COMPUTER ISSUES LEFT ME UNABLE TO POST THIS YESTERDAY

Editorial Note.  I planned this post to be themed around the trip Carrie, my dear wife, and I took to New York City yesterday.  I was going to tell you stories about the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center Site and the Reflecting Pools left behind.  I will get to that, I promise.  Some of it is very funny, very informative, and very moving.  Today, however, I am moved to tell the following story:

Four days ago I sat poolside here at the place we are staying in “The Berkshires”.  It’s a very nice place…but it is not as trendy as it sounds.  Perhaps it was much trendier a century ago.  Well, I know it was.  It is still a very nice spot to vacation, though we have only had weather warm enough to be poolside that one day.

In the irony of ironies department, as I sat poolside four days ago, I read a book by a lady named Ruby Bridges.  Ruby is a strong and brave lady you have probably never heard of, even though you should have.  Recorded history and what is deemed by “deemers” often leaves out folks you should have heard about and spends too much time on some folks better off forgotten.

In the book I read as I was sitting poolside, Through My Eyes was the title, Ruby Bridges tells the story of how she was a first grade student going to an all white elementary school in New Orleans in 1960.  The city of New Orleans was going through federal court ordered integration of their public schools.

The picture I have placed at the beginning of this post is a painting by the late great Norman Rockwell.  You know, the guy who is famous for all of his Saturday Evening Post covers.  Well, he painted a story about Ruby Bridges.  He was compelled, as were many good citizens, to put forth the effort to help the cause of racial equality.  Many not so good citizens, more of them in number to be noted on the scene, were not so gracious.  They did not want a first grader going to their children’s school.  Imagine that. They were scared of a first grader.  That pretty much sums up their sensibility.  I know…I know…this little girl was a symbol of a greater fear these people had going on.  It is always the pioneer who suffers the most.

Ruby Bridges spent most of that first grade year quarantined in a room in that school by herself being taught by a lady from Boston.  In New Orleans in 1960 in one classroom there was a black student and her teacher was from Massachusetts.  The odds were certainly against them.

I was so inspired when I read the short story of the first hand account of the times and days Ruby faced, endured, and eventually made triumphant.

With just a few pages left of my reading, Carrie, my dear wife, found in her “phone research” that the Norman Rockwell Museum was about a half an hour’s drive from where we were sitting.  We went the next day.

The Norman  Rockwell painting that depicts the harsh reality first grader Ruby Bridges faced as she was daily escorted to school by federal marshals is titled The Problem We All Live With.  The photo I put in this post is one I took of the painting that is prominent in the museum.

As I studied the painting, I breathed a semi-sigh of relief as I reflected on my own life, I am 47 years old, and how I would like to believe folks…particularly black and white…have made progress getting along.  I’ve seen it.  I have heard it.  Or, should I say, I have heard less of it.  The progress I feel I have witnessed made me proud.

That pride…at least a great deal of it…took a serious blow today.

When on vacation, I admit it, right or wrong, I just don’t keep up with many of the things I normally keep up with.  I don’t watch sports.  I don’t watch much television.  I just try to disconnect a bit and unwind.  My phone is still not “smart”.  I do read newpapers incessantly, however.  This morning I read The Boston Herald, The New York Post, The Daily News, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Albany Union, and The Berkshire Eagle.  I start early and make my way through them until mid-morning.  None of these editions had any of the news of what Carrie told me as we were eating a late lunch at our favorite local eatery around 2PM this afternoon.

Carrie said something to me about a “shooting”.  She was stunned that Mr. Newspaper Man did not know.  She figured I was just not saying anything to keep her own feelings at bay, as I know this tragedy tears her to shreds.  Well, she continued to tell me about the South Carolina church shooting that has left nine dead and others wounded in some manner or another all over the world.

Norman Rockwell sure knew how to name a painting, didn’t he?

I am sad beyond the words I type here.

Why do some people have to be so stupid?  I suppose that is an age-old question that probably won’t stop making the rounds any time soon.

As a child I grew up in a small Southern Indiana town that did not have a single black person living in it.  Most of rural Southern Indiana is like this still.  There just aren’t many black folks around.  Most of the prejudices I have witnessed were passed on from generation to generation and based on two things…stupidity and fear.

I was fortunate as a child growing up in this environ.  I knew better.

My parents are from Mississippi.  My mother can tell you stories about how her family did not have anything against the black people they knew.  In fact, my white mother picked cotton right along side kids her age that happened to be black.  They,  black kids and white kids…picked the cotton side by side because the money had to be made and the cotton had to be picked.  There were no protests going on.  There were no federal marshals seeing to it that these cotton pickers were getting it right.  The work had to be done and they were doing it.  Refreshing news from 1952.

When I was a kid we had a grand family reunion every Thanksgiving day in Scott County, Mississippi.  My mother had sixteen brothers and sisters.  It was a grand time.

The day following the reunion, my parents and my sister and I would visit folks an hour drive away in the Mississippi capitol city of Jackson.  The last stop on this day of visiting was my favorite.  The last stop was at the house of one Edna Bell.  Edna was the housekeeper of my great-great grandparents in the 1940s-50s-and part of the 60s.  Edna was like family to us.  Edna Bell was black.  Edna lived in an all black neighborhood.  I loved the woman dearly.

This is a picture of my Dad, who spent a great deal of time with Edna as a small child, and me holding my baby brother as we are sitting next to Edna.  This picture was taken in 1984.  It was the last time we saw Edna before she passed away.  I miss her.

I often tell students I work with that in my lifetime I have been cussed, hit, kicked, made fun of, pushed around, falsely accused, brokenhearted, and just plain hurt by other people I have known…and every one of those people that either attempted or succeded to hurt me were white people.

There is a problem we all live with.  I suppose it is not going away.  Human nature will always get in the way of God’s plan.

Trying deperately to speak the rights.

Danny Johnson