a little red hen

Black History Month Ends: what do we know now...that we did not know before?

On UP with Chris Hayes,Chris ends each hour by asking his panelists the same question.  It's the one we could all be asking as we engage in newspaper reading, political program watching:  What do we know that we did not know before?  I've appreciated the reminder on how to be more reflective about new information.

Black History Month traces its origin to 1926 when it was conceived by Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) as Negro History Week.

" When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his "proper place" and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary."
   -- Dr. Carter G. Woodson, "The Miseducation of the                                             Negro" (1933)

The 2012 observance of Black History Month on PBS had highs and lows-- my, not very humble opinion. The most useful take-away from the program that received the much promotion and commenorative button at top,  "More than a Month"  was being re-introduced to the writings of Dr. Woodson. Filmmaker, Shukree Tilghman, learned about him on a visit to The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, the group Woodson founded that keeps the yearly event in play. 

Otherwise the program was annoying, too focused on the filmmaker's being clever. For a more nuanced perspective than mine, Channing Kennedy of ColorLines questions Tilghman on his provocative premise that Black History Month is "always about the same four people," and focuses too much on slavery.  By the end of the film, Tilghman has encounters that change his mind.  He might have used clips from Anthony Stewart's video.  Produced in 2008, its goal was to promote reading Woodson's 20th century book for its 21st century applicability.  

  

 "SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME" was the kind of PBS production that reminded us of the old days. That time when the corporation presented intellectually stimulating and genuinely controversial programs rather than the faux and jokey "More Than a Month."

Both of us thought we were pretty well-informed about slavery.  Ron Bloom taught at an historically black university, Morgan State, for most of his professional life, worked with health care professionals at Harlem Hospital until a few years ago.  We lived for almost 30 years in Baltimore, Maryland, a predominantly black city with a deep history and present of racism.  Peonage, "debt slavery" was completely unknown to either of us. That's embarrassing for white progressives to acknowledge but true.  How much more do we not know?

...debt slavery or debt servitude, is a system where an employer compels a worker to pay off a debt with work. Legally, peonage was outlawed by Congress in 1867.  However, after Reconstruction, many Southern black men were swept into peonage though different methods, and the system was not completely eradicated until the 1940s. 

Watch What is Peonage? on PBS. See more from Slavery by Another Name.

Douglas A. Blackmon, co-executive producer and, author of "Slavery by Another Name", is Atlanta Bureau Chief at the Wall Street Journal.  Next week he answers questions at a screening: Princeton University on March 7 in McCormick Hall, in case you live nearby.  I'm hoping he gets to blindingly-white Portland, Oregon, before next year's Month, and reveals how continued peonage in the U.S. illuminates the unthinkable:  Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Declaration did not end slavery. 

 “Why is Black History only acknowledged during the shortest, and one of the coldest,  months of the year; in the dead of winter?” Dr. Carter G. Woodson, 1926

Don't Tell ME What To Do!

Swell way to start the day.  Read Feminema's blog, found image and followed her link to Keep Boehner Out of My Uterus where a comment led to today's Washington Post (local) article, "Women's PAC Formed Following Abortion Legislation." 

Missed Rachel Maddow Show last night or I'd have learned about that PAC in Virginia:

 

Will women in other states start a similar, bi-partisan Women's Strike Force?  The brand new group raised $10,000 in its first day of operation.

 

Alabama could use one.  Today legislation similar to the one that claimed everyone's attention in Virginia, a “State Mandated Rape” Anti-Abortion Bill , will be debated in the state senate.  The anti-choice, Republican governor of Alabama could be looking toward some challenging days ahead similar to Virginia's governor.

But it is scary that so many of these keep popping up.  The anti-abortion "Heartbeat Bill" in Ohio .  A woman state legislator, hoping to fool who [?], has sponsored  another fetal ultrasound bill under the title, "Women's Right to Know" in Pennsylvania.

There are others-- Oklahoma and Georgia.  Little of this has been covered in what I read.  Only through Google searches about "states with anti-abortion legislation" did I discover much of what's posted here. 

Most hidden and most disturbing is a bill in Congress, "District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," pushed forward by an Arizona congressman.  Where did it come from?  It is modeled on legislation promoted by the National Right to Life organzation.  Mike DeBonis has a blog on the WaPo, that describes the bill while reminding me that D.C. needs statehood for crying out loud.

What is this? 

Women are only 17% of members in Congress.

Wearing it every day so you will ask me!

Thanks to the Feminist Majority who had the idea.

 

UPDATE 2/29/12

 

Forty-something whine: granny carts so soon?

My Wednesday did not begin as expected.  I blame the New York Times--not unlike blaming the patriarchy.

The food section, known officially as "Dining and Wine," appears this day, perfectly midweek for as long as I can recall.  Even when its contents are too rich--restaurants with $60 entrees breathlessly reviewed or kitchen equipment no one needs--I look forward to turning its pages.  Perhaps this week a wonderful recipe will appear.  

Turning the first page I could not miss this Tony Cenicola photo.  Though in black/white in my newspaper, it was startling with its size right in the middle of the page: eleven by six inches.  It dominated the top half of page D3 and was not even about food.

"There's a Younger Hand on the Granny Cart" was the heart-breaking and l-o-n-g piece by Helene Stapinksi.  Feel her pain:

"I remember the moment I realized that I might have to cave in and buy a granny cart....I was no longer a young mother but a 46-year-old aging parent, lost in that twilight time between pushing a stroller and driving a motorized scooter."

Good grief, I thought, are these girls (I'm sure that's how she sees herself) finished with life so early?  What happened to all those decades later that many of us enjoyed--the fifties, the sixties, the seventies.  Okay, as I move toward eighty, the view is more limited. 

Next Helene focuses on disguises for her awful, potential cart.  Maybe one that looks like a baby stroller.  A salesman supports her disgust, "...useful but an eyesore."

Doing due diligence-- putting off the purchase that will brand her as old-- Helene checks out Trader Joe's in Brooklyn and is relieved to see a 23 year old with a small blue, "nonna cart."  Classier in Italian?  Was it possible that these awful necessities were on their way to:

    ...hip, urban accessory and I was on the cusp of a trend, not the verge of decrepitude.

Doesn't that statement cry out for a tee-shirt design.  On the front, "I'm a trend-setter in NYC"  and the crisp Cenicola photo on the back.  Tthe Times could produce it as a special for anxious forty-somethings in New York-New Jersey-Connecticut.

A true "Sex in the City" girl, she sucks it up by the end of the piece, shells out $27.99, accepts that she will not look cool. Accepts her dark fate, Helene ends with another of her many ageist stereotypes:

...ready to knock over anyone who looks at me funny.

Before I finished the paper, those Times' editors had another punch waiting.  This one in the Sports section about Janet Evans, an Olympic swimmer in California who'd taken time off to have two children. 

I struggled with turning 40...Someone said, 'How do you feel now that your life is half over?'  I wasn't ready to accept that it was all downhill from here...

Did you hear me screaming?  In a week when women's reproductive lives are on the line, is Janet Evans aware that the future of her five year old daughter is threatened, and for crying out loud, she blithely joins her sister on the other coast to perseverate about getting old.  I notice that her discomfort with aging did not stand in the way of signing on to sponsor ("business partnership") that older people's favorite, Metamucil.

This is why I did/still do feminism?

At least there was a recipe, "Perserved Lemons Brighten a Stir-Fry" which in my old lady way, I tore out for a future meal for me and my old man.  Thanks to you Food Writer, Melissa Clark; I definitely do not want to know your politics.

"Jobs are not in my uterus!" Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC

Is there anything else for intelligent women to say right now? Splash it across a very bold, very red banner. Wear it across our chests like those suffragettes who captured the vote for women one hundred years ago in Oregon.

Aside: shout-out to Oregon's "Century of Action"  to spice up the local effort. Make getting the vote--8 years before the entire country--about something in the everyday lives of women today.  In 1912, imagine, it was possible for Oregon's governor West to go all out for women suffrage:

"Many men today are traveling through life on what their wives or stenographers know...many of us old ward heelers will have to take a back seat..."     

It was 2007 when I first met Melissa Harris-Lacewell (her name at the time).  Bill Moyers brought her into our living room on PBS.  She'd  just moved from the University of Chicago to become an Associate Professor at Princeton.  She talked at length about race in the interview, "Barack Obama is where we can project our attitudes about race...He is going to try not to have a conversation about race."  She did not see him getting the Democratic nomination in 2008--she hoped for vice-president!

It's five years later; Obama is president.  In our changed world, Melissa Harris-Perry, now married, lives in New Orleans as a Prof at Tulane University, and-- after many guest appearances with Rachel Maddow-- she has her own show.  Describing herself as "a black feminist scholar," she plunged into controversial issues this first day.  Her show expanded my understanding around current politics and introduced forefront other thoughtful, intelligent young people, some scholars. some not.

In the first session were Dorian Warren, Columbia University and Baratunde Thurston, The Onion, and author of the recently published book, How To Be Black.  Earlier a very stodgy Edward Cox (son-in-law to Nixon) sat beside Warren and was clearly floating about in a Goldwater type 20th century world.

Peter Edelman, Georgetown University Law School, older than Cox and not having to defend the Republican Party, pointed out that social issues have been brought into play by Santorum and his Gingrich from their fear that an improving economy takes steam out of their claims that Obama ruined it all.  The fallback becomes women's bodies rather than jobs.  Even though these are not in our uterus! 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 "All Republicans want to be our Daddies--particularly to girls," Melissa noted and delivered this lecture on "Compulsory Motherhood," in second hour of the show. Chloe Angyal, an Editor at the blog, Feministing, had joined her, wondered, "Who knows what comes next?"  Melissa, "I know--aspirin!"  Edelman said it was a losing strategy and Chloe responded, "If people are losing the conversation, they become loud."  Which is, of course, what is happening, much to the delight of the media who have kept it going far beyond its expiration date stamp.

I am with Melissa in feeling nervous about the potential power of this anti-woman position, about the success in various states with getting "personhood" into legislatures.  Chloe brought forward the imagery in my mind of The Handmaid's Tale:

"Forced birth is what we're talking about here in the personhood of the fetus.  Used to be a fringe position."

In the second hour of the show, gay marriage was brought in along with the right's focus on marriage at the moment when fewer women with children are electing to be married.  Joining the group were Jawn Murray who was new to me and Toure who is an MSNBC regular.  The link leads to a conversation on NPR that Toure had with Michele Norris last year about his book, "Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness: What It Means To Be Black Now."  He dismisses the notion of the U.S. as "post-racial."  Both of them spoke about Whitney Houston whose funeral was taking place in Newark, New Jersey, as the program was in session.

Trying to keep up with note-taking, I ran down in the last half hour. Missed the Sunday edition but it is all online so I can review, catch up, get ready for the exam.  I ready to learn more and hope America is too.

Feminism, as understood by men as well as women, brought all of the above to us:  thank you Rachel Maddow and our foremothers/fathers who worked so hard to get women suffrage.  

Two Breads, different outcomes: one small book

In a semi-organizing mood one day, I approached my shelves of recipe book for bread.  Some, like  Jean Hewitt's 1971, New York Times Natural Foods Cookbook, have other recipes.  A favorite was a simple "Crusty White Bread," an ersatz French bread, made with olive oil or clarified butter.  Many guests were once impressed.  

"Baba a Louis Bakery Bread Book" by John McLure, rarely mentioned among the bread bloggers, was one I purchased a few years ago in NYC but never used. The subtitle, "The Secret Book of the Bread," seemed to promise more than a slim volume might deliver.  I was about to be surprised by a delicious bread and a radical (for me), new approach for raising dough.

But first, an introduction to McLure and his bakery in Vermont.  He shared about a mysterious health condition and receiving a "chain cake," similar to a chain letter.  He was instructed to pass along some soured batter he'd been sent.  He used all of it to make a cake in the shape of an ahkh.

Then fed it to "our pet pig."  Okay, I could see why I'd put the book aside:  it did not mesh with my life in Manhattan.  It felt too 1960s and I needed to be more grounded.  Now, however, in Portland, Oregon, which sometimes feels as if it is levitating, I was more prepared for his secrets on "reversing the decline of bread."

Photo from his book illustrates McLure's method for creating a properly moist environment for the second rise of the dough.  The picture was important to show dough in a baking pan covered by an inverted baking pan.  I have no idea why the bread pan is elevated but do get that the pot on top was to keep the warmth inside.

My approach was to spray water inside the bottom of a deep roast pan(had to be high enough so loaves would not make contact as they expanded.  Covered it all with a dish towel tucked around all the open spaces.  Almost engineering.   

Open Sesame (a la Baba) was the "soured yeast" bread which did not use my own sourdough starter but:  

3 cups wheat flour

3-1/4 cups white flour

1-1/2 tsp active dry yeast

1-1/2 Tbsp sea salt

2 cups + 2 Tbsp water

...were mixed together to "form a nice firm ball of dough, placed in a covered bowl, left to rise for 12 hours. Resulting in a soured dough.  Earlier 3/4 cup of sesame seeds had been roasted.  After this long first rise, the dough was cut in half and seeds kneaded into each piece, shaped into round loaves, then put into the towel-covered cocoon above for several hours to double.  Coated with egg glaze, baked at 375 for 40 minutes.  Tasted so good, sesame seeds very subtle, long-lasting. 

Delighted with this one, I tried another McLure recipe, Peter's Grain Bread-- soaked oatmeal, bulghur, wheat flakes, sunflower seeds and millet.   Same method but did not a success.  Know what I need to do differently.  Will try again because I'm intrigued by the mix of ingredients.

Never learned the story-behind-the-story of ankh cake or how McLure moved past his health problem. Looking for information on the ankh, however, led straight to a blog by a gentleman in Harlem!  Back in my last neighborhood.  He has studied the  Secret of the Ankh, and believes it is "...not only a symbol of Life but the elements that create life."  Like bread.

 

 

 

Cultural Geography @ Maple Grove Cemetery

It's winter term at Portland State.   Cultural Geography this time for myself as Senior Auditor.

Unlike the highly motivated and much younger Dianne at Schmidleysscribbling, I take no tests,  get no grades.  However, she works toward a PhD.  At 70, or will she be 71 when she actually holds it in her hand?  Am I correct in assuming that higher ed still delivers something printed, a document to hold in one's hands?  Please, not a PDF printed out at home. 

My (note the sense of ownership here) prof, Hunter Shobe,  does expect a certain level of participation from auditors.  Not too much, as we old people with our weighted bags of "knowledge" and "experiences" would love to share, Hunter likes just a drop or two.  Class has 50 students. "Proper auditor etiquette" is described by PSU HERE.

Cemeteries in the landscape were the subject recently.  Because this is the "new" geography, begun in the 1980s, refined further in the 90s.  It is more humanistic than in the first half of the 20th century where maps and regions were the focus. People and their lives and urban considerations are now included.  We attempt to read the "text" of what surrounds us.*  Cemeteries are part of that, places with which I've enjoyed chance encounters.  With little personal history beyond my own life, I'm curious about the lives of others.  Similar curiousity enhanced my practice of psychotherapy: listening to family histories,  creating genograms, family maps from these.

Walking through cemeteries was accidental until the birth of Roxie, our third grandchild.  We spent afternoons with her wandering the 65 acres of the best park in Kew Gardens, New York, where her family lived at the time.  It was one of those unexpected finds:  Maple Grove Cemetery.  Founded in 1875, described on its website as "rural," it  has its own fact-filled book, now in a second edition.  Dense with trees and other foliage, it was an oddly quiet place in the City. 

We encountered few visitors other than the occasional person tending a grave.  Every now and then we could sit on a concrete or wrought iron bench.   Roxie was a few months old, mostly sleeping in her baby carriage when we began our walks in the winter of 2007.  Two years later she  talked, was restless in a stroller bcause she had learned to walk "by myself."

Guiseppe Izzo's marker at the top of this post was one of the first graves I photographed.  He had been electrocuted?  No, a young employee of the Long Island Railroad, working on a Sunday, he  stepped on the third rail.  He was scheduled to leave for Italy the next day--June 13, 1915-- to join otherf Italian immigrants to enlist in the Italian Amy. This information was available in the Maple Grove archives a few weeks ago.  Today to satisfy my nosiness about David Morrison, whose spouse gave his religiosity more weight than her own name, I visited the site again and was disappointed to read a note "Interment Database is temporarily unavailable."

Fortunately I'd written about Guiseppe in a one-pager handed to Hunter Shobe along with these images, so I did not have to rely on my memory to write this.  He will show the class selections of our photos. In the  next post, there will be other pictures I took for their variety of styles and different ways of expressing loss.

 *More on cultural georgraphy... two of the non-academic course readings.  Michael Casey, Che's Afterlife, the Legacy of an Image and Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust, a history of walking.  Textbook, virtually unreadable as is much academic writing, Pamela Shrumer-Smith, editor, Doing Cultural Geography.

 

 

 

Occupy Portland: UNSUBSCRIBE

The headline Occupy Protestors Do Some Damage shocked us.  Just across the river in our family's neighborhood--not downtown.  It was an Oregonian story buried on the second page of the Metro of Tuesday's Oregonian.  According to news reports, the people who did the window-breaking and related damage (a 15 year old boy among them) were not representative of an Occupy group.  The "official (?)" group was on a nighttime march intended to protest police brutality in Oakland, California. From the news report:

"At one point, protesters began fighting among themselves, arguing about how to proceed. Some demonstrators advocated keeping the protest peaceful and others disagreed." 

As I wrote here a few days ago,  Occupy Portland seems unfocused in its publicized interest in stopping housing foreclosures.  Others have questioned consequences of the dominant "whatever" attitude, the resistance to organizational structure or any form of leadership.

On the first page of the same Metro section, columnist Steve Duin described attending a Sunday meeting of the official (?) Occupy group.   One of them acknowledges that many were:

"...happy to see the Park occupation end. We'd lost control.  Totally.  By the end, we had 75 to 80 percent homeless there."

Duin echoes what I wrote here five days ago on the need for focus and positive actions on substantive issues:  

"...[they] must remain engaged in the housing and health care debates, link arms with the interfaith commmunity and remind Portlanders that the symbol of free speech has evolved from a speakers' corner..."

His column must have been delivered to the paper before Monday night's outbreak.  I look forward to a follow-up column.  Perhaps he can decode the twisty rationale at Occupy Oregon, titled  "Police Respond Violently to Anti-Police Brutality March."

A non-violent movement must find a way to distance itself from any kind of violence.  It must also look at its own behavior.  If its anti-police-violence statements and marches attract out of control actors, then is this an appropriate use of its time and energy when there are on the ground issues that need attention?

And so I unsubscribe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OCCUPY supports homeowners, sometimes singing

Every few days Portland Occupier sends a message.  It is always a reading challenge with its absence of paragraphing in the email form.   Here in a more readable way is "Saving the Home of Angelah Hill," [photo by Paul] about an employed, registered nurse who has run an adult care home in Portland, Oregon for over 10 years.

In 2008, her income dropped "through no fault of her own," and her home has been in and out of foreclosure since then according to this report.  While I struggled to put the pieces together, it was not hard to appreciate the post's description of racist practices by banks.  In this case it was Wells Fargo.

What I expected to read was not there:  what Occupy Portland plans to do to support Ms. Hill.  In other cities, the Occupy groups have been pro-active. Detroit, the 18th worst city for foreclosures in the U.S. (down from its #1 spot in 2008) has more than 70,000 unoccupied homes.  This week, according to Think Progress, with efforts from Moratorium Now, Occupy Detroit and Homes Before Banks, a family won back their home;  the bank accepted the family's revised offer to buy back their home.

 On the Rachel Maddow Show tonight an earlier effort in October 2011, was featured about a group known as  Oranizing for Occupation brought along women and men, black and white, to sing "Listen Auctioneer" in a Brooklyn foreclosure court.  Some were arrested.  Only one of four foreclosures took place that day.

 

Again last week, in a detailed post from the Village Voice via Occupy Las Vegas, (please do not ask me to explain) more song by many more advocacy organizations (and their supporters sang in a Brooklyn, New York  courthouse-- "driving the police crazy." Among the recently organized supporters Housing is a Human Right and  Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE).

Many thanks to the blog, The Faculty Lounge, for the words to "Listen Auctioneer."  Let's learn them, Portland:

Mrs. Auctioneer, all the people here

we're asking you to hold off the sales right now.

We're going to survive but we don't know how.

A complete rendition below, music with words, from Organizing for Occupation, New York City residents from the "activist, academic, religious, homeless, arts, and progressive legal communities who have come together to respond to the housing crisis."

 

 

Joe Vithayathil & Happy Cup Coffee meet on Fox News

It is late afternoon, Wednesday, February One, in my world.  Many happenings in the past two days.  To begin:  a little red hen got a new outfit.

To make the changes, I used the re-design service at TypePad, thanks Melanie. The next blogging year (#6 begins in March) features fixed width margins, an enlarged hen and chicks, part of the loaf of bread hen has made--with no help from the neighborhood cat, dog, pig.  And so much more RED.  With a serious line failure in my building, I had no way to make an "announcement."  Thanks to the universe, Ellen of Cinderellen's Corner happened by, noticed, liked it.  Approval from Cape Cod, excellent.

We awakened too early yesterday.  That was Tuesday.  Why, we wondered, then remembered it was a BIG day for our liquid of choice,  HAPPY CUP COFFEE.  Joe V. from the local Fox TV News was coming to visit at the roaster.  An early morning guy, Joe Vithayathil did six segments of  "Joe on the Go."  We were impressed with his 5 a.m. energy and enthusiam.  Listen to one segment HERE and watch the roaster spin.

KABUM is the name of the Ugandan coffee beans he's holding.   Last month the company came to Happy Cup because they wanted to make the connection with another organization like theirs, one working to improve the lives of  the less fortunate in the world.  There's an impressive story at the Kabum website:  sending the majority of profits back to the individual grower, who gets bonuses for a quality product and micro-loans to buy their own land and  equipment.

 After asking about the art, music, theatre programs for people with disabilities at  Full Life, the twelve year old organization behind Happy Cup,  Joe V. stayed to meet several clients as they assembled the new Happy Cup Valentine Gift box (now with Portland's own Moonstruck chocolate).  The name of the client who packs the coffee is stamped on each bag. 

Flash TV and a radio program  are other activities women and men enjoy at Full Life.   There's an impressive Drum Circle led by one of those talented musicians attracted from elsewhere to Portland's lively creative life.  Clients and staff enjoyed Joe V's  interest and look forward to a return visit to see more of all that goes on at Full Life