All my love and thanks for all the places we've been, crises we've survived, children and grandchildren we've loved...
...and your great patience in teaching me too many things to list...what I've learned from your pleasure in sharing with everyone who comes within your range.
All of us look forward to many more June tenths with you--
most especially yours truly ...
Like everyone else, my expectations are high for President Barack Obama. Far from the East Coast where I'm usually closer to Federal action, I feel a bit disoriented. My Elderblogging friend, Betty Reid Soskin, has flown from California with her special invitation for January 20, 2009.
As I watch from Oregon, I'll think of her, an 83 year old African American (still working as a Park Ranger) who has known discrimination on both coasts and perservered through many life changes. Her next post at CB Breaux Speaks will be wonderful to read. My own hopes are expressed in the many categories listed at the end of this post.
Sunday's Oregonian featured a long article on Portland as the whitest city in the United States. It's a long and sorry story that goes back to its beginnings in the middle of the 19th century. Young Oregonians and new residents are asking more questions--a hopeful sign.
How about starting to knit again, Saz, my friend in blogland? Maybe a scarf for people in Mongolia where winter is very intense. Lots of people did it-- coast to coast, Canada, Australia. The Dulaan Project collected 12,085 handknits-- at least one item of clothing or a blanket went to more than 12,000 men, women, and children. A year's worth of knitting by many little red hens and a few roosters. Time to begin the 2007 accumulation.
More at Mossy Cottage Knits, Ryan's blog from Seattle. There's even a tiny photo of little Mongolian children as they wear the latest shipment. I could swear the brown and orange hat is the one Ron knit. Of course, it could be someone else's very original color combo.
* * * *
Emaile from my friend, Steve Hill, "... recently found good news about New Orleans: http://www.justiceclothing.com/thereis/justice/kgordon where
I ordered some shirts made in a unionized factory
that reopened there! (It's difficult to find ethical
clothing that appears conventional enough for the
office, so this site is handy.)"
* * * *
Car radio, somewhere in Massachusetts, "Rent a husband! For everything from baby to faucets to...."
Bingham, Mai
ne, Main Street
Updated political banner, Radical Vegan Food, Durham, N.H.
This morning's Comment from Joared, lively responder in Elderblogland.
"is anyone writing about New Orleans? .... it would be quite challenging to capture everything that needs to be said. Wonder if August Wilson, whose plays are so well written, would have undertaken such a script?"
Tapped into my guilty feelings: need to post something besides this one. Could I lay off some guilt on viewers; only response to it came from knitting friend Njoyia of the Harlem Knitting Circle. Do only black Americans continue to feel the pain? Do those who are not black really understand the pain of racism?
Not according to Brian Copeland, whose powerful one-man show, Not a Genuine Black Man, we saw last night. He brings humor to his terrible, personal story. Not what we've seen in Richard Pryor: this is more about us, the white Americans who think we get it but never can. Because there are not enough of us trying to make a difference. Sorry, readers, but it is Sunday and you have happened upon my soapbox, a little red hen.
Let me make it more personal. It is 1969. Ron and I have already lived with, as Jews, housing discrimination as others in two places outside New York City-- Oberlin, Ohio and Baltimore. We'd observed the "illness" of racism and its impact on African-Americans and on us. My hair is very long, Ron has almost as much on top and a bushy beard. We sit at the after-dinner table in suburban St. Louis with my father and his wife, longtime civil rights activists around school integration. I asked, "Wouldn't it have been a better strategy to go for housing integration right after WWII...when everyone was feeling positive about "the other"? They were incensed; I was their hippish, smartass child who thought open classrooms would be a good idea for my child.
Look at Brian Copeland's website. Look at the video clip from his hometown, San Leandro, California, a 1971 CBS-TV special. This was not the South. How he survived is a very powerful story. But at what cost to him--and to us? If you're in New York, the show is on till July 16. Or, you can buy his just-released book, "Not a Genuine Black Man."
By the way, Eleanor Roosevelt also believed that housing integration was the place to begin. I'm honored to be in her company. New Orleans? Send a check to Common Ground or one of the black colleges, Xavier University of Louisianna.
Because my son and daughter-in-law, Nick and Leanne, were living in New Orleans in 2002, I decided to take This Dirt Museum on the road. With their help, I connected to delightful people, hospitality, and an introduction to the city's delightful enthusiasm for the unexpected.
Ever since beginning this blog, I've wanted to express my concern about the present and future of New Orleans and the Guf Coast. Up to now the website link to Common Ground Collective has been a stand-in for my wish to DO SOMETHING useful. That's a feeling shared by all Americans of good will. We wish for a more personal connection--after we've sent money for relief efforts, books to the New Orleans library.
Is this urge too self-serving? It certainly is the right instinct when we see that our government's response is no-response. So much could have been different if the feds had created massive programs along the lines of the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps to clean up and re-build. Though this elderblogger is not able to join the thousands of college students and medical professionals running a clinic who have volunteered at the Common Ground site, I hope that writing about the area reminds you to do what you can. Send money, if possible, encourage young people to participate in hands-on relief efforts.
In my "Favorites" file, I keep the link to The Times Picayune, New Orleans' daily paper. The image at the top of this page is the best piece ever written about my life with worms. It appeared April 12, 2002, as an alert about my many performances at Kingsley House, Crescent City Farmers Market, Tulane University, and the Botanical Garden. (I was younger then.) Arranging red wigglers to spell "Compost" was inspired. A readable copy is on the wall of my current installation at Knitty City.
Sadly, the Times Pic, as its known, carries bad news this week. FEMA is closing the facility that housed up to 40,000 volunteers who have been giving their time and energy to re-building efforts. What can we do? Write our congressmen/women, lobby those running for national office.
Wanting to end this post with some upbeat nostalgia, I offer a view of one of the objects New Orleanians particularly enjoyed. Before I plunged into kitchen composting, my art form was neckpieces crafted from weathered shells, beads, hardware. Once I discovered that wet compost could be handled like clay, would dry very hard, I had an exotic new medium--vermicompost, a/k/a, transformed garbage, to use as beads.
Compost Necklace. Components, starting from bottom: Manhattan compost (center square bead, note white eggshell), carved bone beads, flattened bottle caps, Mexican compost (round and small square beads), Italian glass beads, Jute cord, copper clasp.
"It is just not natural to speak of New Orleans in the past tense. There is an element about it that is timeless, that is always the present. The past in New Orleans cohabits with the present to an extent not even approximated in any other North American city." -- Tom Piazza, Why New Orleans Matters, 2005
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