The process of "enclosure" in the English countryside used to be a definite multiple-choice question in any high school level course in European history. The very first sentence of the Wikipedia entry for enclosure says: "In English social and economic history, enclosure is the process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on common land formerly held in the open field system."
Capitalist theory frowns on common land. The so-called "tragedy of the commons" is that, since nobody owns it, everybody can abuse it. Moreover, it can't be converted into capital so the present owners could do something different with its cash value. It is stuck in the hands of those who have the rights to use it so new people can't come along with a "higher" use for it. The phrase they use for this kind of perpetual ownership is "mortmain", or "dead hands."
Before the Supreme Court seized the common lands of the Spanish and Mexican community grants of the American Southwest, especially Sandoval v. US (167 US 278) the common lands of each community were used mainly for grazing livestock and cutting timber for construction, furniture and fuel. Stones from the Creek addresses this again and again. I wrote a paper on this subject twenty-five years ago. The people of those community grants are still dealing with the consequences 100 years later.
But the seizure of common lands is only one tool in the hands of those who would proletarianize an independent group of people. In the story "Turning Water Into Gold" the federal Newlands water project wasn't just a way of enriching speculators in the desert. It was also a way of denying the Pyramid Lake Paiute people their ducks, kuzavi, tule… let's just say their entire livelihood. And it was a way of driving them into the wage economy. Water projects today do the same thing by privatizing the very essence of life. So do chemical spills like the one in West Virginia and "fracking"(which makes injecting the chemicals into ground water a normal part of the process) by poisoning the people's water instead of privatizing it.
In "Scars" the industrialists of the "New South" simply criminalized young Black men by arresting them on specious charges and then leased these "convicts" to work for them: in this case in phosphate mining. It was also done in the coal mines of Tennessee and Alabama, in steel plants, and on private plantations, too. There were no wages, but the point is still to take independent people and get them working for you. The difference is that it was slavery long after the adoption of the 13th Amendment.
In the story "The Sun Shone So Brightly," the protagonist thinks of himself as a kind of free spirit who has traveled across the country and across oceans because he doesn't want to follow the traditional path of farming his parents' land. But he finds all his childhood friends working in a copper mine not far from their home. It was never a matter of choice for them; perhaps his own choice is just his imagination.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Frontier
In 1971 my friend Richard and I took a long car trip around the United States. One stop was Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, a center of Anasazi culture between the 7th and 14th centuries. The question of why the inhabitants moved from the mesa tops into well-defended caves and then left the area was presented by ranger interpreters as a "mystery." At that time, Richard was pursuing an archaeology major and he asked whether it was possible that this had to do with the upheaval in the Valley of Mexico coinciding with the arrival there of the Aztecs. The question elicited a stunned silence. Finally the ranger explained his discomfort: "But that's Mexico and this is the United States!"
Remember that we were discussing events in the late 1200's: two hundred years before Columbus, and five hundred years before the Declaration of Independence. (560-570 years before the US arrived in the area.) One has to assume that the Border Patrol was short-handed at the time. In his defense, I will note that the distance between Mexico City and Cortez, Colorado is about 1600 miles. On the other hand, the cultural reach of central Mexican culture was extensive. It is probable that the Mesoamerican ballgame Ullamaliztli was played in the areas now called New Mexico and Arizona. 200 sites resembling ball courts and several balls have been found at archeological sites. And evidence of trade is everywhere in what is now the US in the form of products from central and southern Mexico.
But I started thinking about this differently around 1986 during a visit to Taos Pueblo. People want Taos to manifest a kind of mystic connection with hidden powers. It is roughly 1000 years old and the campaign to save the sacred Blue Lake was a big deal in the 1960's. But when you visit Taos Pueblo, the members have little stores to sell you Coca Cola and fake-looking tomahawks made in Singapore. My revelation was that Taos was the outermost pueblo of the Rio Grande Valley, doing business with the Plains Indians before Kit Carson and before the Spanish. It may have been the farthest outpost of the empires in the Valley of Mexico.
Taos continued to play a role like that during the 1830's and 1840's. But coming from St. Louis and headed to Santa Fe, the entry point to New Mexico was at the ford on the Pecos River. Until 1800, then that frontier was Pecos Pueblo. For about three-quarters of the 19th century it became San Miguel del Vado: Saint Michael of the Ford. Once the Santa Fe Railroad was built, it moved to the city of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Now the frontier is about 300 miles further south, in El Paso, Texas. But that is just a formal national boundary. ICE sets up where they think illegal crossers will get back on I-10 or I-25. And who knows what the future holds?
Remember that we were discussing events in the late 1200's: two hundred years before Columbus, and five hundred years before the Declaration of Independence. (560-570 years before the US arrived in the area.) One has to assume that the Border Patrol was short-handed at the time. In his defense, I will note that the distance between Mexico City and Cortez, Colorado is about 1600 miles. On the other hand, the cultural reach of central Mexican culture was extensive. It is probable that the Mesoamerican ballgame Ullamaliztli was played in the areas now called New Mexico and Arizona. 200 sites resembling ball courts and several balls have been found at archeological sites. And evidence of trade is everywhere in what is now the US in the form of products from central and southern Mexico.
But I started thinking about this differently around 1986 during a visit to Taos Pueblo. People want Taos to manifest a kind of mystic connection with hidden powers. It is roughly 1000 years old and the campaign to save the sacred Blue Lake was a big deal in the 1960's. But when you visit Taos Pueblo, the members have little stores to sell you Coca Cola and fake-looking tomahawks made in Singapore. My revelation was that Taos was the outermost pueblo of the Rio Grande Valley, doing business with the Plains Indians before Kit Carson and before the Spanish. It may have been the farthest outpost of the empires in the Valley of Mexico.
Taos continued to play a role like that during the 1830's and 1840's. But coming from St. Louis and headed to Santa Fe, the entry point to New Mexico was at the ford on the Pecos River. Until 1800, then that frontier was Pecos Pueblo. For about three-quarters of the 19th century it became San Miguel del Vado: Saint Michael of the Ford. Once the Santa Fe Railroad was built, it moved to the city of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Now the frontier is about 300 miles further south, in El Paso, Texas. But that is just a formal national boundary. ICE sets up where they think illegal crossers will get back on I-10 or I-25. And who knows what the future holds?
Monday, January 27, 2014
Winnetou
In the story "One Voice, One Heart," Lazar Sussman answers his children's question, "How did you meet mommy." He tries to reconstruct how he, a Jewish livestock dealer's son from the frontier between Hapsburg Austria-Hungary and Romanov Russia, found his way to the Apache frontier of the Arizona territory.
Why were a barely teenaged Lazar and his older brother Shlomo so captivated by talk of America by refugees from the pogroms of 1881? And why did they run to Arizona instead of staying in New York with all the other Jews they traveled with?
The answer is in Shlomo's fascination with the novels of Karl May. Lazar tells his children:
Karl May is one of the most popular and most translated of German writers. Born in Saxony in 1842 he made a living writing romantic stories about places he had never been. His most popular stories are probably those about a German traveling in the American West who becomes blood brothers with a Mescalero Apache chief named Winnetou. May did eventually visit America, but he did not get farther west than Buffalo, NY. He nevertheless insisted that these were actual stories about his travels.
Why were a barely teenaged Lazar and his older brother Shlomo so captivated by talk of America by refugees from the pogroms of 1881? And why did they run to Arizona instead of staying in New York with all the other Jews they traveled with?
The answer is in Shlomo's fascination with the novels of Karl May. Lazar tells his children:
My papa did business with a man from Breslau, Morris Eisenfeld. He brought Shlomo these books from Germany about America… about the Apache chief, Winnetou and his friend Charlie.”This was too much for the children. “Who is Winnetou?” demanded Esther.And in mature reflection Lazar has to ask, too, who is Winnetou?
Karl May is one of the most popular and most translated of German writers. Born in Saxony in 1842 he made a living writing romantic stories about places he had never been. His most popular stories are probably those about a German traveling in the American West who becomes blood brothers with a Mescalero Apache chief named Winnetou. May did eventually visit America, but he did not get farther west than Buffalo, NY. He nevertheless insisted that these were actual stories about his travels.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
On November 26, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the dishonorable discharge of 167 troops of the US 25th Infantry, an all-Black unit of the United States Army. All had been questioned in connection with a shooting that August in the town of Brownsville, Texas. All denied knowledge of the incident and their stories were corroborated by their white officers. First Sergeant Mingo Sanders, a soldier with twenty-six years of service approached the inspector general with details about the evening, but with no knowledge of the shooting. They were discharged without a court martial because of what Roosevelt termed a "conspiracy of silence."
On September 28, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., a Harvard sophomore was rioting with classmates on the Boston Common. When police arrived to break it up and one officer gave chase to Roosevelt, his room-mate, Shaun Kelley, knocked down that officer, breaking his nose and opening a wound on his scalp.
Roosevelt was arrested, brought in front of a grand jury, and asked the name of the man who knocked down the police officer. He declined to share any information. The officer who questioned him said he thought Roosevelt's father, the President, would have advised him to give the name. Roosevelt, Jr. answered, "I don't think he would."
The contrast between the two affairs, both unfolding over the same fall, is too extraordinary to ignore.
Source for Roosevelt, Jr's arrest and questioning: NY Times, October 2, 3, 4, and 5, 1906
Source for Brownsville Affair: Affray at Brownsville, Texas; US Army; 1907
On September 28, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., a Harvard sophomore was rioting with classmates on the Boston Common. When police arrived to break it up and one officer gave chase to Roosevelt, his room-mate, Shaun Kelley, knocked down that officer, breaking his nose and opening a wound on his scalp.
Roosevelt was arrested, brought in front of a grand jury, and asked the name of the man who knocked down the police officer. He declined to share any information. The officer who questioned him said he thought Roosevelt's father, the President, would have advised him to give the name. Roosevelt, Jr. answered, "I don't think he would."
The contrast between the two affairs, both unfolding over the same fall, is too extraordinary to ignore.
Source for Roosevelt, Jr's arrest and questioning: NY Times, October 2, 3, 4, and 5, 1906
Source for Brownsville Affair: Affray at Brownsville, Texas; US Army; 1907
Saturday, January 25, 2014
The Ortega Family of Santeros
Here in New York City, the word santero has a questionable connotation among many Christians. It can imply a follower of the Yoruba faith, or even a roots worker who is casting spells for people. In New Mexico it refers to the artists who create devotional objects such as paintings and carvings of the saints, altar screens, plaques for the Good Friday stations, etc. As with the icons of the Eastern Church, in New Mexico these works are not idols but are windows to the spiritual world that is just beyond sight. Many families of New Mexico santeros have been doing this work for many generations. During the period of rule from Mexico City especially, there was a real shortage of priests in New Mexico and Church worship had to be carried on by lay leaders. The objects of devotion in the Churches and in the chapter houses of the lay brotherhoods also had to be local, and a local style developed.
Over twenty years ago we were in Santa Fe for a conference of school leaders. On a free day we were driving north toward Taos when we encountered a candy store next to an elementary school, El Dulce Hogar. The yard was filled with large wood carvings, mostly of St. Francis and St. Pascal. We stopped in and met the world-renowned santero Ben Ortega. Unlike other artists in this genre he was first generation. He was generous with his time and we spoke for over an hour, mostly about his children, of whom he was very proud, and who had followed him into this work. The encounter haunted me, and I carried a photo of Judith with Ben and one of his works in my wallet for years. I only took it out when I first got an iPhone and digitized that photo.
Years later we were in Santa Fe during the summer Spanish Market. The first tent we saw was for a young artist named Mateo Ortega. Judith got excited about the surname, but I -- being a big idiot -- warned her not to make too much of the coincidence. It was not a coincidence: Mateo is Ben Ortega's grandson, working still in a family style as well as creating his own original work. That day we went on to meet nieces, nephews and grandchildren, as well as sons and daughters of Ben Ortega, who sadly passed away a few years after we met him.
The story "Warrior Princess" is about a woman who is refurbishing the carving (or bulto) of St. Michael for his feast day on September 29. The village is San Miguel del Vado in San Miguel County, New Mexico. I found a photo of what the original statue, now in a Colorado Springs museum, looked like. I also found a photo of its late-nineteenth century replacement, a seven-foot tall figure which was probably made in Brooklyn. In writing "Warrior Princess" I was much more influenced by the older statue. But I also kept thinking about the San Miguel figures carved by Ben Ortega's son, Pete. The work of the Ortega's continues to haunt me.
Over twenty years ago we were in Santa Fe for a conference of school leaders. On a free day we were driving north toward Taos when we encountered a candy store next to an elementary school, El Dulce Hogar. The yard was filled with large wood carvings, mostly of St. Francis and St. Pascal. We stopped in and met the world-renowned santero Ben Ortega. Unlike other artists in this genre he was first generation. He was generous with his time and we spoke for over an hour, mostly about his children, of whom he was very proud, and who had followed him into this work. The encounter haunted me, and I carried a photo of Judith with Ben and one of his works in my wallet for years. I only took it out when I first got an iPhone and digitized that photo.The story "Warrior Princess" is about a woman who is refurbishing the carving (or bulto) of St. Michael for his feast day on September 29. The village is San Miguel del Vado in San Miguel County, New Mexico. I found a photo of what the original statue, now in a Colorado Springs museum, looked like. I also found a photo of its late-nineteenth century replacement, a seven-foot tall figure which was probably made in Brooklyn. In writing "Warrior Princess" I was much more influenced by the older statue. But I also kept thinking about the San Miguel figures carved by Ben Ortega's son, Pete. The work of the Ortega's continues to haunt me.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
A Snowy Day
It was just starting to snow when we went out this morning shortly after sunrise. Yes, the sun did rise. It disappeared into the clouds moments later but I really did see it. It was in the mid twenties and dry, so I was optimistic about a nice walk with plenty of Prophet's little homies to keep him company. I forgot that when the weather report warns about six inches of snow, people have to prepare for Zombie Apocalypse.
No. I did not go to the store to see the Bottled Water Battles or the customers stripping the shelves of ammunition. All I had to see was my fellow dog walkers rushed to get through what may be the best time of the day. Today they had places to go and things to do before battening down the hatches and barring their relatives at the door.
We had a good time anyway. Prophet has been begging to go into a little valley that is almost totally blocked by downed trees and their branches. One trunk was easily five feet high and I had to hoist myself over. He whined for a second, but by the time I looked over he had found a way to leap up on it and was already jumping off the other side.
He met a new yellow Lab who really interested him for a few minutes until Prophet realized this guy was going to stay ON THE TRAIL instead of clambering down into his favorite marsh and crashing through the newly re-formed ice. Then is was "See Ya!" There was a quick hello for the dogs who were being brought back home and then a tug-of-war on a stick with me, instead.
When Prophet was a little pup I worried that the red-tailed hawks might consider him a possible meal. Now they want no part of a 90 pound dog. They don't stay nearby, even fifty feet up in a tree. They take a look and then find a different place to perch.
Its sixteen degrees now and the snow is falling steadily. I am sitting indoors and writing this post. But I am looking forward to going back out and making fresh tracks.
No. I did not go to the store to see the Bottled Water Battles or the customers stripping the shelves of ammunition. All I had to see was my fellow dog walkers rushed to get through what may be the best time of the day. Today they had places to go and things to do before battening down the hatches and barring their relatives at the door.
We had a good time anyway. Prophet has been begging to go into a little valley that is almost totally blocked by downed trees and their branches. One trunk was easily five feet high and I had to hoist myself over. He whined for a second, but by the time I looked over he had found a way to leap up on it and was already jumping off the other side.
He met a new yellow Lab who really interested him for a few minutes until Prophet realized this guy was going to stay ON THE TRAIL instead of clambering down into his favorite marsh and crashing through the newly re-formed ice. Then is was "See Ya!" There was a quick hello for the dogs who were being brought back home and then a tug-of-war on a stick with me, instead.
When Prophet was a little pup I worried that the red-tailed hawks might consider him a possible meal. Now they want no part of a 90 pound dog. They don't stay nearby, even fifty feet up in a tree. They take a look and then find a different place to perch.
Its sixteen degrees now and the snow is falling steadily. I am sitting indoors and writing this post. But I am looking forward to going back out and making fresh tracks.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
GSD Adventures
I have written a little before about how Prophet, our GSD, likes adventures. He will settle for anything, even a short ride in the car, but his favorite seems to be bushwhacking off-trail during our regular walks.
This morning, like most mornings, we went on the trail along the Hudson for about three miles from W. 232nd Street up to the Riverdale train station on the MetroNorth. It was 25 degrees and dry, so the ground was frozen hard without being icy. The first off-piste stop, a small valley filled with rubbish from teen beer parties, takes us down a hill that is steeper than the angle of repose. Prophet likes to wait exactly at my feet, waiting for me to dislodge pebbles that he can angrily chase. If I am bold enough to step down without hesitation, we are not at cross purposes. If I hesitate, anxious about a misstep, he blocks my path and we stand frozen: me looking at him, him looking at my foot. This morning we went down, and then back up the other side with little hesitation.
We also usually drop down a similar hill to a creek mouth with a small marsh which culminates in a sump where the water enters a pipe under the railroad right of way. Today, the water had the beginning of crystallization on the surface. Prophet has become leery this winter of thin ice that he might break through. He apparently has no hesitation about leaping into freezing water. He only jumped across when I started throwing a ball across for him to retrieve.
The northernmost mile, a loop from the Riverdale Lower School to the Salanter Akiva Riverdale School, is usually where he meets his homies and can chase, wrestle and play up and down the trail. It was empty this morning. Prophet almost always wants to clamber down another steep, loose hill to the tracks near a retaining wall. It is largely invisible from the path above, but has large dramatic graffiti painted on it for the entertainment of Westchester and Putnam commuters… I guess.
Prophet will never go down these embankments alone or in the company of his wilder friends. If we are alone, he stands at the edge, beseechingly. "Can we please, please, PLEASE go down," is the message I read in his eyes. If I walk past, staying on the trail, he comes over to demand compensation (in Zukes!) for cooperating with my stupid plan of skipping all the fun. This is what I think of as full DNH mode: Deutsche Nudnik Hund. He walks very close to me, head in front of my left knee, face turned toward me, eyes insistent.
Sometimes Prophet will drop a tennis ball over the edge, initiating a game of "fetch"in which I am supposed to recover what he throws. I rarely go along with this role reversal, but the truth is that I have done it sometimes.
If his friend run down unaccompanied, Prophet stands near me, looking directly at me. At those moments I imagine that he is asking, "Do you see what a good boy I am?" I have on two occasions instructing him to "fetch" his friend. He actually did it once.
Today I went along with all these off-trail requests without hesitation. I even initiated a new one myself, which really made Prophet smile. I am so grateful to have a companion for daily walks. They are easily as much fun for me, but I am quite certain I wouldn't take them alone.
This morning, like most mornings, we went on the trail along the Hudson for about three miles from W. 232nd Street up to the Riverdale train station on the MetroNorth. It was 25 degrees and dry, so the ground was frozen hard without being icy. The first off-piste stop, a small valley filled with rubbish from teen beer parties, takes us down a hill that is steeper than the angle of repose. Prophet likes to wait exactly at my feet, waiting for me to dislodge pebbles that he can angrily chase. If I am bold enough to step down without hesitation, we are not at cross purposes. If I hesitate, anxious about a misstep, he blocks my path and we stand frozen: me looking at him, him looking at my foot. This morning we went down, and then back up the other side with little hesitation.We also usually drop down a similar hill to a creek mouth with a small marsh which culminates in a sump where the water enters a pipe under the railroad right of way. Today, the water had the beginning of crystallization on the surface. Prophet has become leery this winter of thin ice that he might break through. He apparently has no hesitation about leaping into freezing water. He only jumped across when I started throwing a ball across for him to retrieve.
The northernmost mile, a loop from the Riverdale Lower School to the Salanter Akiva Riverdale School, is usually where he meets his homies and can chase, wrestle and play up and down the trail. It was empty this morning. Prophet almost always wants to clamber down another steep, loose hill to the tracks near a retaining wall. It is largely invisible from the path above, but has large dramatic graffiti painted on it for the entertainment of Westchester and Putnam commuters… I guess.
Prophet will never go down these embankments alone or in the company of his wilder friends. If we are alone, he stands at the edge, beseechingly. "Can we please, please, PLEASE go down," is the message I read in his eyes. If I walk past, staying on the trail, he comes over to demand compensation (in Zukes!) for cooperating with my stupid plan of skipping all the fun. This is what I think of as full DNH mode: Deutsche Nudnik Hund. He walks very close to me, head in front of my left knee, face turned toward me, eyes insistent.
Sometimes Prophet will drop a tennis ball over the edge, initiating a game of "fetch"in which I am supposed to recover what he throws. I rarely go along with this role reversal, but the truth is that I have done it sometimes.
If his friend run down unaccompanied, Prophet stands near me, looking directly at me. At those moments I imagine that he is asking, "Do you see what a good boy I am?" I have on two occasions instructing him to "fetch" his friend. He actually did it once.
Today I went along with all these off-trail requests without hesitation. I even initiated a new one myself, which really made Prophet smile. I am so grateful to have a companion for daily walks. They are easily as much fun for me, but I am quite certain I wouldn't take them alone.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
1 Samuel 18:7
The title of this blog (and of the book it frequently references) "Stones from the Creek" is a Biblical reference. In 1Samuel 17:40 the young shepherd who will become King David takes five smooth stones from the creek as ammunition for his slingshot and then goes to fight the giant, Goliath. I thought of all the ways that people have to pick up what is at hand when they ready themselves to fight the Giant. In the second story of Stones from the Creek, the only thing at hand for White Painted Woman is imaginative lies. But, as the story's title says, "The Giant Believed Her."
The story "Who Could Have Foreseen It", about the Banker's Panic of 1907, contains a different kind of allusion to the David and Goliath story. This refers to 1 Samuel 18:7 which tells us that in celebrating David's victory:
"Who Could Have Foreseen It" is only interested in the parallelism and how the repetitions sound. Comparing the various thieves and their thefts we read:
What of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers of Citigroup? They engineered the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the deregulation of derivatives contracts. Summers was named head of the National Economic Council by Obama.
I won't go on. My point here is that there are crimes that seem to get punished and there are crimes that are treated as admirable. This week I have been thinking about Freedom Industries' accidental poisoning of West Virginia drinking water, which may be punished; and about the intentional and wholesale poisoning of West Virginia by the practice of mountaintop removal mining, which will never be punished. It is as our grandfathers said: Klaineh genaivim hengt men; groisseh shenkt men.
The story "Who Could Have Foreseen It", about the Banker's Panic of 1907, contains a different kind of allusion to the David and Goliath story. This refers to 1 Samuel 18:7 which tells us that in celebrating David's victory:
The women sang as they danced, and they chanted:In the Bible, this is the beginning of Saul's jealousy and downfall, but the point here is very different.
Saul has slain his thousands;
David, his tens of thousands!
"Who Could Have Foreseen It" is only interested in the parallelism and how the repetitions sound. Comparing the various thieves and their thefts we read:
And what of the Hell Hound? For if the Lawyer had tried to steal his thousands, and the Iceman had tried to steal his millions, then the Hell Hound had succeeded in stealing his hundreds of millions. It is as our grandfathers said: Klaineh genaivim hengt men; groisseh shenkt men. “Petty thieves are hanged, great thieves are pardoned.” Need I say more?From its inception this story was as much about the Recession of 2008 as it was about the Panic of 1907. Investment scams are a part of every financial bubble. This one was no exception. Bernie Madoff made off with approximately $18 billion when the dust settled and the accountants went over the books. For this he is serving a 150 year sentence. But what about Jamie Dimon who lied about the "London Whale" derivative scandal until the last minute. He is still heading JP Morgan Chase and was considered for the Fed chairmanship by Obama.
What of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers of Citigroup? They engineered the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the deregulation of derivatives contracts. Summers was named head of the National Economic Council by Obama.
I won't go on. My point here is that there are crimes that seem to get punished and there are crimes that are treated as admirable. This week I have been thinking about Freedom Industries' accidental poisoning of West Virginia drinking water, which may be punished; and about the intentional and wholesale poisoning of West Virginia by the practice of mountaintop removal mining, which will never be punished. It is as our grandfathers said: Klaineh genaivim hengt men; groisseh shenkt men.
Friday, January 17, 2014
Paradise
In Stones from the Creek, the story "In the Midst of the Valley" deals with the quest of a young Black man, Ezekiel Payne, for a Black Zion. The title refers to the Book of Ezekiel and the vision of the dry bones, the renewal of a people. For the Biblical Ezekiel it was about the return to Zion from the Babylonian captivity after the destruction of Solomon's temple. For the cavalryman Ezekiel Payne it is about "a place where a Black man can stand up with nobody
to tear him down," a New Africa "where people like him could walk confident that
nobody would try to humiliate them or harm them because of their race."
Ezekiel Payne looks for his Black Zion in the Indian Territory because an African Seminole scout befriends him and invites him to come home with him after their Army service. He sees glimpses of possibility there, but when his Creek Indian wife and in-laws reject him and their daughter Nessa, he moves on to the new Black town of Boley.
Boley was one of many all-Black towns that sprang up in the Indian Territory before its admission -- along with the "twin" Oklahoma Territory -- into the US as the State of Oklahoma. It was an effort to escape from economic and political subordination, discrimination and racial violence. There were also African towns among the Native Americans of the Territory, some of which welcomed Blacks from the states. It is an important chapter in US history that is not well known. Boley still exists today as a town of 1100 people, about 40% of whom are African American, with a high school that has fifteen kids. Many of the other towns are gone.
Toni Morrison's Paradise deals with a fictional town of poorer (and darker skinned) African Americans who were rejected by the all-Black town that they leave the south to join. They form a town of their own and a world of their own. In Morrison's book, this separation and exclusivity eventually corrode their collective soul.
Ezekiel Payne sees most of his future in his daughter, Nessa. He moves to Boley with some hope for the town and more for her education. His dream of Zion lives, but is receding.
Ezekiel Payne looks for his Black Zion in the Indian Territory because an African Seminole scout befriends him and invites him to come home with him after their Army service. He sees glimpses of possibility there, but when his Creek Indian wife and in-laws reject him and their daughter Nessa, he moves on to the new Black town of Boley.
Boley was one of many all-Black towns that sprang up in the Indian Territory before its admission -- along with the "twin" Oklahoma Territory -- into the US as the State of Oklahoma. It was an effort to escape from economic and political subordination, discrimination and racial violence. There were also African towns among the Native Americans of the Territory, some of which welcomed Blacks from the states. It is an important chapter in US history that is not well known. Boley still exists today as a town of 1100 people, about 40% of whom are African American, with a high school that has fifteen kids. Many of the other towns are gone.Toni Morrison's Paradise deals with a fictional town of poorer (and darker skinned) African Americans who were rejected by the all-Black town that they leave the south to join. They form a town of their own and a world of their own. In Morrison's book, this separation and exclusivity eventually corrode their collective soul.
Ezekiel Payne sees most of his future in his daughter, Nessa. He moves to Boley with some hope for the town and more for her education. His dream of Zion lives, but is receding.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
B. Sanhedrin 98a
A lot of things found their way into Stones from the Creek only because they have been on my mind or on my heart for so long. One is Lazar Sussman's memory of why he lost interest in the synagogue. He describes an incident that weighed on his heart long after he saw it as a child in talmud torah:
People who are unfamiliar with Jewish tradition will wonder why I immediately thought that a homeless man might be the Prophet Elijah or even the Messiah himself. People who are familiar wouldn't even think to explain; the connection is that obvious. The Talmud says, for example:
Lazar saw some of the scholars who spent the whole day studying run out of the shul and around behind the old fortress synagogue. They were beating a raggedy-looking man because, they said, he was trying to sneak in a back window to rob the place.
But Lazar wondered. He asked Reb Shimon, his teacher, “What if this dirty soul is actually the Prophet Elijah, breaking in to announce the arrival of King Messiah? Now, his kingdom will be delayed for another generation!”
Reb Shimon dismissed his concern with a scowl. The man, Reb Shimon said, was just a homeless good-for-nothing and a thief. Lazar lost his faith in the scholars and in the synagogue that day.
The truth is that this incident occurred in Brooklyn in 1992, and I have been thinking about it ever since. The man, who in real life was a homeless African American, was rummaging through garbage cans behind the Grand Synagogue of the Lubavitcher Hasidim on Eastern Parkway and he was assaulted and beaten by up to fifty men. In the context of the divided racial and religious climate of that time, everybody simply took their accustomed sides. But Ray Kelly (who as Mayor Bloomberg's Police Commissioner has become a kind of shorthand symbol for racial insensitivity) was then Mayor David Dinkins's Police Commissioner, and he was skeptical of the Lubavitchers' story. He wondered why, if they were detaining the man for the police, did they all scatter when the police actually arrived. He wondered why the beating and why so many. Again, in that divided time his skepticism just became evidence (for those who needed none!) that Mayor Dinkins was against the Jews.
Four years later I asked a Chabad rabbi who came to my door soliciting donations about the incident and he scowled and said, "The man had burglar's tools." But the police recovered handyman's tools. I include here a link to a New York Times story from that time: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/05/nyregion/crown-hts-beating-described-in-2-sharply-different-ways.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Rabbi Joshua ben Levi asked the Prophet Elijah, 'When will Messiah come?' — 'Go and ask him himself,' was his reply. 'Where is he sitting?' — 'At the entrance to Rome' And by what sign may I recognise him?' — 'He is sitting among the poor beggars. (B. Sanhedrin 98a)
There is more to the story, but what is important here is that the Messiah himself is waiting in rags, among others in rags. More often the stories say that this great scholar or that encountered the Prophet Elijah disguised as a beggar. The citations for this are -- as the Chabad like to say -- "too numerous to mention."
For me, as a lapsed Marxist, brought up as an observant Jew, the connection between the communist future and the age of Messiah is strong. I have had trouble letting go of my faith in both. The idea that a homeless man ushers in the Messiah is parallel to the idea that the proletariat brings us equality and justice. For the Lubavitchers, who were so certain that Messiah was coming immediately, to attack a man who -- at the very least -- resembled the Prophet Elijah, disturbed me as much as it did Lazar Sussman.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Evil in the World?
Today I think I just want to catalog the devil's appearances in Stones from the Creek. I will save explanations and interpretations for another day.
The Bolivian miners in "The Sun Shone So Brightly" maintain and make offerings to a statue of a satanic El TÃo who guards the mine.
In the story "Turning Water Into Gold" a redheaded stranger appears at Lucy's tent in the construction workers' camp, demanding information about her receipt of government commodities and asking questions about her grandchildren. She slashes his throat with a pottery shard and he mysteriously disappears.
Near the conclusion of "Scars" Mingo Sanders is tempted to murder the sheriff. Instead "he got the hell out of that office. He got out of that hell of an office. He did not look back at Satan sitting behind the desk shuffling papers."
And when everything goes to pieces in "Who Could Have Foreseen It?" the narrator, who has alluded all along to the Deceivers role in these events exclaims: "Surely even the Tempter himself could never have imagined it all!"
Is this the literary device they call personification?
The Bolivian miners in "The Sun Shone So Brightly" maintain and make offerings to a statue of a satanic El TÃo who guards the mine.
In the story "Turning Water Into Gold" a redheaded stranger appears at Lucy's tent in the construction workers' camp, demanding information about her receipt of government commodities and asking questions about her grandchildren. She slashes his throat with a pottery shard and he mysteriously disappears.
La Santa de Cabora confronts the Engineer about that statue of El TÃo in "Passion Flower" saying,
Your miners ask the Devil for protection every day when they enter his world. They ask the Devil to return them safely to their homes instead of killing them in cave-ins and they ask the Devil to put more copper in every night for them to find in the morning.In "Warrior Princess" the marshal and his posse arrive in town at exactly the moment that the Brotherhood chants words about Satan's envy of the Archangel Saint Michael.
Near the conclusion of "Scars" Mingo Sanders is tempted to murder the sheriff. Instead "he got the hell out of that office. He got out of that hell of an office. He did not look back at Satan sitting behind the desk shuffling papers."
And when everything goes to pieces in "Who Could Have Foreseen It?" the narrator, who has alluded all along to the Deceivers role in these events exclaims: "Surely even the Tempter himself could never have imagined it all!"
Is this the literary device they call personification?
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Mirrors
Some of the parallels in Stones from the Creek were initially unconscious. Only after re-reading two stories did I realize the ways in which I repeated myself. Some of the devil references are like that. Once I realized, I was comfortable adding more. But some were calculated from the beginning. I was very interested in the garÃfunas insistence on being Indians in the early twentieth century and Africans in the early twenty-first. It was a way of shedding more light on the Creek Indians steady process of rejecting their Black members, and of some Black Creeks' insistence that they weren't African American.
The character of José Bishara in the story "If It is God's Will" was a decision, not an accident. I had already written "All These Blue Things" with the once-famous US Marine, Smedley Darlington Butler, and I needed to come back at that story from a different point of view, that of Arünei Jack. I had also already written "One Voice, One Heart." It occurred to me that just as the Apache chief Alchesay of "The Giant Believed Her" could have a Jewish godson-in-law, so Arünei Jack could have a Palestinian brother-in-law. The Jewish merchants of Arizona Territory had their close parallel in the Palestinian Christian merchants of coastal Honduras.
And so I described José Bishara's progress from itinerant pedlar in many of the same words as I had described Lazar Sussman's. I even carefully gave them the same inventory of merchandise. I gave them similar approaches to business. I gave Arünei Jack similar reasons for liking José as I gave Alchesay for liking Lazar: some personal, having to do with their character and the way the couples loved each other; some political, having to do with the advantage of having somebody familiar with the outside society marry into the group. In both cases, that outsider is also an outsider in the opposing society, a Jew and a Palestinian. In both cases they are escaping from danger in their homelands: Lazar from the pogroms in neighboring Russia, José from the Ottoman rulers in Palestine.
So much of Stones from the Creek mirrors our world today. I wrote "Who Could Have Foreseen It" in the early months of the 2008 recession when I could not escape its similarity to the Panic of 1907 and I was writing stories that took place in 1906 anyway. "Turning Water Into Gold" was shaped in large part by the efforts of multinational corporations today to privatize water. And so the twin merchants -- one Jewish and one Palestinian -- are also a way of calling the reader's attention to the similarities between Palestinian and Jewish peoples.
As a Jew, I hear altogether too much truly vile language about Palestinians. And I know from Palestinian friends what they hear privately about Jews. I hope the rest of you are shielded from the worst of this. I wasn't going to write about the entire Middle East conflict in a book about the US a century ago. But I could write in these parallel characters. It is more than saying we are all human. It is an effort to point to some distinctive ways in which the two peoples reflect each other.
The character of José Bishara in the story "If It is God's Will" was a decision, not an accident. I had already written "All These Blue Things" with the once-famous US Marine, Smedley Darlington Butler, and I needed to come back at that story from a different point of view, that of Arünei Jack. I had also already written "One Voice, One Heart." It occurred to me that just as the Apache chief Alchesay of "The Giant Believed Her" could have a Jewish godson-in-law, so Arünei Jack could have a Palestinian brother-in-law. The Jewish merchants of Arizona Territory had their close parallel in the Palestinian Christian merchants of coastal Honduras.
And so I described José Bishara's progress from itinerant pedlar in many of the same words as I had described Lazar Sussman's. I even carefully gave them the same inventory of merchandise. I gave them similar approaches to business. I gave Arünei Jack similar reasons for liking José as I gave Alchesay for liking Lazar: some personal, having to do with their character and the way the couples loved each other; some political, having to do with the advantage of having somebody familiar with the outside society marry into the group. In both cases, that outsider is also an outsider in the opposing society, a Jew and a Palestinian. In both cases they are escaping from danger in their homelands: Lazar from the pogroms in neighboring Russia, José from the Ottoman rulers in Palestine.
So much of Stones from the Creek mirrors our world today. I wrote "Who Could Have Foreseen It" in the early months of the 2008 recession when I could not escape its similarity to the Panic of 1907 and I was writing stories that took place in 1906 anyway. "Turning Water Into Gold" was shaped in large part by the efforts of multinational corporations today to privatize water. And so the twin merchants -- one Jewish and one Palestinian -- are also a way of calling the reader's attention to the similarities between Palestinian and Jewish peoples.
As a Jew, I hear altogether too much truly vile language about Palestinians. And I know from Palestinian friends what they hear privately about Jews. I hope the rest of you are shielded from the worst of this. I wasn't going to write about the entire Middle East conflict in a book about the US a century ago. But I could write in these parallel characters. It is more than saying we are all human. It is an effort to point to some distinctive ways in which the two peoples reflect each other.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Rev. S.J. Rice
The name S.J. Rice appears only once in Stones from the Creek. Throughout the story "Wade in the Water," the minister is referred to only as "preacher" because Mingo Sanders is hiding in the woods, listening to the preaching, but trying to avoid being greeted in Christian fellowship. Later, in the story "Scars," the guard finds a letter from Sanders addressed to Reverend Rice. Even there, the salutation is only to "My Dear Brother in Christ."
But Reverend Rice is a significant figure in both stories. We hear his voice almost as often as that of Mingo Sanders in "Wade in the Water." Given my personal background, where does that voice come from? I have wondered a lot about this and here are my answers, so far.
James Forbes, Jr. is the Senior Minister Emeritus of Riverside Church in New York City. He was ordained in the Baptist and Holiness churches and can (and does!) preach with erudition, thoughtfulness and emotion. I have listened to him address huge crowds and I have listened to him preach to ten people. I have stood in a circle of three and listened to him. I have never heard him say anything like the fictional character S.J. Rice says, but the strong prophetic and pastoral voice, both admonishing and caring, that I tried to convey through Reverend Rice is always present in James Forbes.
I have only been present to hear Desmond Tutu preach once. It was in the winter of 2003, during the run-up to the Iraq War. The other clergy present at the event all prayed God to prevent the war, which left me completely cold. Tutu, though, said that God was praying to us to stop the war. He said that the only hands God has on earth are yours. And he looked directly at individuals in the crowd. That "yours" could be singular or plural, but Bishop Tutu left me with the unmistakable feeling that I could not leave this work to somebody else. That reversal of expected rhetoric stayed with me. Again, I do not hear Bishop Tutu's actual voice in the character S. J. Rice. But the challenging sensibility is there.
There is more to explore in this, but that is what I am comfortable concluding so far.
But Reverend Rice is a significant figure in both stories. We hear his voice almost as often as that of Mingo Sanders in "Wade in the Water." Given my personal background, where does that voice come from? I have wondered a lot about this and here are my answers, so far.
James Forbes, Jr. is the Senior Minister Emeritus of Riverside Church in New York City. He was ordained in the Baptist and Holiness churches and can (and does!) preach with erudition, thoughtfulness and emotion. I have listened to him address huge crowds and I have listened to him preach to ten people. I have stood in a circle of three and listened to him. I have never heard him say anything like the fictional character S.J. Rice says, but the strong prophetic and pastoral voice, both admonishing and caring, that I tried to convey through Reverend Rice is always present in James Forbes.
I have only been present to hear Desmond Tutu preach once. It was in the winter of 2003, during the run-up to the Iraq War. The other clergy present at the event all prayed God to prevent the war, which left me completely cold. Tutu, though, said that God was praying to us to stop the war. He said that the only hands God has on earth are yours. And he looked directly at individuals in the crowd. That "yours" could be singular or plural, but Bishop Tutu left me with the unmistakable feeling that I could not leave this work to somebody else. That reversal of expected rhetoric stayed with me. Again, I do not hear Bishop Tutu's actual voice in the character S. J. Rice. But the challenging sensibility is there.
There is more to explore in this, but that is what I am comfortable concluding so far.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Lowell Thomas
Lowell Thomas was an American journalist who was most famous for his radio broadcasts on CBS. He did the first television newscast ever, too, on NBC. He was the journalist who traveled to the Middle East during World War I and publicized the exploits of TE Lawrence, writing the book With Lawrence in Arabia. A character based on Thomas follows the hero around in the movie Lawrence of Arabia.
Lowell Thomas was a student at Victor High School in Victor, Colorado during the labor unrest in the Cripple Creek mining district. The entire editorial and printing staff of the Victor Daily Record, with the exception of the editor's wife, were arrested and held in the National Guard's prison camp, for reporting on the National Guard's suspension of habeas corpus. After graduation from high school, Lowell Thomas became editor of the Victor Daily Record.
The minute you get started reading into the history of little-remembered events, these oddball facts start popping up. That's why I love the book Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas. He starts with the assassination of Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg. But he gets into the press, the trial attorneys, private detectives, even baseball. Read it!
Lowell Thomas was a student at Victor High School in Victor, Colorado during the labor unrest in the Cripple Creek mining district. The entire editorial and printing staff of the Victor Daily Record, with the exception of the editor's wife, were arrested and held in the National Guard's prison camp, for reporting on the National Guard's suspension of habeas corpus. After graduation from high school, Lowell Thomas became editor of the Victor Daily Record.
The minute you get started reading into the history of little-remembered events, these oddball facts start popping up. That's why I love the book Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas. He starts with the assassination of Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg. But he gets into the press, the trial attorneys, private detectives, even baseball. Read it!
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Self-Doubt
Five years ago I participated in a meeting of VA-NGO, the umbrella group of Vietnamese-American Non-governmental Organizations. As part of a facilitated activity, each of us was asked to write, on a stone from a brook, a personal quality we would like to be finished with. After a month, we were supposed to throw away that stone. On my stone I wrote "self-doubt" and, while the ink from the sharpie is almost completely rubbed away, I still have that stone in my car. I guess it's some kind of horrible talisman.
I do not want to get rid of my self-interrogation, but it is very hard for me to disentangle the two. Today I heard NJ Governor Chris Christie reveal his "humiliation" at having a staff member close three entry lanes onto the GW Bridge, turning Ft. Lee into one massive gridlock, snagging emergency vehicles and resulting in the death of a 91-year old woman. I heard him say it was his responsibility, although he added that he supervises 65,000 state employees and can't know what they're all doing all the time. I heard him say, vehemently, that it was "stupid." What I did not hear him say is that he wanted to figure out what in his behavior, or words, or manner, would have led top staffers to think this was a good idea in his administration. That is self-reflection.
I have wondered a lot since finishing Stones from the Creek whether it was excessively nervy for me to write in the voices of Black Army veterans, Native American chiefs, Chicano legislators and miners or even Jewish merchants and lawyers of a hundred years ago. When people of my own social and ethnic background tell me the book was a success, I feel slightly relieved of my fears and doubts. When people whose life experiences are very different tell me the same, as a few have in the last two days, the fear lifts, at least for a few hours.
Self-doubt is a long time bad habit. I won't be getting rid of it soon. But when I can separate it from its cousin and reassure myself that my work is what I hoped, it feels good.
I do not want to get rid of my self-interrogation, but it is very hard for me to disentangle the two. Today I heard NJ Governor Chris Christie reveal his "humiliation" at having a staff member close three entry lanes onto the GW Bridge, turning Ft. Lee into one massive gridlock, snagging emergency vehicles and resulting in the death of a 91-year old woman. I heard him say it was his responsibility, although he added that he supervises 65,000 state employees and can't know what they're all doing all the time. I heard him say, vehemently, that it was "stupid." What I did not hear him say is that he wanted to figure out what in his behavior, or words, or manner, would have led top staffers to think this was a good idea in his administration. That is self-reflection.
I have wondered a lot since finishing Stones from the Creek whether it was excessively nervy for me to write in the voices of Black Army veterans, Native American chiefs, Chicano legislators and miners or even Jewish merchants and lawyers of a hundred years ago. When people of my own social and ethnic background tell me the book was a success, I feel slightly relieved of my fears and doubts. When people whose life experiences are very different tell me the same, as a few have in the last two days, the fear lifts, at least for a few hours.
Self-doubt is a long time bad habit. I won't be getting rid of it soon. But when I can separate it from its cousin and reassure myself that my work is what I hoped, it feels good.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Self-referential
I do not like it when I can't reconstruct the trail of my own thinking. Two days ago I was looking for a photo of a character in my story "White Caps." In the story, William Patterson is the Surveyor General of New Mexico. My memory said that I took that name and other biographical details from the historical Surveyor General in 1906. That quickly revealed itself as false. In fact I had trouble locating any William Patterson in a position of significance in New Mexican territorial history.
So I spent a lot of time combing through my notebooks. I found material on a second character, Creighton Foraker, and his brother, Senator Joseph Foraker. In scouring Google Scholar and Google Books I even found new and interesting material on a third character, Cipriano Baca. But it took me until last night to find William H. Patterson, an attorney and functionary in the territorial government… not in the first decade of the twentieth century, but in the 1880's. He was the representative for Surveyor General George Washington Julian in a number of important cases.
And then, finally, my memory kicked back in. For dramatic reasons I moved the Gorras Blancas forward in time twenty years from the mid-1880's. I decided I wanted a particular kind of person to pursue them: ex-Civil War, ex-Reconstruction army officer, someone with a nineteenth-century liberal (i.e. laissez faire capitalist) ideology coupled with the pseudo-scientific racism popularized by Theodore Roosevelt and his friends. I wanted a clash of ideas between him and Territorial Assemblyman Pablo Herrera. And I didn't want to be overly distracted by the details of either G.W. Julian's life or that of Morgan Llewellyn. Julian was an abolitionist from Indiana who came to New Mexico deeply prejudiced against Mexican Americans. Llewellyn was a 22-year old whose qualifications seem to be that he was a corporal in Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, although he never saw service in Cuba. Patterson allowed me a blanker slate.
And while I am engaging in self-referential reflection that is probably of interest only to me, I will add here that the Surveyor General would not have been involved in enforcement activities, even regarding the land grants. As a historian, this is all unconscionable. As a writer, it's fine. I only hope the story holds the reader's interest.
So I spent a lot of time combing through my notebooks. I found material on a second character, Creighton Foraker, and his brother, Senator Joseph Foraker. In scouring Google Scholar and Google Books I even found new and interesting material on a third character, Cipriano Baca. But it took me until last night to find William H. Patterson, an attorney and functionary in the territorial government… not in the first decade of the twentieth century, but in the 1880's. He was the representative for Surveyor General George Washington Julian in a number of important cases.
And then, finally, my memory kicked back in. For dramatic reasons I moved the Gorras Blancas forward in time twenty years from the mid-1880's. I decided I wanted a particular kind of person to pursue them: ex-Civil War, ex-Reconstruction army officer, someone with a nineteenth-century liberal (i.e. laissez faire capitalist) ideology coupled with the pseudo-scientific racism popularized by Theodore Roosevelt and his friends. I wanted a clash of ideas between him and Territorial Assemblyman Pablo Herrera. And I didn't want to be overly distracted by the details of either G.W. Julian's life or that of Morgan Llewellyn. Julian was an abolitionist from Indiana who came to New Mexico deeply prejudiced against Mexican Americans. Llewellyn was a 22-year old whose qualifications seem to be that he was a corporal in Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, although he never saw service in Cuba. Patterson allowed me a blanker slate.
And while I am engaging in self-referential reflection that is probably of interest only to me, I will add here that the Surveyor General would not have been involved in enforcement activities, even regarding the land grants. As a historian, this is all unconscionable. As a writer, it's fine. I only hope the story holds the reader's interest.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Race to the Top
Once again this morning I am struggling to understand why Barack Obama as a person is so committed to the reprehensible "Race to the Top" in education policy. I get why he might be a personal friend of Arne Duncan, who traveled in his social and political circles in Chicago. And I get why Arne Duncan could be committed to this. I mean Arne Duncan is a product of private schools and Harvard. He has worked all his adult life as a high-up administrator of educational programs, positions that he obtained from the get-go because of family connections. Arne Duncan was a terrible CEO for the Chicago schools, and I believe his policies are in part responsible for the high murder rates among Chicago teens. So Barack chose a guy he knows personally to do this important work and that guy has continued to pursue this atrocious policy of privatization, teacher bashing and over-reliance on high-stakes testing for assessment.
But there has been a growing groundswell of opposition to this dismantling of public education. Kids who used to love school, because it was a place to learn, now hate it, because it has become a place to drill for tests. Career teachers, especially the best ones, with multiple options, are leaving the profession they loved and were called to. Parents are looking up from the grades of their own children and objecting to the transition from teaching to test prep in their children's schools. And principals are speaking up against the attacks on their teachers.
There is a second face to this, and that is the incentive to fraud. I make no defense of people who cheat and lie. But I will remind the reader that a policy that demands certain numerical targets, or else, is a policy that encourages people to find any way to meet those targets. Beverly Hall, the disgraced Atlanta superintendent is probably guilty of creating an environment where cheating became rampant more than she is of orchestrating that cheating. And Michelle Rhee, who escaped Washington without disgrace, is -- without any doubt -- guilty of the identical crimes. As an aside, I had colleagues who were principals in Brooklyn who simply ordered their teachers to maintain a passing rate of 90%… not a target; a mandate. This requires teachers to pass students who have not met their minimum standards and demoralizes those students who have.
Right now, some of the affluent districts in the Lower Hudson Valley, in Westchester and Rockland Counties, are opting out of Race to the Top because of concerns about the security and privacy of student data. That's nice, but it calls my attention to the fact that this is another windfall for private companies. InBloom, which is creating cloud-based data systems for schools nation-wide, is organized as a not-for-profit, with $100 million in startup capital from Bill and Melinda Gates. We have seen too often in the last ten years how massive changes in public policy are instigated by billionaires who demand (and receive!) tax deductions for deforming our democratic process.
Rupert Murdoch is just selling. Joel Klein, our former NYC chancellor, is heading up Murdoch's educational products division. Pearson is just selling. They have made hundreds of millions selling their poorly-written tests, and then more hundreds of millions selling prep materials to scam their own tests!
This is all unspeakable. But it is tied with a campaign of vilification against teachers. Any teacher who speaks up against all this is immediately regarded as a hack who just wants to protect their own mediocre work. Let me be clear: if there are hacks, they are happily accepting the shrink-wrapped test prep materials. It means less work for them. No more late nights preparing lesson plans: just say what's in the script. No more hours grading written work. Just put the bubble sheets in the machine and get the "data" analysis. Real teachers are opposing this scandal because they want to teach, because they know that it is individual and despite the hard work.
And it is tied with a decades-long attack on public education that goes back before the voucher movement of the eighties to the private segregation academies of the seventies. Some "reformers" don't like public schools because they are neo-liberals who oppose any public services, but they are smart enough to take on the schools before they demand the dismantling of public police and fire service. Some "reformers" see a main chance, the opportunity to create for-profit schools. (And while the public is financially supporting charters, to pay themselves surprising salaries while exploiting non-union teachers.) And then there are those who simply don't feel like supporting the education of their neighbors' children: maybe their own children already graduated, maybe their own children go to private school, maybe they don't have children. Or maybe they don't believe poor children should be prepared for anything but busing tables in their country clubs.
So I go back again to my question: Why does Barack Obama support this? We know he wouldn't allow it for his girls. They go to a very well thought-of private school. Why is it okay for our kids? Does he really believe in this stuff? Does he think that he has too many contentious issues already, so he'll just go along with the right wing of the Tea Party on this? Does he not care about education despite his protestations to the contrary?
What I know is that -- for whatever reason -- he has been at the heart of support for the most anti-children and anti-learning policies I have ever seen. It is all very well to sit in New York and blame Bloomberg and Cuomo, who have been ardent and vocal advocates for the war on children. But it is the policy of the Obama Department of Education, too. The New York Times has gleefully announced that Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Fariña won't be able to stop the steamrolling of our kids, because it is THE LAW. We have to call out the President on this, too.
But there has been a growing groundswell of opposition to this dismantling of public education. Kids who used to love school, because it was a place to learn, now hate it, because it has become a place to drill for tests. Career teachers, especially the best ones, with multiple options, are leaving the profession they loved and were called to. Parents are looking up from the grades of their own children and objecting to the transition from teaching to test prep in their children's schools. And principals are speaking up against the attacks on their teachers.
There is a second face to this, and that is the incentive to fraud. I make no defense of people who cheat and lie. But I will remind the reader that a policy that demands certain numerical targets, or else, is a policy that encourages people to find any way to meet those targets. Beverly Hall, the disgraced Atlanta superintendent is probably guilty of creating an environment where cheating became rampant more than she is of orchestrating that cheating. And Michelle Rhee, who escaped Washington without disgrace, is -- without any doubt -- guilty of the identical crimes. As an aside, I had colleagues who were principals in Brooklyn who simply ordered their teachers to maintain a passing rate of 90%… not a target; a mandate. This requires teachers to pass students who have not met their minimum standards and demoralizes those students who have.
Right now, some of the affluent districts in the Lower Hudson Valley, in Westchester and Rockland Counties, are opting out of Race to the Top because of concerns about the security and privacy of student data. That's nice, but it calls my attention to the fact that this is another windfall for private companies. InBloom, which is creating cloud-based data systems for schools nation-wide, is organized as a not-for-profit, with $100 million in startup capital from Bill and Melinda Gates. We have seen too often in the last ten years how massive changes in public policy are instigated by billionaires who demand (and receive!) tax deductions for deforming our democratic process.
Rupert Murdoch is just selling. Joel Klein, our former NYC chancellor, is heading up Murdoch's educational products division. Pearson is just selling. They have made hundreds of millions selling their poorly-written tests, and then more hundreds of millions selling prep materials to scam their own tests!
This is all unspeakable. But it is tied with a campaign of vilification against teachers. Any teacher who speaks up against all this is immediately regarded as a hack who just wants to protect their own mediocre work. Let me be clear: if there are hacks, they are happily accepting the shrink-wrapped test prep materials. It means less work for them. No more late nights preparing lesson plans: just say what's in the script. No more hours grading written work. Just put the bubble sheets in the machine and get the "data" analysis. Real teachers are opposing this scandal because they want to teach, because they know that it is individual and despite the hard work.
And it is tied with a decades-long attack on public education that goes back before the voucher movement of the eighties to the private segregation academies of the seventies. Some "reformers" don't like public schools because they are neo-liberals who oppose any public services, but they are smart enough to take on the schools before they demand the dismantling of public police and fire service. Some "reformers" see a main chance, the opportunity to create for-profit schools. (And while the public is financially supporting charters, to pay themselves surprising salaries while exploiting non-union teachers.) And then there are those who simply don't feel like supporting the education of their neighbors' children: maybe their own children already graduated, maybe their own children go to private school, maybe they don't have children. Or maybe they don't believe poor children should be prepared for anything but busing tables in their country clubs.
So I go back again to my question: Why does Barack Obama support this? We know he wouldn't allow it for his girls. They go to a very well thought-of private school. Why is it okay for our kids? Does he really believe in this stuff? Does he think that he has too many contentious issues already, so he'll just go along with the right wing of the Tea Party on this? Does he not care about education despite his protestations to the contrary?
What I know is that -- for whatever reason -- he has been at the heart of support for the most anti-children and anti-learning policies I have ever seen. It is all very well to sit in New York and blame Bloomberg and Cuomo, who have been ardent and vocal advocates for the war on children. But it is the policy of the Obama Department of Education, too. The New York Times has gleefully announced that Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Fariña won't be able to stop the steamrolling of our kids, because it is THE LAW. We have to call out the President on this, too.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Black Seminoles
Another angle for looking at the history of the disfranchisement of Black Indians is through the African Seminoles. Runaway African captives from South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama were already establishing maroon colonies in Spanish Florida in the 18th century and allying with Creek Indians who were moving there, too. Both groups grew in population in the early 19th century as slavery expanded and the US made war on the Upper Creek towns and they became known, together, as Seminoles.
Andrew Jackson began military attacks on the Seminoles of Spanish Florida in 1817, but when Spain ceded Florida to the United States, a few hundred Black Seminoles moved to the Bahamas. Their community remained a major refuge for runaway slaves until the United States built a Coast Guard station on Key Biscayne to stop the escapes.
The remaining Seminoles, both Black and "red" moved to central and south Florida. Their old nemesis, Andrew Jackson became president in 1829. His policy was to demand their removal, along with the Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws and Choctaws to an "Indian Territory" west of the Mississippi River. The Seminoles fought removal, especially since the terms included their surrendering all Black members of the tribe into slavery. By 1838, the US Army gave up on this and offered removal for everybody. Many Seminoles accepted this offer rather than continue fighting. Others remained behind, never defeated by the Army, and accounting for the Seminole reservations in Florida today.
When the Black Seminoles arrived in what is now Oklahoma, they discovered that the US government considered them to be part of the Creek tribe. Now, instead of white slaveowners scheming to kidnap them into captivity, there were Creek Indian -- many of them racially white -- slaveholders scheming to do the same thing! By settling on the Deep Fork of the Canadian River, far from the Creek Indian plantations, the Black Seminoles initially found some autonomy. But the cold winters meant real hardship. And their one-time Red Seminole allies were increasingly influenced by Creek slaveholders to assert ownership and enslave them.
In the winter of 1849 a large group of Black Seminoles, along with Native American relatives and some African Creeks, broke out of Indian Territory and headed for Mexico. They found refuge there, and there are still Black Seminole communities in Coahuila. Their agreement with the Mexican government required them to provide military service as scouts against the Comanches and Apaches. By the 1870's, the US government was looking for the same kind of service. Some of the Black Seminole scouts moved with their families to Brackettville, Texas to work with the US Army out of Fort Clark.
The Mexico-Texas families never received recognition as Indians from the US government. The Seminoles of Oklahoma disfranchised their so-called "freedmen" in 2000, just when they received a $56 million payment from the US government for the loss of lands in Florida. The tribal government decided that members were only those who could prove one-eighth "blood quantum" by their descent from people listed on the Dawes "by blood" Rolls of 1906. And, as with the Creeks, any Seminole with any trace of African ancestry in 1906 had been enrolled on the "freedman" list instead.
So the Seminoles, a tribe that was by its very existence a Maroon band of Africans and Native Americans, has disavowed its Black members in the 21st century. Greed? Anti-Black racism? Theories of biological "essentialism"? It is certain that all of these explain the Seminoles denial of their own history.
Andrew Jackson began military attacks on the Seminoles of Spanish Florida in 1817, but when Spain ceded Florida to the United States, a few hundred Black Seminoles moved to the Bahamas. Their community remained a major refuge for runaway slaves until the United States built a Coast Guard station on Key Biscayne to stop the escapes.
The remaining Seminoles, both Black and "red" moved to central and south Florida. Their old nemesis, Andrew Jackson became president in 1829. His policy was to demand their removal, along with the Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws and Choctaws to an "Indian Territory" west of the Mississippi River. The Seminoles fought removal, especially since the terms included their surrendering all Black members of the tribe into slavery. By 1838, the US Army gave up on this and offered removal for everybody. Many Seminoles accepted this offer rather than continue fighting. Others remained behind, never defeated by the Army, and accounting for the Seminole reservations in Florida today.
When the Black Seminoles arrived in what is now Oklahoma, they discovered that the US government considered them to be part of the Creek tribe. Now, instead of white slaveowners scheming to kidnap them into captivity, there were Creek Indian -- many of them racially white -- slaveholders scheming to do the same thing! By settling on the Deep Fork of the Canadian River, far from the Creek Indian plantations, the Black Seminoles initially found some autonomy. But the cold winters meant real hardship. And their one-time Red Seminole allies were increasingly influenced by Creek slaveholders to assert ownership and enslave them.
In the winter of 1849 a large group of Black Seminoles, along with Native American relatives and some African Creeks, broke out of Indian Territory and headed for Mexico. They found refuge there, and there are still Black Seminole communities in Coahuila. Their agreement with the Mexican government required them to provide military service as scouts against the Comanches and Apaches. By the 1870's, the US government was looking for the same kind of service. Some of the Black Seminole scouts moved with their families to Brackettville, Texas to work with the US Army out of Fort Clark.
The Mexico-Texas families never received recognition as Indians from the US government. The Seminoles of Oklahoma disfranchised their so-called "freedmen" in 2000, just when they received a $56 million payment from the US government for the loss of lands in Florida. The tribal government decided that members were only those who could prove one-eighth "blood quantum" by their descent from people listed on the Dawes "by blood" Rolls of 1906. And, as with the Creeks, any Seminole with any trace of African ancestry in 1906 had been enrolled on the "freedman" list instead.
So the Seminoles, a tribe that was by its very existence a Maroon band of Africans and Native Americans, has disavowed its Black members in the 21st century. Greed? Anti-Black racism? Theories of biological "essentialism"? It is certain that all of these explain the Seminoles denial of their own history.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Disfranchisement of Black Indians
I have been reluctant to begin discussing the disfranchisement of Black Indians among the Five Tribes. The history is extraordinarily complex and can shift from moment to moment depending on how an informant feels and the audience. I have alluded elsewhere to Claudio Saunt's experience with Creek leader Buddy Cox and an official of the Creek Nation:
During the Civil War, the tribal government, which was dominated by slave-owning Lower Creeks, allied itself with the Confederacy. The traditionals, who tended to be from the Upper Creek towns, including the Black Creeks, were joined by many Black people who were slaves of the Creek leaders. They had to flee the territory to seek the protection of the United States and many, many joined the Union Army: some as Indian troops, some as Black troops. (And there were many racially "Black" Creeks in the Indian Home Guard.)
After the war, the United States government negotiated new treaties with the Five Tribe. These treaties required the emancipation of all slaves and their receiving full citizenship rights in their respective nation. This is the beginning of referring to most (not all) African Creeks as "freedmen," regardless of whether their parents and grandparents had been full members of a Creek town or held as slaves by Creeks. It is a fully racial distinction.
During the late 19th century the political factions in the Creek council tended to be former Confederates versus former Loyalists. The Loyalist faction were mainly traditional in their religious outlook and their economic standing, meaning small-scale farming and herding. They included all the leaders of the three new African Creek towns. The former Confederates were more likely to be Christian and English speaking and they got into cattle ranching and then real estate speculation.
When the federal government forced other tribes into dividing their collectively-owned reservations into privately-owned individual allotments, the Five Tribes were able to resist this at first. When Senator Dawes came to them again a decade later, the Creek factions were united in opposing this. But it soon became apparent that allotment was coming, whether they liked it or not. At this point most Creeks, with some important exceptions, decided to go with the program.
That program, though, included some very important racial distinctions. First, all tribal members who were deemed to have any African "blood" were designated as "freemen." (There were some exceptions to this, apparently for political reasons.) Second, all other Creeks were assigned a "blood quantum," a fraction which purported to indicate how "Indian" they were. Note that the rule for being a "freeman" is the "one-drop" rule, or hypodescent. But a person with three white grandparents is still "Indian," albeit assigned a "quantum" of one fourth. Further, if an "Indian" had one Creek and one Seminole parent, that made them one half Indian, either in the Creek or Seminole enrollment.
The enrollment was concluded in 1906, the same year Oklahoma entered the US as a state. The state of Oklahoma immediately instituted Jim Crow laws and embarked on a campaign of lynching and terror against all racially Black people, including African Creeks. There was a well-publicized lynching in Okemah of a Black mother and son in 1911 by a mob that included Woody Guthrie's father. And there was the firebombing of thirty-five city blocks of Tulsa, the entire neighborhood of Greenwood, which had been -- until then -- considered the Black Wall Street of the United States. An estimated three hundred people were murdered, six thousand were detained by the police, and twelve thousand were left homeless.
Meanwhile, for purposes of Jim Crow, "Indians" -- excluding the so-called "freemen" -- were designated as white. That did not stop land speculators and oil companies from finding a thousand ways to rob them. But it did succeed in consolidating a big wedge driven between Black Indians, including Creeks, and other tribal members.
It was in 1979 that the Creek tribal council moved to disfranchise the Creek "freemen." The move received more support from the "Indian" members because of zero-sum economics: the fewer tribal members around to divide up any available gains, the more there was for each remaining individual. For example, in 1962 the US awarded the Creeks nearly $4 million in damages for lands illegally seized in 1814 in what is now Georgia and Alabama. When the money was distributed a decade later, it came to about $12 per capita.
There are African Creeks who have very little interest in asserting their Indian identity: the Creeks don't want them and they are quite proud to be African American instead. But there are those who have retained language, religion and culture and continue to sue the Creek Nation for restitution of membership. They maintain an interesting website at http://www.thecreekfreedmen.com
This begins to explain one part of this story. I will probably have to return to it. "In the Midst of the Valley," the final chapter of Stones from the Creek, (http://www.amazon.com/Stones-Creek-Rick-Levine/dp/149447641X/) is a different kind of way to explain the personal horror of this history through one fictional family's experience. I think that is all for today.
"Lusti" being a brief way of saying "estelvste" or "Black" in the Mvskoke language. Later on, the three sit together at lunch and the conversation returns to the Estelvste:"As he peered at the blurry figures standing before the building, the officer joined him. "They all look lusti, don't they?" she asked under her breath. "Thank god for Claude slipping that constitution past." Claude Cox, Buddy's uncle, had overseen the passage of a new Creek constitution in 1979, still in effect today, that disenfranchised the descendants of Creek slaves." (Claudio Saunt. Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family (p. 129). Kindle Edition.)
Perhaps it is because this is a private conversation, perhaps because it is indoors, perhaps it is just the feeling of the moment. In any case it is only a few minutes later when her entire family history miraculously changes:We talked about black Creeks, and Cox, who is known around the nation for his independent opinions, warmed to the task at hand. He said in Creek, "I'm estelusti." Cox had broken a taboo, and the officer responded in kind. "My family is part black, too," she said in English. "But I don't show it, do I?" she asked, presenting her profile in both jest and anxiety. (Ibid)
Here is an attempt at some truth. Among the Creeks, there were Black members before 1812 and they were mostly in the Upper Creek towns, known to US history as "Red Sticks," who fought the US Army and were defeated by Andrew Jackson with the aid of the Lower Creek towns. Those Lower Creek towns were more apt to have African slaves, they were more apt to have members who were white married into the town, and those members (and their children) were more apt to be wealthy town leaders and slaveowners. So, already, two decades before the Trail of Tears removals to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma, there were Creek Indians who were racially "red," "white," and "black." (Hence the title of Claudio Saunt's book about the Grayson family.) And there were also Black people held as slaves.After lunch, we stood before the restaurant saying good-bye, and the subject again turned to the estelusti. "A number of Creeks have black blood, not just the Graysons," the officer observed. "Don't we all?" asked Cox. "Not me" were her last words to us before she turned down the street and walked away.
During the Civil War, the tribal government, which was dominated by slave-owning Lower Creeks, allied itself with the Confederacy. The traditionals, who tended to be from the Upper Creek towns, including the Black Creeks, were joined by many Black people who were slaves of the Creek leaders. They had to flee the territory to seek the protection of the United States and many, many joined the Union Army: some as Indian troops, some as Black troops. (And there were many racially "Black" Creeks in the Indian Home Guard.)
After the war, the United States government negotiated new treaties with the Five Tribe. These treaties required the emancipation of all slaves and their receiving full citizenship rights in their respective nation. This is the beginning of referring to most (not all) African Creeks as "freedmen," regardless of whether their parents and grandparents had been full members of a Creek town or held as slaves by Creeks. It is a fully racial distinction.
During the late 19th century the political factions in the Creek council tended to be former Confederates versus former Loyalists. The Loyalist faction were mainly traditional in their religious outlook and their economic standing, meaning small-scale farming and herding. They included all the leaders of the three new African Creek towns. The former Confederates were more likely to be Christian and English speaking and they got into cattle ranching and then real estate speculation.
When the federal government forced other tribes into dividing their collectively-owned reservations into privately-owned individual allotments, the Five Tribes were able to resist this at first. When Senator Dawes came to them again a decade later, the Creek factions were united in opposing this. But it soon became apparent that allotment was coming, whether they liked it or not. At this point most Creeks, with some important exceptions, decided to go with the program.
That program, though, included some very important racial distinctions. First, all tribal members who were deemed to have any African "blood" were designated as "freemen." (There were some exceptions to this, apparently for political reasons.) Second, all other Creeks were assigned a "blood quantum," a fraction which purported to indicate how "Indian" they were. Note that the rule for being a "freeman" is the "one-drop" rule, or hypodescent. But a person with three white grandparents is still "Indian," albeit assigned a "quantum" of one fourth. Further, if an "Indian" had one Creek and one Seminole parent, that made them one half Indian, either in the Creek or Seminole enrollment.
The enrollment was concluded in 1906, the same year Oklahoma entered the US as a state. The state of Oklahoma immediately instituted Jim Crow laws and embarked on a campaign of lynching and terror against all racially Black people, including African Creeks. There was a well-publicized lynching in Okemah of a Black mother and son in 1911 by a mob that included Woody Guthrie's father. And there was the firebombing of thirty-five city blocks of Tulsa, the entire neighborhood of Greenwood, which had been -- until then -- considered the Black Wall Street of the United States. An estimated three hundred people were murdered, six thousand were detained by the police, and twelve thousand were left homeless.
Meanwhile, for purposes of Jim Crow, "Indians" -- excluding the so-called "freemen" -- were designated as white. That did not stop land speculators and oil companies from finding a thousand ways to rob them. But it did succeed in consolidating a big wedge driven between Black Indians, including Creeks, and other tribal members.
It was in 1979 that the Creek tribal council moved to disfranchise the Creek "freemen." The move received more support from the "Indian" members because of zero-sum economics: the fewer tribal members around to divide up any available gains, the more there was for each remaining individual. For example, in 1962 the US awarded the Creeks nearly $4 million in damages for lands illegally seized in 1814 in what is now Georgia and Alabama. When the money was distributed a decade later, it came to about $12 per capita.
There are African Creeks who have very little interest in asserting their Indian identity: the Creeks don't want them and they are quite proud to be African American instead. But there are those who have retained language, religion and culture and continue to sue the Creek Nation for restitution of membership. They maintain an interesting website at http://www.thecreekfreedmen.com
This begins to explain one part of this story. I will probably have to return to it. "In the Midst of the Valley," the final chapter of Stones from the Creek, (http://www.amazon.com/Stones-Creek-Rick-Levine/dp/149447641X/) is a different kind of way to explain the personal horror of this history through one fictional family's experience. I think that is all for today.
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Prophet and I got out about 7:30 this morning. It was cold, but it was sunny and the air was still. There were not too many people out yet, so I was comfortable defying the leash law for the first two or three blocks. Then, walking west on 231st Street toward the river, we had to stop frequently: to nurse salty paws and to scrupulously check the guest register. Dog owners know exactly what I am talking about.
The street was very salty (and there is no sidewalk) west of Independence Avenue, so we cut through Seton Park. Once we passed the tennis courts, I took Prophet's leash off again so that he could bound through the drifts and follow somebody's cross-country ski tracks through the brush and saplings down to Palisades Avenue. I was already trudging, but didn't quite realize it because I was going downhill. What goes down must come back up, but I was gleefully oblivious.
When we got into Riverdale Park, the trail was tromped down pretty well from the last 24 hours of foot traffic, but while rough, it wasn't frozen. So I was not moving too fast, but I wasn't really struggling, either. Prophet, on the other hand, was racing up and down at a full gallop and then springing through the drifts. I would say he was having a good time. And no salt!
We got to the turn-off for Prophet's favorite off-trail adventure and followed a much less traveled (by the evidence of foot prints in the snow) trail to the edge of a steep hill at which point all foot prints stopped. We dropped over the edge and I quickly realized that today was not the day for walking upright… or dignity of any sort. In other words, I slid down, sitting on my heels. This amused Prophet some, who was still racing up and down as if a steep, snowy hill were a kind of test track, designed to see just how fast a dog can go. He took time out to pounce on chunks of snow I send down from my sliding.
The little valley below is a setting for teen smoking and drinking in warmer weather. There is even a little hibachi cached behind a tree, with a small bag of match-light charcoal inside. But this season only has trash strewn around to remind you of the festivities. And today the snow covered the trash. Except for the railroad tracks and transformer station yards away one could imagine… Well, truthfully, it's a nice spot next to the icy river. One need not imagine.
Usually we climb right back up an equally steep hill on the other side of the little valley. Today I wasn't feeling it. Prophet started up, but the instant I indicated my desire to take another route, he raced back down and headed for our little game path along the side of the ridge, heading north along the tracks. He kept blocking my path, waiting for me to dislodge chunks of snow that he could chase. It was hard going.
That route takes you to a side trail that leads back up to the main trail a little higher up the ridge. Prophet was not interested. He wanted to bushwhack north through the brush between the tracks and the ridge. We did. I only fell once. I had not yet realized that struggling through drifted snow, downed trees and brush without breakfast wasn't such a great idea. That epiphany came later.
After a few hundred yards the way forward was almost completely obstructed by a tangle of fallen trees and branches. Prophet and I agreed that it was time to return to the trail above. Once again, dignity cast aside, I had to use hands and feet to ascend. Prophet was, well, you already know: four feet, claws, tail for balance. Let's just say the climb presented him with fewer difficulties.
Once we were back on the trail I proceeded with some difficulty. I was becoming aware of my failure to eat before going out and was moving a little slowly. Prophet, meanwhile, walked hopefully to the edge of every precipice and then looked at me imploringly: "Can't we please go down there? Please? PLEASE?"
No, we could not. I was fading and, in any case, those hills have no flat space at the bottom along the fence line to the railroad right of way. We reached a concrete platform, just before the place where the trail runs back out to the street for a few yards, admired the view, and then turned around.
I will not recount the way back. We skipped the adventurous detours. The trail remained difficult for me while Prophet galloped ahead and then came back to check. The streets were still salty, but now crowded with motorists and pedestrians. I had run out of gas.
But did I have fun? Am I lovingly recounting the details?
The street was very salty (and there is no sidewalk) west of Independence Avenue, so we cut through Seton Park. Once we passed the tennis courts, I took Prophet's leash off again so that he could bound through the drifts and follow somebody's cross-country ski tracks through the brush and saplings down to Palisades Avenue. I was already trudging, but didn't quite realize it because I was going downhill. What goes down must come back up, but I was gleefully oblivious.
When we got into Riverdale Park, the trail was tromped down pretty well from the last 24 hours of foot traffic, but while rough, it wasn't frozen. So I was not moving too fast, but I wasn't really struggling, either. Prophet, on the other hand, was racing up and down at a full gallop and then springing through the drifts. I would say he was having a good time. And no salt!
We got to the turn-off for Prophet's favorite off-trail adventure and followed a much less traveled (by the evidence of foot prints in the snow) trail to the edge of a steep hill at which point all foot prints stopped. We dropped over the edge and I quickly realized that today was not the day for walking upright… or dignity of any sort. In other words, I slid down, sitting on my heels. This amused Prophet some, who was still racing up and down as if a steep, snowy hill were a kind of test track, designed to see just how fast a dog can go. He took time out to pounce on chunks of snow I send down from my sliding.
The little valley below is a setting for teen smoking and drinking in warmer weather. There is even a little hibachi cached behind a tree, with a small bag of match-light charcoal inside. But this season only has trash strewn around to remind you of the festivities. And today the snow covered the trash. Except for the railroad tracks and transformer station yards away one could imagine… Well, truthfully, it's a nice spot next to the icy river. One need not imagine.
Usually we climb right back up an equally steep hill on the other side of the little valley. Today I wasn't feeling it. Prophet started up, but the instant I indicated my desire to take another route, he raced back down and headed for our little game path along the side of the ridge, heading north along the tracks. He kept blocking my path, waiting for me to dislodge chunks of snow that he could chase. It was hard going.
That route takes you to a side trail that leads back up to the main trail a little higher up the ridge. Prophet was not interested. He wanted to bushwhack north through the brush between the tracks and the ridge. We did. I only fell once. I had not yet realized that struggling through drifted snow, downed trees and brush without breakfast wasn't such a great idea. That epiphany came later.
After a few hundred yards the way forward was almost completely obstructed by a tangle of fallen trees and branches. Prophet and I agreed that it was time to return to the trail above. Once again, dignity cast aside, I had to use hands and feet to ascend. Prophet was, well, you already know: four feet, claws, tail for balance. Let's just say the climb presented him with fewer difficulties.
Once we were back on the trail I proceeded with some difficulty. I was becoming aware of my failure to eat before going out and was moving a little slowly. Prophet, meanwhile, walked hopefully to the edge of every precipice and then looked at me imploringly: "Can't we please go down there? Please? PLEASE?"
No, we could not. I was fading and, in any case, those hills have no flat space at the bottom along the fence line to the railroad right of way. We reached a concrete platform, just before the place where the trail runs back out to the street for a few yards, admired the view, and then turned around.
I will not recount the way back. We skipped the adventurous detours. The trail remained difficult for me while Prophet galloped ahead and then came back to check. The streets were still salty, but now crowded with motorists and pedestrians. I had run out of gas.
But did I have fun? Am I lovingly recounting the details?
Friday, January 3, 2014
so who was First Sergeant Mingo Sanders?
The fictional character Mingo Sanders appears in two stories in Stones from the Creek: "Wade in the Water" and "Scars." He is mentioned in passing by the protagonists of "The Giant Believed Her" and "One Voice, One Heart." After decades of service in the US Army, he has been dishonorably discharged without trial along with 166 other members of the 25th Infantry because of accusations by the white people of Brownsville, Texas… accusations that they were not allowed to answer and that have since been shown to be baseless. The fictional Sgt. Sanders shares those years of service and that discharge with the historical Mingo Sanders.
But the fictional Sanders then heads back to his boyhood home in South Carolina without a friend, filled with rage and resentment and hurt. He encounters an outdoor revival, is baptized and saved. He is falsely accused of theft, imprisoned, and leased to a phosphate mine as a laborer. The real Mingo Sanders was married. He and his wife Luella went to Washington, DC to address Congressional investigations of the discharge, as well as speaking to mostly African American audiences about the Brownsville affair in other cities. President William Howard Taft overrode the terms of Sanders's discharge to hire him as a confidential messenger at the Washington Navy Yard.
Mary Church Terrell wrote a sketch of his life and character while she agitated against the discharge of the 167 Black soldiers. If you are unfamiliar with that name, Mrs. Terrell was a high school teacher and principal in Washington, DC around the turn of the twentieth century. She was a prominent activist and journalist who was a founding member of the NAACP and of Delta Sigma Theta. When Mrs. Terrell phoned Sgt. Sanders to arrange a meeting, she was afraid she would encounter a bitter and disillusioned man. In fact she imagined him to be much like the character bearing his name in Stones from the Creek!
To her surprise, she found him, in her words, to be "as serene and mild as a May morning, at evident peace with himself and all the world." She goes on to write:
So why did the author of Stones in the Creek write him so differently? Part, I suppose, was the need for a dramatic transformation. But more, to be honest, was probably projection: How would I have felt? As I wrote in another post on this topic: How did I feel?
This may be a good place to discuss a fiction that has arisen out of the dramatic needs of people encountering this story over the entire last 107 years. As in "Wade in the Water," people remember Sgt. Sanders as a member of the Black company that accompanied Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders up San Juan Hill. As in the story, people remember Roosevelt asking Sanders to share his men's rations with the Rough Riders, who had left theirs behind, and Sanders complying. And then people remember Roosevelt unceremoniously discharging Sanders from the army only eight years later, without a trial, which of course is just what he did.
It was the 10th Cavalry that fought alongside the Rough Riders on San Juan Hill. Sanders's 25th Infantry was just yards below, being held in reserve. It was in camp, not on the field of battle, that Roosevelt asked Sgt. Sanders if his men would share their rations. But just as the writer of fiction can mash together some events because it simplifies and dramatizes the real meaning of the story, so does the popular memory. Our goal in writing history should be both truth and fact. Our goal in telling story may be different.
But the fictional Sanders then heads back to his boyhood home in South Carolina without a friend, filled with rage and resentment and hurt. He encounters an outdoor revival, is baptized and saved. He is falsely accused of theft, imprisoned, and leased to a phosphate mine as a laborer. The real Mingo Sanders was married. He and his wife Luella went to Washington, DC to address Congressional investigations of the discharge, as well as speaking to mostly African American audiences about the Brownsville affair in other cities. President William Howard Taft overrode the terms of Sanders's discharge to hire him as a confidential messenger at the Washington Navy Yard.
Mary Church Terrell wrote a sketch of his life and character while she agitated against the discharge of the 167 Black soldiers. If you are unfamiliar with that name, Mrs. Terrell was a high school teacher and principal in Washington, DC around the turn of the twentieth century. She was a prominent activist and journalist who was a founding member of the NAACP and of Delta Sigma Theta. When Mrs. Terrell phoned Sgt. Sanders to arrange a meeting, she was afraid she would encounter a bitter and disillusioned man. In fact she imagined him to be much like the character bearing his name in Stones from the Creek!
To her surprise, she found him, in her words, to be "as serene and mild as a May morning, at evident peace with himself and all the world." She goes on to write:
He feels he has done his very best to discharge all the obligations resting upon a soldier from the day he elicited till he became the victim of circumstances over which he had no control and is manly enough to accept what a cruel fate has sen him without a whine.How much of this is true? How much is Mrs. Terrell writing what she needs to for her audience, who want a dignified "manly" man to lionize? Certainly she is the one who met him and she describes her trepidation and that suggests that she is writing what she saw, not just what she hoped for. Sgt Sanders was described by General AS Burt as the best non-commissioned officer he encountered in forty years of service.
So why did the author of Stones in the Creek write him so differently? Part, I suppose, was the need for a dramatic transformation. But more, to be honest, was probably projection: How would I have felt? As I wrote in another post on this topic: How did I feel?
This may be a good place to discuss a fiction that has arisen out of the dramatic needs of people encountering this story over the entire last 107 years. As in "Wade in the Water," people remember Sgt. Sanders as a member of the Black company that accompanied Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders up San Juan Hill. As in the story, people remember Roosevelt asking Sanders to share his men's rations with the Rough Riders, who had left theirs behind, and Sanders complying. And then people remember Roosevelt unceremoniously discharging Sanders from the army only eight years later, without a trial, which of course is just what he did.
It was the 10th Cavalry that fought alongside the Rough Riders on San Juan Hill. Sanders's 25th Infantry was just yards below, being held in reserve. It was in camp, not on the field of battle, that Roosevelt asked Sgt. Sanders if his men would share their rations. But just as the writer of fiction can mash together some events because it simplifies and dramatizes the real meaning of the story, so does the popular memory. Our goal in writing history should be both truth and fact. Our goal in telling story may be different.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
All-Black Towns of Oklahoma
The turn of the twentieth century saw the terror against African Americans reach a kind of peak. The withdrawal of Federal troops from the former Confederacy may have been finished in 1876, but it did not mean the automatic end of Black suffrage. Rather it was an ongoing race war. In September, 1906, for example, or at the very same time as many of the events in Stones from the Creek, the Atlanta newspapers reported four alleged assaults on white men by African Americans. Thousands of white youths and men attacked the African American community, with the connivance of the police, and thirty to forty Black men were killed. This race riot was triggered by African American insistence on continuing to vote, which can be seen by the immediate disfranchisement laws passed by the new administration of Governor Hoke Smith after he was elected six weeks later.
The same is true of the lynchings elsewhere. They were no ritual humiliations of an already-subjugated group. They were acts of war by the ruling whites against the subordinate and -- in many parts of the South -- majority Blacks. The entire Jim Crow structure had to be created out of thin air. Never forget that if whites truly did not want Blacks around them they would not have asked them to prepare and serve their food, clean their homes or care for their children. Can any more intimate relation be imagined?
So the creation of the all-Black towns, many of them in the Indian and Oklahoma Territories was one form of resistance against the terror. In the all-Black towns there would be no segregation and no disfranchisement. There would be no firebombing of African American businesses. The presence of large numbers of African Creeks and Cherokees in the Indian Territory made this land, which would become Oklahoma, look like a promising place for Black towns. Some of the miccos (chiefs) in the Creek Nation even naturalized African Americans from the States as Creek citizens.
The fate of those towns is a story for a different day. But when the fictional Ezekiel Payne (protagonist of "In the Midst of the Valley") his daughter Nessa and his Daddy moved to Boley, they were part of a historical
Black middle class that was trying to create a safe haven for their children.
The same is true of the lynchings elsewhere. They were no ritual humiliations of an already-subjugated group. They were acts of war by the ruling whites against the subordinate and -- in many parts of the South -- majority Blacks. The entire Jim Crow structure had to be created out of thin air. Never forget that if whites truly did not want Blacks around them they would not have asked them to prepare and serve their food, clean their homes or care for their children. Can any more intimate relation be imagined?
So the creation of the all-Black towns, many of them in the Indian and Oklahoma Territories was one form of resistance against the terror. In the all-Black towns there would be no segregation and no disfranchisement. There would be no firebombing of African American businesses. The presence of large numbers of African Creeks and Cherokees in the Indian Territory made this land, which would become Oklahoma, look like a promising place for Black towns. Some of the miccos (chiefs) in the Creek Nation even naturalized African Americans from the States as Creek citizens.The fate of those towns is a story for a different day. But when the fictional Ezekiel Payne (protagonist of "In the Midst of the Valley") his daughter Nessa and his Daddy moved to Boley, they were part of a historical
Black middle class that was trying to create a safe haven for their children.
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