Book Review: The Shawl of Midnight

It's been awhile since I've posted an entry on this blog-- which I hope to neglect less in coming months. As in previous summers, I'm alternating 10-day stays in my city home and the tiny house near Guffey--actually a park model RV that I put on my friend Linda's land almost 20 years ago. I'm at my tiny house (a/k/a Mudbiscuit) writing this, having just finished reading a very special book.

Summertime...a season when time seems to stretch and there is more time for reading. I remember many childhood summer afternoons heading for the library and returning home with an armload of books. Now, decades, later my library visits are mostly online, with my kindle and Libby library app having replaced print for the most part. At the same time, I welcome print when it comes my way, as did a pre-pub copy of The Shawl of Midnight. In this blog entry, I'd like to share why it impressed me so much.

In this novel, Jacqueline St. Joan* has written a powerful story that brings the reader many gifts: a young woman’s coming of age story,  a lens into the lives of women in Pakistan, a compelling suspense novel, and a tribute to the resilience of women who fight back.  It’s a great read and sequel to the author’s first novel centered in Pakistan, My Sisters Made of Light. 

The story begins in 1996 in Islamabad with an assassination of a women’s rights advocate and the birth of her daughter, the story’s protagonist, Nafeesa. Her mother, Meena, is shot at a rally demanding the release of her sister, Baji Ujala, jailed for aiding women targeted for honor killings. Also at the rally is another activist sister demanding justice for Baji Ujula, and she has been the victim of an acid attack. The rally ends in gunshots, and at the hospital Meena dies as her daughter is born. Baji Ujala escapes from jail and the sisters scatter, creating new lives in other places.

Fast forward 18 years and Nafeesa is entering adulthood, carefully shielded from the family history by her protective father. But she learns enough to know that she wants and needs to learn more. And this is where the real story begins. Nafeesa’s dying grandfather wants to see his daughters one more time, and a heroine’s mission begins: the journey to reunite them all in their original home. 

Like many heroes, Nafeesa benefits from a family heirloom that comes in handy at just the right moment, and her supernatural power comes from myth—specifically, the stories of Durga (Kali) and Mahakali. No magic amulets come into play but the power of those stories boost Nafeesa’s courage and strength. She needs both on the perilous journey she’s on—involving nighttime treks in Kashmir, a heavily militarized area on the border of India and Pakistan. How to stay safe? She is ambivalent about carrying a pistol during one episode when she must travel through a forest to find help for an injured aunt. A vision or hallucination—we need not decide which—of Mahakali appears. This terrifying goddess, Protector of the Himalayas, helps Nafeesa find courage. And then there’s Durga (Kali) wearing a golden crown and riding the back of a lion, one of her seven arms holding a sword aloft. Who wouldn’t find more than a bit of back-up in that?

Thanks to St. Joan ’s skill, I could begin to feel the texture of this land with its extremes of temperature and altitude, as well as many cultural features. Dance, clothing, food and animals are woven into the story to underscore readers’ sense of place. I especially enjoyed references to birds—symbols of freedom or portents of change perhaps. And then there’s history interwoven through it all. Much of the story centers on the borderland of Kashmir, still a contested land half a century after the wrenching partition of India into two countries—Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-dominant India. 

Leaving Pakistan to connect with another aunt in Mumbai, India, our heroine broadens her vision when she discovers that her aunt is in a lesbian relationship, resulting in a broadening of her vision of family as well as culture. There are fragments of poetry too in this book, supporting the theme that all journeys have a physical and spiritual dimension.

Nafeesa’s story is a complex one—more than simply a tale of finding the fortitude to reach a goal. She has moments of doubt and confusion—needing to decide who to believe amid strangers who may not be what they seem. But there are enough helpers along the way, and the journey continues. Yet as we all know, one journey leads to another, and by the end of the story all of the well-developed characters in it must make new decisions about where there lives should go. 

St. Joan delved deep into Pakistani culture before writing this book and its predecessor, My Sisters Made of Light. As she explains in an author’s note to The Shawl of Midnight, she had the good fortune to meet “the Harriet Tubman of Pakistan” nearly 20 years ago. Aisha (pseudonym) was a teacher who was also active in the rescue of women targeted for “honor crimes” by their families.  As St. Joan explains it, “honor crimes are a patriarchal practice (not based in religion) by which family members target and punish (sometimes through killing) another family member who is perceived to have transgressed norms, usually related to sexuality, in order to restore  the family’s ‘honor’.” 

St. Joan asked for permission to write Aisha’s story and the two began a collaboration which resulted in these two historically-based books of fiction. As a reader I felt drawn into both stories and found myself more interested in how women’s rights were developing in Pakistan. Coincidentally, while watching the PBS Newshour one evening, I saw a film segment Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, the director of a the new Ms Marvel series which features a young Muslim woman as hero. Obaid-Chinoy has also directed two short films, Saving Face (about acid attacks) and Girl in the River (honor killings) which are currently on HBO Max. I have since watched both and recommend them highly as context for The Shawl of Midnight and for a look at feminist resistance in Pakistan.

*Full Disclosure: I am a friend of Jacqueline St. Joan, and as such, may be suspected of writing an overly praise-filled review. Never fear--you see my true opinions above. As a reader, I’m grateful to my friend for writing these books; otherwise I may never have found them given the sea of excellent writing around us all.) 

The Shawl of Midnight is published this week (August 8) and is available here in print or ebook.

 

New Year's Day 2022: greetings to our tiger year

 I woke up this morning to a sea of white outside my bedroom window, as the first real snow of the season arrived in my Denver neighborhood overnight. It was snow-quiet, punctuated by laughter of a dog walker and the scrape of a shovel, and of course, the cries of the geese flying over the small lake across the street in City Park. A perfect setting for the new year we all want--a clean slate after a year filled with so much sorrow--the losses, disappointments, climate stress or catastrophes that we've all suffered or witnessed. 

I'm also spending the day somewhat unexpectedly with a house guest--my friend, Lauren, whose company is a joy, but the reason for her presence today and yesterday is not. She's an evacuee from Louisville in Boulder County where high winds and quick-moving flames destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses on Wednesday afternoon. So much devastation, and for those unable to return--most everyone in Louisville, as the evacuation order hasn't been lifted--there are more worries: possible pipe or water damage for those with gas heat, as the gas was turned off community wide until damage could be assessed. Lauren believes her house was spared, but won't know for sure until she returns, most likely on Sunday.

Like everyone, I wish for luck in the new year, and I still observe, from nostalgia rather than belief, the customs I've picked up in my long life: my mom's practice of trying to do things on the first day that she wanted to see mark the coming year: in my case, a calm mind, reading, listening to music, enjoying the company of friends. From my former partner, the late Paula Sperry who was born in Texas, the southern custom of making a pot of black-eyed peas with okra. It's now in the Instant Pot where I hope to correct a cooking error in step one of the process. No doubt mistakes will be part of 2022. May they all be easily corrected.

From Japan, where I lived for years, some familiar customs: a "hatsu" (first) shower--firsts being important on the first day of the year, a bowl of miso soup in lieu of the traditional ozoni, and the habit of checking out the New Year's concert from Vienna on Great Performances--not a Japanese custom really, but there are enough fans in Japan for NHK to broadcast it every year. I have moved aside the cow figurine on my seasonal decoration table and put the tiger in its place. On the lunar calendar 2022 is the year of the tiger, noted for strength and bravery, a good talisman to carry forward into this sure-to-be challenging year.

I've told a few friends during the holidays that dread was complicating the hope I usually feel at the start of a new year. Too many systems damaged or changed: the threats to democracy, the climate, our safety with so many guns and so much suffering continuing. In my best moments, I hope to invoke whatever tiger-bravery or strength I can muster for the challenges ahead.

Amid the sad memories of the old year are the gems--those moments that stay in memory though they didn't always feel important at the time: infusing myself with the beautiful, blue sky and clean air that returned from last summer's smoky skies cleared near my cabin on Linda Lane's land near Guffey. Lots of memory gems from last summer, where I spent a couple of weeks each month before I closed it for the season in September: chatting over coffee with Linda while watching the sun travel over 36-mile Mountain, walking Belle, Linda's border collie, along Ranger Station Road, indulging Hop, a 15-year-old Corgi, with treats upon entreaty. Hop may be living her last year now, but we thought that last year, and well, she's still here. 

I'm remembering many moments with friends this past year, after we all got our vaccines and life in person started to reemerge. Many of them over food--at a restaurant, at home, mine or another's, and especially  on holidays when a friend with a beautiful home filled with sunshine and art and beautiful table settings opened her heart and cupboard. Other moments laughing with laughter yoga friends in Cheesman Park, well into winter. There was food there too, always a picnic on the table just outside the Botanic Gardens. 

And then there are those memory-gems on zoom--my hybrid life continuing--with friends who can't or don't wish to meet in person: meditation sessions with Eyes of Compassion Sangha, saying the morning or evening chant together; a birthday celebration with treasured family in Illinois as I turned 74 in February. Music moments came on zoom and in person this past year, and I expect that to continue in our hybrid world. In December, SAGE Singers gave a joint concert with Sine Nomine, another community choir, in the lighted stained glass church where Dr. King once preached. (The audience could opt for in-person or zoom.) I have switched from singer to support person with SAGE, enjoying this new role every bit as much as when I sang.

There were also memorial moments this past year, most recently for a neighbor who died this fall, a long-time resident of Montview Manor, where I still happily live: Kathy Tull, whose daughters provided a December wassail party where we shared food, stories about Kathy's life, and reminded ourselves of the rather special community we have here at "the manor". Later today I plan to toast whoever shows up for a potluck upstairs, then returning to the apartment. Lauren and I are in a similar mood: a few episodes of The Golden Girls if we can find them in honor of Betty White who died this week just weeks short of her 100th birthday, and then something funny or silly--moments that I hope to blend into this still-newborn but sure-to-be challenging year.

Thoughts on a walk through downtown Denver

Taking a walk in a once-familiar place is like reading one of those layered books showing changes over time. That’s what I felt yesterday morning when I made a rare visit to what was once the center of Denver, the “overgrown cow-town”, as some called it when I arrived here in 1976. There was no 16th Street Mall then, just a busy downtown street with department stores, restaurants and offices, and sidewalks filled with people. The long-gone May D&F department store created a large ice rink in the winter, and the street looked like an auto parade route on Saturday nights.I worked for a time in the Petroleum Club Building near Broadway and Colfax, a short walk from the small central library and an art museum that looked like a castle. I stayed for a decade and more as changes came and visited during my Japan years. Following the construction of the mall, skyscrapers came to dot the town, and the library and museum grew new additions. 

And so I remembered these things when I went downtown yesterday, a warm December morning—three tasks in mind. I walked  from the Cultural Center parking garage adjoining the library down to a pharmacy on the 16th Street mall, blocks away. And during that walk I saw and felt the changes of recent years. A microcosm of the US, as the year rolls to an end. A familiar sight in many cities, only with different names.

As I walked along the perimeter of Civic Center Park, sandwiched between the Courthouse and the Capitol Building, I immediately saw the fencing keeping everyone out, put up in September to evict homeless campers and control trash and drug activity. One path leading to a small cluster of tents, the Christkindl market, looked like a mirage in an urban desert. I walked on. The library was fenced off too—a construction project no doubt timed by pandemic closures. 

I continued, crossing into a street bordering the mall, and came across a bunched sleeping bag on the street, wheelchair by the side of the person who was probably inside. I paused, uncertain, but decided not to disturb.  As I walked further, it took me a few moments to start seeing what wasn’t there on the streets—crowds of shoppers, tourists or workers heading to their offices, days before Christmas. There was very little traffic as well, and it was easy to cross against the light. Just a few pedestrians on their way to somewhere, workers hosing down outdoor tables on the 16th Street Mall, and a solitary waiter wiping tables on the patio of the Hard Rock Cafe. But there were signs of manufactured cheer, like this merry-go-round, no kids in sight.

Walking along the mall, I saw the empty storefronts, a few covered with murals promoting a Denver that once existed—snow-capped mountains in the distance, packed restaurants, city attractions. 

Department stores were few, and the open businesses tended to be franchises, a few fast food places, and the two pharmacies I was headed for. I was in search of a rapid covid test kit, and an online listing led me to believe that the downtown CVC had them in stock. In reality, no luck and no need to enter the store. Leaving the pharmacy, I encountered a woman in a wheelchair, asking for a dollar. I gave her the cookies in my bag and she seemed pleased. As I continued my return journey down 16th Street, I passed several other apparently homeless people, seeking donations. I sometimes carry protein bars to hand out when I think I might encounter those in need, and I regretted not having done that on this trip. 

I turned around and headed toward my next destination. Approaching Broadway, I saw well-kept thriving institutions—the real success stories of these past two years—banks and lending institutions. Starbuck’s was also open and well-tended. I passed by, aiming for the RTD office where I bought a packet of discount bus tickets. I haven’t been on a bus since pre-lockdown days, but I expect to hop on when necessary this coming year. Then my major destination of the morning appeared—a rally on the West steps of the Capitol. 

                                        

It was a rally for justice on behalf of Rogel Aguilera-Mederos , a 26-year-old truck driver who was recently sentenced to 110 years in prison for a 2019 crash  on I-70, that led to the deaths of four people. You can read about it here—about the mountain-inexperienced driver whose brakes failed and who missed the runaway ramps. The result was a crash that killed four people, caused by a man who was not reckless or impaired, a man with no criminal record or intent to harm, an immigrant from Cuba. Just about everyone agrees the sentence was wildly unfair, the judge included, but apparently required under the state’s mandatory sentencing laws. 

When I arrived, the rally had already started, a bilingual one, aimed at organizing people to understand what mandatory sentencing laws have created. Originally designed to eliminate racial disparities in sentencing, they have instead led to more injustice, in the opinion of rally speakers, particularly former State Rep Joe Salazar. Salazar gave a fiery speech, lambasting the misuse of power by prosecutors who often use the law to browbeat accused criminals into a plea bargain. Rogel’s mother, who spoke in Spanish wept through most of her speech, her pain so obvious that words were unnecessary. The crowd broke into chants of Justice Now, justicia ahora!. The crowd was small, perhaps 100, and there were several TV cameras. 

In just a few days this has become a high profile case. More than 5 million people, including me, signed a petition asking Gov. Polis to grant clemency to Rogel—either setting him free or reducing his sentence. Attendees were encouraged to call Gov. Polis’ office to request clemency, and there are legal moves underway to reduce Rogel’s sentence. Gov. Polis’s legal team is considering this as I write, and a decision is expected soon.

I returned to the parking garage, walking past History Colorado and the Denver Art Museum, both of which appear to be thriving. claimed my car, and returned home. And I thought of how easy it is to let the what counts as legal reform in one decade—in this case mandatory sentencing—lead to a whole new set of abuses unless underlying causes are addressed.  I had the feeling as I listened that this was a kind of George Floyd moment—an individual case that was so horrendously unjust that it might take us closer to creating a more just law enforcement system. A year past the Rallies for Black Lives Matter, we see that change can happen, but it’s often limited or non-existent in places, and will remain that way unless the patient work of nurturing change continues, both inside and outside the system.

Remembering Stephanie Bogdanski Mack who would turn 110 this month

When I was growing up in the 50s, Aunt Steph was the aunt who never failed to slip me five bucks anytime we had a Bogdanski family get-together. A generous gift, perhaps the equivalent of $20 today. When she visited my childhood home, she was always a force to be reckoned with, often to be found with the men of the family in the living room, while my other aunts gathered in the kitchen. One topic in the living room was union politics at the Mercoid Corporation, an electrical parts factory on Belmont Avenue. It was as close as we get to a family business, as several of my uncles and aunts worked there for a long time.

As a child, I equated her loud voice and strong opinions with power, not having learned yet that it sometimes means just the opposite. Still, Aunt Steph was perhaps my earliest model for an outspoken woman. She cut a fine figure too--usually wearing a body-hugging dress and heels to family affairs. Her presence was never unnoticed, and I always looked forward to seeing her. Not just for the five bucks. I was fond of her and perhaps a little in awe, shy little girl that I was.

Steph, often called Stefka by her siblings, was the second child of Leon and Barbara, born in November of  1911. I know very little about her early life, other than she was born at home and did not finish high school. She went to work at Mercoid, like her older sister Marie (Myne-ka), and her earnings no doubt helped keep the family afloat during the Depression. She was a dark-haired beauty in her youth (and later as a blonde), and was named the Mercoid May Queen in 1940. (Factories had May queens? you may wonder, as do I).

Stephanie married a quiet man, a bartender named Frank Mack. They had no children, and Frank died of cancer in the early 60s. Later, Steph partnered with a co-worker, Ronnie Wronski, though they never married and the relationship ended after several years. Ronnie had become a friend of the family during Frank's lifetime and you can see all three of them here, along with other family members, in this photo, circa 1960. Taken in the backyard of the Hammond, Indiana home where my sister Joan and I grew up, this photo shows (from left): Ronnie Wronski, Steph, Kitch, Jack Beck, Marie Beck, Frank Mack, Joan Riley and Edward Bogdanski.

After Steph and Ronnie separated, Steph remained in Chicago, living alone, until the mid-70s. It was then that she and my mom, Angie (Anielka) moved into an apartment on the northwest side. They called themselves "the odd couple": Angie liked good books, plain wholesome food, and simple comfortable clothes. Steph, (who "likes everything fried", Angie once confided), was fond of The National Enquirer, and quiz shows. But they both kept a neat house and kept each other good company--at least in the beginning.

By the time Angie and Steph moved in together, I was living in Colorado, but made regular visits back to their home every summer. One year, on a visit back from Colorado, I drove them to the country home of their youngest sister, Virginia (Gina), near Toledo, Ohio. Here they are,  circa 1985, "the girls", as Gina called them, waving to the camera.

I got to know Steph better on those visits. I asked her once how she felt about her job at Mercoid, which she kept for 40-plus years, until she retired at the age of 72. She had been a "floor lady" at one point. She told me that she was proud that the electrical parts she made were used all over the world. I don't know that Steph ever had hobbies, but she enjoyed dressing up, going downtown, visiting department stores like Marshall Fields, and eating at Berghoff's Restaurant. She loved fine food, a highball or two, and always took pride in her appearance. She was also proud that she had what she considered good Polish skills, having once been a secretary for a Polish organization.

Steph never had children, she said, because she had a "tipped womb". Perhaps there were other reasons, as  that condition is not considered a barrier to fertility, I later learned. I never had the sense that she missed being a mother of young children, but later, when her nieces and nephews were grown, she spoke of her regret at not having had kids. Toward the end of her life, when she was in the Alden nursing home with advanced dementia, she was convinced that Joan and I were her children, and perhaps we were in a sense. Joan, especially, as she and her husband Jim navigated Steph's medical issues until Steph died in 2002.

Steph was devastated when Angie, her younger sister by 6 years, died suddenly of a heart attack in 1994. Both had suffered some health issues in the last few years, and Steph had become fearful, which caused Angie stress. After Angie's death, Steph coped for a few years on her own in the apartment they had shared, but after a fall and an injury, she was moved to Alden,  By then, dementia had set in, and she could no longer live on her own. Joan and I and others visited her there until her death. She was not an easy patient/resident, being confined to a locked ward and being a smoker.  On my visits I would take her to the patio to smoke. Conversation was difficult, and one time, at one poignant moment, she opened a compact in her purse, looked at herself and said, "How did I become a hag?" More than anything, this broke my heart, for this once-proud and attractive woman.

Steph would have shuddered at the idea of living to 110, which she would be on Nov. 26 this year. "I want to go like Marilyn Monroe," she used to say more than once, referring to that star's death from an overdose of sleeping pills. Yet I doubt she would have ever taken steps to end her life, even knowing the coming end. Had she been asked, I think she would have agreed the end should be left up to God, as was the beginning and everything in between.

Reflections on the passing of Alix Dobkin

 When news of Alx Dobkin’s stroke and immanent death broke last week, I felt a twinge of guilt before recognizing my sorrow and sense of immanent loss. As I thought of her occasionally during recent years, the first memory to pop up was an uncomfortable conversation with her at a conference over a political disagreement several years ago. In the face of death, the great equalizer, all disagreements seem trivial, and I suddenly felt it was churlish and a waste of time to even remember it. What’s worth remembering are the gifts she had in her life and the difference she made in mine. 

Alix, who died at 80, was a pioneer of what became “women’s music", a genre she helped birth in the early 70s. It was a genre that celebrated women’s autonomy, our right to love and make love with each other and our proud membership in what was called the second wave of feminism. With Kay Gardner and other lesbian-feminist musicians, she recorded the first recorded album of lesbian music: Lavender Jane Loves Women in 1973.  Then no mainstream recording label would touch an album by an artist who only wanted to perform for women, so Alix formed her own record company, Women’s Wax Works. It was a breakthrough album for lesbian-feminists seeking a sound track to our lives. 

Alix was already a celebrity of sorts, having played with Bob Dylan and other early folk greats of the 60s. At one point, her obituary in The Washington Post notes, she reportedly turned down the chance to record one of his songs. She married and had a daughter, but later separated from her husband and made a major life change. The catalyst was a radio interview with British feminist Germaine Greer, one of many consciousness raising events that marked that period. She took her daughter, partnered with a female lover, Liza Cowan, and took a new turn in music and toward lesbian-feminist organizing.

I remember playing songs from Lavender Jane in the Chicago apartment I shared with five other women in the early 70s. We lived collectively and felt we were part of something new. I had just quit my first job, writing for The Lerner Newspapers, and was searching for something that I hadn’t quite defined yet. I had been volunteering with the Emma Goldman Women’s Health Collective, which was trying to help women navigate a sexist health system and get good screening and counseling services for their reproductive needs. In the larger culture women were questioning whether the traditional career path of marriage and children was the only way to go—or whether it was wise at all in an often-oppressive culture  “I am a woman giving birth to herself” was the phrase on a poster, one of many aimed at women’s autonomy in that era. Alix’ s song “The Woman in your Life is You”, resonated with me and so many other women I know or once knew. I realized after her death was announced this week that the feelings of sorrow I had came not only from the end of a fine woman’s life, but also losses in mine: a person who was familiar to me over half a century, a reminder of my youth, and part of what seems a stream of losses as I age. 

At 74, I confess that I am a regular reader of obituaries—not out of a morbid search for who’s dying at a younger age than mine. Rather it’s because obits have become a kind of art form, the ultimate short story of the arc of someone’s life. In papers like The Washington Post, the writer is aware that readers want to know the deceased ’s contributions to the larger culture—a new invention or contribution to some field. In Alix’s obit in The Post, she was identified as the source of a meme that resonates in our time: ”The future is female”. Her lover, Liza Cowan, photographed her wearing a T-shirt with that phrase, and decades later it was echoed by Hillary Clinton and young feminists empowered in ways Alix could only hope for in her and my youth. It made me laugh, as I had not even been aware of the origin of the meme in the years since I first heard her songs.

Social media posts by friends and admirers focus on her music, and a tribute from Liza, her lover in those early days, told more of the story. Alix “called on her roots in folk music, Broadway musicals, and Balkan songs…based on storytelling.” Her confidence came early, “from a loving Jewish family in Philadelphia”, members for a time in The Communist Party, “and  she spent her early years listening to the music of Paul Robeson—who once visited her family—Pete and Peggy Seeger, Leadbelly, The Red Army Chorus” and others. There, Liza writes, “she gained a passion for civil rights and storytelling.” She later published a biography of her young years as a “red-diaper baby”.

Alix recorded 5 more albums after Lavender Jane and toured various countries, always performing for women. As she aged, she remained a performer and organizer, especially with Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC). In the last half of her life, Liza writes, she lived in Woodstock, New York, raising her daughter along with former husband Sam, leaving only to tour. And in her last years, performing took a back seat to helping care for her three beloved grandkids. This recent photo was taken in Woodstock.

Alix, like all of us, had many influences in her life, and no doubt she made decisions she either regretted or wished she had handled differently. Our uncomfortable discussion at the 2016 OLOC gathering revolved around the steering committee’s decision to disallow a Native American drumming circle from performing at the event because the group included men. The drummers had been invited by the guest speaker, a Native American poet, who later called out the conference for racism during her address. As an attendee, I felt embarrassed and angry. When I asked whether the issue would be discussed, Alix responded with a vague answer: it could be brought up at the Sunday finale. I did not follow through with that, leaving the gathering with the feeling that such a lesbian separatist stance, perhaps appropriate in the second wave’s early feminist days, was clearly inappropriate in the present. Perhaps Alix later re-evaluated that decision as both OLOC and the white-majority culture began to deal seriously with racism in following years. Like many, I have a tendency to freeze my ideological opponents in the past. 

Alix contributed much to music, lesbian-feminism and to those who loved her. Looking at the arc of her 80 years, it seems to me that she expanded more than she rejected the traditional family. She and her ex-husband Sam both raised their daughter, Adrian, for years. At the end her daughter  and son-in-law were with her, and lesbians around the world kept vigil online and perhaps in person. Obituaries select sections of a life to make a short story for the news. As we know intuitively, we all deserve a novel. If our lives end with the love and admiration Alix experienced, we will definitely be fortunate.

The beauty of armchair travel

While a number of my friends are happily planning trips now that pandemic restrictions are eased, I'm not one of them. The exceptions are my upcoming summer sojourns on Linda Lane's land near Guffey, a beautiful place where my tiny house sits; the other, a trip to Chicago, where until last year I travelled every year to visit family and friends. What I'm talking about here are the other kinds of trips, the ones to new places or adventure opportunities. 

Despite my love of travel--I've had so many opportunities, especially during my Japan years--I find that the relative solitude of the past year jumpstarted a new appreciation for travel via a screen. In January I decided to do an informal project--look for international films that would give me the sense of having visited places. I looked for films from countries I never had the chance to visit, and given the narrowing window of opportunity brought about by getting older, I probably never will. Consequently, I avoided historical dramas or fantasy in favor of more current offerings, preferably those including a road trip or characters using a lot of shoe leather on city streets. The project is still ongoing and is still very limited in scope, but I'd like to share a few of my favorites from the past 5 months. If you're in the "I've seen everything already" doldrums, here are a few you might have missed:

1. Cuba and The Cameraman. This 2017 Netflix original documentary by Jon Alpert covers 45 years of this journalist's visits to post-revolutionary Cuba. The film got a rather stunning 100% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and  I think it's deserved. Alpert, who gained the trust of Fidel Castro early on, had unprecedented access to the late leader. Brief interviews are sprinkled throughout the film, but what really makes it outstanding is its focus on stories of ordinary Cubans over time. On each visit Alpert looks up the same people, and if you're like me, their stories, told with humor and heart in the face of suffering and resilience, stay long after the film is over. (113 minutes in English and Spanish)

2. One Man and His Cow (La Vache). This French language 2016 film directed by Mohamed Hamidi takes viewers on a road trip from Algeria to Paris. It's a"charming and feel-good" production which will take you to Paris, mostly on foot, from a small Algerian town  where our protagonist devotedly cares for his cow, Jacqueline. After years of unsuccessful tries, he finally gets an invitation to enter Jacqueline in a Paris agricultural fair. Along the way he meets a variety of kind and eccentric people, gets embroiled in a social media scandal, and in the end transforms just about everyone's life or viewpoint in both countries. Yes, I'm betting you'll cry and laugh, as I did, wishing it were a whole lot longer. And, of yes, you'll see a lot of scenery along the way. (91 minutes.Available for rent on Amazon Prime, Vudu or Apple TV)

3. Atlantics. This 2019 drama from Senegal is a genre-bender, blending social commentary with the paranormal--generally not my favorite genre. A group of desperate construction workers, unpaid for months, set off by boat for Europe, but their boat capsizes and they are lost. How they "return" is the mystery of the film which is beautifully photographed and directed by Mati Diop, a woman making her debut as a director. The protagonists of the film are the women left behind and the lost men who are "with" them. It took me awhile to figure out just what was going on, but when I did it drew me in through its beauty and message. (105 minutes, original language Wolof, subtitled in English. On Netflix)

4. The Mole Agent. This 2020 documentary from Chile got a 95% rating from Rotten Tomatoes for its portrayal of the residents of a home for the elderly. Our protagonist, an 80-something widower, is hired to infiltrate the home and check to see that a client's mother is being treated properly. You'll quickly see that this is less an investigation of possible abuse and more a look at the varied stories of residents and workers there. Our investigator knows how to listen with an open heart and he is valued for that. The film ends with a message for the client and a feeling among viewers like me that we've gotten a view of Chilean society that would be impossible to get on any tour. (90 minutes, on Hulu. In Spanish with English subtitles)

5. The Disciple. This 2020 music-filled drama comes from India, a recent addition to Netflix that has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It's the story of a vocalist who has devoted his life to the spiritual practice of Indian classical music. However, he struggles with his ability to achieve his goal of mastery amid challenges both internal and external. This is no standard drama of success after beating all odds. Rather it's a very nuanced look at talent, perfection, a media-saturated music environment, and the necessity of choice in an imperfect world. (127 minutes) As a traveler-viewer, you'll ride with our protagonist on the streets of Mumbai and attend a number of concerts. It's too good to be depressing, but feel-good is not the first word that comes to mind.

6. Magical Andes. This two-season series of short half-hour episodes was my favorite pre-bedtime viewing for several weeks. It is an incredible photographic journey along the Andean mountain range which extends through various countries along the western edge of South America. Each episode focuses on a different area and introduces you to locals whose livelihoods or passions are connected to this amazing 7000-km long mountain range. It makes no attempt at social commentary in favor of letting viewers tag along for the ride. I've mentioned this series most often when people ask what I've been watching. May well watch again for the sheer beauty of the photography and the joy of visiting 7 different countries--Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia. (On Netflix)

7. If you're in the mood to stay awhile longer in South America, consider El Pepe: A Supreme Life in Uruguay. It's a 2018 documentary about Jose Pepe Mujica, known as El Pepe, a 1970s revolutionary who later became president of the country and then a farmer devoted to teaching kids about sustainable agriculture. Based on interviews conducted by Serbian director Emir Kusturica. I watched this film in January and it still echoes with me. "My youth belongs to the world of illusion", El Pepe tells the camera. The real revolution is in our minds and cultural values. 

Happy viewing and traveling, reader.

Remembering Joanne Hauschild Kastrul

 In sorting through my digitized family photos lately, I've been especially touched by those of my oldest cousin, Joanne. She died last year in February, just days after her 84th birthday, of pancreatic cancer. Because it was a cancer with a poor prognosis and often rapid spread, Joanne chose to forego treatment for that reason and another more important one: She had met the love of her life just 15 years before. "He is the most wonderful man I've ever met," she told me just months before her death, saying that she wanted every moment of quality time with him--without the side effects of treatments unlikely to extend her life. The wonderful man was Jack Kastrul. Joanne and Jack married in 2008--her for the first time, he for the second--at the tender ages of 72 and 71.

Another wonderful man in Joanne's opinion was Joe Biden, who she thought was just about the kindest man she had ever heard in the political arena. She would have proudly cast her vote for Joe and Kamala had she lived, and when Joe and Kamala succeeded, I felt I had to celebrate double--for me and Joanne, and of course, for the world too.

Here are Jack and Joanne on their wedding day. In front are me--one of the lucky maids of honor, my sister Joan and brother-in-law Jim. Also part of the wedding party were Sandee Kastrul, Jack's daughter, and her partner Kim Crutcher. We all felt like we were creating a new family that day.

Joanne and Jack's wedding reflected one of the important things that brought them together: love of the Bible. What was somewhat unusual was that Jack was Jewish and Joanne Catholic. Their wedding, at the Catholic church Joanne had long attended in her Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park, included a priest and a rabbi--something unthinkable in my Catholic childhood. They continued attending services--both at a church and a synagogue--for several years after their marriage. They also shared a love of music, having met in a choir. It seemed to me that for the ensuing decade each gave the other what they most needed--a family. Joanne, who had no siblings or children, had lived with her late mother, Marie, for decades. Jack had lost his beloved first wife, Clair, to cancer years before.

Before their marriage, I had met Joanne yearly on my visits to Chicago, and our relationship bloomed again after years of relatively little contact. Starting in the late 90s, we would usually make a date to go to the cemetery, where my mother, her mother and adopted father were buried. Joanne had been tending their graves regularly for years, and she understood, after my mother died in 1994, how healing cemetery visits could be. Then we would go out to dinner and talk and get-reacquainted telling family and teacher stories. Joanne had been an elementary school teacher all of her life, most of the time teaching second graders, and she had the energy and enthusiasm that I've seen with others who spend their daytime hours with young children. Here she is (circa 1980) with her mother, Marie, my mother's oldest sister.

Joanne blossomed after her marriage. She cut and dyed her hair--previously worn in a graying bun--and started calling herself JoJo. She and Jack built a life together in an apartment on North Kedzie Avenue, traveled often, and developed a close relationship as a couple with Jack's daughters, Sandee and Kim. Every year when I visited my sister and brother-in-law in Chicago, we would visit them. We'd talk, eat pizza, and sometimes Joanne would play the piano and sing. Here's a picture from the early years of their marriage.

The sadness and suddenness of Joanne's passing was all the more jarring because she was the last of a generation in my mother's family. She was already a grown-up--age 14--when I celebrated my 3rd birthday in 1950. She's sitting across from the cake next to her friend, Babs in this photo:

To me, Joanne always seemed part of a bridge generation--almost like a much younger aunt. I was still in elementary school when she graduated from college--the first in our family to go. Her choice of career was a surprise to no one, as I remember when I was a young child, she would play school in her bedroom when we visited, and her young cousins were willingly corralled as students. Later, when she had been teaching for a few years in Arlington Hts., she was courted by the principal. Everyone expected them to marry but in the end she backed out, choosing to live with her mom and adopted dad, Jack Beck. Her birth father, Bill Hauschild, had died early in her life, and Jack was Marie's loving husband, the one who entered later in her life and became her real dad.

Joanne's death came just weeks before the world shut down due to Covid, but already it had become unsafe to fly. Add jury duty for me and an incipient snowstorm in Chicago in the days after her death. I was unable to attend her modest funeral, though I plan at some point in the future to do some tending to her grave and our respective parents' graves which I think would please her very much. 

Joanne's death took a toll on Jack, whose health declined and then exposure to Covid led to his death earlier this year. At that point he had lost two wives to cancer, a sadness that must have been so difficult to bear. I had written him a letter, sent just a week before he died, telling me how much I appreciated his being in our family, though I'm not sure he either received or read it. I hope so. May his memory and Joanne's be a blessing for those of us who loved them both.

Racism Part 2: My journey to understand race

My participation in Dr. King's 1965 march into Montgomery, Alabama, was the beginning of my journey to participate in the struggle for racial justice that emerged in the 1960s. As I wrote in a blog entry about that event, I joined a group of Mundelein College students who rode a bus from Chicago to Alabama. Our goal was to join the last leg of Dr. King's historic march. It was the first time I was in a racially diverse setting and the first time I saw that I could participate in the civil rights movement of that era. Of course, I still had a long way to go in my understanding of racism, a process that continues to this day. This blog is about what happened in years afterwards and how my thinking changed.

The march experience energized both the students and the administration of my college after we returned to Chicago. In 1965 the Johnson Administration launched the Upward Bound Program, and my school was among the first to sign up. Upward Bound was based on the premise that minority and inner city students were disadvantaged because of poverty and inferior schools. Many could succeed, however, if they were given a chance to get study skills, tutoring and encouragement. Colleges could play a role in bridging the gap between them and their more privileged counterparts by offering summer programs designed to provide these things. Perhaps because of my experience with the Montgomery march, I was hired for the first two summers. I think the program reflected what I then understood the struggle to be: bridging the gap while supporting all efforts to end poverty and erase prejudice. 

I loved my work as a tutor-counselor for Upward Bound and felt that I learned much. It was emotionally powerful as well. Perhaps the strongest benefit was the chance to be a tutor for the first time and also to get to know students who were African-American, the largest category of participants. Wanting to refresh my memory about the program, I started with Wikipedia, learning that the program exists to this day. And I was even more surprised to learn that a short 30-minute documentary was made in 1968 about the program. It's called A Space to Grow, and can be viewed on YouTube. Narrated by Henry Fonda, it was nominated for an Oscar.  As I watched it this morning, I was incredibly surprised to see that I was in it! (My brief scene is at 15:08.) This is the only fragment of my 20-year-old-self that I have, never having owned a video camera. Our lives are probably over-documented today, but for those of us who came of age then, finding such a fragment is is akin to a surprise discovery on an archeological dig. I digress.

As we all know, progress is not a straight line. Dr. King came to my city, Chicago, in the late sixties as a leader in the open housing marches held there. Due to what I later came to know as "red-lining"--the practice banks and mortgage companies used to limit where black people could live--Chicago housing remained starkly segregated: a largely white North Side, and largely African-American South Side. The exploitive parts of the real estate industry reinforced that through "block-busting"--the practice of selling a house in a white area to a Black family, prompting other white families to sell cheaply to avoid the threat of collapsing property values. And then there was my father. He was not a hateful man, but he nevertheless expressed a common form of racism at the time: segregation was good for everybody because "birds of a feather flock together", and attempts to change that often result in violence or economic ruin; furthermore, individuals should have the right to sell to whoever they chose. I didn't think I believed that, but I lacked a place to discuss it (Why I didn't raise the question in class I don't know.), a support group, or a way of dealing with the fear I probably felt about joining. (Marches were peaceful, I remember--except for angry whites who tried to disrupt them.) Things had seemed more clear-cut in The South: laws preventing African-Americans from voting amid the practice of Jim Crow.

In 1968 it was time to graduate and enter the workforce as a community journalist. At my first job, as a reporter for a community newspaper chain, I wrote a series with another reporter on poverty in Chicago, and I also covered a story on the murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton  by police. News stories of Hampton's death, including my own story, clearly pointed to a police massacre, but those stories led nowhere. We were still decades away from a reckoning with police violence against people of color. The miscarriage of justice then was part of my growing understanding that news reports would not, by themselves, lead to any change. Other concerns were growing at the time as well: the ongoing Vietnam War and my own fledgling understanding of feminism. It wasn't until the 1970s that my understanding went to another level.

In 1977, shortly after my move to Colorado, the TV miniseries Roots was broadcast, and like millions of others, I watched it.  Much of the research behind it, based on Alex Haley's novel of the same name, has since been challenged, but for me at the time it was my first real introduction to the history and brutality of slavery. And though I may not have it explained it as such, I began to see the links between that tragic episode of racism--along with more reading about the early wars against Indigenous people in the US-- and the issues of the day. The 70s were also a time when people challenged many of the assumptions of the 60s--that government programs like the War on Poverty and Upward Bound--could reverse intractable problems like war and racism.

But there was a new program that I thought might really help. As in Chicago, housing patterns were segregated in Denver and there were calls for change. During the early 80s, for a few years, I drove a school bus for the Denver Public Schools. I was one of many drivers hired for the district's attempts to desegregate schools through busing. Every morning and afternoon I drove white kids to largely black schools and vice versa. The aim was to boost the academic achievement of minority students, but once again real change failed to materialize. Years later, after I left my driving job, the program ended, and school choice became the focus of efforts to mitigate racial disparities in education. During those years, I had no ready arguments for what should be done, and my focus shifted to feminism.

By 1981, I had joined the volunteer collective of the Woman to Woman Feminist Book Center in Denver. In the larger feminist world, white women were being taken to task for insensitivity and neglect of issues important to women of color. (See This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.) The bookstore collective, which had some diversity but was primarily white, had disagreements about many things, and in that year, about racism. White members were challenged by Jewish women and women of color, who said they, including me, were insensitive to communication differences (e.g., spontaneity vs. rules), religious symbols (a Christmas tree in the window, for example) and insufficient materials about diversity in the movement. At a collective meeting one night, four other members besides myself were told to leave. I was devastated, but the event led to a year-long study group that the five of us started for ourselves to try to understand what had happened. 

Eventually I developed an interest in different communication patterns among cultures and then followed my decision to go back to school with the aim of becoming an English teacher for foreign students. New understandings showed me that racism was not only prejudice and discrimination but also insensitivity to cultural differences and what is now called intersectionality.

By 1990 I had graduated with an MA in Education and had left Denver to teach English in Japan. During the 20 years I spent there I saw in different ways how race, gender and economic privilege can intersect and contradict each other. The setting shifted from US issues to those in Japan. For example, how did I look at my status as a white woman hired to teach a prestige language--and also a foreigner and a non-citizen in another country? There was a lot of debate among my friends about this.

At the same time, I was also absorbed in language learning and its various aspects. One was cross-cultural communication--a rather new academic field at the time. It invited us to examine how communication involved much more than learning vocabulary. Also important were a culture's values, non-verbal practices, communication strategies and cognitive processing. More and more I began to learn how important it is to really understand how our minds work in order to understand motivation, memory and many other aspects including bias and decision-making. In the 10 years since I retired and left Japan, it's psychology and cognitive bias that have come to fascinate me. More on that in my next blog: Racism: Part 3.

Aug. 26, 1970: Don't Iron While the Strike is Hot

 Fifty years ago today, I was standing in the (then-named) Civic Center Plaza in downtown Chicago, listening to a plethora of speakers talk about women and equality and the need to end the war in Vietnam. As is so often the case with my early adult life, I have no photos--only a button from the event and a memory of the slogan, "Don't iron while the strike is hot." I've had the button in my collection for the past 50 years.

I was working at my first real job after college--as a staff reporter for the Lerner Newspapers, a  chain of community papers in Chicago. I have no clip from the event, as not working was a key idea of the strike. My boss, Terry Gorman, a young man who considered himself progressive, did not object. So off I went--on my own, as I recall, to an event that did not...leave a strong impression. I don't remember any particular speech or speaker that day. The documentary She's Beautiful When She's Angry has a brief scene of the Chicago event showing hundreds filling the plaza.  I could blame my faulty memory for this limited recollection, but it's more a case of my feminism being in its nascent stage then. I had yet to join any group, and in 1970, my mind was more focused on Chicago politics and the continuing, tragic war in Vietnam. The shooting of student demonstrators at Kent State University by National Guard troops had occurred just a few months earlier, and with my colleagues I tried to find stories about the war protests with a "local angle". Meanwhile, another important strike was happening that August in California: Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were striking for better wages and working conditions in the fields. My roommates and I were honoring that strike. An incredibly eventful year it was.

Although I had graduated from a women's college just two years earlier, I had not yet internalized just what discrimination and systemic sexism meant and would mean for me as a woman. But I had read Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, credited today with being one of the sparks of second wave feminism. I also knew about the stirrings of the Women's Liberation Movement all around me; I just had no personal entry point yet. The abortion I needed and almost didn't get in the pre-Roe v. Wade era--was still two years away. That experience later brought me to my first feminist collective, the Emma Goldman Women's Health Center, a free well-woman clinic on Chicago's North Side.

Thanks to digital archives, I can revisit the Women's Strike for Equality on Aug. 26, fifty years ago. An article in TIME, a couple of weeks later, called it the largest demonstration since suffrage was won in 1920.  The main event was in New York, where 20,000 women and men marched along Fifth Avenue, chanting and waving banners. TIME wrote: "In nearly half a dozen cities, women swept past headwaiters to 'liberate' all-male bars and restaurants. At the Detroit Free Press, women staffers, angered because male reporters had two washrooms while they had only one, stormed one of the men's rooms, ousted its inhabitants and occupied it for the rest of the day.

"In Manhattan leafleteers collared brokers at financial-district subway stops early in the morning; teams of women activists made the rounds of corporations whose advertising "degrades women" to present them with "Barefoot and Pregnant Awards....In the nation's capital, 1,000 women marched down Connecticut Avenue behind a "We Demand Equality" banner....Los Angeles liberationists were confined to the sidewalk during their march, which drew only 500. Seven women dressed in suffragette costumes stood a "silent vigil" for women's rights during the day at the Federal Building. Easygoing street theater and speeches marked demonstrations in other cities. More than a thousand women and men sympathizers attended a noon-hour rally in Indianapolis, where they watched guerrilla theater."

For some visual imagery of the event within the context of suffrage and other women's struggles, a 3-minute student presentation is worth a watch. And for a broader understanding of the feminist movement of the 60s and early 70s, I highly recommend the documentary, She's Beautiful When She's Angry. It's available free online. 

From these archives and my limited memory, it's clear that voting was not a demand in 1970; voting rights has been a centerpiece of the Civil Rights Movement, and I remember how satisfied I felt, just months after I went to Selma, that Pres. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

On Aug. 26, 1970, observance of the suffrage anniversary was an entry to a new, second-wave women's movement. In the following 20 years the concept of equality was taken to every field: business, health, politics, literature, the arts, many more. And since then, we've seen third and fourth wave feminism come into being. The latter, according to a Wiki, began around 2012, focusing on empowerment of women and intersectionality, the interconnections of categories such as race, class and gender.

And now on Women's Equality Day 2020, a century after the 19th Amendment was ratified, voting is once again center stage in the struggle for justice and equality. Voter suppression is evident as the current occupant of the White House tries to manipulate his way to a second term. Perhaps we could argue we're in a fifth wave of feminism, which will challenge us to help make all of the gains of the past century a living reality for all and protect the gains we once thought we had won for good--reproductive rights being at the top of the list.

A little more than two months away from the Nov. 3 election, in the middle of a pandemic, I have no plans to protest in person. But I'll be phone banking and writing letters for the Democratic ticket, making sure my ballot is in on time.  To quote suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, "To the wrongs that need resistance, To the right that needs assistance, To the future in the distance, Give yourselves."

Montgomery, Alabama, 1965: reflections on my first protest march

It's been more than a half century--a fact that still startles me--since I took an overnight bus trip with a group of Catholic nuns, lay teachers and students to join the last leg of the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The late John Lewis, a very young man, was there with Dr. King and the march leadership, though I never saw or heard him. His death and funeral service this week brought back this time to me, so writing this is a way of reliving and reflecting on these experiences.

I was 18 years old, a freshman at Mundelein College in Chicago in the fall of 1964, a rather naive young woman who had never attended a Catholic school before. I was surprised to learn almost immediately that nuns and students were planning to join the march the following spring and plans were already underway. I knew immediately that I wanted to join it. Did I really understand much of what was at stake? I like to think so, though my understanding must have come from news reports of the growing Civil Rights movement in the early 60s: the fact that freedom fighters were working for basic human rights, that many Negroes (the word we used then) could not vote, that change was underway. And there was a book: John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me. Griffin, a Texas journalist and deeply religious man, had darkened his skin (with drugs and sun lamp treatments) so that he could tour the South and experience it as a Black man. The book was published in 1961 when I was in high school. I remember reading it, surprised and saddened by his account of racial injustices in the deep South.

For my trip to Alabama, all that was needed was $20 for the overnight Trailways bus trip to and from Alabama--and parental permission. The latter was surprisingly hard to get. Both of my parents were strongly opposed, being more aware than I was of the dangers involved. I persisted in my attempts to get them to sign--showing defiance for the first time in my teen life--and finally they relented. Perhaps they were mollified by the fact that the trip was sponsored by the Catholic Interracial Council, and a number of nuns would be on the bus with us. Mom and Dad would not pay, however, so I got a part-time job typing a textbook draft for a nun, and was ready to go when the time came the following March.

It may seem incredible today to say that I have no picture of myself from that event--no pictures at all. I didn't have a camera--they were large bulky things in those days. However, some photos existed from our group (taken by one of the nuns), including this one now in the Loyola University archives. I am not in it (Where was I?) But other classmates were. 

Actually, there is one photo of me which appeared in the college newspaper, The Skyscraper, a month later. You might not recognize me, however. I occasionally worked as a hair model, and had dyed my hair black the previous week.

I have no photos of the 6 religious faculty who joined us on the trip. They were members of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVMs), and they wore a habit identical to the one in the photo below.  This BVM, Sister Leoline of Kansas City, was photographed wearing an orange vest showing she was one of the original marchers who had walked the entire 50 miles from Selma to Montgomery.

Lacking photos,  I took notes--fortunately!-- as I was a reporter for The Skyscraper. The stories we published then are an invaluable memory aid these many years later. 

I can confidently tell you that we left one cold March afternoon from Chicago, arriving 20 hours and 800 miles later. "Welcome to Montgomery, "Cradle of the Confederacy" we saw on a Highway 80 billboard. We knew there would be tensions if not danger: angry locals and members of the Alabama National Guard who would line the route of the march the next day. But first, we'd gather for a briefing on safety and later a rally. As Brenda, my co-reporter, and I wrote, "Drive, warmth and easygoing humor" greeted us when we went to the St. Jude campground on the outskirts of Montgomery. Our bus driver left, to stay safely outside the town and to park the bus in a safer, less open spot.

It was humid and hot, as we ate picnic-style on the grounds and were later treated to a fried chicken dinner by a local resident. Other volunteers fed marchers and offered encouragement.  "Late in the afternoon", we wrote in our news story, "residents and visitors began pouring into the field and taking places in front of the makeshift stage....The dark field, lighted only by spotlights and the repeated flash of photographers' cameras, revealed a standing crowd of thousands. Dozens clung to the trees overshadowing the stage." By 9 pm., Harry Belafonte, the host of the rally, welcomed other entertainers: Nina Simone, Peter, Paul and Mary, The Chad Mitchell Trio, Dick Gregory, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennet and Shelley Winters. Would that I would have had 21st century technology to record the event!

Of course,  the rally included speeches: Dr. Ralph Bunch, UN undersecretary for political affairs, and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Dr. King's top aide. Dr. Abernathy urged us "to assemble at this same spot tomorrow and join the greatest march ever held...and when it takes place, Alabama will never be the same." Prophetic words, definitely.

The march began the next morning with ranks of marchers, six deep, and marshals yelling, ."Let's have a man on the outside", as they ran along the line. Those were pre-feminist times, and that didn't phase me then. No one near us, male or female, was forced to fend off an attack, as we moved forward singing and chanting. Songs are the lifeblood of any movement and several are still alive in memory: "This Little Light of Mine", "I'm on my Way to Freedom Land,""We Shall Overcome".Another popular marching song, "Can't turn me around" is in this 3-minute YouTube video, which also includes march scenes, words by Dr King, and commentary by Harry Belafonte.

In our campus newspaper story, we wrote, "During three-fourths of the trek, which cut through a Negro section of the city, onlookers cheered and joined in singing the freedom chants. Others watched expressionless. Several offered water to the marchers. An old Negro woman shouted that it was the greatest day she had ever seen." I felt a sense of exhilaration that I had not felt before, and a sense of gratitude that I could be there for this amazing event, like nothing I had ever experienced.

"Turning onto the downtown section a different mood confronted the marchers. Quiet heckling from a few white observers was emphasized by a large sign on one store showing Martin Luther King Jr. supposedly at a Communist training school. Confederate flags waved by bystanders, worn by some troopers and flown on top of the Capitol building itself seemed to indicate the real feeling behind the civil rights opposition."

As we reached the Capitol we were urged to sit down and rest, and the four-hour meeting opened with the movement classic, "We Shall Overcome".  The crowd raised American flags to the National Anthem led by Mrs. King. The optimistic tone of the previous night's speeches continued continued through the hours. One of the initial speakers declared, "This is a revolution that won't fire a shot....Our aim is to love the hell out of the State of Alabama with all the power of our bodies and souls." Other speakers spoke to how this march was only a beginning. Urging a continuation of the voting rights struggle in the South, Dr. King stressed that the "aim of the movement is to seek a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience." The struggle won't be smooth but it will succeed, he told us, "because no lie can live forever."

The event ended with another chorus of "We Shall Overcome" as my classmates and I made our way to 

our bus which had returned to pick us up. A day later we arrived home.

And then I went back to school for another three years, and the effects of the march continued to play out in my life then--and then in ways hidden or not, over the coming decades. Part 2 of this story to come.

 

Reflections on joining a Black Lives Matter protest

It’s been six weeks since I dipped my toe into the new protest movement centered around Black Lives Matter and long-standing abuses of police power. Nightly protests erupted around the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death via a nearly 9-minute chokehold—an image that went around the world—and people took to the streets to protest. I was both surprised and excited by this—surprised that the protests didn’t go the way of previous protests against police violence: a few nights of localized protest followed by promises of better police training and then silence. This time the protests didn’t stop, and the reporting of them included investigations of just why it’s so difficult for truth and justice to emerge. 

Widespread use of cell phone cameras had given lie to police reports of civilian deaths at officers’ hands, and examinations of police unions and court decisions showed just how deep and systemic the problem was. Hence the excitement—we are at the beginning of a new movement, much like the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, a movement that will really change things—though exactly how is still unknown.

What stopped me from joining the Denver protests earlier was the pandemic. As an old person, I'm in a high risk group, and that fact ruled out joining large groups of people, many if not most without masks or ability to keep social distance. But by Sunday, June 6, an opportunity arose. Students in the Denver Public School system had organized a march for themselves, parents and staff from the downtown Civic Center to the Martin Luther King statue in City Park. The Facebook event notice requested social distancing and masks. 

As I live across the street from City Park, I reasoned that I could join safely. I left home with water, my mask, sun hat--and the retro T-shirt I wore: a souvenir of a 1980 march against violence against women. I felt the image was appropriate--and the message, while not contemporary, was certainly relevant. No one commented on my shirt--not surprising, as I didn't communicate with too many of my fellow protesters, but it was also strange to realize that more than half of the crowd had not been born when that event took place.

My plan was this: I would stand near the entrance to the park, and if it felt safe to join, I would do so for the final part of the march. That was exactly what happened. I joined in, waiting for a fairly large gap in the line. Following are two photos and my memories from that event.

Approaching City Park from The Esplanade

Waiting for the march to enter the Esplanade from Colfax Avenue, I stood in the shade. A mom and her kids were some distance away, and I asked permission to take their picture. There were so many others like them in the crowd that day, and I hoped these very young children would carry a memory and history of participation into their own young adulthood at least a decade away.

Once in the park, we gathered at the statue. We began with 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence, kneeling on one knee on the park grass. I had not realized just how long that period of time felt, and I thought of George Floyd, how frightened and hurting he must have felt. We stood up, as speakers for the rally organized for speeches. I walked away, wishing to minimize my time in a crowd, even though I was masked the whole time. For awhile I sat on the grass, watching the rally and other participants as they sat or walked toward the park exit. One thing I noted was the complexion of the crowd. Nearly everyone was white or light-skinned--unlike the more diverse nighttime crowds I had seen in the media. That observation puzzled and also pleased me: white folks were making this movement part of their lives, and that meant they were taking racism seriously. 

Since that afternoon, there have been many kinds of protests across the country and in other countries—in memory of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery (shot while jogging in Georgia), Breonna Taylor, (shot when Louisville KY police mistakenly force-entered her home) Elijah McClain (a young unarmed man who died at police hands in Aurora CO ). Mostly they have been peaceful, though some have not been; social media posts have shown police more than protesters acting without restraint. As I write this, the most troubling confrontations are on the streets of Portland, where federal troops ordered by Trump to” restore law and order “have alarmed the nation and actually galvanized protesters to unite and respond. Most moving for me was the Wall of Moms, a group of mothers who have appeared for a few evenings now, with linked arms and chants for peace and an end to federal occupation. More on the  Wall of Moms here.

Most encouraging also has been legislative follow-up. Leslie Herod, Colorado State Representative in my district, sponsored the successful Law Enforcement Integrity Act  shortly after protests began. The law, among other things, abolishes chokeholds, mandates police body cameras, has provisions for decertifying bad police, and calls for officers to intervene is one is using inappropriate force. Herod says it couldn’t have happened without protests creating the momentum for political changes. Though this movement is different in many ways from the social movements I participated in earlier in life (civil rights, Vietnam, feminism), they have one thing in common: protests and legislative change go hand in hand.

Journal of a Plague Year: My life on Zoom

It seems like I'm just as busy as I used to be. As I write, Colorado's "Safer in Place" guidelines are still official policy, and I'm doing just that: staying home, for the most part. A few businesses have been allowed to reopen, but my only interactions so far are with grocery stores. Yet, I have a schedule, not unlike the one I had before: Laughter Yoga at noon on Mondays, singing events on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, and weekly chats with friends. For the moment, I'm not counting other screen events, such as Skype or FaceTime, equally valuable, but limited to me and one other at a time. Then there's the amazing variety of free cultural events available through a screen, subject for another day.

Naomi Fry writes about how quickly the Zoom phenomenon has entered our lives in Embracing the Chaotic Side of Zoom (The New Yorker, April 20). You can read it here. The article focuses on the quirky, embarrassing or funny things we learn by chance during a zoom call: someone's cat crossing a room, the sounds of someone peeing, for example. Human connections in a two-dimensional world. I'd agree, adding the slightly voyeuristic pleasure of seeing people in their living spaces, places I may never have seen when we met in real-life rooms or meetings. 

I'm almost a bit ashamed to say how much I like Zoom. Sometimes it's hard to admit screen contact is not necessarily inferior to attending an in-person event.  I realized some time ago that I just don't like driving much anymore. How nice to just sit down at my laptop and see my friends' faces in front of me. No parking issues, driving in bad weather or Denver rush hour traffic. One of my hopes for the future new-normal is that more work will be done remotely, freeing space for drivers who actually need to get somewhere. As for Zoom replacing the human touch, I think I suffer less than others--others who are used to a lot of touch. First, I'm a senior who's been living alone for some time, and second, I've spent much, much time in environments with minimal touching. For example, my 20 years in Japan, where bowing and nods were far more common than hugs and handshakes. 

(Illustration from The New Yorker)

While Zoom has allowed me to stay in touch with much-loved friends and activities, it's also opened new activities to me. One of them is Voice Circle Colorado (you can find them on Facebook), an improvisational singing group that used to meet in West Denver. I had thought of joining them, but as I live across town and dislike evening drives, I usually put that in my some-other-time mental file. With Zoom now, on Tuesdays and Fridays, I join whoever's there, as the group organizer, Roy Willey, leads us in song or meditative chanting. Usually we have our microphones off, so there's no shyness about the sounds we're making or not making. 

Zoom is not really useful for singing together due to technical distortions, though for awhile, my choral group, Sage Singers, tried. That was before we fully came to terms with the fact that performances are on hold for the foreseeable future. Lately, however, we've been practicing a song that we hope to perform in one of those viral online song collages that are appearing on social media. Like Voice Circle, we practice with mikes off. Kevin, our wonderful and energetic director, gives us vocal tips and practice suggestions during our Sunday afternoon Zoom sessions. Equally valuable for me is the time we spend getting to know each other. We check in on how things are going, and also take turns sharing stories. Recently "tell us something we don't know about you" has been our ending activity--more valuable perhaps that the short time we used to have on snack breaks between rehearsal segments. Now, rather than having a brief chat with people I know somewhat, I'm learning more about people I knew less well or not at all.

Another Zoom benefit is that participants can join from anywhere. My laughter club here in Denver has been meeting at noon every Monday in a 24-hour laughter Zoom room, made available by Dave Berman (See Daily Laughers on Facebook. Dave seldom meets us there, as he lives in Australia. When we meet at noon, it's 4:30 a.m. in Melbourne. His hosted sessions come twice-daily, and I've occasionally joined the one at 5:30 pm my time.) My laughter club's sessions now include members of the Taos laughter club, thanks to Meredee and Davey, who host that club. They are the founding parents of our club, but we lost the chance to hear their weekly laughter last year when they moved to New Mexico. Such a pleasure to be together again--along with other laughing friends who choose to join us.

I also find that I'm having more regular connections with my friends in OLOC, a group for lesbians over 60. Every month we used to meet for lunch, social talk, and a presentation on some relevant topic, gathering in a restaurant or community center, mostly north of Denver. Often I would miss due to weather, driving reluctance or feeling a bit under-the-weather. Zoom removes those barriers for me. It may do so for others as well and may also allow us to expand group membership beyond the Boulder/Denver metropolitan area. Last weekend, when we met on Zoom, part of our agenda was a memorial service for Carmah Lawlor, one of our oldest members who died earlier this year. The service included a brief tribute followed by remembrances of Carmah's life and memories we have of her.

I've found that Zoom doesn't work well for other things, though. Exercise for one. There are many exercise classes online now, but I find a screen distracting and prefer to do my own thing. Included in that is dancing. Square dance in squares of eight dancers is impossible, of course, though The Rainbeaus have weekly chat sessions now on Zoom. For me other types of dancing are problematic too.  I have access to line dance lessons on Facebook, but they don't work well for me on a screen. Sadly, as I used to admire watching line dancers at the monthly women's dance at the Avalon Ballroom in Boulder and wanted to give lessons a try. Perhaps I'll try the online ones again when it gets too hot to be outside much, as one of my friends promises herself.

For me and so many others these days, Zoom has been a boon in so many ways--including ways I haven't personally experienced yet. Kids' birthday parties, work conferences, visits with quarantined relatives, medical teleconferencing, even dates. (In the latter case, Zoom seems to be a poor substitute for the real thing. For example, one young woman mentioned in Naomi Fry's article told how strange it felt to be on a date with a new love interest while she was in her childhood bedroom.)For most of us with Zoom capability, the opportunities will be broad enough to keep us Zoom-connected sometimes even after social distancing ends. Already news articles are talking about how these changes are expected to remain a part of our lives. 

Meanwhile, readers, enjoy wherever zooming takes you--or whatever activity you enjoy more.