Friday, November 25, 2016

Remembering a great man and friend: Lee Willoughby

I'm mourning the loss of a friend today. Lee Willoughby passed away yesterday, Thanksgiving Day. It was very sudden, I was told, and I don't know any details yet, not that they matter to grief. This morning I look through the photos I have, remembering times with Lee, a man I started to get to know when I moved back to Colorado and settled in at my cabin in 2010. Here's a photo posted and reposted on Facebook, Lee with an expression so many of us remember: warm, relaxed, gentle, an invitation to neighborliness and conversation. Nature is up front and center and behind, as it was during Lee's life.




Most of our friendship took place at the Woodland Park Farmer's Market, where Lee and friends faithfully set up a Harvest Center booth on market Fridays every summer. I often sat at the booth for an hour or more, chatting with Lee about many different topics: high altitude gardening--the focus of our group, about politics, the movement for healthy, local food--which he was passionate about, music, and friends. He was a joy to talk with because he was so present; he listened, he shared his thoughts, he could see humor and hope in much.


A initiator and mainstay of The Harvest Center, along with his wife Kathy, he was the best kind of leader: one who valued everyone's contribution and encouraged their efforts, all the while bringing energy and ideas of his own. He showed up. Every weekly market day for a number of years, later every other week, setting up the booth in the early hours, usually along with Paula and Jim Bennett, other Harvest Center mainstays. He also organized periodic gardening and food preservation workshops, indoors at the Woodland Park Library for much of the year, or outdoors. Spring was time to prepare raised beds, a necessity for short season gardeners. The photo above is from a 2013 workshop in Divide.

At other times Lee and Kathy helped organize and display the produce section at Mountain Naturals, a grocery store in Woodland Park, ensuring that we could enjoy food any day of the week. Kathy and Lee also took care of the all-season Harvest Center greenhouse at nearby Aspen Valley Ranch. They maintained it year-round and were present for special events, including annual Harvest Center greenhouse tours. Here's a photo I snapped when I stopped there during this year's greenhouse tour.



Another friend of Lee's, Laura Hatfield, posted a Youtube link on Facebook of a 2008 lesson Lee gave showing how to build a planter box. I couldn't watch it all the way through today--too many tears, but I will another day here.  For more video and photos, see the Harvest Center Facebook page. As Lee's Facebook friend, I had other glimpses into the man he was: one who loved hiking and the outdoors, who was active in the community (attending a meeting on the promotion of non-motorized transportation in Woodland Park just days before his death), who knew when to sit back and enjoy a bit of good music, who suffered through this year's election loss, posting Hillary Clinton's touching and powerful concession speech.

Lee was only 72 when he died. He left this planet much too soon, and as all of us will leave, with much work undone. I hope to honor his memory by continuing his commitment to healthy, sustainable living in whatever ways I can, and I hope that the community where he lived will find a way to permanently honor his life and work. Rest in peace, Lee. Thank you for the gift of your friendship.  My deepest sympathy to his family and all friends who are grieving his death.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Loving: marriage equality circa 1965

I went to see the film "Loving" last night, and I was reminded once again of the many historical events that were once current events for me. "Loving" is the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, the couple who challenged the slavery-era laws that made their interracial marriage a crime in Virginia and many other states--until 1967. Today that seems almost unbelievable! I was 20 years old then, on the verge of adulthood, and I had grown up on a country with laws such as these.

1967. That year the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the ACLU, which had taken the Lovings' case to the high court. The process took years. Marriage equality--no one yet thought in terms of LBGT--became the law of the land when anti-miscegenation laws were declared unconstitutional in a unanimous decision. The film follows the historical record quite accurately, a narrative for younger generations of a time when America had its own version of Apartheid. To read Ann Hornaday's excellent review of "Loving" in The Washington Post and to see photos and video, click here.

The topic of interracial marriage came up in my family, possibly in the spring of 1965, when LIFE Magazine ran a story on the Loving family and their case. This was one of the photos taken by Grey Villet, reproduced by the actors in the film.


Villet snapped this one of the couple's three children, along with numerous others showing their warm family life. 

Like millions of other families who subscribed to this magazine, my parents very likely read this story. I may have missed it, though, as I was in my first year at Mundelein College and right around the time the story ran, I was boarding a bus along with other students to join Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic march as it entered Selma, Alabama. I have no photos of myself from this time, but here is one of our Mundelein group which later appeared in the student newspaper, The Skyscraper.


There were many discussions and arguments at home before and after the march, as my parents struggled to understand this sea change in American politics and culture, and I struggled to unlearn the racism I absorbed growing up in  1950s white America. I had no doubts about the rightness of the Civil Rights Movement in the South, but I was struggling to apply it beyond voting rights and the right to sit at a lunch counter. I think I remember my parents talking about interracial marriage as being a personal matter, but those couples ought to pause before having children and condemning them to a difficult life. I'm not sure I had an effective answer to that yet, as I was still trying to work out "morality" and social change in that tumultuous, life-changing decade. My father always argued that "you can't legislate morality", but I was starting to learn in my political science classes that you certainly can. I lived in Chicago, a very segregated city, but I got a job on campus with the Upward Bound program--part of the War on Poverty--and met African-American students for the first time. I learned and thought and tried to act. Today I feel grateful to have come of age during that time. 

Today it takes my breath away that the Lovings endured the harassment and fear that they experienced for nearly 10 years before the Supreme Court's landmark decision. The film recounts their arrest 5 weeks after their 1958 wedding, when the sheriff and his deputies burst into their bedroom. They avoided prison only by pleading guilty to violating the Racial Integrity Act and agreeing to leave the state for 25 years. They moved to Washington D.C. and raised their growing family there for the next 5 years before returning home to Virginia--with the possibility of re-arrest always hanging over them. 

While still in the city, Mildred drew courage from The Civil Rights Movement, which offered promise of an end to their exile. She wrote to Sen. Robert Kennedy, seeking help, and he sent her request on to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The novice volunteer ACLU attorney joined forces with another lawyer who knew how to handle the case, and they took it all the way past two losing appeals to the Supreme Court. The film acknowledges the Lovings' reluctance to be in the spotlight during this process; they did not attend the high court hearing. In a 1966 interview in LIFE, they insisted they were not going forward because they wanted to be the ones to overturn discrimination.  "We're doing it for us--because we want to live here."

Seven years after the ruling, Richard Loving was killed by a drunk driver. Mildred, who passed away from pneumonia in 2008, publicly showed her support for the right of everyone to marry--black or white, gay or straight.

  

Dr. King's words about the moral arc of the universe being long, but bending toward justice, resonates with many, but especially with the Lovings' one surviving child. Peggy Loving Fortune said in a People Magazine article after the movie came out, that she is "overwhelmed with emotion" and "so grateful" that her parents' story is finally being told. This film touched me deeply as well. Don't miss it.



Friday, November 18, 2016

Moving toward resistance: the power of old women

Has it been just 10 days since our political frames were upended and Donald Trump became President-Elect? As with all disasters, it seems like I've been living with this knowledge so much longer. Like many of my friends and people around the world, I'm still somewhere along the continuum of grief*: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness/depression, and finally, acceptance. I supported Clinton, campaigned for her, and until her upset loss Nov. 8, expected her to win.

For the first few days after the election, the first three grief stages were dominant for me. Denial lasted only until late election eve, when Hillary Clinton's loss became a mathematical certainty. Anger followed--at everyone who voted for this ignorant, vulgar and dangerous man or who didn't vote at all. Bargaining didn't last long. I applaud those who are circulating petitions that the Electoral College be abolished or its members agree to vote for the popular vote winner (Clinton), and I would like to hope along with those who predicted DT would soon be impeached, yet I can't pin my hopes on either of those unlikely outcomes. So that leaves sadness, trying to move into acceptance, which of course is the precondition of resistance.

So why is grieving the word that fits our condition so well? I've certainly seen my candidates lose before, and I don't remember grieving. It was more like stumbling, picking myself up, dusting off my pants, and moving on. My string of losing candidates started with Nixon defeating Humphrey in my first election as a voter in 1968. A winner--a brief Democratic respite--emerged in the late 70s with Jimmy Carter, and then came a decade of Ronald Reagan, followed by Bush Sr.. We drew a winning ticket with Bill Clinton in the 90s, and then...George Bush Jr. for 8 years. Finally, Barack Obama won in 2008--the best win of all. I was in Japan then, and I remember calling my US election office to make sure my absentee ballot was on its way. A portrait of Obama hung in my office at school, the familiar one with the word "hope" printed underneath.

2016. The unthinkable arrived last week, which, when we parse out all of the factors, seems almost inevitable. The world turns, the backlash phenomenon reappears, and we are immersed in a media environment where truth and lies blur. "Post-Truth" was just named the Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year. (Click here for a discussion of that.) In earlier times, I recall recovering from defeat more quickly. One reason might be that for a big chunk of time, I put less faith than I do today in the electoral process as a source of change. Also, I was or felt young, with decades ahead to help turn the world around.

Like so many of my friends who are now old, I see my past as so much longer than my future. The likely damage from a Trump administration is frightening to contemplate. How much can be undone during my time on Earth? How much energy will I and my aging friends have to be part of the struggle? It was in that sad spirit that I drove to the monthly meeting of OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), an event I join when I can. For the most part we're a support group, focusing less on marching and more on helping each other get through this thing called aging. We have potlucks, collect money for worthy groups, host visitors. Our most political effort recently has focused on activities helping us acknowledge and learn from differing communication and leadership styles. This Saturday we had set aside for a post-election discussion. "What would come of it?" I wondered as I walked in the door of the Northglenn Community Center.  This image below, which I found by googling "powerful old women, images", epitomizes my feeling about that day. I think it fits the tone of Saturday afternoon. We weren't smiling a lot, the two dozen or so of us who attended, but we took our places, looking into the future. And as this woman's hands show, we all brought a history of work in other times and places.


As our discussion began, our work on communication styles--as well as our long experience in different kinds of groups--paid off. We had excellent facilitators, Katherine and Trish, who guided us through three parts of the discussion: how we are feeling, why that is so, and what we hope to do. We agreed to guidelines: short speaking turns to allow everyone time to speak, respect for differences. Not surprisingly, our feelings were similar, and the grieving metaphor was invoked by many. We acknowledged fears and uncertainty about the future. Gillian brought information about the safety pin solidarity movement.


There was music: a song by Holly Near, and a Peter Paul and Mary old standby, Mr. Bigot. Brang brought copies of a short Buddhist text, which includes this phrase: "Greed, hatred and ignorance cause suffering. Let them go. Love, generosity and wisdom bring the end of suffering. Foster them." At several points, we remembered that we've gotten through hard times before, that wisdom and experience are valuable tools.

Moving into talk about what we can do, we were ready to begin the long work of resistance. Numerous ideas came up. One is to monitor and follow up on the actions of all of our Colorado representatives and senators in the US Congress, contacting and working with national OLOC, reconnecting with those working (still!) on the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), and focusing in a number of ways on issues we feel passionate about.

We left the community center that afternoon, still grieving but ready to carry on. For me, I felt much more powerful than I did earlier. We may not walk as fast as we once did or stay up into the wee hours, but our wisdom and experience count for a lot. And we plan to use those.

*The 5 stages of grief listed above were first identified by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying. For more discussion, click here.