Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

 

March 15, 1933 -- September 18, 2020

Honor

Integrity

Courage

Strength

Dignity

Endurance

                               She was one of us.

                               She stood with us,

                               First among equals.

                               She was our North Star.

                               She protected us, ALL of us, as long as she could.

We've got work to do.

The Bridge

 

                                                       This is the bridge.

There is rising sentiment to take the Edmund Pettus name off of the bridge that crosses the Alabama River on the way out of Selma, Alabama, the county seat of Dallas County.

The bridge was built in 1940 and named for a Confederate General. In 1877, during the final year of Reconstruction, that man became the Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. In 1896, at the age of 75, he was elected to the United States Senate. [In those days the state legislatures, rather than voters, elected U. S. Senators.] His campaign relied on his organizing and promoting the Alabama Klan and his adamant opposition to recognizing and allowing implementation of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution.

The 13th Amendment (ratified in 1865) eliminated slavery in the U.S. and its territories. The 14th (ratified in 1868) granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the laws.” And the 15th Amendment (ratified in 1869) declared that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

[Women citizens were not guaranteed the right to vote until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. The right to citizenship and constitutional protections, including the right to vote, did not apply to Native Americans until 1924.]

Dallas County's Voter Registrar's Office was open only two days a month and the staff  habitually came to work late, took long lunch breaks, and left early. Even when African Americans were able to get into the office to register, they were often refused registration.

Any American denied the right to vote has no say at all about who governs them -- who makes the laws and what laws they make, who enforces the laws, and who delivers "equal protection of the laws."

By the beginning of 1965 only 1% of voting aged African American residents in Dallas County were registered to vote.

There were demonstrations. Nonviolent demonstrations. 

By 1965, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) led by Dr. Martin Luther King and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) led by John Lewis were working with local people in nonviolent direct action throughout the south focusing on voter registration and Black participation in elections. 

In January, 1965, more than 100 Black school teachers marched from Selma's Brown Chapel to the Dallas County Courthouse to protest the arrest of Amelia Boynton a local Civil Rights activist. She was arrested by the elected County Sheriff Jim Clark. The teachers were aggressively turned away from the courthouse. They returned to Brown Chapel and held a rally. Those teachers risked losing their jobs. Schools were segregated. African Americans went to Black schools and were taught by Black teachers. White students went to White schools and were taught by White teachers. But hiring and firing of school staff for both school systems were in the hands of a single elected School Board.

Keep in mind who got to vote all those elected officials into their offices. And who did not.

In February Jimmie Lee Jackson, unarmed and participating in a peaceful voting rights march in his hometown, Marion, about 30 miles from Selma, was beaten and shot point blank by an Alabama State Trooper. He died February 26. He was trying to protect his mother. 

Provoked by Jackson's murder, members of the African American community declared their plan for a symbolic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama's state capital, to lay a coffin on then Governor George Wallace's capital steps.

On March 7, 600 people met at Brown Chapel and marched two-by-two, staying on the sidewalks, not blocking the roadway.

          Hosea Williams from SCLC and John Lewis from SNCC led the march that day.

The Alabama State Troopers were under orders from Governor George Wallace to stop the march. Sheriff Clark's posse was on the sidelines, many on horseback.

JOANNE BLAND: "We left Brown Chapel AME Church, going to the bridge, coming to the bridge, thinking that we were doing a symbolic march. It was supposed to be a symbolic thing, that we’d go and then we’d turn around and come back. But it didn’t happen that way.

"When we got to the bridge, I was in the middle of the bridge when all of a sudden they started to kneel and pray. But the men in the group came and crowded — put all the women in the middle. That was my first inkling that something was wrong, that something bad was going to happen, because that had never happened before, and I had been on hundreds of marches. And by the time we all kneeled down, I heard what I thought were gunshots and screams. So I thought they were killing the people up front, they were just shooting them. And by the time we got up enough to see what was happening, it was like the domino effect. The people from the front were running back, and people on horses were riding and beating people. Horses were stepping on people. Even coming back, the troopers had on a gas mask. But at that time I didn’t know what a gas mask was. So there were these monsters in uniform running toward us, running toward us, beating people unmercifully.

"The last thing I remember on the bridge was a horse. This man had come over the hill, and he was just beating people, just hitting anybody, and the horse bumped this lady, and she fell down. And the horse reared up, and when it came down, its hoof came down on her arm, and it broke it. And the bone came through here, and blood just went up like a fountain. It’s the last thing I remember until I woke up on this side of the bridge in the back of a car."

Amelia Boynton was beaten unconscious.

                         John Lewis on his knees being beaten in the foreground.

All three major television networks broke into their Sunday evening programming with film from what would be forever after known as Bloody Sunday.

A call went out for people of good will to come to Alabama for a march to follow two days later. And they came. People from all over the United States including 450 white clergymen. 2,000 people met at Brown Chapel and started the second march to Montgomery.

But George Wallace had gotten a Federal Judge to issue an injunction against the march.

Left to right: John Lewis in the light colored vest, Rev. and Mrs. Ralph Abernathy, 1950 Nobel Peace Laureate Ralph Bunche, Unidentified man, Dr. and Mrs. King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Hosea Williams holding a child.

Because of the Federal injunction, when confronted by Alabama State Troops, Dr. King turned the people around and went back across the bridge to Selma. He believed the injunction would legitimize whatever action the troopers might take.

Those who had come for the second march were asked to stay a little longer. Talks were ongoing with President Johnson to get federal protection for the marchers and legal action was being taken to get the injunction lifted for a third attempt to make the march.

That night, a group of White men beat and murdered civil rights activist James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, who had come to Selma to march with the second group.

Federal Judge Frank Johnson, Jr., ruled that the activists had the Constitutional right to march from Selma to Montgomery as a means to petition the government for the right to vote. President Johnson called up the Alabama National Guard to protect the marchers from Selma to Montgomery.

Thousands went to Alabama to join the march. 3,200 people crossed the bridge March 21, 1965.

Left to right: John Lewis, unidentified nun, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Dr. King, Ralph Bunche, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, and Fred Shuttlesworth. (The leis were brought from Hawaii by a delegation of supporters who came to join the march.)

By the time they traveled the 54 miles to Montgomery on March 25, they were 25,000 strong.

Yes, do take the Pettus name off of the bridge, but please do not name it the John Lewis Bridge as some have suggested.

Yes, Congressman Lewis did devote his life to working for all Americans to have the rights and liberties the Constitution provides for. But he was not the only one who crossed that bridge.

There were so many people who marched. Who crossed that bridge. Some of them nationally and even internationally famous -- Dr. Martin Luther King,  Reverend Dr. Ralph Abernathy, Coretta Scott King, Ralph Bunche, John Lewis. James Baldwin was there. Joan Baez, and James Forman were there. Harry Belafonte and Tony Bennett were there. And some were famous in Alabama like Amelia Boynton. But most of them were like Joanne Bland, well known to their friends and families and neighbors. 

Those thousands who were finally able to cross that bridge and march from Selma to Montgomery to petition their government. They were from all over America, and their one unifying principle was that all Americans should have the unfettered right to vote. They should have a say in who represents them in making decisions for their schools and town and county and country.

I cannot think that John Lewis, the man, would want his name on that bridge. That was a bridge to Freedom. Put his name on H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019, currently awaiting passage in Congress.

                                      And name the bridge FREEDOM.

Reading Sets You Free

Reading Sets You Free
(Image from Blue Cereal Education)

Yes, it does set me free. It always has.

Amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic, books keep me from being "locked down." I don't care if the books are in the hard copy form of actual physical books or if they are electronic. As long as the words are there. As long as they take me some place and show me a thing or two or twenty-seven.

Many of my friends  are working jigsaw puzzles. Thousands of pieces puzzles. They rescue them from the backs of closets. They retrieve them from storage units. They order them online. They share them back and forth and back again. They have preferences: puzzles about travel, puzzles about cats, brightly colored puzzles, oddly shaped puzzles.

I can't do puzzles. I have a cat. My Kočka, would no doubt love for me to work jigsaw puzzles -- on the dining table, sans 24-hour guard.

He plays with things. Carries things around. Loses things. He probably doesn't think he's "losing" things. The only thing he loses is "interest" in those things he carries around.

Kočka is an unusually smart cat, but words in books are beyond him. In fact, the books themselves hold no interest for him. And because my e-reader, unlike my cell phone, does not respond to his touching the screen, he's not interested in it either -- soooo, he leaves them alone.

Consequently, I may lose my place in whatever book I'm reading, but I won't lose the book, be it hard copy or electronic.

Our public library is closed for the foreseeable future. You can go online and put books on hold. Hard copy books you pick up curbside. It goes like this. They send you an email when the books you want are available. You park in the designated area at the library, call them to tell them you've arrived and open your trunk, then get back in your car. They bring your books out in a brown paper bag and put them in your trunk. You get out and close your trunk and go home. (Kinda puts you in mind of receiving contraband, doesn't it?) No face-to-face contact. Minimal risk of spreading Covid-19. Or you can download the books you want to your e-reader with absolutely zero chance of spreading the virus. Either way, it's free.



This week I finished Diane Mott Davidson's Tough Cookie, a cozy mystery, one of Davidson's series featuring the caterer sleuth Goldie Schultz. Her books are set in Colorado and are liberally sprinkled with recipes. 

Of course, I have to interrupt reading to prepare this recipe or that. The only thing is, even though her books are set just up the hill from where I live, I still have to amend them for cooking at altitude. At a book-signing, she explained that she has a professional change the recipes so they work at sea level.



And then I read Fredrik Backman's Britt-Marie Was Here. Let me just say, if it's a Backman book, it's worth my time. He writes people I know and philosophy I understand.

         

                   "A human being, any human being at all, has so perishingly few chances to 

              stay right there, to let go of time and fall into the moment. Explode with passion.

                    A few times when we are children, maybe, for those of us who are allowed 

              to be. But after that, how many breaths are we allowed to take beyond the con-

              fines of ourselves? How many pure emotions make us cheer out loud, without
              a sense of shame?
                     All passion is childish. It's banal and naive. It's nothing we learn; it's 
               instinctive, and so it overwhelms us. Overturns us. It bears us away in a flood. 

               All other emotions belong to the earth, but passion inhabits the universe."

Those two books, I downloaded on my e-reader from the library. 

My next book was Nevada Barr's Liberty Falling. Several years ago while my Daddy was still living, one of his care-givers brought me a grocery bag filled with Nevada Barr books. For those of you not familiar with her work, she writes murder mysteries, a bit more action-packed than Davidson's. Barr's main character is Anna Pigeon, a Park Ranger. Each mystery is set in one of the National Parks. This one takes place at The Statue of Liberty National Monument, Ellis Island National Park, and in New York City's Manhattan.

Remember the old James Bond movies, back when they included not only flash/bang/chase scenes but actual dialog. And that dialog was snarky?  Like when Bond was on the dance floor with a beautiful woman and he saw reflected in her eyes an assassin aiming at him. He spun her around so that it was she who was shot. He danced the victim over to a chair, gently sat her down in it and said to a bystander, "Do you mind if my friend sits this one out? She's just dead."

Barr laces her high energy action with the same kind of humor. At one point, Anna ascertains that a fellow Park Ranger, though injured, is not in danger of dying and she must go ahead and save the day. 


Barr writes,

"Anna squirmed under the Dumpster and retrieved Andrew's gun. A Glock 9mm, a good weapon. She chambered a round. 'I'll be back,' she promised. Arnold Schwarzenegger had said the same thing in Terminator 2. It sounded more convincing with the accent."

And a few pages on:

"Regardless of how divinely inspired, New York frowned upon unauthorized persons shooting people with borrowed guns. Anna spent seven hours with three different law enforcement agencies giving statements, defending her
actions, accepting congratulations, being bullied and drinking bad coffee. Drowning in polluted salt water was beginning to seem like the good old days."



Despite the current administration's hurry to "reopen," the simple fact of the matter is Covid-19 is here to stay. Until there is a safe and effective vaccine, those of us in an "at risk group" or who interact with people in such a group should continue to stay home when possible, observe six-feet social distancing and wear masks when away from home, and wash our hands often or use hand sanitizer.

And do whatever we can to limit cabin fever -- work jigsaw puzzles, read, watch old movies, dance in the laundry room, sing in the kitchen, paint, bake, write, take online ukulele lessons -- make our own happy!

Y'all stay safe.

All Writers Should Be Poets

Writing is Magic
image from Dreamwidth Studios

Yes, all writers should be poets. And word musicians. They should play language, the simple, normal language of real people. Because simple, normal people (whether they have the time to see it or not) live in all the colors of sound and sight and touch. And thought.

Barbara Kingsolver is just such a writer.

From Pigs in Heaven:

              "Cash learned beadwork without really knowing it ....
                He never imagined ...
                he would have to do another delicate thing with his hands ...
                to pay the rent. But since he started putting beads
                on his needle each night, his eye never stops
                counting rows: pine trees on the mountainsides, boards in a fence,
                kernels on the ear of corn as he drops it into the kettle.
                He can't stop the habit, it satisfies the ache
                in the back of his brain, as if it might
                fill in his life's terrible gaps.
                His mind is lining things up,
                making jewelry for someone the size of God."

The words are Kingsolver's. The line breaks are mine. The experience is ours. Yours and mine in this time of Covid-19 when we keep apart from our old lives. We work puzzles (jigsaw and otherwise) or binge watch TV or read or sleep or garden or bake or any and all the things we each do to satisfy "the ache in the back of" our mind. To fill "life's terrible gaps" brought into such fine focus by our new, slow-paced, quiet time.

Maybe, in this new, slow-paced, quiet time, we are all "making jewelry for someone the size of God." .

My World

My world

     If I close my eyes and reach out my hands to either side, I can touch the edges of my world. On March 7, 2020, the Novel Corona Virus 19 contracted my world. On that date, I returned home from San Antonio, Texas by way of Houston. That's 1,226 miles. During the almost two months since then, the farthest I've been away from the hallway in this picture is 6.4 miles.
     This is my hallway. Behind us and to our right is the great room, my kitchen/dining/living room. My husband and I cook, eat, read, watch TV, and doze there. The first door on the right is the coat closet. Ostensibly meant to hold visitors coats. The last visitors we had were since our niece and her family. They stopped over on their way to go skiing in the mountains then back home to New Mexico. They left our house March 10.
     March 11, I went to my exercise class at my Rec Center. March 12, my rec center closed. And my public library closed. The two suns of my circumbinary social system went dark.
     On March 17, Colorado's governor and the State Public Health Department issued "Public Health Order 20-22 closing bars, restaurants, theaters, gymnasiums, casinos, nonessential personal services facilities, and horse track and off-track betting facilities statewide." (And here I didn't even know Colorado had a horse racing track. I knew there had been Gray Hound racing in Colorado, but it had shut down sometime before I moved here and was then banned in 2014.)
     At first Stay-at-Home was frightening and oppressive. The Rec Center where I went four days a week for exercise class was closed. That was my connection with the community. That's where I'd met my friends, where I interacted with them, where my walking group had been formed.
     I call it "my walking group" but it is truly "our" walking group -- a loosely knit group of people mostly over 65. We are from all over -- as global as Covid-19. And some are that rarity, Native Coloradans.
     Thank goodness, the Stay-at-Home Order has exemptions. We can walk in our town's public parks or on its streets as long as we observe six-feet social distancing and wear masks.  That's what the walking group does now, almost everyday.
     We used to go for coffee, or whatever, at various shops and bakeries after our walks. That's when we visited. By that I mean we talked about everything -- politics, religion, families, children, grandchildren, science, health, books, movies. You name it, we talked about it. There was always empathy and plenty of laughter.
   
     Those shops and bakeries are open for curb service only now, so we sit in empty picnic pavilions or set up our folding chairs in parking lots and driveways (maintaining social distancing, of course) and we visit. We still enjoy empathy and plenty of laughter.
(This photo was taken after the 6-feet, but before face masks were mandated and before those who live in Senior housing were restricted to their apartments and allowed no visitors and no communal dining.)
         
Oh, yes -- and now we have Zoom meetings. That could be a joke "How is a group of Senior Citizens like a kindergarten class?"
       

     One day last week, I understood that this is my world for the foreseeable future.
Oddly enough, recognizing that was very freeing. My world happens to be in the midst of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. Mountains and lakes, and wondrous skies with glorious sunrises and sunsets.

Sunrise and Sunset (Both photos looking west from my back deck.)  

   





We have walking trails that feel like we're away from the city, while still being in the city. The herons and cormorants and egrets, the geese and ducks and robins are all back from their wintering grounds. They're building nests and hatching babies. They remind me that life goes on.
   
     Life does go on and we observe the current restrictions knowing that we are protecting our families and friends as much as we can. And they are protecting us as much as they can.

This is my world.

Time for Tears

Anne with an E

I'm having a hard time dealing with my emotions in this hard time of Covid-19.

It is likely that my children and grandchildren will not be able to travel from Texas for a visit this summer. My life is out of my control. I am being kept away from my friends. No in-person exercise classes. No going to coffee shops or the library or museums or movie theaters.

Standard television fare other than the news has not been my cup of tea for many years. And now even the news is more upsetting than regular television. The local news, the national news, the BBC world news just make me angry or scared or so sad I don't think I can stand it. Not even PBS's News Hour with Jeremy Brown covering the Arts and Culture from his home salves my heart for long.

Thank goodness for Netflix, Brit Box, Amazon Prime, MHz, and TED.com. I can watch what I need and what I want, when I want. With my breakfast to start my day. Late at night if I can't sleep. Any time when I can't be doing what it is I would rather be doing.

These online television options offer all kinds of escapism, abundant opportunities for enlightenment, humor both sharp and gentle, and inspiration.

Oddly enough the show that is most effective at helping me deal with the heavy sadness, the sorrow I feel for the whole world, is the Canadian Broadcasting Company's Anne with an E. It's based on the novel Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, published in 1908.



"Since its publication, Anne of Green Gables has been translated into at least 36 languages and has sold more than 50 million copies, making it one of the best selling books worldwide. The first in an anthology series, Montgomery wrote numerous sequels, and since her death, another sequel has been published, as well as an authorized prequel. The original book is taught to students around the world." -- Wikipedia

And I've never read any of these books. How did I miss them? Oh, well. I'm a slow reader. I didn't read a Bobbsey Twins book until I was a Junior in High School or a Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House book until my daughter was reading them. But I did read all of  Louisa May Alcott's novels. That counts, right?!





I've also not watched any other television or movie productions of the Anne of Green Gables stories. To be honest, I thought they would be children's stories. Treacle and pablum.


The Canadian television series Anne with an E, created by Moira Walley-Beckett, must be an adaptation rather than a faithful rendering of the books. I can't imagine that a writer who wrote during the early 20th Century would be so progressive in their thinking. The TV series deals with the very harsh realities of the late 19th Century that an orphan most certainly must have dealt with -- bullying and bigotry against all and sundry who were somehow different from the dominant white, English-speaking, Canadian culture. (An awakening for me. I grew up believing those attitudes unique to my Oklahoma -- here meaning "Southern" -- roots.) And the equally harsh realities of life and death due to the limitations of medical science at that time.




Anne was an orphan, farmed out to whatever family would take her in. She was treated like a servant or worse until she was sent to the elderly Cuthbert siblings, Marilla and Matthew, played by Geraldine James and R.H. Thomson. Anne, played by Amybeth McNulty, was sent to the Cuthberts in error. They had requested a boy whom they expected to help them work the farm.




Marilla and Matthew have grown old and sterile, untouched by the world beyond Prince Edward Island, the culture into which they were born. Anne, with her life-saving imaginary world, turns their prim and proper life upside down. Indeed, the whole community of Avonlea's.

Life for these characters is hard. Some people do mean, unacceptable things to them. Sometimes their own attitudes cause them great pain. Some of them never change.  People die. A baby is born. Some of the people do change.  And I cry.

But the sorrows and joys are not gratuitous or unrealistic. Somehow, shedding tears for these characters' sorrows and joys in their very harsh time is cathartic for me living in our own very harsh time.

Whether for their sorrows or joys, or for ours, it is a time for tears and tears help.

The Best Night Out

Civic Center Music Hall

I grew up in small town Oklahoma. As a teen, we lived in a college town on the northern edge of Oklahoma City, it was still a small town and quite separate from The City, but....

The college afforded us access to things other small towns lacked. We could swim in the college indoor pool year round. We could use the college library in addition to our school library and the local public library. Plays were performed by the drama department. There were recitals and concerts, poetry readings, and art shows. We had a veritable smorgasbord of the arts by college students, instructors, and invited professionals. Consequently, I developed a taste for that kind of entertainment.

Now in the time of Covid-19, here I am living within easy access to a big city, complete with all these things from multiple colleges and universities plus the Denver Museum of Art, Colorado Symphony, and Colorado Ballet. Let me just say, Colorado Ballet is an excellent company and Denver has an excellent ballet audience.

We have travelling Broadway shows, and big-name concerts at top venues. Red Rocks Amphitheater is almost within sight of my house -- if you take away a couple of ridges and lots of trees.

But not right now. The doors are closed. The halls are silent. The lights are out.

So I'm remembering the best night out I ever had -- keeping in mind, I've had many best nights out.

This one, though, came when I was living in a different small town in Oklahoma. Guthrie, Oklahoma to be exact. A perfectly fine small town. Actually, as small towns go, it wasn't quite that small. It was and is the County Seat which means it had more than its fair share of lawyers and doctors. It had a daily newspaper, plenty of restaurants specializing in good, hearty food -- one that could actually qualify as fancy (and expensive.) A movie theater, a drive-in movie theater, and umpteen history museums (Guthrie was the Territorial Capital of Oklahoma.) The Masonic Temple sits on a hill overlooking the city. It has a very fine pipe organ and the nicest Ladies' Room I've ever been in complete with a baby grand piano in it's sitting room. The only Ladies' I've ever been in with a sitting room.

But you know, sometimes you just need to get out of your day-to-day life in your safe but too familiar small town. You need to see people you don't know.

A fellow single mother and I drove out of Guthrie to The City. Her daughter and my son were with their respective fathers so we had no immediate responsibilities.

First there was dinner at a restaurant fancy enough to have semi-private booths, cloth table cloths, and cloth napkins. Then we sat with hundreds of people we did not know at Civic Center Music Hall watching the Oklahoma City Ballet. Oklahoma City has the best ballet audience! They actually feel free and know when to applaud instead of waiting until the end of a performance.

From there we went to a jazz club for more good music and a drink or two, some good conversation and maybe a bit of flirtation.

The club closed, but we weren't ready to go home yet. Or at least not all the way home. So to the Hill Top Cafe in Guthrie. The Hill Top was one of those tiny 24-hour places with stools at the counter facing the grill, some booths around the outside walls and two long communal tables down the middle of the floor. It caught folks when the bars and clubs closed and, because it was just down the road from the VFW Hall, it caught all those folks, too, after they had danced and drank their Saturday night away. In The Hill Top at that hour, we could see any hair style, any clothing style, any age group over 21.

And even some people we knew. People who had also broken away from their mundane small-town life for whatever their style of best night out might be.

Finally, as the sun came up, she dropped me at my house. There is just something wonderful about ending your best night out, safe in your own small town at the hour you most often got up.