Yesterday morning I was in my daily 6 am Pilates class (6 days a week, baby! 🙂 ) when I saw something that brought me to tears. I generally keep my eyes closed to concentrate when I can. My mind-body connection leaves a lot to be desired, so I really have to think hard and closing my eyes helps me listen to the instructor and follow directions better. But we got to a part where we had to stand up and “face the forest” (actually, a wall papered in a larger than life photo of a woman taking a run in the woods). When I did, I noticed the back of the t-shirt of the person in front of me. On it was printed “Do what makes you happy!” I immediately recognized the vibe from the font. The sentiment was written in the sort of puffy-looking, 1970’s psychedelic font, complete with the daisy I have been using at the end of my signature since 1967, the year before I graduated from high school at 17, and which each of my daughters chose to have tattooed somewhere on their body. You’d know it immediately if you saw it, even if you weren’t around in the ’60s. It’s iconic.

But rather than it bringing a smile to my face as it would have back in the day, I found myself tearing up as I saw the universally recognizable font and the sentiment. While trying to listen to the Pilates instructor, I was so startled by my reaction that I also had to try to think about why I teared up at such a simple, seemingly happy thing. I quickly realized that it was definitely not because I yearned to be 17 again, around the time when this font was in vogue, living out the Black female version of the “Summer of Love,” “Flower child,” “hippie” experience, starting college in the midst of what would become the convergence of, among other things, the campus Black Power movement, spirited resistance to the Viet Nam war, the Feminist movement and the hippie happenings. While I experienced all of that in some way or another, coming of age at the perfect time to live that memorable, significant, groundbreaking history, I learned those lessons and moved on and have not yearned for a repeat, even at the age of 73 when I am closer to my ending horizon’s promises than my beginning one’s.

I realized instead that my tears were coming from a deeper place. A far more serious place. One of great sadness, sorrow and disappointment. My tears were a delayed response to a quote I’d recently seen somewhere from the noted historian and author, Doris Kearns Goodwin, about the state of the divided US right now, given the release of her newest book about her and her husband, a presidential advisor, living through history. She had said that we must remember that we have been though rough times before, the implication being we came out okay. At the time, I remember something about the statement seeming off to me, but I didn’t have time to think about it and I kept moving.

Seeing that font made me realize why her statement seemed off. My tears stemmed from my reaction to where the country is right now in the throes of divisive conflict, and where it was then when that font was all the rage. I knew I was feeling frustrated and upset at what was going on, but I had no idea tears were just below the surface or would surprisingly show up at such an inauspicious time.

Yes, the country was divided then. So much was happening, as mentioned above. The issues were all terribly big and important to the country’s awakening to a new reality of recognition and demand for inclusion of those traditionally excluded. Resistance to the Viet Nam war had resulted in a campus demonstration killing 4 and wounding 9 unarmed students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard called in to maintain order, and virtually unprecedented anti-war demonstrations were occurring all over the country, culminating in a huge one in Washington, DC in 1969, expressing society’s deep displeasure with the conduct of the war. Women were holding consciousness raising sessions in their living rooms trying to make sense of Betty Friedan’s groundbreaking bestseller, “The Feminine Mystique” sweeping the country, then marching, demonstrating, and burning restrictive undergarments like bras and girdles (thank God for the latter!) and demanding equality. That, itself, was the opening of a recognition in Black women that the feminist movement, like much of other things in history, had left out their concerns and they would have to pursue them on their own. Blacks on campuses were demanding to be seen, heard and included in curriculum, building names, research, Black houses and other campus life. The LGBTQ+ community was pushing for gay liberation, stemming in part, among other things, from the New York Stonewall riots, likely never thinking the day would come decades later in 2016 when that little gay bar would be declared Stonewall National Monument by President Obama.

The Civil Rights Movement was still going on after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, striving mightily to make real the lofty goals of this new, unprecedented legislation never before seen in this country. The Immigration and Nationalization Act was also passed in 1965, for the first time in history allowing black and brown people entry into the country not using ancestry, national origin and race as the deciding factor to keep them out.

Hemlines came up to mini but maxis were just as much in vogue. Tightly curled Black hair, whether straightened via hot comb or perm, went natural and “Black is Beautiful” became the rallying cry. Thanks to the Beatles, white male hair grew longer and white female hair went straight rather than being bouffanted or otherwise being put in curlers and held up by oceans of hairspray. And lest we not forget, drugs were de rigeur for the time (No. I did not inhale. 🙂 ).

It was all the basis for much turmoil and upheaval, private and public. At some point I’ll have to write about coming home from college for Christmas my freshman year with my permed hair cut off, wearing a short natural–and I’ve worn it natural for the next 56 years– at a time when my minister father’s credo was “A woman’s hair is her crowning glory!” That was fun. Not! 🙂 But as divisive as these times were, pitting friend against friend, family member against family member, World War II veteran fathers and mothers against their college-age anti-war demonstrating offspring, crew-cut and coiffed prepily dressed Dads and Moms against long-haired, un-styled, naturally kinky, hippily dressed offspring, they felt totally different than what I was feeling about where we are as a country today.

This font sighting was yesterday, Monday July 15, 2024 (it took me a few days to get this finalized…life!). On Saturday July 13, 2024, the right ear of former president Trump was injured by a 20-year old white registered Republican male shooter who shot and killed one rally attendee, a firefighter father of two, and critically injured two others from the rooftop of one of only three buildings on an open fair grounds in Butler, Pennsylvania. The shooter was then killed by the Secret Service (why do they insist on referring to it as “neutralized’?). I knew the NY Times photographer, Doug Mills,’ photo of Trump, with bleeding ear, surrounded by Secret Service agents, triumphantly raising his fist to the crowd with a huge American flag flying over his head against the backdrop of a perfect azure sky, would surely become an instant iconographic photo sent all around the world in the click of a button. Not only would the news make it so, but I knew Trump would use it to his utmost advantage with the Republican National Convention scheduled to take place in Milwaukee beginning that very Monday July 15.

The thought infuriated me because I knew the whole tragedy would be so lacking in decorum. Within hours, he was using it to fundraise and true to form, it was a part of the RNC Convention’s opening that Monday and beyond, including delegates sporting bandaged right ears in solidarity. I might add, the latter being much to the dismay of those upset that someone had actually died in the situation and thousands have died due to gun violence, with no such show of support. Having been a delegate to a national convention, I knew and appreciated the value of ginning up the folks that are to go out and do your bidding to get you elected, but I knew he’d use this for all it was worth.

Monday was also the day that the Florida federal judge, Aileen Cannon, appointed by Trump, threw out the arguably strongest case of the three remaining pending criminal cases against him (having been convicted on 34 felony counts in another case in NY), dismissing the federal indictment for his taking official documents from the White House when he left office after losing the election. These were documents that, by law, belonged to the people of the United States, held, curated and cared for in the National Archives. According to photos and accounts of witnesses, Trump had allegedly stored them, among other places, in the bathroom of his Mar-a-Lago estate, apparently not secured as such highly sensitive documents should be, had brought them out to show whoever he wanted to, and allegedly had obstructed justice by repeatedly lying about having documents at all.

It was disconcerting, not to mention frustrating, that this case was even having to be pursued. Early on in my career, I worked at the White House Domestic Council (now known as the Domestic Policy Council). I came in after Nixon resigned and worked in President Gerald Ford’s administration until he was unseated in the next election by Jimmy Carter. So I was there during a White House presidential administration transition.

Transitions are extremely important. The business of the government and the presidency must continue unabated and unimpeded for the American people even though the administration changes. Everyone there knew the rules. Memos were sent out well ahead of time outlining what we were to do with our documents and what documents were to be preserved and how. All materials needed to facilitate the process of their transfer were provided. They had to be packed up for pick up for delivery to the National Archives (I must admit I was surprised years later to see some of mine show up online as part of the Ford administration when I’m googled). We all knew nothing belonged to us. In addition to being available to meet with any incoming folks who might need to get a leg up in order to hit the ground running on their first day, we spent hours preparing notebooks for those taking our places so that, once again, the business of the presidency could continue with as little disruption as possible for the American people. Everyone knew this and knew how important government documents were. Surely that included the president. Or it did until the president was Donald Trump.

For Trump to allegedly fail to turn over boxes of documents, some so highly confidential that even those with top security clearance did not have access to them, then take them away and repeatedly say that he did not even have them was ludicrous. Eventually, after, among other things, being told by Trump staff that there were documents, the feds received and executed search warrants and entered his premises to find them and find them they did. His argument then became that he was the president so they belonged to him therefore he could take them if he wanted to. I can’t imagine any public servant in any capacity thinking this is a solid legal position. Private employee either, for that matter.

Apparently, I am not alone in my conclusion. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in New York. I know we’ve all heard that you could get a ham sandwich indicted because the grand jury only gets to hear the prosecutor’s side of the case in the secret grand jury proceedings. But having sat as foreperson for a grand jury for weeks, aside from being an attorney, I can tell you that it’s not that easy. The grand jury is not composed of idiots. They are your friends and neighbors. They know how to listen, think and analyze. You don’t have to be a lawyer to do so. Common sense works just fine. They understand that the defendant will have his version of the facts and that everything the prosecutor says in its presentation, if brought to court, will be subject to cross examination there. But based on the evidence presented by a prosecutor in grand jury proceedings, in order to bring an indictment, the grand jury has to be convinced that the evidence and the prosecution’s narrative and theory of the case makes sense. The New York grand jury thought it made sense and recommended Trump’s indictment. Trump pleaded not guilty, which is, of course, his legal right to do. But that doesn’t make it any less maddening, wasting taxpayer resources over his par-for-the-course ridiculous shenanigans and flouting, and lack of respect for, the judicial process.

Trump has said, and has shown time and time again that if you say something enough times, people believe it. Just think back to his inauguration when he swore he had bigger numbers in attendance on the National Mall than President Obama. Anyone with eyes could see that simply was not true. By a long shot. I was there at Obama’s inauguration and there was no comparison to what I saw on TV of the crowd at Trump’s. My family and I were there really early and there were so many people on the National Mall already that we couldn’t get any closer than the Washington Monument, which is at the entire other end of the National Mall, blocks away from the US Capitol where the swearing in takes place. That space was not filled in during Trump’s inauguration. His attendance was much smaller. Aside from the question of why he even cared since he was now president of the United States for Pete’s sake, is the question of why would there be a comparison? For historical purposes alone, the inauguration of the first Black president of the US would likely mean the numbers would be expected to be high. And they were. In addition, Obama had a history of being a very likable candidate and always drew incredible crowds. Why wouldn’t that be the case at his inauguration? Despite the physical and photographic evidence, Trump swore up and and down his numbers were bigger, totally ignoring–or not caring about– the fact that millions of viewers on TV, not to mention those in attendance, saw for themselves that it was not true. But then again, this is the same man who looked out at the few dozen paid folks gathered in the basement of Trump Tower for his presidential run announcement and said it was thousands. Go figure.

But to argue the documents were his to do what he pleased with them? What?! Under what law? It is not even an argument. But that never keeps Trump’s lawyers from running whatever specious thing they come up with up the flag pole, throwing whatever silliness they come up with up against the wall and seeing if it sticks. As a lawyer myself, I can’t imagine wanting whatever fame or fortune I thought would come with representing him so much that I would be willing to risk my personal and professional reputation by doing his foolish bidding that only serves to make me be the one standing there in court looking silly.

But, as we have seen, even at the US Supreme Court level, unfortunately, it can work for him—even though it ends up wreaking havoc with the long-standing judicial system we have always had reason to, for the most part, reasonably rely upon. That’s the value of appointing people to judgeships.

That was the true value of his presidency for him. He put in place hundreds of federal judges who would buy into his politics, mindset and world view and it paid off. It doesn’t matter that it makes a mockery of the law that I have loved for the over four decades I have been a lawyer. The law that, though imperfect, has always still stood as our greatest bulwark against tyranny, randomness, unpredictability and chaos. Unlike many others places around the globe, I truly relish the fact that we are a country of laws. And we have as well a tripartite system of government the framers designed so that one branch of government can never have full control. Checks and balances were built right into the system to prevent it.

Don’t like a move made by the executive branch? Take it to court and challenge it in the judicial branch, or get Congress, the legislative branch, to pass a law against it. Think a law the legislative branch passes is not in keeping with the Constitution? Let the judicial branch decide. Think the US Supreme Court, the highest level of the judicial branch, was wrong in interpreting a law Congress, the legislative branch, passed? Congress, the legislative branch, can pass a law to address and nullify it.

But with Trump’s influence and actions seeking total GOP control of everything in all three branches of government, those built-in checks and balances are crumbling. What do we do when the top of the judicial branch, the only ones in their position for life and not elected by us and therefore not accountable to us, is shot through with jurists placed there by the chief executive of the executive branch, using loyalty to him and his ideas rather than to the law and the Constitution? That’s what recent decisions have been looking like. Purely political, devoid of the normal legal substance that protects us. Do we really want that?

Do we really want a judge that ignores years of judicial precedent and issues a decision striking down the indictment of Trump on charges he violated the law in taking the documents and obstructed justice by trying to hide that fact? To do so not on the merits (which, from the looks of it, were pretty unassailable), but by saying that the appointment of a special prosecutor was unconstitutional when such appointments have been used for decades with courts rejecting such arguments? I don’t think so.

Think about the checks and balances the framers built in. Do we really want a US Supreme Court where a Republican legislature denied to President Obama only his second US Supreme Court nomination in two terms as president by saying it was too close to an election nine months away, but who shoved through Trump’s third appointment with just about one week to go before an election, giving the Court a solidly conservative majority? A Court that would then, among other things, overturn the 50-year precedent of Roe v. Wade permitting abortions and rule that Trump has absolute privilege giving him virtually unfettered power to do whatever he wants in the name of official action, including not even being able to use those actions to show context for unofficial actions? To be okay for him to meet with Department of Justice officials to find any way possible to challenge a valid election simply because he wants to stay in power?

This is what the Supreme Court did on July 1, 2024. What an extraordinary Independence Day gift for Trump that no one, I’m sure least of all Trump and his lawyers, expected. They couldn’t, because it was so unprecedented and unbelievably broad in its scope. I didn’t mind the office of the president of the US having immunity from official acts within his powers as chief executive, as that is the state of the law for public officials and you don’t want them having to worry about being sued for every official act they do. But in my view the Court’s decision went far beyond that in the examples it provided. Also, Trump has shown us that you cannot assume that even someone in this exalted position of importance will conduct themselves within the normal limits of expected behavior because he has shown us time and time again that he won’t. I need only remind you of his action in publicly mocking the disabled NY Times reporter whose disability made it so he could not move his arms normally.

Sigh…. So, all of this came to mind as I saw the font on the back of the t-shirt in front of me. It has not been a good few weeks (months? years?) for lawyers who believed in the system of justice that had been in place in this country since its founding. Congress hasn’t been able to come together and agree on much of anything for ages. The US Supreme Court just ignored forty years of precedent and stripped many agencies of the deference they are generally provided as those given the task of handling an area by law. And we we haven’t been being very civil to each other in the process of it all.

When all of the values that I thought we held dear as a country (even though we often fall short, I appreciate that we keep trying…and it is not lost on me how hard it can be for a Black female to be able to provide that grace, given the treatment of Blacks and women…) seem to have gone by the wayside at the hands of someone who has shown time and time again that he has no regard for them, the picture looks bleak. What we have always taken for granted as democratic principles like majority rule, legal precedent, even basic civility, honesty (relatively speaking…) simple things like not publicly humiliating the disabled, not “grabbing women by the pussy,” have all been severely challenged over the past nine years since Trump came down the golden escalator to the basement of Trump Tower to an audience of several dozen (although he said it was “thousands”) folks who had responded to a casting call and were paid $50, and announced his candidacy for president, accusing the Mexican president of sending immigrants who were rapists and bringing drugs (tho he said he “assume[d] some were good people”). If that wasn’t a huge, blaring neon sign, I don’t know what was. And he not only went full speed ahead in the same vein, he brought many in the country along with him, taking his lead and acting in a similar, uncivil, negative fashion with little regard for accountability.

So, here we are.

I can’t blame it all on him. After all, his supporters are grown folks who make their own choices to act like him, follow his lead. He seems to have made people forget or ignore even the most basic lessons they have been taught from the time they were born about not lying or bullying people, being kind, considering others, etc. But it shows you how utterly important good leadership is, how influential it can be.

Or not.

What that font on the t-shirt of my fellow Pilates practitioner reminded me of, that brought tears to my eyes, is that the context for what is going on now with the country being so divided is not the same context as it was before when the country was deeply divided at the time the font was popular. We no longer seem to have a basic set of understandings, values and tenets we live by as Americans that make it so we can disagree without believing those who think differently are not soulless demons, without resorting to violence, without painting difference as a wrong rather than just different, something threatening, a thing that must be stamped out, eliminated.

Whether it is a woman’s right to choose what happens with her own body, a library being able to choose what books it will allow on its shelves, a public institution of higher education deciding what courses it will offer, a professor determining what information is best geared to teaching the course subject matter, a federal or state agency deciding what programming it thinks best addresses employee issues it is experiencing in the workplace, what gender someone must be in order to be a legitimate object of your heart’s desire, what bathroom a person can go to, what sports they can participate in, or even what treatment a parent can be permitted to allow their child access to to best suit the determined needs of the child, they are all now the subject of a great deal of not only ire but reprehensible backlash for opposing views.

Is this really OK with us? Do we not see or know that what happened in Germany in the 1930s and 40s?The burning of books, likely preceded by the banning of them? The loyalty to the leader rather than to the country as Hitler required, that we were shown to have been the basis for much of Trump’s personnel in his first administration and appears even more so to be Trump’s basis for many of the plans included in the Project 2025 document his folks have come up with as the game plan for him being back in office after the 2024 election? A plan he claims no knowledge of even though it has been contributed to by those quite close to him and his former administration? Does anyone else see a problem with Trump’s walk-on music for Wednesday night of the RNC being James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World” after Trump declares that overturning Roe v. Wade and letting the government dictate what happens to women’s bodies rather than the women themselves, was one of his greatest accomplishments?

Think it’s all too extreme to ever become reality? Then you have a short memory. We lived through the 2016-2020 administration when one of his first acts upon taking office was to ban Muslims from six countries from entering the country–a move shut down by the courts. It kept going from there. Then we saw what happened on January 6, 2021, when Congress was in the process of meeting to certify the 2020 presidential election results. Trump had called for his followers to come to DC and exhorted those gathered on the mall to march over to the Capitol and “stop the steal.” Were any of us really ready to believe that after that speech, those gathered would not heed his call? An event that took the country by shocked surprised as they watched it unfold on TV, only to within days have it painted as “patriots” and a few months later at the hearings on it have a GOP legislator describe what we saw as mongering hordes of thousands scaling the Capitol walls, breaking through barriers meant to keep them out, attacking police officers, taking a dump and wreaking havoc in Capitol offices as a “normal tourist visit.” Hundreds of “tourists” generally aren’t convicted for touring a space.

So, nope. My tears, tho seemingly out of the blue and random, were real. My tears were not random. My tears had a basis. A very, very deep and broad basis. One that I must live with every day and try to keep moving forward despite it. I saw that font and realized that we are not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy. This world is not the world or the country I knew with shared basic values “having a moment.” It is not the world or the country with those values having a disagreement that would be able to be worked out, as in a democracy based on shared values where there is an understanding that this is not a dictatorship, that because it is a democracy, we understand that we do not abide authoritarianism. That we know that maybe not everyone will get everything they want out of it all of the time, but that’s part of living in a democracy because you understand that the values and democracy mean more than any one particular disagreement or person–whoever that person is. That not everything is a hill you want to die on. That having a vision of an ongoing democracy means understanding that the long view rather than the short one will mean sometimes you don’t get what you want, but you get to come back and try another day. Values that mean you can disagree with someone and still respect them, not be violent or disrespectful to them. Values that make what it is you believe you are fighting for for your country doesn’t mean you destroy the country in the process.

All that seems to be gone, at least in some quarters. It certainly is getting a lot of news space. And that makes me very, very sad. That is what brought forth my tears when I saw that font from back in the day.

But, I am not ready to give up on us yet. I am the eternally realistic optimist. I still stubbornly believe that there are enough of us all across this great country of ours who still believe in shared values for our country and are willing to vote for them.

Do the right thing.

I have no reason why I just now came across my blog, but I did. I see that I first began it in what will be ten years ago next month. What a joy it is to peruse my entries at this point, ten years later. My grandson, Christian, who was three when I began the blog and who formed the basis of, or is included in, many of my entries, is now thirteen. His sister, Makayla, will be eighteen next month and has received early acceptance into the college of her choice. 

Where in the world did the time go? 

Yesterday, while I was on my way to my morning Pilates class, Makayla called to ask me if I would meet her at Urgent Care because she suspected she had strep throat and could not go alone since she was under eighteen. I met her there. As we sat and chatted while waiting for her to be called into the examining room, I teared up at the thought that in a month she would be eighteen and a “grown-ass woman.” How could that be? ”Nana are you crying?” she asked, confused because the story she was telling me did not call for tears. I suspect she won’t fully understand my tears until she has kids or grandkids of her own. It seems we were just all gathered in DC for her birth, which did not occur for another full week, well after her sisters and other mother had returned to their homes out of state. Or even before that, when her mom (my daughter) and I chatted on the phone while I was on my daily walk as she regularly encountered morning sickness while at work during our chat.

It can be so overwhelming to go through the day-to-day logistics of having children. Loving them, clothing them, feeding them, educating them, socializing them, making sure they have what they need for school or activities each day, schlepping them back and forth to their activities, making sure clothes fit and are clean, homework checked, meals balanced, boo-boos mended, hurt feelings soothed, fears calmed. And that’s all before they get to be teenagers who try your last nerve in every way possible as they check out the boundaries of their new-found freedom as teens. 

And don’t get me started on them driving. My daughters couldn’t understand why I stood there crying as they passed their drivers’ test. They didn’t understand the concept of my being responsible for their protection in a car all their lives and now giving that role over to someone who couldn’t manage to keep a room anywhere near clean or who routinely told “convenient” lies about their whereabouts if they knew I would not approve. Someone who danced in her seat when her favorite tunes came on the radio, who would now have to concentrate her energies on remaining safe in this death machine on wheels, in my eyes. :-)

Then, before you know it, they’re off to college, never to really return as before. The truth is, all of my three have returned home (I promise their dads were not made out of rubber :-) ) for some legitimate reason or other at some point. This generation is not like the last, with the expectation that they will have the lives their parents had. We have felt it. From divorces to jobs that didn’t work out like you expected, to deaths, to returning to school, life lessons that made each, I’m sure, grateful for a soft place to land.

And in that ten year period since first I wrote, so much has taken place, one day at a time. Yet here we are. 

I chuckled when I read about having carved out a day to grade a slew of papers, only to get a call that Christian needed to go to Urgent Care and his teacher-mother needed to be at work. I am now retired. No more papers to grade. Whoohooo! While I LOVE teaching law and could have done it until I was no longer able, after thirty-eight and a half years, thirty-three in the same university, I could feel that something else was calling me. I did not know what, and had no yen to do anything else in particular, but I could feel that there was something else I needed to do and it would reveal itself. At age seventy, your Social Security payments max out as as much as you you will be able to collect each month and you have to begin your monthly check collecting, so on my seventieth birthday, I retired. 

I wasn’t worried about what I would do. I know how the Universe works in my life. 

So, I leaned into retirement, understanding it would be a process after a lifetime of regimented living, after starting school at age four and going straight through law school, then to work after that. I began to get used to the idea of what it meant to not care about a weekend because every day is a weekend day you didn’t have to work. That takes a while to sink in. The world depends on weekends. You no longer have to.

I went through a process of figuring out what time of day worked best for me to arise and go to sleep now that I had no reason to wake up at a particular time. I realized I’m not a late sleeper. I experimented with various things figuring out how I wanted to spend my time. Did I really want to clean out the messy drawers and cabinets I’d been waiting for time to tackle? Was I ready to go down the rabbit hole of my genealogy like I’d been itching to do for ages—even though I could now do a good deal of it from the comfort and convenience of my computer rather than spending hours in the dark and dusty basement of some institution looking at microfilm? Was I ready to write books? If so, what? There were so many in my head. Did I want to travel? My mother died suddenly of a heart attack when she was fifty years old and I was twenty. One of my takeaways from that was to live each day as if it was your last, do what it is you want to do and don’t save it. The truth was, I had traveled all over the world to wherever I wanted to. I was sure I’d still do some traveling, but I had no great yen to do so. There truly is no place like home for me. Truly. Contentment Cottage is my special place and while I love people and going to events and having new experiences, it is my comfort and joy.

Every day was full of something. I realized that I loved Pilates enough to go to class every morning at 6 am, rising 2 hours earlier so that I could walk for an hour before class. I realized, once again, since I had done it before, that the worst thing about getting up at 4 am isn’t getting up at 4 am. It’s going to bed around 8 or 9 p.m. when you do your best work at night. 

I learned I must take great care of my aging self, including, among other things, that I must have between 7 and 8 hours of sleep each night, put eating berries in my day, put exercise in my day, do things that challenge me mentally, stay engaged, and all the things the experts say to do. I wanted to e able to enjoy my aging and remain vital and not a burden to my daughters and grandchildren. When your mother dies of a heart attack at 50 and your Dad dies 37 years later with Alzheimers he had for at least a couple of decades, you try to do what you can to preserve your health.

I still speak, teach and consult, but I have a much more relaxed schedule to do it. Since I arranged my life so that my house and car were paid for and I was debt-free before I retired and my daughters were all past college (turns out, nearly), I didn’t feel the need to hustle to make ends meet as many retirees do. I could take my time and open myself up to see what it was the Universe needed me to retire in order to do.

My first big surprise was receiving a call from my university’s president telling me that a committed had submitted a suggestion to him that an endowment be created to give an annual award to a faculty member who had demonstrated a significant commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB) both inside and outside the classroom and he was accepting their suggestion. The call was to notify me of this and ask if it was okay with me if they named it for me. 

Huh? 

“Is this a trick question?” I asked once I, literally, found my voice. He laughed. ”No. We can’t name it the Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander Inclusive Community Award without your permission.” 

They received it, of course.

The second surprise was being told that the university wanted to do a video of me. I couldn’t even understand the request. I’d never seen such a thing at my university. Once they explained that it would simply be about me, I agreed, though reluctantly. I still didn’t get it. I said yes because I guessed they needed it for the new award announcement. I needed to do my duty. I just didn’t have a picture in my head of what it would be or why. Just about me because I’m me and do what I do, it turns out. Weird. It received wide press, including national, upon it’s release. Unbelievable. My favorite part was that a young Black male senior in his last semester, who aspired to be a movie producer, was tapped to create the video. It was his first project. He took it very seriously and did a great job. I was so happy for him. My favorite part of that is that in his interview for the video, he really heard me and understood what was important to me. He sent me two “director’s cuts,” one of which was purely about me quilting. I absolutely loved it since quilting is such a big part of my life, connects me to my Ancestors and is such a metaphor for life for me.  

I wasn’t in a hurry to rush the Universe to unfold its plans. I was fine if nothing ever showed up. I had plenty to keep me busy—even though I did not need to be busy. 

But something did show up. It turned out the plan was to write after all. 

Fiction, at that. 

What?!

Having ever only published legal textbooks before, I have now finished four novels, three of which are now available on Amazon.com and other places. The fourth I just finished last week. They are, in many ways, a culmination of everything in my life leading up to now. The goal of the books is to bridge the gap (more like a widening chasm lately) between diverse groups of people, in a fun, interesting and entertaining way. The method is to use all the parts and experiences of my life to weave tales of quilts that do extraordinary things while leading to information about some issue of DEIB.

Huh? How in the world does that work?!

Even I had never heard of such a thing. It just came to me. From the Universe, I’m sure.

Ever had a fierce argument with someone, only to discover well into the argument that the two of you were operating with a different set of facts? Facts that once the other side knew, they actually agreed with, but neither side knew each was dealing with a different set of facts? Time after time after time I experienced this phenomenon in the work I did, and do, as someone who teaches and consults in Employment Law, Global Diversity and DEIB. While we always have a great time of it, it is clear to us that that is what is going on. It always startles the people involved. Always. They always come away wishing they had known the other set of facts because it would have made such a difference in their thinking. They feel cheated, like someone lied to them.

Each of the books in The Quilt Journeys Mystery Series explores a different DEIB issue and tries to fill in the information gap that my 40+ years of experience has shown me often exists about the issue with those not in the group the book addresses. Each of the quilts is different, and all but one have extraordinary powers. The book are a very fun and interesting way to explore the issues while just reading an intriguing cozy mystery. Not sure what the cozy mystery genre is? Think “Murder, She Wrote.” Comfortable, cozy, spellbinding, without the murder, blood, guts, police procedure, etc.

Writing the books has allowed me to explore a talent I did not realize I possessed, even though my students and training attendees said it all the time: storytelling! I still don’t see myself as a storyteller or even imaginative, but I guess that sounds ridiculous at this point. How the stories come to me and develop is way beyond me. I have no idea. My co-author is my niece, who I consider the imaginative one. But often, once I begin the story, it just takes off on its own and I feel like I’m just along for the ride. I have no idea where it’s going. I want to see where it goes as much as the reader does! It is absolutely fascinating. I feel like I’m just the vehicle for something the Universe wants to deliver.

It all began with my niece, who was visiting from Texas, asking me to tell her about the stack of handmade quilts I had made that were sitting on a chair. I keep them there because they inspire me. Like the books, once they are done, I can’t believe I actually made them. While I was telling her about the one I made to commemorate the 200th birthday of her great-great-great-grandmother, born in 1815 into slavery in Alabama, she said we ought to write a quilt about a book. I’d been a textbook author for over thirty years; she had never written a book. While she was incredibly intelligent and imaginative, she rarely finished a project she thought up. Determined to have her learn that one could actually begin something and finish it, the next morning I opened my laptop and said, “So what happens?” She had no idea what I was even talking about. After I told her what I meant, she said, “Well, a woman goes into a shop and buys a quilt.” I stopped her right there and started writing. That was Monday morning. By the time I left for my speaking engagement in Arizona on Friday, the book was all but done. The rest is history.

So, while I began this blog ten years ago and have been pretty intermittent about it, a lot has happened in those ten years. My oldest daughter now has a young woman about to graduate from high school and begin college, rather than an eight-year-old, and a then-toddler son who is now a teen. My middle daughter has bought thirteen acres not far from us and built a container home that became a UN prototype for sustainable housing before COVID hit and stopped everything dead in its tracks. My baby daughter graduated from college summa cum laude, 17 years after beginning, and is now working on her Master’s degree. The two oldest daughters have lost their dad, my first husband. I have re-connected, to some extent, with the true great love of my life and it has fueled me in ways that could only come from the Universe because it had work for us to do. I have weathered the COVID pandemic pretty much unharmed, except in ways we all have felt a new reality we’d rather not have done. We have experienced the end of the first Black man as president who set a sterling example of presidential behavior, and endured the reign of his successor who tested us in ways we still reel from, yet he is looming on the horizon as potentially another term. One that, if it comes to pass, will make me continue to wonder who we are as a country, because I thought I knew, but am learning more and more each day, maybe not so much. 

I have retired and learned to love it, felt the continuing love of an institution to which I devoted thirty-three years in ways that still startle me, including a Valentines Day text early this morning from a student from years ago. I have traveled to England to deliver an invited paper at Oxford, Italy to teach sixty eager students, Italy once again for my oldest daughter’s fortieth birthday, India as a gift from my middle daughter, Aruba, the Dominican Republic, Cancun, a solo cross-country drive from Georgia to Colorado just to see the Rockies, a cross country road trip with my former partner and our two grandchildren, gazing at, among other things, the wonders of the Rockies, the Crazy Horse Monument, the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, the St. Louis Arch, and the site of the Oklahoma City Bombing. I attended the donor’s event for the opening of the incomparable National Museum of African American History and Culture, had my first inspiring visit to Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL, the inspirational National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY, that I didn’t even realize existed, made several incredible quilts of my own, including finishing a Dresden Plate quilt I discovered that I had begun thirty-five years before, won a national teaching award that included $25,000, with which I created an endowed scholarship for students who engaged in DEIB efforts, received numerous other awards and recognitions for teaching and service, including several teacher of the year awards, lost one hundred pounds, gained some of it back, grew my very short natural into flowing dreadlocs, grew innumerable beautiful precious flowers and veggies in my garden and am still awed by each and every one, published three more editions of my co-authored Employment Law textbook, finally withdrawing after the tenth edition, content in the knowledge that it had been number one from the moment it came out and still led the pack after ten editions, and did lots of great work on my home. 

Did I mention becoming the mother of three kittens during COVID, one of which my middle daughter promptly claimed as her own? Or becoming one of the instructors in the first online certification course on the planet for the new international DEIB standard, ISO 30415:21, whose US task force I served on for three years? Or teaching in the first National Judicial College 4-day course on The Anti-Racist Courtroom? Or recording my first audiobook? Or attending my first high school reunion? It took me fifty-five years, but I finally managed to get to one. . . and ended up in a Washington Post article about it. Oh, and had the unique and totally unexpected experience of being a delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, along with a delegation that included luminaries such as my personal hero, the late Rep. John Lewis, and the incredible Stacy Abrams, and was able to become a part of history by casting a vote for the first female candidate from a major political party for president of the US, Hillary Clinton.

Well, I’m sure I’m leaving out lots of other things that happened over the past ten years since I began this blog. In fact, probably at least as much as I remembered. But I must say it was rather lovely revisiting what I did manage to remember. All in all, I realized that whether or not ten years seems like a long time depends on what you’re thinking about. For my grandchildrens’ births, even the quilt from thirty-five years ago, it seems like just yesterday. For my trip to the Rockies, it seems like forever ago. I guess it just depends. And that’s life….

This morning when reading the morning news, I came across a story about the singer, Drake’s son bursting into tears onstage as his Dad accepted the BBMA honor, whatever that is. I have heard of Drake but couldn’t tell you one song of his, despite, as it turns out, he was receiving the Billboard award for artist not of the year, but of the DECADE. Turned out BBMA is Billboard Music Awards. Who knew? 🙂

However, knowing as I do, male, and especially Black male, acculturation in this country, I had opened the article to see how old his son was because I couldn’t imagine a Black boy of any age doing this unless he was a toddler. Turned out he was 4. Made sense.

But what struck me the most was that Drake had a heart cut into his haircut on the front side of his forehead.

What?

Instant love.

Hearts are my favorite shape in the entire universe because they symbolize my life motto, “It’s ALL about LOVE!” I have them all over my house, I do not make a quilt without them (and hand quilting is huge for me), I have a Maori-inspired heart tattooed on my chest and I even collect and/or photograph natural heart shapes in nature such as leaves, rocks, etc. (last summer I had a 3 potatoes shaped like hearts!).

If this grown Black man was willing to have a heart cut into his haircut, in the front, at probably one of, if not the, most important, media-heavy, auspicious, occasions of his life, I knew I would likely appreciate the message in his music.

Moments later, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) advocate that I am, I clicked on a story about a kid band, Linda Lindas, that had written a song, “Racist Sexist Boy,” about a boy who had teased a girl. Curious, I opened the article and, quite unexpectedly, proceeded to be blown away.

I LOVED that the songwriter was only 10! I LOVED that she wrote it after she was told by the boy that his Dad told him to stay away from Chinese people and when she told him she was Chinese, he backed away from her. I LOVE it that I was totally unprepared for the performance the band gave at the L.A. Public Library! I LOVE it that the song “became a viral pandemic-era anthem.”!! It deserves to be!

As you can see, I love this on so many levels. So much so that it brought me to tears when I thought about Drake’s haircut heart that I’d just seen and then saw how these little kids had turned what could have been just another mean, disrespectful, hateful, ignorant act into such a win! I love it that at that age, that gender, that ethnicity, they felt a sense of agency enough, felt empowered enough, to just respond in a way that made sense to them rather than just taking it and feeling hurt.

I thought about how one of the most important things about doing DEIB work is understanding how important the role of society and environment is in us being where we are as well as us creating change.

We are social creatures. It’s just part of our DNA as human beings. We do what we need to do to say within the group.

The environment the group creates is tremendously important. People don’t tell jokes they think no one will laugh at any more than they will wear clothes they think others will find totally unacceptable and subject them to public ridicule. We need to understand how important our individual role is in this equation. We choose —or not—to laugh at the joke. We choose—or not—to walk away when someone tells us who they are. The power of one is astonishing in its effectiveness.

Whether you see it at that moment or not, your decision simply not to laugh is seen and heard and no matter what others say, sends a ripple. The joke teller will think twice next time s/he gets ready to tell a joke s/he believes others will think is funny when the laughter is at the expense of unnecessarily demeaning others. Eventually s/he may stop telling such jokes altogether because s/he gets the message that it is not acceptable. We create that environment. And we can do it by saying absolutely nothing at all when the joke is told, giving the idea that it is not OK. Or we can laugh and send the message that it is.

We all know when we do wrong. We know when we have crossed over the line. We know when we have done something that demeaned someone, embarrassed someone, hurt someone, or otherwise made them feel bad. We can make the choice not to do it. Don’t allow someone else’s choice to go over the line drag you into it. If these are not your values, don’t act like they are. You thereby help solidify an environment you don’t even want. All of our acts woven together create the environment.

Drake’s heart in his haircut, Linda Lindas’ anti-hate anthem, were not done together. They were totally unrelated to each other (well, actually, both involved music made by BIPOC). But together, they create signs that the world is not OK with the way things are when we treat each other as outsiders based on irrelevant criteria and instead should return to our natural state: Love. I love that!

Do what you can to be a part of that environment that binds us together rather than divides us. Every single little bit we do matters. Many hands make light work. Each of us, doing what we can, can absolutely make the world a better, more loving, more accepting place.

Who in the world doesn’t want that?!

Yes, I am a lawyer, I am 70 years old, I’m Black, my Ancestors were enslaved in North Carolina and Alabama, I am female, and I can still say this. Pollyanna I am not. Experienced I am.

As I was walking across the floor of my basement this evening, I realized how delicious the space felt. It felt so good to have it back. After the death of my daughters’ Dad 3 years ago, my basement, both the spacious front family room section as well as the equally spacious back storage section, were taken over as storage space after my middle daughter did the sad and laborious job of clearing out and preparing for sale her Dad’s 3-story-plus basement home in DC. The things she chose to keep until her own home was built ended up totally taking over a space I loved. Not only did I very much enjoy the space itself, I realized walking through it today just how much I missed just having the open space.

I’ve lived in my house for 33 years. With my 3 daughters now off in their own spaces, I live alone, something I very much enjoy. I try to live all over my home. Though the master bedroom is on the main floor, I prefer to sleep in the cooler, darker basement. When my daughter needed to live with me with her husband and new baby after selling her home in another state and moving back to mine, I gave them the house to occupy and the basement served me quite well. It is a totally separate space with its own bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette and entrance. In its most recent use, for three years all but the bedroom and bathroom were lost to me as the other part of the space was used for storage. Relishing walking through the space now that I could, I realize I am walking through a space that may seem indulgent considering the fact that I live alone and had the rest of the house to occupy. But it was a space I was used to occupying and missed when it was used otherwise. To have it now be bright and open rather than crowded with a jumble of things covering every surface including the floor, making it seem dark and crowded made me realize how much it impacted me without my realizing it. Just having the unruly, dark, jumble of foreign possessions there had an impact I was not aware of. It made me feel like I was crowded into a dark confining space. I do not, for one second, regret allowing it to be so used by my daughter and would do it again in a heartbeat. But I was surprised at just how much a difference it made mentally and emotionally to not feel crowded in. I was surprised at how much I took in and felt without realizing it. I was surprised at how our mind can close to negatives when there is a positive purpose. But once my daughter moved into the new home she built and cleared out the space, it was as if my whole mindset changed, felt lighter, more hopeful, more upbeat. No one was more surprised than I.

Walking across the spacious floor and thinking about how good it felt to be able to access the space once again, I thought about a news story I’d read the day before during a long wait at Lowe’s to place my order for a new appliance.

The news, which delighted me, was that Black farmers had begun receiving messages from the USDA that they would soon be receiving notice of payments and loan forgiveness as part of the most recent COVID recovery legislation.

Ten years before, my textbook, The Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Environment in a Diverse Society, commissioned by McGraw-Hill Publishing, had been published. A first-of-its kind textbook in the Business Law discipline, it was a great book, but ahead of it’s time. It was cancelled after the first edition did not meet sales projections. It was a move I understood, but still believed made little sense considering the way the country was headed. 

Turns out I was right. Imagine having a professor who did not know I’d written the book, during a call to ask if I would be on a panel on creating an anti-racist curriculum in colleges of business for the annual meeting of our national organization, say that Business Law professors needed a Legal Environment book that addresses diversity and inclusion (D&I). She said she and some colleagues were thinking of writing one. She was stunned when I told her that not only had I already written one, but that when the book was cancelled, my co-author and I obtained a reversion of rights from the publisher and she and her colleagues were welcome to use the book to create a new one. What mattered to me was getting the information to students, not royalties. But it further solidified my notion that the publisher should have just waited it out as they had volunteered to do when they agreed to publish my Employment Law for Business textbook. Another first-of-its kind text, the book, now in its 10th edition, is the leading text in its discipline and has been for the nearly 30 years it has been in existence.

Since the Legal Environment book addressing diversity and inclusion issues was a first-of-its-kind, my co-author and I were free to craft it in whatever way we thought best served its purpose. We said in the introduction that we would only include D&I where it was relevant as we were not trying to force the issue because of an “agenda” but simply wanted the relevant information to be provided to students. Present textbooks generally just present the law. However, we understood that the law is not created by legislators in a vacuum, executed by those in power in a vacuum, nor interpreted by courts in a vacuum. Students needed to realize that. After all, they may one day be in one of those positions and we wanted to make sure they understood the landscape. The law is not simply the law, totally detached from the ideas we hold as human beings in a society.

During his administration, Trump demonstrated this on a daily basis in each of the three branches of our tripartite system of government (legislative, executive and judicial) by pushing extreme legislation, helping elect extremely conservative legislators and castigating those who took positions varying from his (legislative), appointing conservative judges whose most important qualification seemed to be a willingness to uphold his views and berating decisions and judges when they did not (judicial), and by arbitrarily using his power as chief executive to do all sorts of inappropriate, detrimental and self-serving things and appointing embarrassingly unqualified leaders in executive branch positions that wreaked havoc on everything from the environment to civil rights (executive). Unfortunately, as a textbook author whose subject matter deals with a lot of the havoc he was wreaking, I did not have the choice to turn away from it. With the 10th edition of my Employment Law text coming out in January of 2021, each and every day, several times a day, I had to check the news to see what he was doing now that could impact the text. It was a depressing time (thus my absence from blogging. But that’s another post…)

Our textbook not only provided the law, but gave context and meaning to it regarding issues of diversity and inclusion. In designing the book, our thought was that some areas lent themselves to D&I concerns more than others and we would never try to insert D&I where it did not belong. One area we didn’t think there would have very much was administrative law, the area of law that deals with administrative agencies. Generally thought of (certainly by me and my classmates in law school in the Washington, DC, the heart of administrative agencies) as dry as dust and boring, to boot, my co-author and I were pretty shocked when our research showed otherwise. In fact, very much so. 

The two situations that stuck out most in my mind were the Black farmers’ loss of their lands due to admitted discrimination by the USDA, and Native Americans and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) discrimination resulting in the loss of billions of dollars in leasing revenue that should have gone to Native Americans. Both situations had been in years of litigation and both had won. Both had also not had Congress approve the payment of damages despite the determination by a court of the agency’s liability. It was nothing less than disgustingly disappointing. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how frustrating that must have been for the claimants involved. To have won your case, have clear evidence of discrimination, and still not be able to collect your damages.

Now, ten years after our textbook was published, the Black farmers, who had lost over 12 million acres, 85% of their lands, according to Census data, mainly due to discrimination by the very agency that was supposed to protect their interests, were finally getting a payday. Roughly 98% of farmers are now white. Now, $4 billion of President Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act was set aside for debt relief for Black, Hispanic and other underserved farmers and ranchers to help with the impact of COVID and “to remedy centuries of government discrimination.” Between 11,000 and 13,000 Back, Hispanic, Native American, Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander farmers, will benefit by having their entire loans paid off and eligible farmers will receive an additional 20% of that loan as a cash payment sent to them to cover the tax burden that comes with such large debt relief. It would not bring back their land, but at least they were no longer being ignored as they had been for so long. The the head of the agency itself, Tom Vilsack, said he was determined to do something about the discrimination the agency had imposed. He said the agency was committed to “ending discrimination wherever it exists at USDA and working like never before to gain the trust and confidence of America’s farmers and ranchers.”

Turns out, this is America, so, of course there were detractors. The predictable opposition was made, with whites saying it discriminates against them. Unbelievable. You discriminate against me and I sue you and you have to pay and someone who was not discriminated against and therefore is not entitled to payment says this is unfair? I am so confused. Did our court system undergo a change I am not aware of? But then, given what Americans had witnessed their former president doing when he did not like court decisions, this made perfect sense. Lawsuits have been filed and other actions in opposition, including an announcement by Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) to introduce the Agricultural Civil Rights and Equality Act, prohibiting USDA from discriminating or providing preferential treatment to any person on the basis of race, color, national origin or sex.

When you have been at the work of D&I for as long as I have, have worked at the White House and Capitol Hill, this sort of opposition is to be expected. As undesirable as it is, it’s just all part of how we roll in America.

Then I looked at the comments section in the Washington Post article dated 5/22/2021 (the link to the article above is to an open source as my experience has been that the Washington Post links are usually inaccessible without you paying to view them), something I rarely do. Why invite negativity into your life? It’s bad enough to live in a society that you know has people who don’t even think you should exist for one reason or another, without actually looking at what they have to say and giving energy to their ridiculousness.

But I did.

And what a stark reminder it was. Sitting there reading the comments in the appliance section of Lowe’s, with tears burning in my eyes, I remembered why I rarely read the comments section. 

There is so much work to do.

The comments reflected such a lack of knowledge, no idea what they were talking about. Yes, I know there are many who would call it racism. But for 40 years I’ve been in the business of dealing with providing information that turns people on a dime from the nonsense I was seeing in the comments to an informed passionate D&I advocate—surprising even themselves— so I knew that all statements like the ones I was viewing, as bad as they were, did not deserve that label and neither did their authors. That’s not said to protect them, it is just a reflection of 40 years of experience. I am absolutely aware that there are those who would be perfectly happy to see every non-white leave the country.  In 40 years of dealing with thousands upon thousands of whites in the D&I context, and even longer in life, tells me it is not every one of them. But I digress. 

The comments that truly caught my eye were the ones about how this money should not be given to Blacks because of who Blacks are and how they behave. Higher incarceration and murder rates, lack of education and decent communities, etc.

It was clear that the authors had no idea that each and every thing they mentioned was the result of the systemic and individual racism to which Blacks had been subjected since landing in the shores.

All of it. 

• View Richard Rothstein’s “Segregated by Design” from his book, The Color of Law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN40H5ztRqg

I thought about this as I walked across the floor of my basement this evening. I thought about how much of an impact it made on my mental state to see the space taken up with a plethora of random home furnishings and minutia gathered over a lifetime versus how it felt to have it back to normal as a spacious, relaxing, cozy, light-filled comfortable space. This, despite the fact that right up the steps is the first floor of my home with its living room, family room, sunroom, dining room, kitchen, sewing room and bathroom. Then there is the floor above that with spacious bedrooms and a bath. Imagine what it would be like if the crowded, dark, stuff-filled basement was all I had.

If just having that basement family room space with my wall-to-wall bookshelves, Christmas closet, quilt closet, wrap-around desk, faux fireplace, come back to its own could impact my mental state so much, how must it be for Black folks confined pretty much forever to communities that are overcrowded, lack well-funded schools, libraries, parks, grocery and other reputable stores that respect their patrons?  What mindset does it create to live with that day in and day out?  To feel like there is no way out? To feel the wrath of the world face you each and every time you venture out of that space, the looks of disdain on people’s faces simply because of who you are or where you live?

Then to have someone with no idea of why things are the way they are use it as an excuse for thinking you’re like an animal and should be treated as such? 

Makes me want to scream. 

I have done an exercise I found in a book once, in my classes, where students are divide into three groups and the goal of each group is to build a town with the resources provided. A “sheriff” is appointed who has a toy water gun. There is also a Supply Manager in charge of sitting at a table and handing out the resources as group members ask for them. What they don’t know is that the Supply Manager has been told to give group A whatever it asks for, group B pretty much of what it asks for and group C very little of what it asks for, to do it slowly, and to do it with a negative attitude and imposing requirements not imposed on the other groups. C is also to be randomly mildly accosted by the sheriff hanging around them more, interrupting their work supposedly on official business, and hassling them when they become upset. Everyone starts out eager and hopeful, confident they can build a great city. It eventually dawns on C that they are not being given what they need, while they see A getting whatever it asks for and more without restrictions, B getting lots of resources and C not only getting hassled when they ask, but not getting much at all. They see the other cities rising and realize they are nowhere near being able to accomplish the assigned task. It doesn’t take long before these perfectly pleasant classmates and friends begin getting angry with each other, C stealing things from A and C and eventually knocking down the work of the other two groups out of frustration. When time is called and the exercise explained, everyone is absolutely flabbergasted at what has taken place. This was in classes with virtually all white students.

It is such a good demonstration of real life. What happens in Black and other non-white communities subjected to what America has systemically built into the system is not based on inherent attributes of a particular racial. It’s based on deprivation, exclusion, marginalization. It just so happens that in this country, based on its history, that tends to be Blacks who suffer.

A few years ago my elementary school art teacher daughter who teaches in a Title I school (i.e., 40% or more of the students qualify for free lunch because they meet the government criteria for poverty) brought a group of students over to bake Christmas cookies. The way my house is set up, they came in and were soon in the kitchen without passing through much else of the house. When the cookies were finally in the oven, they drifted off towards the fireplace (this one real) while my daughter and I cleaned up. All of a sudden we heard screams and ran toward them. As a lawyer, my first thought was of my liability for someone’s hurt child. Turns out no one was hurt. They had simply walked into the sunroom and had seen not only the 9 ft. Christmas tree there, but they were screaming that there was a back yard. A back yard! I live on a corner, so it’s a pretty big yard. I promise you, even though there is a gazebo and hot tub and a wooden potting shed,  I do NOT live in a fancy, upscale home in an exclusive neighborhood. But to them, it may as well have been. I felt so, as kids nowadays say,  some kind of way. Ashamed?  Even tho there was nothing to be ashamed of?  Guilty?  Even tho I had worked hard for what I had and done nothing wrong?  Responsible? Even tho I was not the one who was responsible for them?  Whatever I was feeling did not feel good. And it was clear they felt blessed just to see what they were seeing, to know it existed and was possible in the world. 

It broke my heart to see their reaction. To know it reflected the plight of so many. To know it was through a history of depriving Blacks of opportunities that would give them an even shot at living their dream. Minimum wage and union laws intentionally designed by southern legislators to leave most of them out when created, a GI Bill that powerful southern legislators demanded be written such that it would not disturb their Jim Crow world and permit them to discriminate on the basis of race (when my sister was in the Navy and stationed in Jacksonville, FL tried to use the GI Bill that paid for service member and veterans’ education to take classes at Jacksonville University, the admissions office told her that she could not attend the University because they did not allow “coloreds.”), and federal home lending laws that created redlining and virtually excluded Blacks from home ownership except in what the government deemed undesirable areas, that in turn led to withdrawal of normal services like trash collection, libraries, etc.

That people did not realize this and instead blamed the plight of Blacks on the inherent attributes of the skin color of the very people suffering under the deprivation was maddening.

That the federal government is now facing up to their responsibility it owes Black and other non-white farmers is heartening. It is so little but something so long overdue. That there are those otherwise of good will who simply do not have enough knowledge to understand this is why I do what I do in the world as a D&I consultant, author and advocate, and will until I no longer can. When they understand, when they see how it leads to the tremendously different lives of children like those visiting my home to bake Christmas cookies that cold December day, it will have been worth my while.

It never occurred to me that being able to walk across my uncrowded basement family room floor once again would make me think of how crowded conditions effect those confined to those spaces and how the payments to Black farmers intersects with that and lead me to that insight. 

But I’m not surprised.

I just returned for a weekend trip to Atlanta to attend the festivities for the Bar Mitzvah for the son of one of my former students from about 25 years ago.  Pure and simple: It was extraordinary.  On so many levels.

I’d been to a Bat (female version) Mitzvah before, but even if  had, it wouldn’t have mattered.  One of the things that everyone (about 500 folks) agreed on is that it was unlike any Bar Mitzvah they had ever seen—and they were all Jewish.  Not only was it well attended with people from as far away as Israel, Europe and Canada, but the young man it was given for was just an incredible human being, as were his parents.  The parents (one of whom was my former student) were so open, warm, and welcoming that even though my daughter, grandddaugher and I were pretty much the only people there who were not from their close circle that they deal with through their daily lives in some way, and we were the only people of color.  For us to not once look at our watches on Friday, Saturday or Sunday was nothing less than extraordinary.  THAT’s how comfortable we felt.

One of the takeaways for me is to make sure that I tell the world that this can, in fact, happen.  We can, as outsiders, go into a group that seems totally unlike us, and, if done the right way, feel totally at home in even the most personal of ways.  You know them.  You’re sneaking looks at your watch.  Your jaws ache from the forced smiles.  You realize the laughter you’re giving is not coming from your heart, you’re making mental lists of other things you need to do.  You’re waiting for it to be over.  Think about doing this for an entire weekend.  Think about the difference between that and being with a group of your friends that you have a great time with.  Totally different experience.  This was like the latter.  Unbelievable.

I am an avid bibliophile and audiobook listener.  It is hard for me to just “do nothing,” so I am rarely not multi-tasking in some way or other.  Yes, I know the drawbacks and downside, but I have to save that for another post. So, since I walk for an hour each day, audiobooks are a perfect way for me to read and get in my exercise at the same time.  But when you read as much as I do, one of the great things audiobooks affords, is being able to “read” things you would not likely have the time to do otherwise.  One of my favorites recently, is “The Life and Adventures of Nat Love Also Known as Deadwood Dick.”  Nat (pronounced Nate) was a black real-life, ride-the-range cowboy who began life as a slave, eventually headed west, and ended up writing his own incredibly good book about it.  When the trains took the place of cowboys and the plains were populated by humans rather than cows, Nat became a Pullman Porter and rode the rail for decades more. The book was very well written, extremely exciting and, best of all, reminded me of how much I liked westerns.

Since finishing his book a couple of weeks ago, I have re-discovered my love of westerns.  I even subscribed to the Western Mania channel on cable.  Heaven.

Watching old western movies and TV shows has reminded me of so much I had totally forgotten.  One of my few childhood memories is of my beloved black corduroy cowgirl suit with the white plastic fringe that I received for Christmas when I was four or so.  Although my mother kept telling me I should, I refused to take it off while going to bed for my nap, only to wake up and discover the black corduroy covered in white lint.  I cried my eyeballs out.  Watching reruns of the very popular 60s and 70s TV show “Bonanza” made me remember that I’d loved the actor, Pernell Roberts, who played the oldest son, Adam.  Not only was I actually in his fan club at about age 12 or so, but my walls were plastered with his photos from the fan club and fan magazines (remember those?)

What is even more interesting to me now is looking at these westerns from my perspective as a much older adult (now age 68 rather than 4 or 12), and as one whose life work has been diversity and inclusion work.  This would seem to be TOTALLY at odds with liking westerns.  But don’t be fooled.  I am really sad to see the decline of westerns because I realize how much they taught us about American history—selective tho it was.  I see so much more now and understand it so much better.

When I watch westerns, I am not just looking at a story about the west.  As a lover of history, a sociology major in undergraduate school, as a lawyer and diversity and inclusion scholar, as a mother, as a head of household, as an African American and a female, and as a great-great grandchild of those who were enslaved, I’m thinking about things that got our country to where it is today.  It is so easy to think the dance did not start until we arrived on the scene.  But understanding what got us to that point where we entered is tremendously enriching for me.

When I look at westerns, I am dealing with the idea of Manifest Destiny and what absolute and unmitigated gall it took to decide that you wanted to just go and take over a place, regardless of what was going on when you got there, and make it your own.  Imagine someone just showing up in, say, sparsly populated North Dakota today, liking what they see, and deciding that they had discovered it and wanted to stake it out for themselves and proceed to do so.  Of course, that is precisely what happened with the Native Americans inhabiting the west and the settlers and cattle ranchers that operated on the basis of Manifest Destiny.  Seeing that play out is incredibly interesting to me and teaches me so much.

Then there are the fights between the cattle ranchers who wanted the wide open spaces for grazing, vs. the homesteaders who wanted to lay claim to what the federal government, in an effort to populate the area, had told them they could have if they went and staked a claim and lived there.  Naturally, if you were a farmer trying to eke out a living for you and your family by turning open prarie into farmland (being a “sod buster”) the last thing you want is for thousands of cattle to trample on your efforts.  So, of course, you put up a fence to keep them out.  Major fight.  Cattle ranchers vs. homesteaders.  Barbed wire fences vs. open range.

Then there were the cattle owners vs. sheep owners.  They hated each other.  As wide open as the west was, you’d think there would have been room for both, but not according to them.  They battled long and hard.

Cowboys who could take up to three months getting longhorns from, say, Texas to  markets in Kansas before the railroads came along and took out the necessity for most of their job needed a place to come to at trail’s end.  The trail offered nothing in the way of creature comforts or much else other than survival.  Cowboy songs arose as a genre for a reason.  It was pretty much the only entertainment on those long nights on the praries.  Places like Abilene, where the trail ended, popped up as a natural place for them to blow it all out and let ‘er rip at the end of long trail run.  Heading into town and letting off steam by spending your entire pay in the saloon on liquor and pretty women, simply made sense to them.

Of course, it did not make sense to the townsfolk who had to live with what it meant in the wake of a town full of drunken, hell-bent-for-leather, out-of-control cowboys at the end of the trail.  Random drunken shootings, drunken brawls, gun fights over little or nothing, prostitution,gambling and the crime that generally accompanies it such as theft, cheating, robbery, accosting law-abiding townspeople, were all by-products that law abiding citizens, especially those with children, did not care to live with.  Thus, cowboys vs. town folks.

Do we allow them to come in and spend their money in town or do we restrict their access and protect our townfolks?  Who do we make the most money from, the cowboys who come in for a few days at the end of the trail or the town folk who live here year-round and need not only a saloon, liquor and prostitutes and maybe some new duds or a gun that the cowboys do, but also seed, feed, cloth, wagons, wheels, and the other accoutrements of living?  What is the role of the church that the law-abiding town folk attend?  Should it look upon the visiting, riotous-living cowboys with disdain and exclude them or try to bring them into the fold and convert them?  Should they meet them where they are at the saloon or wait for them to come to church?  Was it permissible for a town or farm female to fall in love with a passing cowboy and try to get him to settle down, or she leaves with him or would she be an outcast?  Were the cowboys to be judged as a group since they seemed to travel in packs and take on a group mentality, engaging in acts that they may likely not do if they were solo, and dismiss them all as unruly derelects, or judge them as individuals?  All important questions that get played out in the west.

And then there’s the actual criminal element.  Train robbers, bank robbers, stage coach robbers, roving gangs, land swindlers, illegal gamblers, cattlemen and land barons who wanted more and more and were not above using their minions to browbeat or physically persuade others to give in, snake oil salesmen, con artists, and others who were ready, willing and able to take advantage of the newly-arrived less-than-savvy that this new wide open land welcomed daily.

And, of course, undergirding all of this is the almost complete and total absence of black folks, Native Americans, Mexicans and women, the latter in few roles other than bar maids, saloon entertainers, or homemakers. How do you tell the story of Texas, which was originally a part of Mexico, without Mexicans in it? Happens all the time.  Right up to this day. In fact, when I googled Deadwood Dick, the first few entries said he was a fictional character.  I was so confused.  I had just read his autobiography from 1920.  He finally showed up in the google results.  But it was typical of the way that black folk were left out when the story is told, just like the story of America’s “greatness.”

We rarely, if ever, have that story told in its full truth.  That we got to be the most successful economy on the planet in a comparatively very short period of time is the story.  Conveniently left out is the fact that that laudable happenstance was largely the result of cotton, and that cotton was made profitable only because of the unpaid labor, i.e., slavery, that made it happen.  It’s like singularly declaring yourself the world champion fighter when you got the title by having the advantage of performance-enhancing drugs or by tying one of your opponent’s hands behind his back.  You really don’t have legitimate claim to the title at all if you told the entire truth, so you don’t.

And because most of us just sort of take the story as it’s written, we go from that point on.  Rather like looking at a cowboy and Indian movie and rooting for the cowboys the way folks of my generation did as kids.  When the Indians were depicted as savages who were violently attacking these peaceful settlers who wanted nothing more than to find a safe place to raise a family and they were being helped out by the cowboys, why wouldn’t you root for the cowboys?  Conveniently left out of the picture is why the Indians were attacking in the first place, and the fact that the place the settlers sought was already inhabited by the Indians who were brutally and violently rousted to make way for the settlers.  Violence that came after the Indians had done what they could to try to help the first arrivals adjust, only to learn that this may not be the best policy.

As I look at westerns, I also think about things like the fact that it is reported that as many as 60 million buffalo roamed the Great Plains in 1840 and less than 50 years later there were less than 100.  Think about that.  60 million to less than 100.  In an effort to take away the primary food, clothing and other source for the Native Americans that the federal government wanted to be rid for for the settlers moving to the west under Manifest Destiny, buffalo were killed almost to extinction.  And that is only one animal.  There were countless others, as well as the flora that was sacrificed to Manifest Destiny.  NBot to mention, of course, the biggest thing eradicated from the Plains (and any other place where they dwelled—which is to say everyplace in the US: The Native Americans themselves.  Watching the treatment of them in westerns is jaw-dropping.

I am not a Luddite who abhors progress.  I believe in progress.  I simply don’t believe in progress at the expense of entire races of people.  I am not condemning everything that happened.  Rather, as I watch westerns, I think about it.  I’m not saying that places like Witchita, KS, or Laredo, TX, or Los Angeles, CA should not exist as we know them today.  But, as I watch the westerns that I enjoy, it makes me appreciate them more as I think about what we are not seeing, as well as the implications of what we are seeing.  It teaches me more about what it took to get us where we are as a country.  It tells me not only about the values of hard work and being fair and just and helping neighbors and doing the right thing, but it also teaches me about who gets left out of that picture, what is valued, what is not, who we are as a people and gives me a deeper appreciation and understanding of those with whom, by dint of where I was born (in the US), I am a part of.  I like the idea of having those who were willing to stand for what was right despite the odds, or being willing to take on the “bad guys” to stand up for admirable values.  I just don’t think white men should have been the only ones depicted in that equation since that was not the reality.

Yep, I get all that out of watching entertaining, interesting westerns.

Talk about multi-tasking!  🙂

 

I want my life back.  For some reason, I feel like I’m living a life that doesn’t look or seem like it’s mine.  I’ve been so busy until I no longer have time for things I used to do.

In my last entry over a year ago, I wrote about not writing for 15 months and trying to do better.  Well, here I am another 15 months later.  This time it was rather intentional.  I thought about writing so many times.  But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.  It was like it has been taking all I have to keep myself grounded after the election that took place four months after my last entry.  I hate the idea of giving space to the one who won that election, but for history’s sake, just let me record that things have been as bad—even worse—than I feared.  I am still recovering over a year later.  It is difficult to do because virtually every single day there is another jaw-dropping addition to his sorry retinue.  It is taking all I have to maintain.

But, for more pleasant matters, today is the last day of class for the semester and that always makes me feel a sense of release and relief, as well as sadness.  After spending a semester with my students, I always feel like they are my baby birdies and I am releasing them to the world.  In a way, I guess I am.  I love it when they let me know how they are.  A couple of months ago I had he most extraordinary thing happen.  One of my former students was chosen for the honor of being recognized in the 2017 “40 Under 40” event my university gives for young alumni who have done something truly special.  We are blessed to have many, many applicants for the honor, but only 40 are chosen.  One was one of my former students and in his essay he mentioned that I was one of his favorite professors.  I decided to surprise him by attending the event in ATL (he lives in DC).  I was shocked to open the rather voluminous commemorative program at the event and see that his entry began with his comments about me being his favorite professor.  How gratifying.  And the top notch event was awesome.  I’m so proud of Nick and happy for his wife, Ashley.