Inauguration Day

 
“That little girl was me.”
designed by @briagoelier and @goodtrubble

Today our Vice President Kamala Harris strides into the future alongside the shadow of Ruby Bridges.

"The Problem We All Live With"
by Norman Rockwell 

In 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges was escorted by her mother and four U.S. marshals to school every day that school year. She was the first Black child to attend public school in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America. 

Sixty years later, how far have we come? It may seem like we haven't come very far at all. With Washington, D.C., filled to the teeth with armed and armored National Guard troops. The Mall is fenced and that part of the city I love is closed to the public. It's not bad enough that America, along with the rest of the world, is besieged by a pandemic, but America in particular is under threat from terrorists born and bred right here. Terrorists just like those that threatened Ruby Bridges. 

Kamal Harris
on the campaign trail

But, you know what? We have come a very long way. Thanks to the courage of those two young New Orleans parents who knew how important it was for all their children and for so many children they didn't know to have a fair and equal chance in the America they believed could be. And to the courage of the two young adults who came to the United States, one from India and one from British Jamaica, to study. They stayed to give their children a chance in the America they believed could be.

I thought my country had taken a giant step away from its shameful, hateful history of racism when Barack Obama was twice elected President of the United States. I was proud of the people who elected him. What's that old saying? "Two steps forward and one step back."

The November 2020 election put us on the right road again. The road to building a country that will share the American Dream with all its people. That shining city on a hill.

Since the election, I've waited for today with a mix of effervescent anticipation and bone-deadening dread.

Dread be damned. 

I will trust the courage of Americans. We will get through this pandemic. We will inaugurate our first woman Vice President. Eventful enough on its own. Add to that, she is a woman of color!

We will not only step up, we will stride forward.

Today is the day.

D is for Dear America

From Simmons Buntin, co-editor of Dear America, a collection of personal essays, narrative journalism, poetry, and visual art from more than 130 contributors:

     "Dear Reader,
          "When Alison Hawthorne Deming sent me her letter to America a week after the 2016 U.S.
     presidential election, I had just hung up the phone with my daughter, a college sophomore,
     biologist-in-training, and young woman who had just voted in her first presidential election --
     and now found herself devastated. It was the fourth or fifth time we'd talked since the election,
     and as her father I felt that I was in the position of talking her down from a ledge. A ledge on
     which we both teetered.
          "Alison's letter arrived just in time. A response to the shaken American landscape so
     vividly illuminated by Donald Trump's win, it was written -- she told me in offering the letter
     for publication in Terrain.org -- to encourage herself and others as we reeled with the dis-
     ruption in our sense of national well-being."

Terrain.org is a nonprofit literary magazine published online since 1997. It continues to accept submissions for publication -- including for the ongoing Dear America project.

I attended the Association of Writers and Publishers Conference in San Antonio during the first week of March. I, too, had "teetered" on that ledge. When I heard the first panel of writers from the Dear America I was reassured that I was not alone. Reassured that we need not acquiesce to the anti-American policies of the Trump administration. I was inspired. I was braced for action. And I spent my book budget on copies of Dear America so I could lend or give it to people I love.

The essays and poems in Dear America are not diatribes against Trump and his cronies. In fact, they are celebrations of the America I remember and still believe in. Celebrations of escaping urban noise and motion while fishing off the end of a pier. Of immigrant dreams. Of not racist treatment.

I have been afraid of how far we were falling away from our American values. The goal of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all people regardless of and respecting our individual differences. But not dividing ourselves into us and them.

Where once I thought of America as being the Leader of the Free World, I have watched in fear as we were led away from the Free World toward the oligarchies, and the tyrannies of the world.

And now America is experiencing a greater danger. One that is without national boundaries, without politics, without any concern for any individual or group of individuals.

We are being schooled by Covid-19 in just exactly how much good it does to "go it alone" -- as a person, as a demographic, as a nation.

And again, this book, this collection of writings from more than 130 people, this Dear America reassures me. That woman's letter which steadied Mr. Buntin from "teetering" on the ledge back in 2016 continues to steady us and call us to action.

"Think of the great spirit of inventiveness the Earth calls forth after each major disturbance it suffers. Be artful, inventive, and just, my friends, but do not be silent."  -- Alison Hawthorne Deming

A to Z Blogging Challenge -- America

Today is Day 1 of the 2020 April A to Z Blogging Challenge. In all the Covid-19 chaos, I did not sign up, but I need to write so I'm going to do it informally. The goal of the challenge is to post every day except Sundays during the month of April. Each day's topic will begin with the corresponding letter for that day. April 1's topic should begin with A. April 2, B. April 3, C. etc.

Today is Day 1, A -- America

In this day of the continuing Stay At Home edict, America is at risk from Corona Virus-19.

Many years ago on my first trip to Washington, D.C., I saw the America I believe in.
I worked for the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, part of the Department of Agriculture in Oklahoma City. They sent me to D.C. for training. Alone.

I saw America on the subway despite my out-of-towner anxiety. Oklahoma City has very little in the way of public transportation and back then even less.

That first day I entered the Metro at the DuPont Circle Station. I carefully paid attention to my surroundings as I walked from my hotel to the station so I would know which way to go when I came back. The Colombian Embassy was right there, a red brick building across the street from DuPont Circle which was a small park.

Descending into the underworld, I was exposed to the high speed world of a big city. The locals literally ran up and down the impossibly high escalators, not just one floor or even two floors, but three or four floors without a break. Did I mention, I'm afraid of heights? I stood as far to the right as possible clinging to the railing with both hands, silently pleading "Don't touch me. Don't touch me." They ran past me carrying their brief cases and back packs and giant purses and shopping bags. I knew that if they brushed against me, I'd tumble all the way to the bottom.

On the train, I worried about how I would know which stop to get off? The train was filled with people. I was alone. I was scared enough that I didn't really register the sights and sounds of the people around me. Locals in their business professional attire. Most wore government id's on lanyards around their necks. The women wore sneakers, their heels stowed in those bags to change into once they got to the office. I had been advised to do the same, so I was in sneakers, too.

And there were tourists, too. It was June, so they were in their comfy vacation clothes. Some of them didn't know how to navigate the underground either. I listened as they discussed among themselves how to read the maps posted on the wall of the train. One group had been in town for a week. They were from Iowa. They actually knew where the Ag Building was and explained to me where I needed to get off. Luckily there was a station right across from the building I needed to go to.

When I returned at the end of the day, I confidently exited the subway at the DuPont Circle Station. However, when I reached the surface, I recognized nothing. I didn't see the Colombian Embassy. Even DuPont Circle looked different. What confidence I had gained during the day evaporated.

I knew the street my hotel was on. So I started walking in the direction I thought I should go. I realized I should ask someone which way. There was a group of upper elementary aged children speaking French. There were people in twos and threes speaking languages I didn't recognize. Finally I passed two men speaking English. I asked them how to get to where I wanted to go. They looked around thoughtfully then gave me directions and wished me well.

When I got back to the hotel, I found out there are two subway stations at DuPont Circle.

The second day, I was considerably more secure. I did know how to ride the subway. No one was going to knock into me on the escalators and both locals and tourists were perfectly willing to help a lost out-of-towner.

That afternoon on the ride "home" to my hotel, three young women each dressed in white and carrying a rose further represented this America that I love. They had just been to their high school graduation. One was a red-haired Caucasian, one was African American, and the third appeared to be of Middle Eastern heritage. Three enthusiastic young women embarking on their future.

I know people complain about Washington, meaning the American government. And I admit that if something can be mismanaged or someone can be mistreated, our government can certainly discover just such a way to do it. And even with all our languages, Americans can fail to communicate with each other. But, Washington, D.C. is a beautiful city, filled with museums celebrating America's past and people of all kinds building the future.

The city exemplifies the wonderful variety of America. And, along with the rest of the world, America will come through Covid-19.

America's Future

Becoming by Michelle Obama -- a review

Michelle Obama's memoir is perfect to start 2019. It's open and eye-opening. This book scatters seeds of Yes-we-can, gently telling us little bits about people who are not to-the-manner-born, but learn, do well, and make a difference. It's her view of herself and her experiences and of the people around her that strengthens my optimism about America. And about humanity in general. Optimism that is being sorely tested.

Wikipedia identifies Michelle Obama as "Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is an American writer, lawyer, and university administrator who served as the First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017." This paragraph identifies her as her, not just the wife of Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, first black President of the United States. Not just as first black First Lady of the United States.

More than half the book is about her life before her husband ran for president. And that life was amazingly normal, working class, American. Her father, Fraser Robinson III, worked for the City of Chicago at a water treatment plant. And her mother, Marian Shield Robinson was a stay at home mom until Michelle went to high school. Both were born in Chicago to people who'd come North during the Great Migration. (I knew nothing about the Great Migration until I read Isabel Wilkerson's book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, published in 2010 by Random House.)

Like my own family, there were only two children -- Michelle and her older brother Craig. Being less than two years apart, they were always close (also like my brother and me, although I'm the older one.) The Robinsons maintained close ties to their extended family, grandparents, aunts and uncles, great-aunts and -uncles, and lots of cousins. All, of whom lived close enough to get together easily and often. And, let me tell you, from personal experience, a small family of four doesn't feel small at all with that many kin close by.

Michelle says she wasn't really aware of racial problems until she was older.

When she was small, Michelle's South Shore neighborhood was more diverse than my white one was. Oklahoma was determinedly segregated.

Bryn Mawr, her elementary school was considered one of Chicago's best public schools when she started kindergarten there. The children in her class picture are described by a classmate as "five little white faces and 23 shades of brown faces and one Middle Eastern face.”

By the time she finished the 8th grade, there were only brown faces. The children may not have questioned where their white and wealthier classmates went, but the grown-ups knew what was going on. At least some did.

When Michelle was entering the seventh grade, the Chicago Defender, a newspaper widely read by the African American community ran an OpEd describing Bryn Mawr as a "run-down slum" governed by a "ghetto mentality." Michelle's school principal, Dr. Lavizzo wrote his own letter to the editor in which she says he made it clear that "he understood precisely what he was up against. Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It's vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear."

She says "There were predatory real estate agents roaming South Shore, whispering to home owners that they should sell before it was too late, that they'd help them get out while you still can." They used the word everyone was most afraid of -- 'ghetto' -- dropping it like a lit match."

In Oklahoma City, it was 'busing.' My parents bought it and moved us to the suburbs.

Mrs. Robinson did not. Michelle describes her mother -- "She'd lived in South Shore for ten years already and would end up staying another forty. She didn't buy into fearmongering and at the same time seemed equally inoculated against any sort of pie-in-the-sky idealism. She was a straight-down-the-line realist, controlling what she could." A yes-we-can kind of mom.

And one thing Mrs. Robinson could do was to lobby for "a special multigrade classroom ... grouping students by ability rather than by age -- in essence, putting the brighter kids together so they could learn at a faster pace.

 Dr. Lavizzo's background is a yes-we-can seed. The multigrade classroom "was the brainchild of Dr. Lavizzo, who'd gone to night school to get his PhD in education." Night school.

The importance of education is emphasized throughout this book. Michelle's brother Craig was offered basketball scholarships to the University of Washington and Princeton. Washington's offer was a full ride. Princeton would cost $3,500 per year. Although Craig told his father he'd rather accept the University of Washington offer so it wouldn't cost the family anything, Mr. Robinson, being a yes-we-can kind of father, wouldn't hear of it. He wouldn't let his son choose based on saving them money. They'd figure out a way. And Craig chose Princeton, no doubt, breaking trail for his sister.

Michelle was a determined student. She was salutatorian of her high school graduating class. Her inspiration to follow Craig to Princeton? A high school counselor told her that she wasn't the sort of student to go to Princeton. Hah! Another yes-we-can seed. She graduated cum laude from Princeton then went on to Harvard where she got her law degree. And, yes, she was a normal, working class daughter who achieved a big salary at a prestigious law practice back in Chicago which she needed even though she continued to live with her parents in South Shore so she could pay back her college loans. And that's where she met Barack Obama. She was his mentor. It was part of her job to lure him to work for the law firm when he graduated Harvard Law.

As it turned out, he lured her away. And into the White House.

There is so much in this book. So much. So much. Becoming is a good read, an inspiring read. I could fill pages with Michelle Obama's words. Her fears. Her aspirations. The places she went and the people she met.

And she explained something to me that I did not understand. Why, or at least part of why, we could celebrate electing an African American man to be our President, a face to prove that America truly does hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That all people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. From that to the shameful situation we have now.

Here's what she said:
         "For more than six years now, Barack and I had lived with an awareness that we
          ourselves were a provocation. As minorities across the country were gradually
          beginning to take on more significant roles in politics, business, and entertainment,
          our family had become the most prominent example. Our presence in the White
          House had been celebrated by millions of Americans, but it also contributed to a
          reactionary sense of fear and resentment among others. The hatred was old and
          deep and as dangerous as ever.

        "We lived with it as a family, and we lived with it as a nation. And we carried on,
          as gracefully as we could."

I do believe that we, as a people and as a nation, will survive this regressive period in our history and again move forward. We will work toward the American dream of true freedom and equality of opportunity for all.

Yes we can.

What If Donald Trump Were a Woman -- Nonfiction

image from Open College
"Me! Me! Call on me!"

America, we have a problem. We have addressed the Race Issue, not successfully, I agree, but we've at least addressed it. Most of us recognize that being nonwhite in the United States still presents serious problems. What about the Gender Issue? Do most of us recognize that being female in the United States still handicaps us?

What if Donald Trump were a woman? Would he have gotten the Republican nomination and gone on to become the President Elect?

I know. I know. You're right, he'd be a pretty ugly woman. He's not that great looking as a man. So let's disregard this joke and not minimize the problem.

Let's imagine if Donald were a woman.

To make this a believable hypothesis, the female Donald would need to be as rich as Crassus and star of a TV show. The closest we've got to that is Joan Collins' Alexis Carrington on Dynasty. (I understand Dynasty is available to rent from Netflix if you're too young to remember that particularly glittery soap.)

Okay, just bare with me.

So we've got the wealth and fame in mind. We'll assume that our she-Donald made it through the nominating process despite the way he/she spoke to and of the other Republican candidates. The rest of the tale will be just the real Donald as a woman in a one-on-one contest with Hillary Clinton.

Hillary is a wife, mother, and grandmother. She has been married once which of course got her her first liability. Her husband Bill, the 42nd President, was impeached for lying and obstruction of justice. Not for sexual improprieties with a 22-year-old employee, but for lying about them. There is nothing to indicate that Hillary herself was involved in sexual impropriety.

Our Lady Donald is also a wife and mother. She has five children by three men. That in itself would be a liability in our society. And of her own making, at that. Our Ms. Donald is caught on tape bragging about her own sexual improprieties. She/he is then accused by multiple people of improper sexual behavior, including against underage people. Again, liabilities of her own making.

One of the women running for office could point to being twice elected to the Senate from New York State. Not Mistress Trump. She would be able to point to no service in any elected position. But, at least she's not a politician.

And as Secretary of State Hillary could tout interactions with international leaders, both allies and antagonists.

Not to be outdone, Ms. Trump publicly admired long-time Russian antagonist and threatened to ignore treaties with long-time allies. Did I mention that she espoused the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Hillary, as Secretary of State and recognizing the long-held tradition of "the buck stops here," accepted responsibility for the tragedy that was the terrorist attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The female Donald, rather than accepting responsibility for her/his own insufficiencies bragged about his/her business acumen in using tax laws to avoid paying her fair share of income tax and bankruptcy laws to avoid his business obligations.

Our Mistress Donald disrespected American war heroes and their families. She/he liberally laced public speeches with profanity and easily provable lies. He/she carried on feuds using middle-of-the-night tweets, exhibited aggressive behavior during presidential debates, encouraged violence during public events, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  

Be honest. If Donald Trump were a woman running against anybody and behaved as he has, would he now be the President Elect?

Women, we have a long way to go. Don't let's get caught in a mess like this ever again. Letting men determine our future will never get us or our society where we need to go. We have to take responsibility and actively participate in determining our society's future. This must be the only Unity that counts.