Terrapin Station

The Great Mandala

I was watching a video of Lilith Fair yesterday, and I was very struck that all the artists said they were surrounded by music in their early years. Sheryl Crow, Shawn Colvin, Emily Saliers & Amy Ray, all the others, every single one. Their parents played them tons of music and it stuck and it got into their heads and it worked its magic. 

 

I was raised listening to Peter, Paul & Mary, The Kingston Trio, John Denver, Simon & Garfunkel, as well as lots and lots of folk Mass and church music. Harmony has great power for me.

 

I listened to this one again today. I remember the first time I really listened to the words, as a young teen. It affected me so powerfully then, and now. I guess it's no wonder that I grew up to be a belated hippie peacenik, despite my conservative Republican parents. What the hell did they expect? 

 

I love this version, with Richie Havens and Peter Yarrow. 

 

The Great Manadala (Wheel of Life) 

 

So I told him that he'd better shut his mouth
And do his job like a man.
And he answered "Listen, Father,
I will never kill another."
He thinks he's better
than his brother that died
What the hell does he think he's doing
To his father who brought him up right?

 

Take your place on The Great Mandala
As it moves through your brief moment of time.
Win or lose now you must choose now
And if you lose you're only losing your life.

 

Tell the jailer not to bother
With his meal of bread and water today.
He is fasting 'til the killing's over
He's a martyr, he thinks he's a prophet.
But he's a coward, he's just playing a game
He can't do it, he can't change it
It's been going on for ten thousand years

 

Tell the people they are safe now
Hunger stopped him, he lies still in his cell.
Death has gagged his accusations

We are free now, we can kill now,
We can hate now, now we can end the world
We're not guilty, he was crazy
And it's been going on for ten thousand years!

 

Take your place on The Great Mandala
As it moves through your brief moment of time.
Win or lose now you must choose now
And if you lose you've only wasted your life.

 

Songwriters: Albert B. Grossman / Mary Allin Travers / Peter Yarrow

The Great Manadalla (Wheel of Life) lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

Free Inhabitants in 1860

 

Sarah Elizabeth Brown Swarthout, enumerated in line 11, was my second great-grandmother; that is, my grandmother's grandmother. My great-grandfather, her son Richard Brown Swarthout, was not born until 1862, so he is not included in this census. 

She is physically real to me because I actually own a few beautiful coin silver spoons engraved with her maiden name. They were wedding gifts. And I have some of her wedding silver flatware, with her monogram on it. 

All this to say:

The census form is titled "Free Inhabitants" and I am not being able to get over that today. It covers me like a mantle of bricks. 

About time, I guess. 

This good reflection by my friend Rosa about the National Memorial for Peace and Justice is on my heart today too. 

 

 

 

 

Book Review & Giveaway: Raising White Kids

Say something. Don't say nothing! 

Jennifer Harvey's Raising White Kids is an excellent introduction to the issue facing parents and grandparents of how to talk about racial issues that I was taught "it's not nice" to talk about. 

The fact that I phrase it that way tells you that I'm white. I should also say that I grew up in the South with tremendous privilege, many advantages, and virtually no Black peers at school. In the  1930's, my mother had to parade to the graves of Our Beloved Confederate Dead to lay a wreath (this was in Tallahassee.)  We had black maids when I was little and that was IT. I rarely saw and never met people who weren't Caucasian. 

My parents never, ever talked about race with us that I recall, beyond one time when I came in from watching TV and announced, "Black people are so lucky!" My parents looked startled and asked me what I meant. "Because their white teeth look so nice against their dark skin!" Mom and Dad sort of rolled their eyes and said, "well, maybe." I was aware that I had said something silly but they didn't go any farther with it. I slunk away, ashamed. 

Say something. Don't say nothing! 

Now, as I care for my almost four-year-old granddaughter, I want to do better, but I do not know how. This book gave me an introduction to ways I can improve on what I was (not) taught. 

Harvey gives examples of her own and other children saying things and asking questions that would have been quashed the way mine was back in the 70's, and discusses her responses and the conversations that followed. In that vein, my parents could have asked me more questions and explained a little bit about why black people actually have quite a bad time in America, and why. It would not have been too early to tell a 7-year-old those things. 

Recently I was playing a CD of children's songs for my granddaughter (we love to sing together and I sing her all sorts of things: hymns, folk songs, playground doggerel.) "Jimmy Crack Corn" came on and I fast-forwarded! Nash said, "why did you do that?" I said, quickly, "Gramma doesn't like that song." I missed the opportunity to explain to her WHY. Because it's a song about a slave caring for a master. Because it has a history in blackface minstrelsy. I just shut it down. I was embarrassed and scared. 

Say something. Don't say nothing! 

I read Nash a book about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King on his holiday last month, and we talked about how sometimes people are not nice to others because of the color of their skin. I had planned that. I was ready for her questions. But it's the questions that she asks when I am NOT ready that I need to find the courage to face head-on. To wonder with her about them. Jennifer Harvey's book has begun to prepare me for the task. I expect to be uncomfortable and probably to stumble. But I am determined to try. 

 

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I received two hardcover copies of this book from Abingdon Press with the understanding that I would write an unbiased review and give away one of the copies. If you are interested in reading it, please comment here or on the Facebook post and I'll draw a name at random on March 15.  

1 of every 10 people

 
From a Facebook status:

‎1 of every 10 people is gay. That means 1 of every 10 people is instantly put down, labeled, left alone, put in a minority and so much more, all for something they didn't choose. Many gay teens are committing suicide as a way of escaping. If you want to tell them life will get better and you respect them for who they are, copy this into your status. Most of you won't, but let's see the 5% who will.

I almost never copy in these FB status things.  Mostly because they tell me to do something, and I don't want to be told what to do.  They make bets on whether I'll do it; the answer is, I won't. 

But the 1 in 10 is an important number for me.  My sophomore year of college, I did a speech in Technical Speaking class on Ryan White.  You remember him, and if you don't, follow the link.  (It was news to my class that day.) 

In my speech, I mentioned (from my careful research) that 1 in 10 people is gay.  I remember the professor saying, "1 in 10!  That can't be right!"  I assured her that my (impeccably documented) source said it was.  She and the rest of the class shook their heads in utter disbelief.  I could not convince them. 

There were 30 of us in that class.  It was Texas A&M in the mid 1980's.  It was an insanely conservative place, but also the home of the Corps of Cadets, which (anecdotes say) has at least its fair share of homosexuals. 

So, probably two to three people in the class were, indeed, gay.  Closeted, almost certainly.  In the years to come I'd go to "the gay bar" in that town with friends.  It was a scary time.  Would it get raided?  The building was a warehouse, completely unidentifiable from the outside.  No one bought mixed drinks then; bottled beer was it, because there was a theory that you might get AIDS from a poorly-washed glass but beer bottles were safe.  One of my friends from that era died, within 10 years, of AIDS, but I am entirely certain he didn't get it from a glass. 

So if there were three people in that class when that statement was made, and refuted...how did they feel?  Marginalized.  Invisiblized.  Nullified. 

It's been 20 years and we are still trying to put forth the facts.  It's time we spoke, shouted, screamed, loudly enough to be heard. 

 

"Afghan Boys Are Prized, So Girls Live the Part"

Mehran Rafaat, 6, left, and her twin sisters, Benafsha, center and Beheshta, near their home in Badghis Province, Afghanistan. (New York Times photo)

Two friends that I respect (one of them an anthropologist) posted a link to this article on Facebook, noting that it was very interesting. 

I found this article interesting, indeed, but also deeply upsetting.  

Working in international education, I'm accustomed to trying not to judge other cultures against my own (practicing cultural relativism).  Comparisons are odious, you know.  However, I am very disturbed by the injustices perpetrated on the women in the article. 

I have no idea how that can be changed, or if it's my business.  I THINK it is.  You've got your UN Declaration of Human Rights, and your Millenium Development Goals.  And then there's the proposition by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Nomad, which I mentioned in this post. 

Thoughts? 

Uganda

(demonstration outside the Ugandan mission in New York - CNN photo)

I'm a big fan of getting local news about something, and talking with someone "on the ground."  I've had too many panicky parents call and say, "there was an earthquake in Mexico!" wondering if their child is okay...not realizing that their child is as far from the earthquake zone as they are from Iowa, and he or she doesn't know it happened.

Today I was in a meeting with a person from Uganda.  Someone else in the meeting asked, "so what do you know about that anti-homosexuality bill?"

She told us she had called a relative to ask that question, and he told her that yes, the bill would certainly pass, because the populace was definitely behind it.  But that no one would be executed!  They might be put in jail, but they would definitely not be executed.  And that, really, it would be awfully hard to prove homosexuality anyway, wouldn't it?

Unless you were looking for it, I thought.  No matter whether the person really was homosexual.  What is proof, in that system?

Besides, it's not just "go to jail."  It's "life in prison."

Persons found to be HIV positive can also be executed. 

Here's a CNN story.

I can't say that my colleague and her relative are wrong.  But I surely do wonder.  And oh, I am praying.

World AIDS Day

One patch from the AIDS Memorial Quilt. 
 

I remember Brian, and so many others.  Don't ever forget. 

My Mama Writes

If you haven't already done so, please go read my mama's great blog post about the book The Pain and the Promise .  I found this book at Half-Price Books one day, browsing through the Civil Rights section looking for Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man. 

I SNATCHED it up, because while I never lived in Tallahassee, it and the surrounding area are a big part of me.  My mother grew up there, and we went there every summer.  In addition, my mom's stories of growing up in that idyllic small-town, deep-South milieu were always fascinating to me.  I can't tell you how much time I spent poring over her yearbooks and wishing that I were there, then.  Of course, the truth (I am certain!)  is that those beautiful girls with the pageboys, those handsome young men in their letter sweaters, having the dates in the malt shop, were every bit as insecure and teenagedly miserable as I was 40 years later! 

I read the book, identified many of the names and families, was horrified, and eagerly took it to mom to read, fascinated to know how much if it she would recall.  And the answer was:  almost none.  She had been quite completely protected from it, as the white men running the city intended.  She had an entirely different experience of Tallahassee in the 50's and 60's than described in the book.

Enough from me.  Go read what she has to say.  It's eye opening. 

Stonewall 2009?

From Hope for Peace and Justice at the Cathedral of Hope

As you may have heard, in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 28, the Fort Worth Police Department raided the Rainbow Lounge, a new, primarily gay bar in the city. As you also know, Sunday, June 28 marked the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, considered to be the beginning of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights movement in the United States. For many, this coincidence is a chilling reminder of the fact that, while we have come so far, the journey to equality is not yet finished. The Cathedral of Hope and Hope for Peace & Justice issued the following statement yesterday in response to the actions of the Fort Worth Police Department:

World’s Largest Gay Church Decries Actions of Fort Worth Police:
Dallas-based Cathedral of Hope calls raid “unacceptable”

Dallas, Texas – June 28, 2009 – The Dallas, Texas-based Cathedral of Hope, known as the world’s largest lesbian and gay church, has issued the following statement regarding the raid on the Rainbow Lounge early this morning by the Fort Worth Police Department:
June 28 is celebrated throughout the United States and elsewhere as the beginning of the lesbian and gay civil rights movement in this country. Surely this did not escape the knowledge of the Fort Worth Police Department as they raided the Rainbow Lounge early this morning. In a scene eerily reminiscent of the raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village 40 years ago, the police reportedly entered the bar unprovoked, harassing and arresting patrons without reason. The Cathedral of Hope and Hope for Peace & Justice call on Chief of Police Jeffrey Halstead to issue a full report and apology immediately. This kind of targeted humiliation and harassment was unacceptable 40 years ago, and it is unacceptable today. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and their friends, families and allies have had enough.
Reverend Michael Piazza, Dean of the Cathedral, in condemning the raid, said, “After more than a generation of progress, this action shows that there is still much work to be done to ensure that all Americans enjoy ‘equal protection under the law.’ It is tragic that lesbian and gay taxpayers are still abused by the very people who are paid by our taxes.”

Praying for Diocese of Fort Worth

Today the bishops of two dioceses, Dallas and Fort Worth, will meet.  The outcome of the meeting is of great importance to me, and to many in this area, and to my friend Elastigirl.  Please keep these two men in your prayers today, as well as Elastigirl and others who will be affected by decisions made. 

Oh, God!  I'm waiting to see your will done.  And I greatly hope and pray that it may align with my will.  If not, I'm used to it.  But, please.  Please. 

Amen.