibly hide deep feelings of hurt, envy, and unmitigated rage! Was I truly as undeserving as I've always suspected, and could it be that my children and grandchildren share her negative feelings but were unable to express them as honestly as she?

Over the entire weekend she ranted and raved about her own accomplishments -- bragged loudly and outrageously in an irrational but understandable display of what-ever-it-was until -- by nightfall on Sunday -- the fever had returned and her throat was now inflamed from screaming her pain.

Eventually, I felt terribly bruised from the onslaught of her charges, but there was just enough truth in them to overturn the elation of my extraordinary moment in time. My long-restrained response to the unfairness that I've been feeling invited doubt to re-enter the ring for a return match. I felt angry at her for her inability to understand and appreciate all that had happened for me -- and I felt helpless to combat those deficiencies that her retardation has caused to so relentlessly dominate my existence over a lifetime. And, I simply didn't like her at this point, for raining on my parade. That said, we need to get on with life and continue the love that sustains us both through these extremely difficult places. Maybe what saves us, eventually, is the ability to face up to circumstances that are beyond our control honestly, and ride them out with as little carryover as possible.

On Monday morning, I made an appointment with the Urgent Care department at the hospital and took her in for an examination. The fact that -- added to a flare-up of allergies -- this was purely an emotional response to all that had happened. My guess was that it would soon pass. Predictably, she was seen by her primary physician and my diagnosis confirmed. I then gathered up all of the lovely bouquets and the beautiful leis and brought them to my office cubby. All signs of the celebratory weekend had to be removed from my home in order for peace to return to our lives.

A week has now passed. She returned to her apartment on Monday as I got back into my work and -- except for an occasional reminder -- Commencement has been put on a back burner, except for my writings. She holds nothing back nor does she carry such episodes into the future. For her, it's over. From her attitude since she came home for the weekend yesterday, one would hardly guess what a traumatic period we've just come through. At this moment she's sitting in the big chair in my living room busily working on an art piece (making a crocheted pillow cover) and bragging to no one in particular about her hand-painted toy box at NIAD that sold for $140 during the week -- and that she has a new piece in an exhibit in San Francisco this week ... .

Dorian, the Artist, whose feelings of the unfairness of it all, has come through despite resentment at being skipped over -- of the absence of public appreciation (and isn't that a fairly universal hunger?).

Her mother?

Not so much ...

... I guess I wanted to feel the confetti drifting down just a little while longer ... .

2011-05-21T16:22:00.000-07:00

And more photos ...

taken by my granddaughter, Kokee, possibly with her cell phone. The official (professional) photos will be sent by CCA, and they may be clearer -- but they won't carry the love that these do! There will be a DVD of the proceedings in the mail in a few days. I'm not sure I'll want to view it, ever. Some things are better left alone. Maybe it should be kept with this blog (I'm thinking of having it printed out in book form by an online service), but I'll need to save up for that. Since there will be so many volumes, (since 9/2003-present), I'm not sure it won't cost as much as a complete set of the encyclopedia!

You cannot imagine such a

glorious, confusing, affirming, crazy, wild, and wonderful day!

2011-05-17T08:58:00.000-07:00

Speechless ... almost! More later when the dust has settled and the petals have fallen from the bouquets.

(Photo by Peter Freund)

2011-05-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

The time is 10:50 a.m., the limo is scheduled to arrive at 12:15 to deliver Dorian and me to the Concourse where Commencement of the Class of 2011 will begin promptly at two o'clock ... .

It's reminiscent of those late teen years when my mother would try to talk me into not waiting for my date to arrive -- sitting on the front steps. I'm now waiting for the limo and trying to not be looking out through the drapes for signs of arrival, two hours too early. I will surely have wilted before the party begins!

I've been up since six o'clock. I lay awake for hours -- after attending the Fashion Extravaganza on campus; a most exciting event! I hadn't planned on going, but found that I needed to have a continuing immersion in the universe that is CCA in order to fulfill the role that I've been given as mentor. I'm finally convinced that this word is fittingly descriptive of why I'm here and being honored on this day.

On Thursday evening there was the warm reception and beautiful dinner (with bouquets of cream-colored tulips on each table) in the honor of the two of us who are being honored. The limo's arrival at 4:30 was preceded by a ring of my doorbell and the delivery of a lovely floral bouquet with a card of congratulations from President Stephen Beal of CCA.

By midnight last night the panic set in. Was I simply foolish to think that I could actually deliver a major address without notes? What ever was I thinking? This would be like performing a high wire act without a net! And the promised carefully constructed speech of my dreams was nowhere to be found.

I spent hours trying to recall just what it was that I felt so sure would be standing by to be drawn upon. Nary a word. Had I become over-confident from conducting years of bus tours as an National Park Service interpreter, and for total strangers -- and doing it without notes? I work from memory and whatever the moment held for us, together, to be expressed and explored. Why had I put such stock in my capacity to transfer those abilities into this once-in-a-lifetime event? Is this not what others train long years in order to do?

Then, at about three in the wee hours of the morning the words began to line up in recognizable order to be uttered from the lectern this afternoon. Rose about six and logged on to my computer and brought up the word processor in order to pull together at least the first few words of thanks to President Beal, my friend, Sanjit, who would be introducing me; the Board, faculty, staff, family and friends, and finally, to the graduates. I'm counting on those important words to provide a proper foundation -- a chance to settle in and become accustomed to the setting -- and I'm gambling on this being enough to steady my emotions enough for those words of long nights of tossing and intense dreaming to come through.

It's still "Thumb prints, Gate Posts, and Bookends." The connecting truths are there waiting in the wings of my mind. If not, I will allow my words of gratitude to suffice. But they will come.

I'm certain of it.

Almost ... .

Peace be with me ... please!

2011-05-08T12:16:00.000-07:00

As one might guess, as the day of Commencement approaches -- the tension grows ... .

How on earth can one ever measure up to such expectations? But then maybe it is only I, myself, who is setting those expectations, right? Maybe I've already reached whatever heights others were setting for me, which would suggest their rationale for choosing me for this great honor in the first place. But then the very fact that they're sending a limo to drive me from home and back announces their expectations in a fairly serious way, does it not?

The big decisions have now been made; the "what to wear" and "what to say" are now set in stone. It will be something already on hand and previously worn and guaranteed "comfortable" so that I don't have to think about appearances. That will leave only the commencement address to concern myself with. The title remains unchanged, "Thumb prints, gate posts, and bookends" it shall be. Let's hope that I can weave them successfully into whatever final form they take. At this point I'm happy to allow the content to continue to deepen and mellow. I'm sure that I've given this talk over and over again in many settings -- in my dreams. I'm experiencing a very active dream life from the disheveled state of the bedding in the mornings; though I'm noticing that I wake more at peace in the past few days -- a serenity that may indicate that the work is nearly done.

As foolish as it may sound, I'm reluctant to try to capture it into a paper for fear that I'll be tempted to simply read it instead of delivering the words as they present themselves at that moment at the lectern. I know that I'm best when I can see the faces and look into the eyes of an audience; and I also know that about five minutes into my presentation, all of the paralyzing fear vanishes, and that I'll be safely home until just before the ending, with just a millisecond of panic in the silence just before the audience responds.

My colleague, Lucien, emailed that -- as she was at the StairMaster at her gym yesterday -- reading a magazine to while away the time (it was Real Simple Living) -- she happened upon a quote from me. I vaguely recalled a writer calling from New York a few months ago (having been referred by Bruce Frankel, author of How Should I Spend the Rest of My Life). She wanted a quote on aging to add to others from other older women whom she'd also interviewed for the article. (It was jarring to note that those other older women were in their fifties and sixties -- the age of my children!) By now it all seems a part of the job and a natural request that I can accomplish without losing a beat before returning to whatever I was in the middle of before my phone rang... .

Then, a few days ago a request came that seemed more important, and in keeping with my new found status as a resource in areas far beyond my ranger-ing. This one caught my attention. I've been invited to interview Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer prizewinning author of the brilliant "The Warmth of Others Suns"and then write an article for publication. In a kind of rubber-hitting-the-road moment, I realized that it is quite possible that I'm being invited to participate just a mite above my current level of competence, and that I need to leave that kind of journalism to the journalists. I lucked out with that article published in the California Historian, and this may be one of those times when I will over-reach and in so doing, risk this heady moment when I'm soaring far above my own expectations when I only need to bask in the rapture of having done so!

Since last weekend my schedule of activities included;

driving (with Dorian) in uniform representing our park in the city's Cinco de Mayo parade;
that afternoon guided a 3 hour bus tour of 50 Tradeswomen, Inc., (members attending a national conference in Oakland) through the Rosie the Riveter WWII/Home Front sites scattered throughout the city;
ended that same day with a 101 mile drive to Aromas, a hamlet on the road to Watsonville in Monterey County, in time to attend a 7:30 pm sold-out "Songs and Stories" concert performed by my eldest son, Bob. Dori and I stayed with Bob at his ranch home in San Juan Bautista, a beautiful valley surrounded by hills in the greenest of springtime glory; since then we
participated in the Rosie the Riveter event at the Crucible in Oakland; and yesterday
attended the grand opening of the brand new state-of-the-art soccer field in the Nystrom District.

Life is good on this Mother's Day on this planet.

Photo: Lottie Allen Charbonnet, my mother at 95. She was partying at a luau in Hawaii when this photo was taken. She lived to see her 101st birthday, and as you can see by this picture, savored life despite the hardships her generation endured.

2011-04-20T19:42:00.000-07:00

It's done ... !

Sent the invitation list off today, and once the problem was pinpointed and resolved -- got into the rhythm of this great honor.

It was so helpful to have had a chance to tour the campus of the California College of the Arts on Monday; to meet a member of the board; lunch with faculty members; visit the studios filled with young artists at work. It all fell into place, finally.

I feel far less intimidated by events, and am ready now for the celebration!

Yesterday at the request of the National Institute for Artists and Disabilities I led a delegation of service worker volunteers from Belarus and their translator on a tour of some of our park sites. They were accompanied by their US State Department hosts. It felt great to feel confirmed in my role as a representative of an important federal agency. There is a system of national parks being created in their country so the interest in our park-in-development was high. I felt a real connection with the group despite the language barrier; though that was minimal since several were able to cross over into English now and then with relative ease.

Were I to have a chance to live some of those early years over again, I'd surely want to have several languages at my command. Though, as I recall, I had a group of visitors from Japan about six months ago, and that also worked out well. Maybe what happens between people at the non-verbal level trumps verbal expression.

Now that the pressure is off -- maybe I can just bask in the glory of it all, and try to get into my paper hat for the festivities on May 12th and 14th.

Maybe I should think about buying a new dress for the occasion. I thought that I'd outlived the Age of Acquisition. It has been years since I've felt the need to even think "fashion." But there are some lovely things hanging in my closet that I've had no occasion to bring out for a very long time. There was a time ... maybe just once more?

A woman can always gear up for fashion, right?

Maybe I'll try for a new hair style ... do you suppose?

That is if we can still find enough hair to style! Maybe it's time to just cut it all off and face the truth that there are just so many hair follicles to each lifetime, and at 89 I've outlived my allotment.

2011-04-18T22:03:00.000-07:00

Mystery solved ... .

and ... had it occurred to me to stop for just a few moments ... I might have known why I couldn't create that guest list for the commencement ceremony. It was due two weeks ago. After spending days pushing the envelope to the back of my desk -- and at one time slipping it into a drawer so that it would be out of sight. I finally separated out the form for cap and gown measurements, slipped that into the envelope, and dropped it off in a FedEx box in the Civic Center. But the request for the guest list was missing from the packet. I agonized through an enclosed note, and felt terribly guilty, but nothing moved the task forward -- not one inch.

Then today in a casual conversation with Julio, the answer was revealed. It was so obvious. How on earth could I not have guessed?

I've outlived most of my guest list. And the time to allow the sadness that this realization should have elicited was missing. The brutal truth of that sentence was the thing that I couldn't face. Small wonder that this simple task was so difficult to complete ... . It was a time to mourn, and something deep inside wouldn't allow me to move on until I'd done so.

On the drive home I stopped my car on a nearby hilltop where the din of afternoon traffic is lessened -- and let the tears flow unashamed; let myself miss all those who would have made that list; lingered over each name as it surfaced. Up came my sisters, my parents, Papa George, my dear Aunt Vivian, Gil and Eve, my eldest son, Rick; Mel and Bill; close friends and relatives long gone, and with the tears something vitally important was released. Tomorrow I can face what is now a mere clerical task.

I'll complete the list -- made up of my sons and daughter, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, those few remaining old friends, augmented by the many good younger souls who have become central in the living of these incredible recent years; new friends; those with whom I work; some city staff people -- some very young folks for whom I'm "Miss Betty," (and loving it!), and then I'll move on.

If I could only remember to just stop and listen ... for my inner voice.

It's always there in the quiet.

Maybe I just need more stillness.

2011-04-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

"Gate posts" -- my commencement address has arrived; clear and true ... .

Yesterday I woke to clarity and self-confidence. Not sure what brought this euphoric state about, or even if one can rely upon its staying power -- but the words have lined up as if by magic. I know their meaning, and that there is little need to try to organize them further. Over the days to come -- between now and the day of commencement -- they will continue to sort themselves out and deepen. They are relevant to this graduating class, I believe. The title; "Thumb prints, gate posts, and bookends," is the key that opened the door into the connections not only to my past, but to the arts. As suspected, they were there all the time ... sitting behind my eyes waiting for me to settle down and listen to myself, maybe ... .

Funny; I hesitate to say much more about this lest this fragile wisp of security will disappear and the awful uncertainty of the past weeks will return. And if I write them here ... I'm not at all sure ... .

Maybe it suffices to say that those "gate posts" are key to one of the family stories about my great-grandmother, Mammå, a precious memory from childhood -- one of the many stories told by Papa George as we tied the beans to their poles and dug up the carrots and gathered the melons in that little kitchen garden after my parents and we 3 children arrived in Oakland from the New Orleans floods of 1927.

My impression of what romance meant was formed very early in childhood. It was the Civil War story of Leontine sitting high in the branches of a pecan tree watching the Union soldiers marching past on that dusty road from Donaldsonville. She must have been very young, perhaps 16 or 17, and from her photographs, quite pretty. I knew that she was barely 5 feet tall, so the exciting tale of the soldier, Corporal George Allen of the Louisiana Colored Troops, stepping out of the line long enough to coax her down from her perch then re-joining the march carrying her on his shoulders for a few miles was not hard to believe. He would later become her husband and father of their dozen or so children. This would be the standard for love stories that Hollywood would have to meet in order to gain my little girl approval. And it was true.

That the child, Betty, heard such lovely stories far earlier in life than those of the unspeakable brutality of slavery or the great Civil War that brought it to an end means that I had little awareness of my great-grandmother as being enslaved; nor do I recall making the personal connection until studying American history as an adolescent. But the intellectual connections rarely mean as much as the emotional imprinting, and there is little memory of making those linkages. If the elders of the family spoke of such times, they must have done so in creole, a patois of French that dominated speech in our homes during those years, and placed such conversations out of reach of the children. Perhaps it was just too painful. They could hardly have not been scarred by such memories, but I can't recall feeling a personal relationship to that tragic history until I was a young mother, when I, too, held it at arms length from my own children ... until the Sixties.

I do remember the dark stories told by Papa George when we were working together in the garden and he was talking to himself and letting me listen; which happened on occasion with some grownups. Those stories usually involved the Ku Klux Klan and his younger brother, Uncle Albert, suddenly leaving under the cover of darkness for parts unknown -- never to return (the family later learned that he'd escaped to Kansas City); and the many bloated black bodies that floated up in the river from time to time -- bound wrists to ankles -- and the lynchings ... but the listening was terribly hard, and the nightmares ... .

I only remember Mammå as the family matriarch; celebrated by the elders as the aunts and uncles made up the delegation who would make the annual trip back to St. James Parish each year for her birthday. Southern Pacific railroad family passes enabled this important family ritual to continue for decades since most uncles were Red Caps or Porters during the Great Depression. Wonderful stories about their childhood in that little cabin across from the levee of the Mississippi -- where my grandfather, and my mother and her siblings and so many others were raised -- fueled most grownup conversations and colored my childhood memories, and surely provided the foundation for how I relate to "the World."

Let me live with my gate posts a little longer before sharing... .

Photo: Leontine Breaux (Braud) Allen in midlife.
Bottom: Uncle Herman Allen and his wife, Marie Gaudet Allen

2011-04-10T14:05:00.000-07:00

Thumb print ... ?

This is one of the key images governing my life, I think. And I can recall precisely when it became so. Though there's something about time with me that defies logic. I only became aware of it late in life at a moment while watching my father -- who spent the last ten years of his life totally blind -- quietly going about making simple household repairs in the usual way -- by meticulously measuring with his thumb. At some point during his long life he had determined that from the last crease to the tip was exactly one inch. By so doing he made of himself a physical tool of mathematics.

I remember that somewhere before my tenth birthday (which places this incident in 1931 -- mid-Depression), Dad and I were building a (dry) fish pond in the side garden on a summer afternoon. There was no money for running water into the pond from the house, but nonetheless, we were working diligently on this project that would feature an island and miniature wooden bridge, and that -- as we worked -- there were always "the lessons," delivered as though gospels from on high. I remember the sand, gravel, and bag of cement next to the galvanized water buckets; the scraping sounds of mixing with the hand trowel as we stacked the rocks in place, and then filled in with the wet mixture with Dad keeping up a patter of conversation all the while.

A nice reminder that beauty is its own reason for being, and that even a dry fish pond is justifiable if viewed as art (but this is an assessment of a mature woman -- remembering). I have no idea what sacrifices were necessary for us to have that little pond surrounded as it was by iris, tulips, and daffodils each spring throughout my childhood. It was sitting beside that little pond in the shade of an almond tree that I discovered Edna St. Vincent Millay in a book that arrived in a box from the nearby Salvation Army store that mother haunted at least weekly for bargains.

At that time our proud father was working for the Southern Pacific railroad as a lunch car attendant, and would be gone for days at a time with 2 or 3 days layover between runs. With two sisters and Mom to compete with, time with him was precious, and to have it, alone, a privilege, indeed.

But this was late in life, and this always productive man was now in his early nineties, blind, and partially bedridden -- but was still going about his days being the "man of the house." As I watched, he was installing a new door knob and lock. I stood fascinated watching the familiar "thumbing" that I now remembered as one of the lessons of the fish pond, and can still hear his voice as he said:

"My father taught me to measure carefully, and to never repeat the process. If you can't trust yourself to cut it means that you didn't do it right the first time. Never re-trace your steps."

His father was the final authority. Back in New Orleans, Louis Charbonnet was a celebrated engineer, ornamental iron worker, and millwright, and Dad had apprenticed under him since his early teens.

I'm reminded that -- when invited to write an article for the California Historian (something I'd never done for publication) - it was a complete disaster. I could not edit my work. Once written, all efforts to alter a single word met with failure. I remember how -- when I tried to re-arrange sentences or paragraphs, delete for reasons of redundancy, -- the words would take me in some new direction and I could never re-connect the new text with the old. Frustration caused me to finally submit the (far too long!) article to the editors with permission to "edit to fit," just to make the deadline. To my total surprise, in a few weeks the editor called to say that they were not only not going to edit the piece, but were planning to run it as the cover article in its entirety, so could she stop by to select some photos? Could it be that I'd "measured right the first time," and that it was not the lack of editing ability? I recognize now that I'd chalked it up to a deficit when it should have been credited as an asset. How often have I done that, and am I doing so now?

Also, not only have my music and lyrics always arrived fully formed and never change, but I remember that once written, they remain an accurate measure of the frame of mind in which they were created, and that I know that were they written even a few hours later, they would have been different songs. They have always captured accurately for me the moment of their creation.

I've rarely retraced my steps; driven past the places where I've formerly lived -- even to the East Oakland home where I grew up and where that pond we built was created; nor have I shadowed my son, David, as he has taken over Reid's Records; or ever tried to revive my "artist" self from former lives (my guitar sits silently in its case -- as it has for several decades) until son, Bob, visits and wants to share something he's written); or, rarely read back through this blog, except to add a photo or two, and never to edit.

"Once measured, cut and move on."

Wisdom of the Thumb Print, and a hint at just how early in life values are formed, and that children really are the sum total of all that has gone before. One day someone will determine through proper study and peer review that we are, indeed, the product of genetic coding -- that there well may be some esoteric forms of accumulated wisdom or gifts (yes, even the ability to bend time) that span generations -- and that -- at some point we will learn to use such knowledge wisely for the benefit of humankind, and move into the future less fearful.

But I'm not quite there yet ... .

2011-04-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

I'm guessing that it was a combination of things; the threat of being furloughed by the NPS on top of the financial pressures of having that possibility coincide with the property tax deadline ...

Well, we scraped by the federal budget debacle, and we're still here.

But along the way the glow of confidence that was acquired at Humboldt State University proved far more fragile than one might have hoped, and panic began to set in over the past few days. I've been inexplicably close to tears much of time; even spilling over upon discovering in an email yesterday that yet another honor (this time from the Historic Preservation Commission of the city) has been bestowed, and that I'll need to justify to myself over the days ahead(!). The result was that the packet of information needed by California College of the Arts for commencement sits on my desk demanding attention but providing only guilt at being paralyzed by Lord knows what ... ?

I've not yet turned in my invitation list, though I did manage to get a few addresses before collapsing into this lethargic state that has produced a darkish veil of whatever this is. It's uncharacteristic of me. I'm not normally a procrastinator nor a depressive, but how else do I explain this?

The commencement address is writing itself in the sleep state -- I've composed it countless times -- only to have it disappear into the ether come sun-up. The title, though, remains and is unchanging. It's called, "Thumb print, gate posts, and bookends." I believe that I know what it means, and I believe that it will be there when I need it. The problem seems to be that -- though I've written speeches for others, I've never really written one that I was expected to deliver. I'm not even certain that I can. But maybe all that will be required of me will be to stand at that lectern and allow the words to express themselves. Maybe they're building up in the REM state, forming into shape for delivery. I recognize the process. It's the way I wrote music and lyrics long ago, songs that never changed, once written, and always appeared to be something I was remembering ... strange.

Maybe all I need is to trust that this is something that simply is.

For some reason, the vision of myself rising one day last spring (as if it were just another Tuesday), mechanically showering and getting into formal summer dress uniform (white shirt and tie, 4-button coat, highly polished oxblood shoes, badges, and ID bars, topped off with flat hat), then getting into my car for the drive to the office where I'm greeted by Tom, our deputy superintendent, also dressed formally, who excitedly told me that I was to accompany him to Buchanan Field in Concord to meet Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's plane whose staff person had called late last night. It was announced -- without warning -- that the Secretary's plane would touch down for a 90-minute surprise visit to the newly-named 392nd unit of the National Park System, Port Chicago Weapons Station. I would later learn that -- en route from the airport to the Port Chicago site -- that I would give the Secretary the story of the new park, and that a delegation of dignitaries; including Superintendent Martha Lee, the mayor of the City of Concord, the base commander, the president of Friends of Port Chicago, a rep from Rep. George Miller's office, plus local press who had been alerted to the big news, etc., would be waiting to greet him and his party.

I could not possibly have known of his impending visit since the call came long after I'd left for home on the evening before. The occasions when I am called upon to be so dressed are rare (only a few times a year), and how on earth would I have known that this would be such an occasion? And -- it didn't occur to me until just before sleep that night that, again, the sequencing was off ... .

It is this little understood state of an unnamed and unnameable ability -- this sixth sense from one of my unnamed and unnameable dimensions -- that I need to trust now.

But can one go through life depending upon something so nebulous? Yet, is this not the way I've always lived -- intuitively sensing out directions -- often acting before the fact? Always alive -- in the moment? And -- always aware of context? Doesn't everybody? (Does anybody else ... ?)

Will this be the source of my commencement speech-in-progress; this speech that has such an intriguing title but quite literally, no content?

One can only hope ... .

2011-04-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

Ain't I a woman ... ?

Another busy week, but a thoughtful week it was.

My mind has been spinning with new thoughts born of the visit to Humboldt State University, and exposure to information that was mind-bending in that I became more acutely aware that so many of my conclusions have been arrived at in intellectual isolation and with unguided reading and a haphazard system of self-education. My natural intelligence has served me well, but how much more could I have accomplished had I had the advantage of attending such a university in my youth? How I do envy those young woman of the sisterhood whose lives and achievements are being shared with a generation of the young leaders who will take us into the future.

On the long drive back (after I was beyond the snow line), I was reminded of something said in passing by my host, HSU Prof. Christina Accomando who has done extensive research on Truth:

"... Sojourner Truth's first language was Dutch. She was born in New York where she was owned by a Dutch family. Her legacy is oral and transcribed in some imagined southern slave dialects by various scribes whose work it was to record her words over many years."

I found myself harking back to those words that echo down through history from the Seneca Falls Conference, "Ain't I a woman?"

Those thoughts (from my undisciplined mind) collided with two unrelated others and the combination threatened to derail yesterday's bus tour during which I found myself expressing them aloud -- and before I'd gotten around to understanding them fully. I'm still working it through so this post may undergo revision as I do so.

The first is that I have a persistent need to disassociate myself from the "Rosie the Riveter" story. I've always considered that story a part of the myth of the emancipation of women into the work force -- and my contention has always been that this did not apply to women of color since we've been working outside the home since slavery. Given the fact that, until recent times, black men had been limited to the lowest-paying service sector jobs, so it had always taken two salaries to support black families. My WWII job in Boilermakers A-36, a Jim Crow union created for blacks only, meant that I had never seen myself as the romantic Rosie of "We can do it" fame.

Yet I've become increasingly uncomfortable with my position. It wasn't that I felt that it was untrue or unjustified, it's just that there is a legitimate white Rosie story that isn't being told, and that it needs to be. And, that white women needed to be demanding more from that history than a catchy tune, red bandannas, posters, and belated kudos.

The equally compelling thought was of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 in which 149 lives were lost; immigrant women working for $6 a week under such conditions that in the aftermath, the horrific conditions of the workplaces in the garment industry came under harsh scrutiny, and the movement for unionization was strengthened.

WWII did not bring American women into the workplace for the first time. That's a myth. Women have been working since time immemorial. Only it was not called work until they were introduced to what had formerly been male occupations ("work"). What women did was always defined as their life roles -- to be ever in support of the men of the society. We have always been secretaries, librarians, teachers, nurses; always supportive of men -- with few exceptions. Women's work consisting of child care, general housekeeping, shopping, washing and ironing, budgeting, preparing meals, etc., were considered "what wives do" until they were recruited into the work force to do welding, riveting, conducting orchestras, dispatching trucks, engineering, reading blueprints, ferrying aircraft into war zones, contracting, manufacturing munitions, assembling jeeps and tanks, etc.; all work, for the first time in history.

Despite the fact that Rosie was often a poor woman whose opportunities were limited before she entered the defense industry, the romanticized vision that endures was that she was a middle class white woman (played by Katherine Hepburn or Rosalind Russell) who called her hairdresser or manicurist to cancel her next appointments and headed for the shipyards and aircraft plants to sign on as replacements for our fighting men. That those pioneer women who were widowed by the Civil War and WWI had not been workers -- though raising large families, alone, on farms they ran themselves -- were not workers??? That those immigrant women whose lives were lost in the Triangle fire were not workers and therefore not counted before WWII as such? Were those migrant sweatshop workers even counted as women?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, and the rest of the Suffragettes might have fared better had they heard Sojourner Truth's words as "Ain't I a worker?" Maybe the scribes got it wrong? But then, what do I know?

Maybe, in time, some powerful gutsy white feminist -- whose passion for her story equals mine for my black story -- will appear out of the blue to guide walking tours at that great Rosie the Riveter Memorial on the Richmond Marina -- and make the feminist story come alive! It's one of the multiple stories inscribed along the walkway that begs re-visiting, along with the story of Henry Kaiser, masterful industrialist who changed the workplace and revolutionized ship building; the Port Chicago explosion that brought about the desegregation of the Armed Forces; the story of the internment of Japanese, 70,000 of whom were American citizens; the moving inscription that tells of the fact that WWII gave us 54.8 million casualties, worldwide; a number reflecting the last time we included civilian deaths, before the concept of "collateral damage" was introduced into the language of war; and the story of women in all its complexity -- because we were represented in all of those stories -- except that of Port Chicago -- and with little recognition -- until recent times.

I have a feeling that these thoughts may undergo revision. I managed to get myself into a fairly lively debate with two of my male colleagues yesterday which, unfortunately, gave off more heat than light -- so I'm not yet comfortable with my conclusions -- but the very fact that this history is still raising passions may be proof enough that we're finally processing it. Maybe we'll get around to processing the Civil War before I trade my ranger flat-hat for a French beret!

2011-03-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

The Humboldt adventure looms large this morning ... .

While writing the last entry Dorian called to ask if we could make a trip to the fabric store for some yarn she needs for a project. This meant driving to the mall, waiting in the car under the protection of our blue handicap placard (a privilege almost equal to having valet parking) while she makes her choices. This sometimes involves a generous amount of time -- but that's what crossword puzzles were meant for, and I always keep the latest New York Times magazine under the seat for just this kind of opportunity. And such errands also allow time for chewing on whatever is left unprocessed in life that either was initiated by writing, or, is resisting resolution.

My mind was still occupied with the S.F. State protest of 40 years ago, and I remembered that -- (and long before blogging was even a word) I tended to write accounts of significant events for myself. Since these were rarely shared and certainly not meant for anyone else's eyes, my files were bulging with what I now see as first-person accounts of historic events. Who knew?

All that is to say that somewhere in my files is that "first-person account" of that dramatic confrontation on the S.F. State campus. My Humboldt experience suggests that it's important that I add that document to this blog (maybe under Cbreaux's Annex?).

And it is critically important to resist the temptation to make the corrections that 89 year-old far more experienced Betty might be tempted to do -- (The original was pre-computer; typed on my trusty IBM Selectric without SpellCheck or the editing capacity now available.) I know that I must simply scan the document as is, typos and all. As I recall, it's polemical and filled with youthful hyperbole, which may be precisely why it's important to not allow myself to try to temper young Betty's voice. Maybe that's where the value is; value to preserving and revisiting that woman-that-I-once-was involved as a mere bystander in a major confrontation that changed the very nature of educational institutions and democratized the process in ways that bled out into every other institution and pointed the way toward freedoms promised but more often denied.

And I was only a spectator to social change. I was on campus that day with two UU ministers (Revs. Aron Gilmartin and Harold Wilson) in a quest for understanding of the headlines we were reading almost daily. Did I consider myself a political activist? No. Not then, and not even now. When I saw the words describing me written out on the whiteboard on Thursday morning in that classroom, it was jarring. All of those titles were endowed after the fact. They all represented simply Betty in the process of living of a life and responding intuitively to whatever presented itself. I recall when I first saw -- in print -- myself described as a cultural anthropologist, I had to look up what it meant!

Now I need to explore those files for that paper and hope that I don't lose the sense of its importance in the process -- and opt out of posting it. At times second thoughts may stifle creativity. The Sisterhood will be happy to get it, and will use it well.

2011-03-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

It's over -- but maybe it's just another beginning -- this newest chapter in the remarkable life of Betty ... .

The Humboldt experience will mark the place where so much came together for me -- at a time when it was crucial to my next steps.

I'm in one of those periods where life is unfolding at a rate that defies understanding, and when I haven't the luxury of time to process all that is happening to me and to my ability to make sense of the world. I've lived these periods before, but never with such a sense of urgency and import as now. Yesterday at Humboldt State University before combined classes of young students I was a teacher.

I may have finally come to terms with the appropriateness of May 14th and the commencement ceremonies -- as the place where academic achievement equates with life equivalency. I'm not the first, and I'll not be the last. There are a host of extraordinary ordinary folks who have been honored by the academy, legislatures, institutions, for having taken the more circuitous route toward the same goals yet arrived at the same place having had impact along the way. I think of cousin George Allen, a grandson of my enslaved great grandmother, Leontine, who rose to be president of Southern University -- only the second generation out of slavery, and the many African Americans of note who followed.

Most important, I discovered a sisterhood that exists on that campus that exemplifies the changes the world will need in order to survive the lightning quick rate of change that waits for no one. This cadre of young teachers have an excitement about them that one can only hope is reflected widely across the academy.

I rarely read back through my blog, there's
little time for that, so I'm not sure I've written about the experience of sitting in a Berkeley meeting of politically progressive elders -- mostly former east coast "red diaper babies," now grown old -- as they discussed just how we were going to change the world for the better by whatever means necessary. These were white-haired "revolutionary" veterans of peace marches, and "Save the Whales" and "A Woman's Right To Choose," etc. That was in the afternoon. That very evening I drove to the Fruitvale District of Oakland to the Nu Upper Room, an artist's collective that met in the historic old Masonic Temple where the Hip Hop generation -- guided with love by guru Rafiq Bilal -- was hosting a cultural revolution of its own -- and I discovered that those goals that were being fought for so earnestly by those Gray Panthers earlier in the day had already been achieved across town and by nightfall! One simply needed to change the lens and tilt the viewfinder a tad and nirvana was a reality. Here were young people of every color and ethnicity; visual artists, dancers, playwrights, poets, gathering in the name of black culture and honoring it and themselves in ways that were stunningly meaningful.

It was so in Arcata. Instead of idealistic black revolutionary Hip Hop Guru, Rafiq, here was this amazing sisterhood made up of Christina, Wurgil, Maria, Patty, Karla, Janet, Lorena and Barbara -- all leading eager and inquiring young students in an exploration of subject matter that only a few decades ago were being so valiantly fought over in our educational institutions. And, yes, I was in that crowd in 1968 when jauntily tam o' shantered S.I. Hayakawa stood on the rooftop of the Student's Union with his bullhorn taunting the crowd below in that dramatic confrontation over the resistance to the creation of an Ethnic Studies Department at San Francisco State. That scene ended in tear gas and law enforcement officers on horseback swinging truncheons while plowing through a mass of determined students and supporters -- a sign of the times.

On the long drive home, at Laytonville, I found myself driving through a pouring rain sobbing convulsively! My personal storm lasted until the outskirts of Willits many miles south. It was a long but cleansing drive through magnificent redwood and rushing river country that I'll remember with awe for the rest of time.

And how strange that I hadn't found closure on the S.F. State event until this adventure at Humboldt State University, some 40 years later.

Connecting the dots has become a profound ritual in these concluding years. Maybe that's reason enough for recognition on May 14th. Maybe it simply means acceptance of my role as "first source" to a history of some of the most tumultuous eras in our nation's narrative -- a time when the social landscape was altered for all time, -- and I've been witness to that history and have lived into the actualizing of what is no longer seen as alternative, but essential to the education of whole persons; whole young Americans.

And the long drive home yielded more ...

later.

2011-03-22T11:26:00.000-07:00

Just when I sense that I'm beginning to take myself too seriously ... look what happens.

First there was Tutt (another Charbonnet stranger cousin who appeared magically from cyberspace) to inquire if I knew of a Charbonnet family crest -- a Coat of Arms? I was delighted that there just might be such a thing somewhere, but punted by sending an email to Cousin Paul in Baton Rouge, the arbiter of all things Charbonnet from his side of the family. Surely such a thing could hardly have emanated from mine. This was a European thing. Our side is into ceremonial masks and totems; no crests. You may recall -- if you've been reading my blog for a while, Paul and Shirley -- from the melanin-challenged side of the family -- actually flew out to the West Coast to meet me a couple of years ago. It was a grand reunion that found us more confounded by our politics than by race. Paul is a devout conservative Republican and I, well, you know the answer to that one. But politics aside, we were absolutely delighted with what we found in each other and celebrated coming together after centuries of separation.

The next day Tutt followed up by another message announcing that he'd indeed found one, and that he would share it with me as an attachment.

Meanwhile, Paul responded with "I don't know of any, but were it possible to do so" this is what I would design in honor of our most senior and illustrious family member" (I'm paraphrasing). And, so saying; voila!

Maybe I'll have it emblazoned on a tee-shirt or make it into a flag to hang from the antenna on my little Honda. Maybe two -- one on each side a la diplomatic service!

I can just imagine getting a fit of the giggles in the middle of some self-induced profundity -- just thinking about this image!

I can just imagine historic St. Louis Cemetery in Old New Orleans sending up a roar as the ancestors roll over in their crypts! ... while in another part of the graveyard -- waaaaay over there in a corner --- others are dancin' for pure joy at what has come to pass. I've always known that there were those down through history who were always trying to get it right; and that history has mostly been written by those who didn't. And that in our generation, we've moved closer to that place of racial harmony that we all must reach before true democracy is replicable throughout the world.

Maybe it was always a family thing.

2011-03-20T16:22:00.000-07:00

When the call came from a member of the faculty at Humboldt State some weeks ago, it seemed a likely add-on to end the busiest time of the year for me... .

She told me in that original email introduction that her classes had been reading my blog after being introduced to me through a few paragraphs of Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi's recently-published history of the ACLU in California entitled, "Wherever there's a fight." Elinson had interviewed me a few years ago, and had later sent a copy as a gift -- and before the end of last year we shared the podium at the Japanese American Methodist where we were panelists.

Meanwhile, those classes have apparently viewed the videos and clips on my blog and after doing so faculty invited me to spend a few days on campus meeting with classes in Women's and Multicultural Studies. I have no idea how this will play out, but I gather that the format will be informal and that I will be primarily in a Q&A setting -- that's where I'm most comfortable, anyway.

It seems reasonable to ask for annual leave from work in order to have this on-campus experience as a preliminary to my upcoming great adventure at the California College of the Arts in May. I've had a difficult time getting into a place where that whole thing doesn't feel waaaay over-the-top and downright weird! An honorary doctorate, indeed! But maybe if I could just get out of the maelstrom for a few days, I can make some sense of it. May is coming up fast. We're at the point of having to send in the invitation list, measurements for cap and robe, begin to form a commencement address to deliver(!); and all of that has to come from somewhere within -- some place where I'll need some stillness to reach. Perhaps Humboldt State nestled in the old growth redwoods is that place.

I've never written a speech; been "uploading" truth now for years with nary a note nor clues chalked onto cuffs or palms. But it feels as if a commencement speech needs more preparation than that; more evidence of study and effort ... but whenever I try to cull those gems of wisdom that occur deep in the night to wake me from sleep ... in the morning they've vanished without a trace. And you know what? I know that it's in me somewhere and will emerge -- maybe as I stand on that dais and not a moment before -- but it would be so comforting to feel certain that I'm deserving of such an honor.

Tennyrate, I was offered the option of being flown in (50 minutes out of SFO on United), or the only other alternative -- to make that 5 and-a-half-hour drive north up Highway 101. Sounded so enticing -- given the reasons above -- until the past couple of days when the storms have been relentless. I feel so in need of that 5 hours transition time between lives. I will be driving north into rain country. The snow level has been as low as some of the Bay Area foothills this weekend. Now I'm anxiously watching the 5-day forecast and hoping for change. It doesn't look very promising. However, the die is cast, and I will leave early on Wednesday morning -- with a couple of audio books on CD (Mark Twain as narrated by Matt Damon and Howard Zinn's History of America which I've never had time to complete).

Wish me luck, guys.

2011-03-20T12:47:00.000-07:00

There are times when past and present collide and all of my dimensions get into a grand melange and there's nothing to do but simply stop! ... .

My great adventure at blogging started, after all, with my entry into the exacting science of genealogy years ago. It was in tracing my paternal line that all manner of obstacles prevented my ability to trace any of the women among the ancestors. This was particularly ironic since there is such a long line of strong women whom I remember vividly (Mammå, herself - Leontine Breaux Allen, the matriarch of the Breaux line; Aunt Vivian Jernigan, the dynamo from my mother's generation; Aunt Alice who created the first school for black children in St. James Parish; and so many others) -- but they were impossible to track due to name changes through marriage.

I first started this journal in September of 2003 as a way to leave my own history for those who come after, and, here it is March 2011 and I'm still blogging. Not only that, but I'm piling on "Life" in so many ways that I'm breathless just trying to keep up with myself!

I'm reminded of this because right in the middle of one of the most crushing speaking schedules to date, a member of the family emailed this photo of these paternal ancestors. It is by far the earliest I've ever seen, and not only that -- but it is a photograph of one of the women in my lineage. Wonder of wonders!

With my talk yesterday at Berkeley City College just completed, and, only two days away from my Humboldt State University campus adventure in the offing -- all I can do this minute is think about returning to this fascinating work that started it all. With the help of others I've partially completed 13 generations of the Charbonnet Family Tree (see links above the archives), and I'm so afraid that it will remain unfinished even as this amazing American family saga continues to unfold ... .

Then this morning I opened my mail to an announcement that the family crest has been located ... and that this distant cousin from my time will send it along as soon as received ... .

Just how many worlds can I manage to maneuver in simultaneously without crashing the space ship?

2011-03-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

... then today there was the panel on Women's Empowerment at St. Marys College in Moraga ...

Such a different view of the world!

The drive from the urban area of Richmond with its grittiness and dark view of the world -- across scenic San Pablo Dam Road; through picturesque Orinda Village and the outskirts through the once familiar now any-small-city-in-the-USA-ized town of Lafayette; across the rural landscape past the Sunday cyclists and out into the back countryside to Moraga and venerable old St. Marys College -- and it was bound to be a novel day.

I arrived at the campus Soda Center as the keynote speaker, the Mayor of Moraga, was at the lectern. The room was half-full, but then I recalled that this was the second day of a two-day conference, and participants were scattered into breakout groups. At this point I had no idea what to expect, except that I was to serve on a panel with unidentified others. Not much to go on, right?

We were given a printout with a selection of questions that might be used to guide our presentations.

It went well. I felt comfortable and able to respond to my own satisfaction.

This experience, as it happens, will serve as preparation for my 3-day, 2-night, adventure as a guest lecturer the last week in March at Humboldt State University. It may also serve as preparation for my commencement talk at California School of the Arts in San Francisco in May. That still lies ahead but is looming less and less threatening as I build on the campus experiences, before a generation that seems finally but truly ready for the honest national conversations that their parents and grandparents have avoided until now.

Such a dedicated and earnest group of young panelists, each with a passion formed of personal experience, and each having found a channel through which to effectively confront whatever challenges lay before them. I felt a deep sense of separation born of age and experience, yet an equally deep realization that such a treasure of self-discovery lies in their futures -- still forming -- and that they are each change agents who are earnestly and with love creating the world in which my grandchildren will either knowingly or unknowingly and in faith -- join them in building a world far more empathetic than the one which parented my generation.

How honored it feels to be available to stand on the same side of the racial and cultural barriers with them as we together bridge the chasm of cynicism and indifference at this end of the 1st decade of the 21st Century. The Age of Aquarius!

Whoever would have dreamed ... ?

2011-03-05T15:11:00.000-08:00

Still nursing the bi-centennial grandfather of colds and making every attempt to not let it interfere with Life with Betty ... .

The video below was done at the February 19th Family Journey Day sponsored by Supervisor Keith Carson of the Fifth District of Alameda, County. It drew about 150 hardy souls who were willing and able to attend despite a drenching extended downpour.

We were 3 panelists; a woman minister, a retired former San Francisco State head of the Department of Black Studies -- and moi.

After being totally intimidated upon noticing the voluminous notes each were clutching prior to the opening of the program (I never speak from notes), I settled in to listening for clues of what I might draw from the others when my turn came at the lectern. Fortunately, I was not the first to speak so could build on Dr. T'Shaka's words, though he didn't leave many lifelines to cling to. Our accounting of those years differed enough so that I had to find my own way in the telling.

All 3 talks are accessible on You.Tube.com, so -- the complete afternoon with Q&A are available.

This audience was interesting in that it was almost all African American, and mostly young. It was a challenge to make this history compelling to youth who've had so little preparation with which to receive it. I'm told that this program will usher in a comprehensive one that will involve learning the rudiments of genealogy and building family trees that will extend through the summer; a worthy undertaking.

They were very gracious. It was an afternoon well-spent.

Family Journeys (Part 3) || African African Family and Black History Pro...

2011-03-03T16:17:00.000-08:00

2011-02-20T14:09:00.000-08:00

Sorry to have been missing for so long ...

I know. It’s been a long time between posts -- maybe the longest time ever. But the first 3 months of the year have become busier than ever due to the increasing number of African American-related events that have found their way onto my calendar; more each year.

To completely confuse matters -- I was not only scheduled beyond reasonable expectations, but received a jury summons right in the middle of it all, and for reasons beyond my ken, I reached a point where I simply stopped everything until I could catch the ring on this merry-go-round and ride until some destination would reveal itself.

Last week, as ordered, I found myself seated in the jury assembly room in the Martinez County Courthouse at the appointed hour of 8 am. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask for release from duty (I’ve been called before but never served) because -- down deep -- I know that this is one of the rights guaranteed by the constitution to any American citizen accused of a crime. The only way those rights can be guaranteed is if ordinary people like me participate in the process. I have never, and would not ever opt out.

But in the end, that’s precisely what I managed to do. At least a deferral was granted at the very last step in the process of jury selection.

We were the last 65 potential jurors in a roomful of twice that many. We were led to the third floor courtroom of Judge Barbara Zuniga for final selection. The Bailiff set the tone. This was serious. I had no idea how that process would go, never having reached this far. We sat in awed silence as he prepared us for next steps.

Finally, we were suddenly on automatic. “All rise!” and a slim and attractive blond robed woman entered from her chambers to do what to her must have been ritual and dull. To those gathered before her, it was surely not.

I’d entered with the first 18 and therefore filed into the actual upholstered chairs of the jury stand. The rest were seated as “audience.”

She told us what we might expect over the days ahead; that those remaining in the pool were to return next Tuesday morning at the appointed hour to be examined by the attorneys, and that she didn’t expect this particular case to last more than 5 months.

Also in her preparatory speech she pretty much erased any excuses that those of us seated before her might be harboring. It said clearly on our summons that any reason for non-serving had to be submitted 5 days prior to the date issued on the summons.

Yet, here on the paper before me now was a new form that clearly stated, “I would like to be excused because ...”. She ended her presentation with the words that everyone would be excused now to return on Tuesday, but that those of us who felt that we had any reason not to serve at this time should remain in the room. This was unexpected.

Five months. At my age this could easily be the rest of my life, right? And here I am with speaking engagements that have been building over the past 3 months (January - the King Holidays; February - Black History Month; and March - Womens’ History Month), and my unique role with the National Park Service would suggest that I would need to cancel all of those (now advertised) dates with no one to send as replacement speakers. The full impact of those facts suddenly rose to be dealt with. And not from the standpoint of ego needs, but simply from the very practical standpoint of my status as the resident “elder” whose memory has become an irreplaceable asset to the work of interpretation of the Rosie stories of the Home Front.

Only this past week a major newspaper story had been published in all of the local papers about my talk at Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, and flyers were being distributed about Alameda County 5th District Supervisor Keith Carson's Family History Day in Berkeley -- in which I was to be one of 3 panelists.

And, I’ve been invited to be a guest lecturer at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California (50 minute flight) where I will be their guest on campus for 3 days and 2 nights. I’m scheduled to fly up on Wednesday, March 23rd to meet with classes in multicultural studies.

Impulsively, I managed to get enough of that into two paragraphs (starting with my age), and -- the judge must surely have seen the news articles -- and hand it to the bailiff.

It was no more than five minutes later when -- after disappearing into the judges chambers with our little slips in hand -- the bailiff returned and called my name.

“Mrs. Soskin? You are granted a deferral for 11 months. You may leave the courtroom and return to the Jury Assistance Desk downstairs off the main lobby to arrange for your return. “

I signed on to be re-summoned on November 1st.

You just never know. And by then I will have celebrated my 90th birthday!

Now, which do you suppose warranted the deferral, a consideration of my age, or, my new-found rather fragile celebrity? We'll never know.

2011-01-31T20:44:00.000-08:00

The evening was magical ... !

Lawrence was magnificent! His rich and velvety baritone-bass filled the hall without amplification. I heard the old spirituals as if for the first time; Deep River, There is a Balm in Gilead, Motherless Child, but also Summertime and Ol' Man River. The audience was racially mixed and culturally diverse (one could tell that from the fact that those new to classical music applauded at the ends of movements while the seasoned concert goers waited until the final notes of the piece have sounded). I now consider myself "seasoned," but not enough to feel superior and annoyed at the novice theater-goers who aren't clued in to (formal) audience protocols.

It's that "call and response" thing I've talked about. In my world we Black folk don't sit on our hands. We let artists know that we appreciate them. It's one of those cultural variations that will probably always remain. It's like they clap on one and three to the music, and we clap on two and four (syncopation). You can tell -- when you're sitting in a darkened theater -- that the audience is racially integrated when the rhythmic clapping falls on all four beats. If you find yourself in an audience where you're the only one clapping on two and four -- you better look around! (You may be in the wrong room.)

The city of Lafayette, California, has been given a giant leap forward in the race toward reconciliation through the Gold Coast Chamber Player's concert -- but that isn't all. On Monday evening the Veterans Memorial Hall in Lafayette is the site of the NPR broadcast of the Commonwealth Club -- an evening panel discussion in which Rep. Barbara Lee and others will participate -- the second event in the city's month-long observance of Black History Month. Would love to attend, but this is a busy week, and it's quite impossible to take the time.

If what is happening in the Diablo Valley is any indication, we need no longer ask if the Obama presidency has made a difference in national life. We are quite ready and willing to have those long delayed conversations in order to process decades of forgotten and/or neglected history.

Today I accepted an invitation to appear on National Public Radio station KALW (SF) for an hour between 10 and 11 o'clock on Monday morning, 2/7. The subject will be unsung heroes of the Home Front Era. I believe it's a call-in show, but I'll know more about that tomorrow when the producer calls to fill in the details. It will take little effort since they've suggested that I not come into the studio but do my part by telephone from my office (will wonders never cease?). I'm not at all sure that would be preferable since I think I'd much prefer seeing the person I've speaking with. Since
I'll be conducting two bus tours this week (2/3 and 2/5), there should be much to talk about.

And in the background of my mind there will be sounds of that deep, deep, rich baritone with those resonant low notes ...

Photo: The logo of the Gold Coast Chamber Players.

2011-01-23T21:41:00.000-08:00

Conversations need not all be verbal ... case in point ... .

They've been playing in the background of our national life through the Arts for decades and have probably moved us further along the path of reconciliation among people of different races than all of the speeches of all of the great orators over all of the centuries. These "conversations" (i.e. "the Kirov Ballet meets Alvin Ailey," and "Ray Charles with strings plays Carnegie Hall) have moved past novelty into the creation of new art forms in music and dance to delighted audiences throughout the world. The "Black voice" as Dvorak described it -- is so powerfully and deeply infused in all of America's popular music that we may have forgotten its origins or appreciated its contribution to the very definition of what is uniquely American in our music; or the culture of pain and anguish; the unbounded joy and deep sorrow; the struggles which produced it.

Over the past few years I've been flirting with chamber music -- and finding myself yielding to its magic but always suspecting that "... a little Mingus on bass and Max Roach or "Philly" Joe Jones on percussion -- maybe Miles with a muted riff now and again..." might improve Haydn a bit (grin!). But over time my resistance gave way to a genuine appreciation for the genre, even while secretly wishing that my greater love, jazz, might one day be seen as equally classical music. It was the violas playing Mozart and cellos playing Villa-lobos, especially, or almost anything else, that won me over in the end.

Next Saturday evening I will attend the opening concert of the Gold Coast Chamber Players in Lafayette, California -- a place located within a comfortable hike from the home we built in the 50s -- the place that was so life-changing for our family in a tumultuous time in our nation's history --- ten years or so before the Civil Rights Revolution of the Sixties, and long before we gave up the less than welcoming suburbs and retreated back to a more comfortable anonymity of a racially and culturally diverse life in the city; a debt owed to our children once they reached adolescence.

The Gold Coast Chamber Players are bringing Lafayette its first observance of Black History Month -- in a place where perhaps one percent of the population is other than white. Not only that, but the artistic director and my dear friend, Pamela Freund-Striplen, is bringing together her favorite composer, Antonin Dvorak, with brilliant African American baritone, Lawrence Beamen, in concert. Not only those two giants from different centuries and races, but also included in the program will be the work of William Grant Still, a noted African America composer from another era.

... and I will be appropriately-clad in my conservative black crepe suit with pearls -- to be (with other volunteers) greeting the music lovers upon arrival and pressing programs into their hands. And, I may be the only person in the room who realizes just how far we have all had to come in order for this to be an ordinary social event, or of how much change over how many years was necessary for any of this to even begin to be normal.

This weekend's "conversation" between Mr. Beamen and Mr. Dvorak across the ages may enable those of Diablo Valley residents to deepen. They've already had their effect upon me in that these conversations are more often being engaged in from the same side of the racial barrier, finally, and being less often shouted across chasms of hatred and acrimony. But this may be more true in this part of the country. Overall, there is still much work to be done, but Lafayette is taking the necessary steps toward fulfillment of the promise, " ...in order to form a more perfect Union".

Do watch this amazing 34 year-old "Robeson" in this interview. He was born in Mississippi but raised in Richmond, California (my town). His youth doesn't permit him to comprehend the distance we've all traveled since his grandparents back home were expected to step off the curb and into the gutter when encountering a white person on the pathway -- and never to make eye contact without threat of harm. And where hardly anyone would have known his last name -- surnames were for whites, only. Mister Beamen? Never!

But that's a conversation for another time ... .

Program, anyone?

HARMONY & MELODY with Lawrence Beamen and the Gold Coast Chamber Players

2011-01-23T21:40:00.000-08:00

2011-01-22T20:38:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday another of my bus tours will be filmed; this time by World Trust ... .

I was reminded of this PBS piece (below) that was filmed about two years ago, and I needed to view it again in order to remind myself of just what were the important lessons from that experience that I may need to call upon again.

I think if there's anything to be learned from viewing it again, it would be that one really can't prepare for such an event. It means being whoever I wake up to "being" on Tuesday, and using whatever is in the air that day. Most of the work comes with the editing, maybe. I'm pleased with this footage -- and could never have guessed how it would turn out while we were filming. In fact, somewhere along the way I forgot that the cameras were present. The film crew was very unobtrusive. Maybe it will be so this time, too.

I believe that Dr. Shakti Butler, Founder and Executive Producer, is planning to create a segment that will be incorporated into her next documentary. Her field is psychology, with specific work aimed at achieving greater understanding between those of different races and cultures. She travels throughout the country conducting workshops for educational institutions and corporations.

She invited me to her home some weeks ago where I shared a lovely dinner with her family which included her cinematographer husband, Rick Butler. I left with 3 of her films in hand, all really fine. It was surprising to find among those pictured several people whom I've met in my wanderings over time; Aisha Bilal in a dance sequence; Erika Huggins of the Black Panther Party, we've never met, but her oral history sits in a binder on my desk. She is so articulate ... so sensitive ... so insightful, so wounded yet (surprisingly) so compassionate -- that I keep that binder within reach for those times when I need centering, focus, when, temporarily, the path forward has become clouded.

Also on camera is one of my favorite speakers, Tim Wise, whose understanding of the concept of white privilege is so dead on that -- despite the seriousness of the topic -- his wry delivery of skillfully scripted comic lines rivals the best of the stand-ups! I bought a copy of his speech on video and presented it to our police chief as a gift a while back. Richmond (as does many cities) has both a black and a white police officer's association within its structure. A holdover from less enlightened times? That's a conversation I'd love to have with him someday. What's with that, anyway? I would hazard a guess that it's at the insistence of black police officers. Were it the other way, it would not be allowed, right? Should this be the other way around it would be considered racist, surely. Just one of the contradictions that we've learned to live with without questioning.

Maybe we need that conversation before I arrange for those tango lessons.

So much to do ... so little time.

This Is Us! Betty Soskin

2011-01-22T19:58:00.000-08:00

2011-01-17T13:08:00.000-08:00

DRUUMM (Diverse Revolutionary Unitarian-Universalist Multicultural Ministry)

... an organization about which I knew nothing until recently, but I'd been invited to make a presentation on my work with the National Park Service before the group at a national conference hosted yesterday by the 1st UU Church in downtown Oakland. I'd accepted since there is this little understood lack of visitation by People of Color in our national parks, and that this might be a way to reach into this community for some answers.

Because I'm never presenting from prepared notes and depending upon memory, passion, and whatever arises from the audience, I arrived on Saturday to spend an hour or so trying to get a "feel" of the group that I would appear before on Sunday afternoon.

It felt good. Home. Comfortable. I'd long ago lost the need to "belong" in connection with organized religion. It happened while I wasn't noticing. It must have been then that I released my spiritual "training wheels" and struck out on my own individual search for answers to Life's great questions. This work was far too important to entrust to any priest, lama, minister, rabbi, or shaman as intercessors, but needed to be individually confronted in a random universe. I didn't notice when that happened; and am aware of the change only in retrospect. I recall no spiritual/intellectual coming-of-age; just a drifting away into new territory that more resembled astrophysics then religion -- but that provided no more answers than before -- when I was looking over my husband, Bill's, shoulder at the Tibetan Buddhist disciplines and practices.

My youngest son, David, raised UU, but eventually returning to the Faith of Our Fathers, Catholicism, was among those in yesterday's audience. In a way, after a long absence he was returning to the humanist environment of Liberal religion. That felt good. At the end of my talk -- during the Q&A he spoke to the arc of his spiritual life and -- contrary to what might have been expected, I felt complete success as his spiritual guide through childhood in that he had chosen for himself as an adult, the faith of our centuries-old paternal line, the Charbonnet, when he opted for legacy over denominational definition. The Creole Charbonnet men had been builders of Catholic Churches in New Orleans since the early-1900s, when my grandfather, Louis Charbonnet, designed and constructed the Convent of the Holy Family Sisters - the first religious Order for African American nuns in the country; as well as the historic Corpus Christi Church in the Tremé. Among our family treasures is this fading photograph of Corpus Christi High School, one of the earliest constructed for children of color; also a Charbonnet site.

Besides, I was almost certain that the God in whom David believes as all-powerful and all-loving would understand David's mother's atheism and credit her with having gotten the love message and executed it well throughout life. Crazy? Maybe. But my children were guided toward finding their own answers to great questions -- then joined me in later life in the search for meaning, and had arrived at their own answers without losing respect for the individual choices of their parents and siblings. This speaks well for UUism.

Another discovery was that somewhere along the way it appears that I've outlived my rage. I truly believe that anger has served me well over a lifetime, but that at some point over the past decade or so, it has been transformed into something other -- yet leaving behind the associated passion. Maybe this is what has empowered my work. There is something operating that feels new and which provides an edge -- I can see it in the faces of my audiences. I'm left with an inexplicable feeling of awe at the close of each talk -- almost tearful. I've not figured this out, nor do I know how one consciously creates such moments, but oh how I wish they'd come at some earlier time of life.

But then I do dimly recall knowing such moments while singing ... when even this Atheist experiences the touching of souls -- even while doubting the very concept of "the soul." That's when the need for suspension of judgment kicks in -- and one consigns those things which one cannot touch, hear, or see -- but which one knows are there-- to be cast out onto that illusive dimension called "The Ineffable."

2011-01-09T16:07:00.000-08:00

Over the past 24 hours, I've found myself wondering for the first time, seriously, if the time hasn't come to climb out from under my flat hat and finish up in a sprint as Betty Soskin, Private Citizen?

I'm really not sure yet, that this is the proper course, but at least there are stirrings ... and, no, I've no intention of slowing down or retiring (at least not before I've taken those tango lessons and learned to play the cello).

My identity is more and more determined by an expanding public image but maybe the "juice" still emanates from my private self?

In thinking about how to handle the CYCLE gardening project -- all of the answers that rise to the top fall outside the perimeters of my ranger role. For instance, were I not with the park service it would be easy to have someone measure off the empty and garden-ready space to see just how many raised beds it could accommodate; have someone with more expertise than I to tell us how much each would cost, then initiate a campaign that would invite the public to "purchase" individual beds. Funds raised would provide the lumber for each, and -- if such a campaign were successful, we'd be off and running before we've lost the kids. How's that for an idea? It might even be possible to run such a campaign online ... needs more thought, though.

However, it's "under the flat hat" that I have six months of commitments to fulfill -- so maybe over the past 7 years the power that now fuels my work and reputation (beyond what came with me into my position from my private self) would disappear in a "poof!" once I discarded the uniform. It's so hard too gauge that. "Celebrity" can be deceptive; an ego trap.

On the other hand, maybe I can have it all. Maybe in some way those projects which seem relatively unrelated to my interpretive role with the NPS can be made to fit under some arcane classification; maybe I'm simply needing to give more time to making the connections.

I'm convinced that somewhere in here there is an explanation to just why it is that the National Park Service is having such difficulty attracting visitation from the ranks of "People of Color." The recent Oprah & Gail nationally televised visit to Yosemite was an attempt to chip away at that persistent problem. Maybe those connections must be made -- not by black celebrities from luxuriously outfitted campers -- but through relating back home in communities where the under-served and under-privileged might be introduced into the park system through home-based community-created programs as a beginning point; and by rangers of color under flat hats.

Maybe as long as I'm one of those rare beings, there is a need for me to remain in place with the full force of this great federal agency providing the wind at my back.

Maybe I've thought this through enough over the past few minutes (my fingers/brain connection usually can be counted on to deliver), and retirement can be delayed -- at least until I've found an answer to this gardening project. To Lily Mae and Lena, and to those young people -- currently, I am the federal government's response to their dilemma, I just can't fathom just how that is.

Maybe that's reason enough to carry on, at least until I locate that tango instructor.

Now if I can only figure out how to get someone else to design that fund-raising campaign while I continue to be the governmental response to those who need one.

Photo: top was taken at the Home Front Festival in 2010 at Shipyard 3 in Richmond.
bottom -- 1972 Democratic Convention at Miami Beach, Florida where I was a McGovern delegate. This may have been where "private citizen" Betty was successfully launched.

2011-01-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

Off into another year of unknowns and untested days, weeks, and months -- another gift of Time ... .

Our staff has grown considerably over the past 3 years and adjusting to just who I am and how working in this new constellation effects my work is a question to ponder. We've had 3 superintendents over the 6 or so years of my park history, and -- not only are there more than triple the number of staff as when I started, but there are positions now that have never existed before. Coming so late into the National Park System means that I will probably never feel a part of the culture, and that has both its advantages and disadvantages. I'm less representing the park out in the community than I am the community's person within the park system -- and that feels right -- as it should be.

I'm working among relatively young staff who come from a wide range of experience in both urban and wild places, and many who are having their first west coast experience. On the other hand, I'm working in a place where all but 6 years of my entire life has been lived within a 30 mile radius. And, my age -- which places me among the dinosaurs -- also means that I am a "primary source" in terms of the WWII era being enshrined by this park As such, I continue to have a legitimate place among the young with whom I'm actively engaged day-to-day, and the sense of being an "anchor" in some ways. Just hope I can avoid having that anchor turn into an albatross -- for which I'm ever watchful.

There are four parks under our management team (John Muir, Eugene O'Neill, Port Chicago, and Rosie the Riveter),which presents a variety of visitor's experiences as well as a fascinating variance in interpretive demands on each of us to be informed and actively defining "the work". This is especially true for the newest of our 4 parks -- "Rosie."

So how on earth do I fit Lily Mae Jones and her kid's violence prevention nonprofit, CYCLE, into the matrix? Not so easily, sometimes. The NPS has its own great programs that have been tested over time, Junior Rangers being one such. We have another under development at Rosie that is training a group of teens to be civic ambassadors under the direction of a very capable ranger co-sponsored by the City of Richmond (with stipends) which is designed to serve 8 young people in a year-round training that will serve their needs, the city's, and the park's mission and interpretive goals. With civic partners, we are also in the third year of development of a very successful summer program for middle school girls which is Rosie's Girls, which gives girls in their early teens a taste of non-traditional occupations ordinarily limited to boys. That serves 2 groups of about 20 youngsters daily for two cycles of 3 weeks during the summer.

On the other hand, there's Lily Mae Jones with her 50 to 85 young people (18-22) gathering together on weekends in a program of their own making. Those efforts have been stymied by lack of materials. Roots could hardly be more "grassy" than theirs, but except for my informal attempts at marrying the aims of the City and the NPS under a very broad interpretation of "civic engagement", their enthusiasm will remain untapped.

Learned yesterday in a visit to Lily that the program that supplied the young people (YouthBuild) has been temporarily stalled, and the director sacked! I'm hoping that this is simply a rumor, but then I recalled that this is often the fate of city-sponsored programs. They're usually initiated in the early days of each incoming administration because newly elected officials have campaign debts to supporters who've worked hard and must be rewarded with appointments. The easiest way to do that is to be named to head fragile programs -- mostly those designed to serve youth who haven't the political power to prevent the gutting. They're a weak constituency -- unlike that of Seniors, for example, who've learned to scream hard and loud, and march on city hall, and who vote!

That bridge that I live on between federal and city -- community and national parks -- may be primarily responsible for last week's plunge into depression. It's that feeling of recurrence of problems long thought "dealt with", that keep showing up as though for the first time. This is surely the nature of life and a function of aging. Of course, I've been here before -- and many times. And, should I live so long, will turn up again. But what is also true is that each time there are new possibilities; new tool kits to test; new technologies to explore; and new minds to unite with in finding answers.

Among the new staff members are, potentially, those with new insights with whom I can add my tested and true political experience and, together, we'll add our voices and energy to that of my "Iron Triangle Gatekeeper" friend, wonderful and altruistic through it all, Lily Mae Jones, in her persistent efforts to reduce violence among the young of her community.