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 24 Jan 2008 @ 09:58
Beginners, make your will firm and strong: twenty-four hours a day, wield the sword of positive energy to overcome demons and curses, cutting off psychological afflictions. Look continuously into a saying, and you will spontaneously discover the light of mind, containing heaven and earth, every land completely revealed.
---Chien-Ju
When you try to set your mind to it, you miss it. When you stir your thoughts, you turn away from it. If you do not try and you do not stir, you are living in stagnant water. What do you do?
---Zen saying
The world is a passage back to God, that is the only reason it is here.
---Michael Murphy
This rather infamous picture was taken last year at a Gangsta Party on Martin Luther King Day at Clemson University. [link]
A couple weeks ago I wrote on an interest that developed in childhood about faraway places and people of other nationalities and races. I titled it Full Frontal Feminism, after Jessica Valenti's book, because I credit that interest for my involvement in civil rights from the late 1950s on. Almost immediately I heard from a friend of mine here in Athens, who teaches American National Government, The Politics of Law, Constitutional Law, Constitutional Politics, Civil Liberties, and American Political Thought at Ohio University. She urged me to join college faculty around the country to ask students to stay away from "Race Parties" that were being planned by kids. Since they get a day off, why not party on and get loaded to celebrate?
I thought about it for a while and took a look at an invitation to one that was being set up off campus here. It said there'd be plenty of fried chicken and 40 ounce cans of malt liquor, and all the party-goer had to do was dress up as his or her favorite Black stereotype. OK, sounds very American collegiate...but is it any more wrong than that? Were people of Greek derivation angry about Toga Parties? Would I be mad about an Erik The Red party, at which kids would dress up as Swedes in fur rugs and helmets with buffalo horns sticking out---even though I know no Swede actually ever wore such a helmet? Didn't all peoples have to go through this crap when we came to the Land of the Free?
What was the intention of the party? That's what I wanted to know...I mean, besides an excuse to get blasted. Martin Luther King DID like fried chicken, and college kids like to dress up for theme parties. What's the harm---as long as there is a kind of tribute to the culture honored in some way? It bothers me that the minstrel tradition and Amos 'N' Andy, where whites dressed up in black-face (and even some blacks did to emphasize stereotypical features) and spoke in dialect, are looked down on. I mentioned in the previous article about the banning in the United States of Disney's Song Of The South. Isn't all that going too far?
But isn't this different? I admit that I've welcomed the Martin Luther King holiday to finish cleanup from Christmas and recover a bit more from that hectic season. However, our family always spends time listening to the words of Dr. King and usually music inspired by the work that he did and the mission of his life. We reflect on the fact he was assassinated for this here in this country, murdered as were other leaders who advocated Change during that time. I'm not at a place where I could go to a party about such things, unless it were a pretty serious gathering.
Nevertheless, I still wasn't ready to raise a stink about kids having parties. There is something to celebrate about what progress has been made for civil rights. I can get into partying about the contributions of Black Culture. I like it better if there are Black people there and we all enjoy each other. The best parties I ever went to were the mixed explorations we enjoyed in the mid-60s. Will I ever forget 50 people packed in my living room, dancing to 45s until dawn, and then out came the vacuum cleaner and everybody cleaned the whole place before going home? How about that barbecue at Shugie's front lawn in Greenwich, and the low lights and Arthur Prysock LPs indoors? Man, celebrating race can be beautiful! More >
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 11 Jan 2008 @ 10:07
A man met a lad weeping. "What do you weep for?" he asked.
"I am weeping for my sins," said the lad.
"You must have little to do," said the man.
The next day they met again. Once more the lad was weeping. "Why do you weep now?" asked the man.
"I am weeping because I have nothing to eat," said the lad.
"I thought it would come to that," said the man.
---Robert Louis Stevenson
If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it's a waste of time looking for him further.
---Mohandas K. Gandhi
Drinking his morning tea
the monk is at peace.
Chrysanthemums.
---Basho
The picture is of author Jessica Valenti and her book of last year which was written especially for young women of college age. The image illustrates an interview with her at Salon [link] .
I've been trying to think how I got interested in civil rights. I know it was all the way back in early childhood, even though there was no "movement" to speak of then nor was my normal white family particularly involved in politics or social problems. What I think did it was a Walt Disney movie from 1946, which would have put me in 1st grade. Anything Walt made was OK, even though Mom worried about the scary parts in every one. To this day my worst fears can be traced to Snow White running and lost in the forest, or the disappearance of Bambi's mother, or especially the transformation of Lampwick into a mule in Pinocchio---all done with animated shadows...and sound. Neverthless, as a family we saw everything that came out, and so it was with a film called Song Of The South.
By '46, Disney was experimenting with live action and much less animation interspersed. Song Of The South is about a little boy, played by Bobby Driscoll, who lives on a big plantation in the South, although I don't remember that it was exactly slavery times. At any rate, he wanders one day into the area where his father's black workers live and meets a man known as Uncle Remus, played by James Baskett. The whole situation is a setup for Remus to tell the kid 3 of the stories about Brer Rabbit, collected in the writings of Joel Chandler Harris. Of course we shift to cartoons then, but it's the only animation I remember...except for the bluebirds when Uncle Remus sings the Oscar-winning song from the film Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.
OK, if you're wincing at some thoughts of stereotype here, you're not alone. In the 1960s, the NAACP protested to Disney about the movie...and it was withdrawn. The song and the Brer Rabbit sequences still can be found here and there, but apparently the full movie only can be purchased in Japan. A friend of mine found a couple of copies of video from there up in Canada, and smuggled them in. As a result, I can report I've seen Song Of The South fairly recently---and had the chance to share it with my kids. What impressed me as a child was the racial interaction in the movie, how Remus and the boy came to love each other, and the social repercussions their relationship eventually produced. But isn't this strange---that the very movie I credit with developing an interest in me in the civil rights of American citizens, and people around the world, is banned as being prejudicial?
Well leaving all that aside, what happened back in first grade is I became open to friendships with people of other races and nationalities. At the same time we were beginning to learn folk songs in music class at school. My uncle, who was essentially a farmer and a United Brethren, got me started in stamp collecting. The whole world and its peoples were opening up to me and I loved it. But I was made aware of problems. A black school friend named Ronnie followed me home one day, and Mom gave me a talk about different people staying and playing with their own "kind." I didn't like that, and so a year or 2 later I went home with another black kid named Morris. When we got to Metallic Avenue, I saw there was no street there at all. In fact, 10 feet in front of the house, which had no door on it by the way, there was a tall wire fence...and 10 feet beyond that were the tracks of our town's major railway, the Erie. I guess I was pretty scared, and I went home. More >
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 2 Jan 2008 @ 01:01
When you meditate, invite yourself to feel the self-esteem, the dignity, and strong humility of the Buddha that you are.
---Sogyal Rinpoche
The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.
---Tennessee Williams
This year,
yes, even this year
has drawn to its close.
---Buson
The Opening of the Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse, 1610-14
El Greco
I had a night of foreboding last night. No, it wasn't the champagne. In fact I went to bed very early. I felt it when I awoke around 3 AM, with fragments of a dream still flickering. People were coming up the hill, closing in...and I needed to decide whether or not to shoot. Rather a moot question, since I didn't seem to have any guns.
Maybe the wind, which by then was battering the house, had shaken me up. The cold front had arrived, bringing the snow from further west that's falling now. We expect about an inch, and I've already put down the potash before the relatives arrive for a Hungarian New Year's feast.
It couldn't have been the hospitality I enjoyed yesterday at Kathy's remarkable home. She and her partner Constantine had invited a few people for a delicious lunch of soup, fresh bread, salad, deviled eggs, cheese and some Crumb's special crackers that I brought. The land is high on a hill of natural oak forest, with amazing outcroppings of huge boulders, possibly shoveled there by the glacier which chugged to a stop just north of there.
When Kathy first acquired the land, she found a cave among those rocks and there she lived until she could build a tepee, and eventually more comfortable shelter. What they have now is a model home, for me at least, that is self-sustaining and off-the-grid. You can see it here [link] and go there to find out more if you're close by. There are more and more energy-efficient and alternative houses showing up around here. People move here especially to try their hand at living this way. More >
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 24 Dec 2007 @ 08:25
Trust shows the way.
---Hildegard Of Bingen
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
---Friedrich Nietzsche
The invariable mark of wisdom is seeing the miraculous in the common.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson
I was sitting yesterday morning in the balcony with the rest of the choir at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church. In our robes from there each Sunday we sing the Introit, then hustle downstairs to process with the first hymn. It was about 10:30. Marsha Reilly was concluding the second organ prelude, John Ferguson's particularly mysterioso setting of O Come, O Come Emmanuel. That would be our entrance hymn too on this 4th Sunday of Advent. Suddenly my wife appeared next to us up there, urgent but smiling. "You became a grandfather about half an hour ago," she whispered. In the service a bit later, a prayer of thanksgiving went up from our congregation for the birth of Nina Marie.
Winter Solstice and Karen's labor had arrived at the same time, a little after 1 AM Saturday. The Cold Moon was nearly full. When the couple was sure her body and the baby were in agreement about the hour of beginning, quiet helpers were called to their little home. Well, Nina was sort of in agreement about it. She would turn her back on the situation eventually, and require at the last a sure hand to go in and turn her gently around for the final slide into the birthing pool. They were in the water by then, 24 hours had passed, and contractions were in the hours of intensity. Karen said yesterday each exhalation was a battle cry.
Dana, Ilona and I entered their living room of peace and silence at mid-afternoon. Jeroch was in a large chair, holding the baby as you see them here. Karen walked in, radiant and welcoming as always. We felt worshipful here. These young people have matured with the months of the process, guiding us and each other with trusting hands of love. We grandparents had come to know each other quickly and better. Karen's mother, the children's book author Erica Magnus, had flown in from LA a couple weeks earlier. Already we had become friends with her father, David Thomas of the OU film department. Karen's sister and her partner are here from the world of New York theatre. Has there ever been such a wondrous Christmas for all of us! More >
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 22 Dec 2007 @ 13:11
Four years ago I wrote an article about a radio production of Dickens' Christmas Carol that my father constructed in our hometown back in the 1940s. He had based his presentation on an RCA Victor set of 4 12" 78 RPM records of the story, produced by famed radio personality Ernest Chappell in 1941. Nothing I've ever written has yielded such a prolonged response. Google still carries it and eventually Wikipedia picked it up in its entry about Chappell.
Each year I get requests from people in at least the English-speaking world for CD copies of that old RCA release, which of course is long gone in its original form (although EBay sometimes offers one I understand). In my original essay, I offer to make a copy for anyone---and that offer still stands.
In honor of radio drama and all the actors who made a living in that unique format---and who had such a huge impact on my life---I've decided to re-post the article...and some of the comments that have appeared since. My main motivation is the interactions with those people who want a copy, and the stories they tell of how much this production meant to them and their families. Hopefully the search engines will be reinvigorated and other people will get some answers---and maybe provide more!
The image accompanying this version is of the cover of the original set of records. It was sent to me by a contact this year in Ontario. The photograph I refer to at the beginning of the essay can still be seen at the original printing here [link] . More >
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