Friday Funnies: Would You remarry if I died?

Sometimes you just want to hear a good joke. Here's beloved star of the silver screen, Jimmy Stewart, then in his "golden years" telling a joke as only he could tell it.

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Growing Up under Southern Apartheid (Part 1)

   The body of Rep. John Lewis crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. via horse-drawn carriage (photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

I grew up in small-town and rural Alabama. In 1978, I left the South to attend seminary in Mill Valley, California. One afternoon, in a casual conversation with a few classmates (we must have been going out to eat somewhere), I mentioned nostalgically that when I was a kid, our maid made the best cornbread – it was better than my mother’s recipe. One of my classmates who hailed from Arizona was astounded by my comment.

“Is your family rich?” he asked.

“Far from it,” I said. I then tried to explain to him how it was common in the South for even low-income families to hire maids from the Black community to help with housework. At that point, I realized that I was speaking of an era that had passed and I was trying to explain it to a person whose life experience gave him no frame of reference for what I was talking about.

The Long Shadow of Jim Crow

The Jim Crow South, in reaction to the Post-Civil War Reconstruction, set the legal stage for racial segregation and continued oppression of Blacks in a post-slavery society. When I was born in 1954 in Montgomery, Alabama, Jim Crow laws had been firmly established by the state’s 1901 Constitution and by local laws and ordinances throughout the state. Society was every bit as separated as South Africa’s apartheid government*.

My father was a pastor, and my mother a school teacher. Because of my father’s vocation, we moved about every five years, so my childhood was spent in Wedowee, Jackson’s Gap, and Dadeville. Since there were four of us kids and with my mother working as a high school English teacher, my parents often employed a maid to help with the cleaning and cooking. It was the expectation that respectable white women were able to find help as they managed the household. “Help,” of course, was the term used for maid service, always a woman from the Black community. The Black community was referred to in those days  as  “the colored quarters,” or simply, “the quarters.” Looking back, I am sure that term, quarters, harked back to the days of slave quarters on the plantation.

Often the maid would have to be picked up from her house and returned at the end of her workday. My father was usually the one to pick up the maid. Sometimes he would ask if I wanted to ride with him to take the maid home, which I always did if asked. It was the same as, "Do you want to ride with me while I run to the store?" (or to the post office, etc.). Those trips to take the maid home were a part of my social education. I witnessed the difference in living conditions. Some roads were unpaved, houses were unpainted shacks. The poverty was apparent. Children were often barefoot and in torn clothing. Dogs ran loose and were often thin and hungry-looking (I remember feeling sorry for the children and the dogs). 

As children, we would naturally ask why these people lived the way they did. Usually, the answer would be something along the lines of, “They are poor, uneducated, they don’t know how to do any better.” Sometimes there would be the implication that we were helping them out by offering them employment.

Unease about the Future

There is one thing I remember about those trips into the quarters, and I remember it in my gut – it was the uncomfortable feeling that when I grew up, it would be my job to go into the Black community to pick up the maid. As a child, I envisioned that life would go on as is, and I was not sure how I would manage that particular adult role. I tried not to think about it too much and I would return to my childhood activities once we came back home. Growing up would come another day.

As our nation mourns the loss of Congressman John Lewis who did so much to remove those Jim Crow laws that kept Blacks oppressed, I am taking some time on my blog to recall what those days were like in Alabama before this son of sharecroppers from Troy, Alabama helped to bring about a new era.

                                                                                                         Part 2: What's in a Name?>

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* (Apartheid: an Afrikaans term meaning "apartness") South Africa’s apartheid government was established in 1948 and was brought to an end in 1993. For a brief article by Morgan Winsor comparing Apartheid & Jim Crow, go here.

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Monday Music: "Stop, children, what's that sound? "

The video below contains scenes from recent Black Lives Matter protests set to the music of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth." With the actions of federal agents in Portland and the POTUS' promise to expand to other cities, we already need more pictures from this month to accompany this warning, "Stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's goin' down."

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Saturday Haiku: Dusk

lightning bugs at dusk

the call of the whip-poor-will
childhood memories

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Photo by Charles Kinnaird

Shades Creek at Jemison Park, Birmingham, Alabama

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Friday Funnies: Just wear it!

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The Witness of John Lewis

In a report about John Lewis on Face the Nation this week, John Dickerson stated that on that fateful day in Selma, in 1965, as the march began across the Edmund Pettus Bridge,  a young 25-year-old John Lewis expected to spend the night in jail, so he carried two books in his pocket. One was The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, by Richard Hofstadter; the other was The Seven Story Mountain, by Thomas Merton.

The Privilege of Books

That book by Thomas Merton caught my attention. I think of where I was at 25 years of age. I was in seminary and had just discovered Thomas Merton, but the witness of these two books in John Lewis’s pocket reveals how far ahead the young John Lewis was compared to my own life when I was 25, sitting in relative ease in seminary classes. The Selma march was two years after an even younger Lewis gave a speech at the March on Washington in 1963.

John Lewis had those two books in his pocket to have something on hand to read while in jail, for he fully expected to be arrested that day. He did not know that he would instead spend the night in a hospital after having his skull fractured by a policeman’s billy club.

The Privilege of Libraries

Lewis was born in Troy Alabama, his father was a share-cropper. He has told of his dismay when he tried to get a book from the public library and was told that the library was for whites only, not for black children. He recounted that that incident made him all the more determined, he said to get an education.

When I was a boy growing up in Alabama, the library was a special place. I remember when the Dadeville Library was in an older building on the town square, and I also remember when it moved to a nice new building just beyond the town square. That was, indeed, a proud day for the town. It was always a delight to visit the library when I was a boy, but looking back, I also remember that there were no black patrons there.

John Lewis’s story is a painful reminder of the white privilege that made my life easier but spurred Lewis to become an agent of change and transformation. With his life, he was able to offer the nation hope.

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Monday Music: Dark Days (Local Natives)

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Saturday Haiku: The Comet Passes

the comet passes

singing to all the living

a more ancient song

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Photo Credit: Declan Deval
Comet Neowise over Stonehenge

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Remembering Rick Watson

Rick and his wife, Jilda at his book table

I was deeply saddened to learn yesterday of Rick Watson's passing. I met Rick many summers back at the Alabama Writers Cooperative. Since we were both bloggers, and he hailed from Dora, Alabama, near my wife's hometown, we became friends and blogger colleagues. 

He had worked for years at Bell South but began his writing career as a  young man after a two-year stint with the Army. He wrote in one of his columns about how his friend Dale Short hired him as a journalist and photographer for The Community News in Sumiton, Ala. In 2007, Rick began writing columns for the Daily Mountain Eagle where he had a weekly column (you can read the paper's tribute to him here). He interviewed many local people and as such served as a compiler of the community's own local history. 

In his columns and in his books, Rick shared many homespun stories of life as he observed it. He loved fly fishing and offered to teach me the art. He told me he had some extra waders and I could join him anytime on the river.

Rick was also a musician and songwriter. He and his wife Jilda performed together at many local gatherings. He loved people, he loved life, he loved to be out in nature. Not only did he welcome you into his world, but he also had an extra pair of waders so you didn’t have to stand on the sidelines. That's just how he was.

Rick blogged at Life 101 where he made an entry every day, his last one just a few hours before he died. Prayers for his wife, Jilda. May he rest in peace. 

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Rick was an excellent photographer with an eye for nature. Here are two of his photos he posted on his blog just last week:

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Norman Rockwell's America

Norman Rockwell is famous for painting traditional American scenes in countless issues of The Saturday Evening Post. His series titled, "The Four Freedoms" was based upon President Franklin Roosevelt's famous State of the Union address in 1941 in which he outlined the four freedoms that America stands for:

Image from History Tech

Of course, Rockwell painted many hundreds of iconic images of Americana for The Saturday Evening Post. Some may not be aware that Norman Rockwell, observer and chronicler of American life, saw the problem of racism and wanted to help America see its own struggle. To do that effectively, he had to leave The Saturday Evening Post, which once had him remove a black person from one of his paintings because the magazine only wanted to portray blacks in servant roles. Rockwell went to Look Magazine which allowed him the freedom to express his social and political views.

Last week I shared his painting, "The Problem We All Live With," which depicted the first elementary school integration in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1964. 

In 1965, after reading a newspaper article about the killing of civil rights workers in Mississippi, he painted, "Southern Justice."

In 1967, when America was beginning to experience equal housing opportunity allowing blacks to move into previously all-white neighborhoods, he gave us "New Kids in the Neighborhood."

With "equal opportunity" in the 1960s, American neighborhoods countered with white flight. The result is that today, we continue to see inequality, injustice, and re-segregated schools and neighborhoods. Thankfully, with groups like Black Lives Matter and Rev. William Barber's Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival, we continue to be confronted with who we are and where we need to set our sights for a more equitable society.


For Further Reading about Norman Rockwell:

• Norman Rockwell and Race: Complicating Rockwell's Legacy
• Why Norman Rockwell Matters
• Facing Hard Realities: Rockwell's Hope for a Compassionate Society

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Monday Music: Wild Mountain Honey Organic

A nice gift this morning from Scott Wright who compiled the following video to go with Steve McCarty's music. From Scott Wright's YouTube notes:

A new version shared with me by the original songwriter, Steve McCarty. We met Steve some years ago because my wife LaRae worked with his wife Trish. He shared this new version of his song Wild Mountain honey written when he was very young living amongst the Redwoods of Northern California. He was playing with the Steve Miller band at the time and wrote this one, along with Fly Like an Eagle, which became hits all over the world for the band. This one has long been a favorite in my own youth growing up in the 70's. The message is perfect for today and the massive changes that are happening before our eyes. I made the video some time ago, but I feel it is a powerful message for today. Enjoy and please share!

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Saturday Haiku: Buddha's Garden

the Buddha may rest

while sitting in the garden

or perhaps he’ll laugh

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Photo by Charles Kinnaird


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Friday Funnies: The Bard & the Librarian

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The Problem We All Live With

That moment when we come to the realization (perhaps while reminiscing upon our idyllic childhood in white America) that our security was founded upon the creation of a dystopian society, the likes of which we thought only existed in the pages of some novel that we could put back on the shelf in order to rest better at night.

In 1964, Look Magazine featured Norman Rockwell's painting, "The Problem We All Live With." It presented America as clearly as did his famous Thanksgiving Picture*.

With the Civil Rights Movement, some began to understand how Jim Crow laws had extended the dystopian society created by our predecessors. Watch this space in days to come for more about the problem we continue to live with.

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* "Freedom from Want" is the name of Rockwell's painting often referred to as the Thanksgiving Picture, or I'll be home for Christmas. It was one of four paintings he did during WWII as part of his Four Freedoms series, inspired by Franklin Rosevelt's 1941 State of the Union speech in which the president outlined the "Four Freedoms" that he envisioned for America, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

In 1964, Mr. Rockwell chose to memorialize in oil and canvas the racial conflict that gripped American life as schools were forced to integrate. He had left The Saturday Evening Post due to the limitations the magazine placed on the expression of his social and political interests. He found a more open environment at Look Magazine. "The Problem We All Live With" depicts Ruby Bridges, the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school.

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Image: "The Problem We All Live With," 1964, Norman Rockwell Museum Collections.

Artist: Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)

Medium: Oil on canvas, 36" x 58"

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Monday Music: Here Comes the Sun

I had this urge, or more like a nudge, to hear The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun." Found this nice mix on YouTube (Thankful for George)

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American Tune (Simon & Garfunkel)

I have featured Paul Simon's "American Tune" a number of times on this blog. A song that is introspective, contemplative, and truly patriotic, I find it appropriate to listen to again on Independence Day. This is a time when we are faced with questions and challenges all about us.

Performed by Simon & Garfunkel at their reunion concert in Central Park in 1981, may this remind us of who we are, what we have been through, and who we hope to be.

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Saturday Haiku: One Nation

a nation's largesse

can be measured by fireworks

or by daily acts

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Photo by Jean Beaufort (Public Domain)

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Friday Funnies: Public Hygiene

And could we photoshop some masks in this old Farside cartoon to update it?

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Cartoon by Gary Larson


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Bob Dylan - A Long Time Ago

"Bob Dylan In a log cabin in the middle of nowhere a long long time ago."  It was aired on CBC-TV (Canadian Broadcast Corporation) on a program called, Quest. An excellent way to hear some of his very early songs which remain classics to this day.

Dylan performs seven songs on this broadcast:

    00:00 - THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN'
    02:37 - TALKIN' WORLD WAR III BLUES     07:30- LONESOME DEATH OF HATTIE CARROLL     12:56 - GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY     16:15 - A HARD RAIN'S A-GONNA FALL     22:16 - RESTLESS FAREWELL 

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