Civil Rights Tour, Part 2

March 23, 2011 By

The old Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr. and his father were co-pastors

Listening to Ray Charles and Dr. John this morning as I worked out on the cross-trainer, I found myself eager to get back to writing more about our trip. The first afternoon with the group I was not really with it. I forgot to bring my camera along  to the places we visited. Plus it always takes me time to get settled in terms of being with people I don’t know and to remind myself to have few expectations of a journey such as this one. For me it is better to simply experience what is happening and then make meaning from it.

Our first afternoon together we boarded the bus and headed out to Auburn Avenue, once the center of the black community where businesses thrived and the small child, Martin Luther King Jr. was born. A section of Auburn Avenue is now the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, run by the National Park Service. Within the site is the Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, Heritage Sanctuary which celebrated its 125th anniversary this past weekend. We were unable to visit the church as it was in the last stages of a major restoration. It was here that Dr. King’s grandfather and Martin Luther King, Sr. (called Daddy King), served as pastors. Dr. King, Jr. became co-pastor with his father during the 1960s. It is where his mother was killed by a gunman in 1974.

In the same block is the King Center where an eternal flame burns near the tombs of Dr. and Mrs. King. A block or so away is Dr.King’s birth home, where he entered the world on January 15, 1929, and spent the first 12 years of his life.

Later we had dinner at Paschals, a black owned restaurant that was once a meeting place for civil rights activities. The food was good, especially the appetizers. We of course had fried chicken and collard greens. Andrew Young, former mayor of Atlanta and Diplomat to the United Nations was our guest speaker. He spoke of the civil rights movement and the work that still needs doing as we enter further into the global community. He no longer encourages young people to become attorneys. He feels that the economy is driving the world today and recommends the field of economics for those who about to enter college.

The New Ebenezer Baptist Church

But it was Sunday morning at the New Ebenezer Baptist Church where the trip started to click for me. As we walked into the sanctuary an alto sax was warming up. I was lost … a goner. I love the alto sax and if you just play for me I will do almost anything for you!

But it was not just the saxophone that clicked for me. It was the warmth and joy of the black members who welcomed us. It was the interpreters signing for the deaf that seemed to be almost ballet. It was the sermon about being hijacked by God to bring troubled souls into a place where all can be mended. It was the fact that other white people were visiting from Germany and other corners of the world,  just to be in a place where one can easily imagine that Martin Luther King is speaking to you and to remember the long road that he and so many others blazed for the world. It was the music, both choral and instrumental. It was the community of people who came together to worship a loving God who will not beat you up because you make mistakes. I am more Buddhist than anything else, but if I lived in Atlanta, I’d be there often to experience the joy and a community of beautiful people living their lives as they move forward.

After the service we boarded the bus for Albany, located in the southwestern corner of the state. The afternoon was sunny and I watched the greening Georgia landscape emerging from winter’s cold. It was in Albany, in the fall of 1961, that Charles Sherrod and Cordell Reagon, field secretaries for SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,) came to set up a base. They came because it seemed a be a fairly quiet community, moderate in racial attitudes, with blacks representing 40 percent of the population, home to Albany State College, a black institution, and surrounded by counties with a majority population of blacks, known as places of malicious intolerance.

A few weeks later nine students from the community arrived at the Continental Trailways bus station, attempting to sit down in the white waiting room. They did leave when asked to but on November 22, three high school student from the NAACP Youth Council returned to the bus station. They refused to leave the dining room and were arrested. Thus started a string of protests challenging segregation. After an integrated group from Atlanta arrived and were arrested, over four hundred high school students were arrested as they marched through the town. In December, Martin Luther King arrived at the invitation of a classmate from Morehouse College in Atlanta and that night he addressed a huge mass meeting at the Shiloh Baptist Church. Because the crowds were so large, he later spoke to another group at the Mount Zion Baptist Church just across the street. The night was filled with music and song, giving rise to the Freedom Singers, who toured the country with their songs encouraging everyone to overcome segregation.

That evening we were privileged to hear an astounding performance of some of the original freedom singers, led by Rutha Harris, in the Mount Zion Baptist Church, now part of the Albany Civil Rights Museum. They had driven from Montgomery just for our small group, picking up a speeding ticket on the way. I shiver at the thought of a car filled with black people, speeding through the night during the early days of the movement and can only imagine what their fate might have been.  

My hunger for music sated, I crash into bed after checking in at our hotel.  Next time:  About The Bus.

Filed Under: stories, Travels

Civil Rights Tour, Part 1

March 17, 2011 By

The tombs of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, Atlanta, Georgia

I’m home after a one of the most stimulating trips I’ve ever been on, happy to sleep in my own bed, doing some regular exercise and slowly processing all that I learned over the last week in the deep south. I’m afraid it will take some time though because the intensity of this journey has left me speechless at times.  The growing crisis in Japan grabs my attention and I often find myself caught between two worlds.  It is hard to know where to begin and it is difficult to explain to anyone asking, how powerful the experience was.  Already my mind is forgetting odd snippets of what was so fresh and clear just a week ago.  Is it aging or is it that I have consumed so much information in the past 10 days that the files are full?  Sounds like it might be both.  But here is a bit of a start.

As we arrived in Atlanta on Friday, March 4th, I couldn’t help but hearing Ray Charles’ soulful renditions of Georgia and America in my mind. The trees were beginning their spring transformation with cherry blossoms, forsythia and red bud starting to bloom.  It is a gracious and friendly city with most people smiling and saying hello as we passed them on the street.  We stopped and chatted with a welcoming black man for ten minutes or so, exchanging notes on where we were from, the weather and how he managed the unusual amount of snow (8”) this winter that stopped the city in its tracks.

The next morning before meeting the group, we walked through Centennial Olympic Park and visited the aquarium just a few blocks away.  We had the place to ourselves for about an hour. Then it seemed that every family in the world arrived with kids of all ages to view and learn about life below the surface of the ocean.  We especially enjoyed the Beluga Whales, Whale Sharks and an amazing array of lacy jelly fish slowly thrusting their way through warm blue water.  The sea otters were a joy; their habitat furnished with all sorts of wonderful toys for them to play with akin to the big basket of toys that Bill and I keep in our living room for our cats and dogs.

At our first meeting as a group, we found 42 other participants as eager as we were to get started.  We came together from Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC, Michigan, California, Wyoming, Georgia, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts,Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio.  Some had been on this trip before.  Some are/had been Peace Corp volunteers, educators, journalists, writers, doctors, attorneys, students, film makers, artists, an Episcopalian Priest and several involved in theatre arts.  Gentle giant Julian Bond, and his gracious wife Pam Horowitz, were our leaders, along with UVA facilitators Joan Gore and Cynthia Smith.  I came away believing that all citizens of this country should make this trip. I’d do it again in a heart beat and hopefully I will.

The trip is not for those faint of heart or who need a spa vacation.  The days were long, the subject for me, emotional and intense. We were constantly on the move, sometimes getting on the bus at 8:30 AM and not returning to our hotel rooms until 9:30 or 10 at night.  No time for even one line on the blog.  But it was glorious and in the end left me feeling filled with a deep knowing that we can get through the challenges that lie before us when it comes to civil and human rights.

We met civil rights icons and those who were foot soldiers during the early days of the movement and who continue to tell their stories and fight for justice.  They are truly an inspiration and filled with a courage that is awesome. I kept asking myself along the way whether I could stand up and do the things they had to do to win their freedom. Or would I falter when the heat was turned up.  There is no way to know unless I found myself in the situations that these people faced.

In later posts I will fill you in on more details of the trip and some of the stories I heard. Stay tuned!

Filed Under: Travels, wonderings

Spring Fever

March 2, 2011 By

Daffodils blooming in the neighborhood. Copyright Joan Z. Rough

Spring seems to be upon us here in Virginia.  Daffodils, Winter Jasmine and Witch Hazel are splashing the still brown land with yellow.  Next month forsythia will follow.

I wrote the following poem remembering what spring, particularly March, was like when I lived in Vermont.   It was still a season for snow but it also held the promise of emergence.  While I trudged to the barn in the middle of the night to check up on my pregnant ewes to see if they had given birth, here in Virginia daffodils were blooming.  I travel further south on Friday for our civil rights trip, wondering what other flowers might already be blooming in those places I have never been.   I will be gone for a week and hope to post a few lines every day about what I am experiencing.  If that is not possible I will write about it when I return.

Spring

Snow spits                                                                                                                                             ewes bulging                                                                                                                                         with promise                                                                                                                                       are cloistered                                                                                                                                       inside

I count days                                                                                                                                         watching bags swell                                                                                                                           vulvas blushing red                                                                                                                             by night patrol                                                                                                                                     the wind riddled barn                                                                                                                         filled with the silence                                                                                                                         of sleeping hens

At dawn one ewe                                                                                                                                 shifts and strains                                                                                                                                 feeling the whisper                                                                                                                               soaking her body                                                                                                                                 small hooves emerge                                                                                                                           in purple blue satin                                                                                                                             that rips rushing                                                                                                                                   the lamb to the straw

Tumbling legs harden                                                                                                                          he readies his burden                                                                                                                          butts pokes                                                                                                                                            finding the teat                                                                                                                                    dripping colostrum

Somewhere                                                                                                                                           to the south                                                                                                                                           daffodils push                                                                                                                                       toward the light

jzr, 1990

 

Filed Under: Poetry, Travels, Uncategorized, Vermont, wonderings

Cat House

February 27, 2011 By

In the fall of 2005, my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer.  Hannah, one of my best

Sweet Hannah

kitty friends died in mid December of a stroke brought on by congestive heart failure.  Her death was expected but none-the-less, it was very difficult.  January arrived and the household was bereft.  My mother was dying, my cat was gone and winter weather loomed on the horizon.  We were living in a catless house, except for Cleo, my mom’s cat who hid anytime we got near.  Bill and I decided we’d remain without another cat.   We did have two dogs after all.

My beloved muse left me, tired of waiting for me to show up. I was too depressed for writing or painting. I needed something different, on a more happy note, to do with my time.  I struggled until I figured I could get some cat-time and extra love by volunteering to help out at the local SPCA.  They assigned me to the area’s Pet Smart, where half a dozen cats are housed ready for adoption.  I was to arrive at 9 AM on Mondays, before the store opened; feed the kitties, clean the cages, let them run about in the tiny room.  Then I’d sit there with one or two in my lap for two hours waiting for people who longed to take home a sweet, furry creature.

I did my job. For the first month not one cat was adopted when I was there.  I think it was because of my early hours.  Most people didn’t show up until well after I left and another volunteer arrived.   I tried to switch shifts, but no one said, “I’m dying to be there earlier in the day.” So I hung in there accompanied by two constant  companions.

There was the tuxedo kitty, who was about 6 months old.  Every time I passed her cell

Lily at rest.

cage, she’d push a paw through the bars and hook her claws on my shirt, trying to pull me near.  When I’d let her out to play, she’d rub up against me, then bounce off the walls hoping for freedom.  She had been picked up on the street and seemed to be missing her former life.

Miss Pepper

Peppermint a quiet, ginger colored lady, had been in this facility for at least 3 months if not longer.  She was an adult and had been rescued from a home where a hoarder had housed some 35 cats.  She slept and occasionally played with a ball she had in her cage.  Whenever I came close she’d start purring and looking up at me with huge yellow eyes set in a moon-round face.

I started talking cats at home.  Bill knew what was coming.  He sat there smiling as I chattered on and on about one cat or another.  I hung in at Pet Smart for another month.  I was getting more depressed by the minute.  My mother was still dying, no cats were being adopted on my watch and I hated seeing them being confined to those tiny cages. I began to think that this SPCA volunteer thing just wasn’t for me.

After several more weeks, I  gave notice that I was quitting.  There was lots of trying to talk me out of it.  “The cats need you.  You need to get out of the house more.  Volunteers are so hard to find.” I told Bill I’d like to adopt the tuxedo kitten.  He smiled and nodded.  Lily, short for Lilliput, came home.

During my last shift, a couple with several rowdy children came in.  They wanted to play with all of the cats.  The kids wanted to squeeze and chase and when it came time for Peppermint to let them handle her, she was afraid, tried to hide.  I piped up and said, “I almost forgot!  She’s already spoken for.” I just couldn’t stand the idea of her going home with those people.  They went home without a cat and suddenly I had two.

Both cats are still with us and are delightful companions.  Lily hunts big-time and I’ve had to take all of the bird feeders down.  She is definitely Bill’s girl.  She sleeps on his shoulder in the evening when he watches tv.  Pepper, who loves to follow me everywhere is known to steal pens and pencils from desks and tabletops.  She sometimes walks around with one hanging out of her mouth like a dangling cigarette.

Cleo, in the garden.

Cleo joined the family when my mom died.  After several years of hiding out in strange places and barely eating, she now spends time in my lap or curled up next to me.   She is 15 years old and is in the early stages of kidney failure.  She is happy though and doing well.  She plays in the middle of the night, tearing around the house often chased by one of the other cats, sometimes both.  Between these ladies and our two dogs there is never a dull moment.  I know what it must be like to run a day care center.

I’m sure the SPCA had me pegged all along.  My file must read:  Big heart.  Will do almost anything to keep kitties happy, maybe even take one or two home.

Just for the record, I rarely go to the SPCA now. I recognize that I already have too many pets.  I do however take a bag or two of dry cat or dog food in as a donation once in a while.  I drop it off then hurry out to my car before my heart-strings are tugged.

Filed Under: Animals I Love, Navigating Through Life, stories

Saving The World

February 22, 2011 By

A kitty at the SPCA waiting to find her forever home .

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

 

I always believed that in order to save the forests of the world I had to do something major, like chain myself to a tree.  Julia Butterfly Hill lived in a giant redwood in California for 738 days to keep it from being cut down.  She is a brave, inspiring soul and I’ve always aspired to do something as equally brave and inspiring.  But that is not who I am.  For one thing, I’m 68 years old and climbing the tree in the first place would be a major problem.  My thermostat isn’t working like it used to and I’m always either too cold or too hot.  I would need to bring a truckload of sweaters and sports bras up the tree with me.  I get sore sitting in the same position for 30 minutes, never mind 738 days. I’d need to bring my Pilates teacher, Jessie, with me, to help me stretch and keep my body in some kind of shape.  And what about a bathroom?  Chaining myself to a tree isn’t any better actually, though I wouldn’t be afraid of falling out of my nest while I was taking a nap.

But I do want to save the world.  I always have.  And it’s not just the forests I want to save, it’s the whales, bats, homeless people, and those who are being murdered in Libya for the sake of an insane dictator.  I want to provide homes for every kitten or puppy that is allowed to be born because pet owners won’t have their dogs and cats spayed or neutered.  I could go on and on.  I  have a very difficult time seeing the world in the state that it is in right now.  All of that speaks of empathy but it also says a lot about the control issues that I’ve finally begun to let go of in the past several years.  The truth is, I can’t control anything, except my temper, which from time to time has a way of running away from me and doing her own thing.

So what does an ordinary, aging, empathic like me have to do to feel that she’s doing something worthwhile to serve?  I’ve been working on the answer to this question for a long time and I’m beginning to believe the wise ones who have said, stay calm, bring love and happiness into the world.  No matter what your own troubles may be, smile and say hello to those you pass on the street.  One of them just might need that smile to keep from doing something tragic.  When you smile your soul lights up.  When you help someone cross the road your soul lights up.  When you donate a bag of dog food to the SPCA your soul lights up.

When you give a gift of kindness your soul lights up and you will be doing something to save our world.  That is our work.

 

Filed Under: Navigating Through Life, Wise Words
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