PJs and Other Controversial and Relevant Topics

It’s eight AM and I’ve been sitting in front of my computer for an hour and these are the first words I’ve typed. Sure, I’ve been reading around my normal morning circuit---e-mail, Facebook, other people’s blogs, a bit of news and back around again waiting for inspiration to strike. I look out the window and for the third time this morning I think that I should get dressed and go outside and take a photo of the woods across from our green space while the trees are still damp from the rain. It must have come in strong from the west because only one side of the bark on those trees are almost black from the dampness while the other side is lit up to a silvery gray by the morning sun. It would make a great painting, if I was skilled enough to capture the sap green and lemon drop yellow leaves with their touches of rosy pink dappling here and there against those tree trunks. 

How long before I’ll ever see this again, I ask myself but still I sit in my bathrobe too lazy to get dressed. It’s one of the downsides of living in an apartment; you can’t wander around outside in your night clothes and bathrobes. Especially in an independent living apartment where that could be taken as a sign that dementia is making inroads into your brain.

There was a silly debate at Tuesday’s Happy Hour about a woman who came downstairs to get her mail wearing her pajamas. Someone said, “This is our home. We can do that if we want” and someone else shot back, “It’s my home too and I don’t want to see that.” Others came down on one side or the other and I piped in with a comment about pajamas covering more than many daytime outfits and I was rebutted with “Not all pajamas.” I didn’t see the woman’s PJ’s that sparked this discussion so I kept my mouth shut after that, but I wanted to ask if she was wearing baby doll short shorts but I didn’t want to be told “no” because the idea of drawing a cartoon of an old woman with too many meals under her belt wearing baby doll PJs with no bra and fuzzy pink slippers was having too much fun in my head. 

I need to learn to keep my mouth shut more often around here, like I did when I first moved in. My sense of humor is not always understood. One night when dinner was over I remarked that I wish they had served dessert because I was still hungry. “Even an after dinner mint would help,” I joked while using sad, basset hound eyes. After we parted and I went back to my apartment I got a knock on the door which never happens. It was one of my neighbors bringing me a mint patty. That was funny but when I got the second knock and a delivery of another mint patty and I started wondering I was being funny or pathetic when I was belly-aching about still being hungry. I got my answer the next day when I thanked one of the Sugar Fairies for keeping me from dying of hunger overnight and she admitted that they'd coordinated their prank.

Change of topic: Do you ever worry that you’re putting too much stuff in your brain and it’s going to start falling out at an alarming rate? I'm listening to an audible book I thought would be more relatable than it’s turning out to be. Music is History by Ahmir Khalib Thompson covers 1971 to present. I thought I’d remember most of the song titles mentioned and so far I’m remembering maybe one in ten. I’m only up to 1977, the year Elvis died and the TV series Roots was a big deal. More than 80% of Americans watched Roots according to this book and to this day the last episode holds the record for being the third most watched TV show of all time following the last M*A*S*H and the 'who shot J.R.' episode from Dallas. 

I saw a 60 Minutes TV show within days of hearing the above facts. It featured a black guy who’d bought a house that unbeknownst to him had been a plantation where his ancestors were slaves. He mentioned that seeing Roots was the first time in his life that he knew slavery was a part of the black experience. That's happening more and more to me lately where two random but related facts will come together from random sources. It's like a beam is reaching out of my head to pull stuff in like matching Go-Fish cards and my brain is flashing a warning message that my hard drive is close to being full.
 
After seeing that 60 Minutes I tried to remember where and when I first learned about slavery and I’m pretty sure it was in 1950's Life Magazine that was devoted to the history of Segregation. The centerfold picture was of a ship’s cargo space below deck where blacks were chained together and lined up like cord wood. Over 200 American slave schooners were running the seas after the Revolution bringing 12.50 million enslaved humans to our shores, according to the Encyclopedia Virginia, between 1500 and 1866. I still had that copy of Life Magazine until I downsized last year. It's too bad so much of our history gets lost or white-washed in the shame of it because that lack of common knowledge of our history gives the Tucker Carlson’s of the world full rein to be super-spreaders of hate and conspiracy theories like the one that got ten people killed and three wounded while buying groceries in Buffalo, New York. ©

   Find the magazine here 

 

Reading, Writing and Why did I do That?

By Wednesday I still didn’t know what I wanted to write about for my Saturday blog post. I had no choice but to hope my attendance at book club the next day would give me a theme and if not, I planned on taking myself out to lunch afterward for some good old fashioned people watching. That's always good for a few paragraphs. Living alone means nothing remotely interesting ever happens here unless I want to bet with myself on which chair the dog will sleep in next. He’s got three. I’ve got one so that tells you something about the hierarchy in this household. 

The Invention of Wings by Susan Monk Kidd was up for discussion in book club and we all liked it, with one woman saying she loved the book. For her, a book passes over into the “love” category when it inspires her to research the subject matter after reading the final chapter. And she brought in some photos of the mansion in Charleston, South Carolina, where much of the story was set. It's a fictionalized depiction of the Grimke sisters---Sarah and Angelina---who were raised in a household that owned slaves and who ended up becoming the first female abolition agents. They were also among the first Suffragettes. The author used their actual letters, diaries, speeches and newspaper reports to research for the book and to flesh out these real-life social justice pioneers. It’s estimated that over forty thousand people heard the sisters lecture on the evils of slavery in just one year and they dedicated their adult lives to the cause. The book starts out on Sarah’s twelfth birthday when she was given a ten-eleven year old slave to be her maid and from then on every other chapter is written from the slave’s point of view with the opposite chapters written from Sarah’s viewpoint.  

Our discussion was going along great with everyone offering up answers to the official book discussion guide questionnaire. Questions like: Did your opinion of slavery change while reading the book? Has women’s achievements in history been lost or overlooked? What do you think it takes to be a reformer today? It wasn’t until we got to the very last question in the last five minutes of book club that things went off the rails. The question was: How has slavery left its mark on American life? Everyone tippy-toed around racism---yadda, yadda, yadda---until someone said, “Our president is making it worse.” Another lady jumped in milliseconds later with, “No, he’s not! He’s doing everything just right!” Silence fell over the room before the facilitator recovered enough to say something to placate both ladies. In my head I was yelling, “Are you crazy!?” 

Speaking of books, a new member in our club recently self-published a book and she put us in an awkward position when she asked us all to read and discuss it. We agreed but she didn’t tell us that we’d have to pay full price for the ‘privilege.’ Okay, that sounds snotty but I have self-published five trade size books and I know they didn’t cost her anywhere near the $20 each that she charged us. That was last month. No one in the club knew until this week that I also write and have self-published. Why did I make the scary decision to out myself? Probably because I was jealous? But of what---that she was getting a lot of attention or that she found it so easy to brag about her accomplishment? Who knows why, but I am sure that I didn’t like how she was carrying on about the "amazing experience of being a published author." Give it a rest, lady, I was thinking, SELF-publishing isn’t such a big deal. Anyone can with the desire and a few bucks can do it.

I outed myself this week by bringing in a copy of one of my books to give to our facilitator. She reads to a group in the assisted living place where she works and she had mentioned they love stories about dogs. The book I gave her (before the other club members got there) is written in the voices of two dogs---one on earth and one who resides at the Rainbow Bridge. It’s not book club material, but it’s filled with humor and a few tears. I have no idea what I expect to gain from my boldest in giving her the book, but I do know that my writing can hold its own against the other self-published writer in our group. God, am I petty or competitive or what? I'm at a loss to explain my reactions to that woman. She makes me feel like I'm living in Lee Ann Womack's country western song: "She may be an angel who spends all winter bringin' the homeless blankets and dinner, a regular Nobel Peace Prize winner. But I really hate her. I'll think of a reason later."

It will be a whole month before I find out how my book was received at the assisted living place and if the facilitator will mention it in front of the whole club, but she seemed thrilled to give it a try. I admire her skill at deescalating touchy discussions and inspiring positive conversations so I’m pretty sure she won’t pan my book just for the fun of seeing my self-esteem crumb in front of her eyes. ©

Day Trip to Secrets and Accomplishments

Growing up, I knew about a house four or five blocks from where I lived that was rumored to be a stop on the 1800s Underground Railroad. As an adult I got to tour the inside of that house when I started using a tax service that worked out of that old, stately place. Like many houses on the Underground Railroad it had a tunnel between the house and a barn where runaway slaves would leave false bottomed wagons, make their way into the basement of the house via the tunnel where they’d be fed and get some rest before going on the next leg of their trip to Canada. 

I don’t remember when or where I learned about how quilts were supposedly used as signals for those helping the fugitive slaves along the ‘railway’---hung on clotheslines or slung over windowsills to point the way to safe houses or warn of danger. Although the use of ‘quilt codes’ is now controversial among historians, it seems like I’ve always known about them (or their rumor) and it never fails to surprise me when I find out that this kind of thing isn’t common knowledge. Tuesday was one of those times. I went on a day trip organized through the senior hall that was billed as a tour of the Underground Railroad and I couldn’t believe that one woman actually thought we’d be seeing real railroad tracks underground! How does a person get old enough to collect Social Security and not know the basics of American history? Our tour guide, by the way, said, “There’s no evidence that quilt codes were ever used in Michigan.” Bummer! 

The day trip took us to Battle Creek, Michigan, to the home of Sojourner Truth, a former slave and important historical figure by anyone’s standards, an activist in both the Abolitionist and Woman Suffrage Movements. From the time we left the senior center and got to her house, our tour guide gave us a crash course on the Underground Railroad, the Civil War and the Quakers. This started at seven o’clock on a coffee-deprived morning so my head wasn’t quite awake enough for such heavy topics. I didn’t know what I expected on a “history trip” like this but it was intense and I was glad we weren’t expected to pass a test when we stopped for lunch. A couple of facts stuck with me, though, one being that an estimated 50,000 slaves passed through Michigan via the Underground Railway. And I already knew that thousands of x-slaves were resettled overseas in what is now Liberia. But I didn’t know that what I was taught in high school---that x-slaves after the Civil War were all given 40 acres and a mule---is not entirely true. The Acts that made that happen were reversed in the courts and the land was returned to its pre-war owners. Very few slaves were able to hold on to that land.

Lunch was at a vintage railroad-station-turned-restaurant and the conversation with my three table mates was one that author Robert Fulghum of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten fame would be proud of---we shared in equal proportions with no one person dominating the talk. It was great. It was entertaining. It felt like we’d known each other for years.

After lunch was the highlight of the trip for me. We went to a funky little museum where a self-proclaimed hero worshipper of Sojourner Truth crowded all fifty of us together and gave us a robust and interesting talk about Ms. Truth, who had lived just down the street for the better part of two decades. I already knew quite a lot about Sojourner including her activism on the lecture circuit, her friendship with famed suffrages, and her meeting with President Lincoln. She was reported to be such a charismatic and popular speaker traveling nation-wide that when she died over 1,000 people came to Battle Creek to attend her funeral. After leaving the museum, the woman who gave the talk hopped on our bus and we went to see Sojourner’s simple grave site, a bigger-than-life monument of her in a small park near-by and to see another spectacular monument commemorating the Underground Railway.

Looking around our world today some people think it’s “going to hell in a hand-basket” as my mother used to say. But a day trip to past secrets and accomplishments tells us that’s always been the perception for those living through times of changing values. Depending on which side of the struggle you fight or root for determines if you see societal struggles as hopeful for the future or a threat to your whole way of life. It has always been that way and it probably always will. ©

Photo at the top is of the Underground Railway monument. Pictures can't do it justice. It's huge and has a lot of details on all sides. The photo at the bottom is of the top portion of Sojourner Truth's 12 foot high bronze monument. In 1993 the town raised $750,000 to have it made.