Guns! Guns! Guns!

I was trying as best I could to get comfortable. When the troop handlers told us to pack our sleeping bags we thought them insane, but after the desert sun had set and the temperatures had dropped we were thankful that we'd followed what had seemed like a ridiculous order at the time.  Every newly minted Marine happily stuffed himself into the warmth of the thick down sleeping bag he'd been forced to pack under threat of court martial or at least a write up.
         Getting comfortable proved difficult because each of us had to have in his bag his new girlfriend better known as his M-16 A2.  It was a cold piece of steel and plastic for which each of us was held responsible and which would have set us back $1500 and a good month in the brig had we lost her. Some of us gave names to the ones we had in basic. I'd named mine Charlene, not as an homage to the movie Full Metal Jacket, but rather to the bottom heavy cheerleader with whom I had NO CHANCE in hell in high school.  The weapon I had in combat training was simply an inconvenience.  Even if you didn't fire it, you had to clean her at least three times a day because of the dust in the lovely area of southern California in which we found ourselves.
          If at the end of the week the armorers didn't think your weapon was clean enough your weekend liberty was cancelled until it was. The happiest part of the end of combat training was simply giving the Corps back its damned weapon.  I've disliked the M-16A2 ever since then and whenever I see some guy at a sporting goods store or gun show buying an AR-15 (the cheap floozy kid sister of the M-16A2 )  I try not to laugh and think: "You must really love cleaning rifles bud."
        Over the past several years I've turned on the news and seen multiple shootings committed by various idiots and whenever it does the same thing happens.  Whomever the president is says how tragic it is, a bunch of well meaning pundits express their grief then the political debate begins. The left points out how easy it is to have a gun, the right points out how the constitution gives each American the RIGHT to own as many as he can afford. They argue until a new news item takes the front page only to resume when the NEXT gun tragedy occurs.

        Sad facts? Simply having access to guns DOES NOT mean someone is more likely to commit a criminal act. Most gun owners aren't shooting up the streets on a daily basis; conversely, it is remarkably easy to legally procure a weapon in these United States. Contrary to the popular opinion of many liberals, the average person doesn't have access to fully automatic weapons, and simply being able to fire more rounds DOESN'T mean you're going on a killing spree.
         But if I may be blunt with my conservative counterparts, the 2nd amendment is the shortest and most VAGUELY written amendment IN the Bill of Rights.  You can CORRECTLY argue that the words "shall not be infringed" means precisely what it states, but be honest and admit that the founding fathers wanted us to have weapons in the event that we had to rise and for militias as they did NOT want a standing army AND they realized that many hunted for food in the 18th century.  Also please stop pretending that the same founding fathers who didn't want us to directly elect senators or the president would have been cool with us having fully automatic weapons, flame throwers and grenade launchers.  Does anyone actually believe that had they known what kinds of weapons we'd develop they wouldn't have made the 2nd amendment FAR more specific?
         The far right however does raise a very interesting point about killers not needing a gun in order to kill.  Human life is very fragile. You can kill another human being with anything you can physically handle and if you can't find anything to pick up, you can use your bare hands.

            America's problem ISN'T Guns and access them, nor is it Indians,  The British, The  Mexican army,  Rebels,  Chinese Immigrants, Irish immigrants, Italian Immigrants, The Kaiser,  Communists,  Negroes,  Illegal Immigrants or members of a particular religion. It's VIOLENCE. We Americans solve every other problem with violence. This country was taken from it's first inhabitants with violence.  Africans were forced to build the south (and part of the north) with violence and psychological torture. Irish, Italian and Chinese immigrants were met with low wages and violence upon their arrival and more often than not the robber barons of the 19th and 20th century settled labor disputes with violence.
            Martin Luther King Jr. is considered a hero by many because he championed non violence as a means of getting unjust laws changed. The unjust laws were kept in place with acts of violence. We canonize King and vilify those who tell us to defend ourselves "By any means necessary."  Because at our core we've accepted violence as part of who we are as Americans.   Our movies involve explosions and our heroes are armed with high calibre weapons. We pay hard earned money to see grown men locked into steel cages and pummel one another.
            We Americans are a violent people and we simply don't want to accept that. Accepting that fact would require us to use more thought when resolving our problems. It would deprive us of the opportunity to solve problems with our fists and trigger fingers. It would deprive us of scapegoats and boogie men and require us as a nation to engage in some retrospective.  We need to accept that violence begets violence and as long as we are a culture of violence there will be mass shootings in our schools, theatres, clubs, office buildings, streets and shopping malls.  We need to clear our heads and dedicate some time to have that existential moment when we as a nation see ourselves for who we are and figure out what our next move will be. Perhaps we'll have that great epiphany while field striping and cleaning our AR-15s.

Gentrification

A friend of mine is in the hospital. I ignored a persistent cough and decided to visit her.  I elected to park my car and use mass transit to get to and from the hospital to avoid the traffic and nightmare of driving around for a rare $12.00 parking spot.  Upon leaving the hospital in the early evening, I returned downtown to discover that finding the bus which had delivered me downtown to bring me back to my car would prove to slightly easier than finding an honest man at pickpocket convention.
          The bus routes in my city have recently been changed supposedly for the better, and no one seemed to know ANYTHING about the routes which have been in place for two months now. I asked a driver who knew nothing, a bus system employee who knew less and the final person I spoke to was a large black woman in a bad wig who only said: "Chiiild...I don't know nothing about the bus routes" as the words "Metro Administrative Officers" served  as an ironic backdrop over her right shoulder.  I walked through downtown on what was once the bus route and saw abandoned bus shelters and bus signs.
       I finally got to where I knew a bus would be when I entered an area of Houston's second ward which used to be old Chinatown. The new residents elected to call this enclave "Ea-do" to indicate that it's "east" of "downtown".  Maybe they thought they were paying homage to either London's Soho in Westminster or it's namesake in NewYork city. Hipsters are known more for their sad need to belong than for any degree of originality.
        This section 10 years ago was warehouses, empty lots and shotgun houses. Seeing opportunity, our realtors bought as much as they could, slapped up shoddy town-homes as quickly as they could and sold them for five times what surrounding properties cost. The  result was a spike in property taxes which forced long time residents to vacate because they couldn't afford to pay taxes on homes they'd owned for generations. Funny. Groups of people can be relegated to living in certain parts of a city because of real estate prices, but when those who did the initial relegation change their minds those living on that land must simply pick up and go to the next sport designated for the poor. It's basically what the U.S. Government did to the Indians and what became the state of Oklahoma.

      I walked past a vacant lot which had been a known brothel five years ago until they built town homes next to it. Strangely enough the new residents rather than trying to figure out why they'd purchased property next to a whore-house simply called the cops and harassed their "neighbors" until they eventually moved.
       I glanced over at gate that a moderately handicapped man could scale with ease and atop a tiny aluminum post slightly above my head saw a cheap security camera the size of a man's wallet. I chuckled as it caught my eye and nearly blinded me with an impossibly bright red light affixed next to its tiny lens,  I gave a toothy grin and extended my middle finger and continued walking until I heard an effeminate male voice in the darkness utter a pathetically sarcastic "thank you."  I laughed and said "I love you too pal, have a good night." How miserable is your existence if you've nothing better to do at night but watch your security camera in the dark on a Tuesday night?
      I followed the ghost bus route further until I saw what looked like a warehouse for all intents and purposes from the outside which had been converted to a bar with  and gated outdoor section. I scanned the crowd inside as well as those outside who seemed to be playing some sport with a net which could have been either badminton or volleyball (it was truly of NO consequence to me) and was saddened not to have seen a single face with any pigment. There were no blacks, no Latinos and there might have been one Asian girlfriend but she was the exception.
      The exterior was gated off the same way the town-homes a block away had been. This neighborhood until seven years ago had been black and Hispanic but now new "urban" dwellers who wanted it said they lived in the city but wished to do so without having do deal with the aforementioned put up gates to insure that they wouldn't have to.  The zoo simply wouldn't be as fun an outing without cages to protect you from the animals would it.

         I trudged along pristine sidewalks that were ignored when I and people named Fuentes and Rodriguez begged for them to be resurfaced. I walked past ugly, quickly constructed buildings whose sole purpose was to drive up property taxes and was nearly blinded by the street lamps. I couldn't help but wonder where the hell were these lights when I and neighbors  asked the city for them? Ironically black rock group Living Colour's song "Open Letter to a Landlord"  (which is about a slumlord who ignores the plight of his tenants and eventually burns the building to the ground to rebuild and sell for a profit) came on my ipod.  Irony in two senses. Living Colour initially couldn't get a record deal (until discovered by Mick Jagger) because no record execs were willing to listen to a black rock group and secondly because I found myself walking across a landscape that while familiar was seeming more alien and less inviting than it had ever been when it was what many would consider a "rough" neighborhood.

       Do I have a problem with people investing in urban neighborhoods? No I have no problem with people engaging in commerce as it makes the world go round. Do I object to people building homes and living where ever they choose? Not at all.  I am however bothered by the fact that if I built a house on the same piece of land that  it would have no effect on the value of that property.  I would welcome any man or woman as my neighbor if he or she were a decent human being.  Do I take issue with my city raising my property taxes simply because non minorities choose to become my neighbors, but LOWERING my taxes when more persons of color like myself move in? You're damned right I do. A society which tells me I'm "equal" should treat me the same way it would treat anyone else rather than using buzz worlds and phrases when I choose to live in a certain area or if someone wants me out.

        Near the end of my walk I can see my car. Three buses heading in the opposite direction passed me during my evening stroll, but as my car is in site as is the bus stop where I would have disembarked, the bus for which I was initially waiting finally passed me by.  I uttered a loud epithet before approaching my car but as I did I thought about my friend Dave who lived a few blocks away. He'd told me how some bottom feeding real estate lowlife had knocked on his door and offered to give him cash for his home. The problem is he only offered him 1/4 of the homes value. Had he sold, it would have gotten a fresh coat of paint and simply have been sold to some hipster douche-bag who would have boasted about his new place "in the city" but only after getting the latest in burglar alarms and maybe a tiny security cam atop a slender aluminum pole.

"We Smarter Than Y'all Was! "

I found myself in a classroom today in which an English teacher had an "unplanned" absence. She broke one of her ankles being Superwoman on the basketball court and to that end left no assignment for her kids.  I won't call myself a writer as I don't get paid for it, but I do pride myself in my ability to put sentences together. I gave myself five minutes to think and came up with a writing prompt which I thought wouldn't prove too daunting to a ninth grade English class. The prompt?

"The richest people in the world have offered you a charge card which gives you access to ALL their money for one week. In that week you can spend as much of their money as you can, but you agree that at the end of that week to be executed on live television. There are conditions. You can't simply GIVE their money away. You have to use it to buy things (no you can't BUY a cashiers check for a trillion and give it to your family) but the things can be bought and given away. You can't assassinate the people whose money you're spending and you can't buy your life back.  Would you take it? Explain your answer in detail."

That was the assignment. When invariably asked "How long it gotta be?" I responded "How long does it take you to express yourself? How long does it take for you to evaluate an ethical dilemma? Give me your answer and explain your answer as best you can." Some students took the ball and ran with it. I got some well thought out responses, but I also got a plethora of blank pages and the odd paper with two or three sentences as a response.

One student handed in a two sentence reply. The grammar was horrific, the punctuation was non existent and the subject verb agreement was painful. I looked at the paper and at him and asked: "Is this all you want to say?"
"YEAH!" He replied angrily. "What I'm supposed to do now?"
"Well, read and write down in your reading log." Students are given reading diaries to indicate what their reading and their degree of understanding of the materials. He did that for a few minutes then asked to go to the library. I asked why and was informed that he was "Bored." I pointed out that boredom was part of life and if he was truly bored to read something. He bellowed "I don't come to school ta mutha-fuckin' READ!" I reminded him that he was in an English class and the better part of what we did in English classes was reading and told him not to swear when speaking to me."

One of his classmates chimed in. "We aint here to read. We here to PASS!" I mentioned that every class required some reading and they were in school to learn and that learning was done quite often by reading. "Hell naw!" the student answered "We just gotta pass. We aint gotta read nothin'!"  He then stormed across the room saying "Y'all act like school was so much harder when y'all went through it. All y'all was doin' was READIN' shit. Fuck it! We smarter than y'all was cause we take more tests than y'all did! " His classmates emphatically agreed.

Part of me wanted to laugh in his face for being so ignorant, another part of my wanted to cry because he and his brethren HONESTLY believe what he said to be the truth. He's a ninth grader who reads at maybe a 5th grade level.  His vocabulary  is minuscule and he sincerely believes that not only is he my intellectual superior, but that his superiority is borne of having to take "more tests" and that all he has to do in school is "pass." He made this declaration with such conviction that I didn't doubt his sincerity.
     He reminded me of a chihuahua restrained by a leash as he charges a rottweiler.

I write this piece NOT to ridicule this child as he's obviously NOT the only one, but rather to provide those of you who are NOT in a classroom with a window into what we have to deal with in the course of our day. Children are given low standards from elementary school and are told that "good enough" is all that's expected of them.  You needn't make the honor roll, you need only "pass."  They spend a third of the school year either testing or preparing to be tested and they honestly believe that these tests accurately measure their intellect and make them as smart (if not smarter) than those attempting to teach them.
        Giving students a test once a year and using that test as a bench mark for student progress on the surface isn't a bad idea, but when you reach the point where you've created a culture of quasi-professional test takers whose only education was how to take a test you've damned an entire nation and began the path to the Idiocracy of which Mike Judge wrote.

Terrorist or Traitor? Let's say both but for legal reasons...

On November 5, 2009 United States Army Major, Medical Doctor and Clinical Psychiatrist Nadiq Hassan was on post at his duty station at Fort Hood in Texas, but that day he wasn't going to his office to treat soldiers on their way home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  His views of the United States of America, U.S. Foreign policy and the very army in which he served had slowly transformed into something ugly and twisted.  On that day Major Hassan killed 13 fellow soldiers and injured 30 more.
      He was shot and taken into custody and when he was the debate.  Many who either dislike or distrust the Islamic faith used Hassan and this incident to illustrate their feelings about Islam.   Western powers don't like admitting this, but we were essential in the creation of the autocracies of the middle east. It was a British model first tested in India by the East India Corporation.  Imperialism couldn't simply be entering a country raising your flag and claiming to be in charge, it required smoke and mirrors. There had to be an "independent country" and you had to be the great foreign benefactor. It was simple, find a random schmuck put him in an ornate palace with lots of servants and have him APPEAR to be running the country by issuing the occasional edict provided he passed no laws unfriendly to the great foreign 'benefactors' who were there to become rich while exploiting the country.
          In India the model failed because the British put the leader on an allowance and when he died his son was told to fend for himself which bred the seeds of rebellion. In the post colonial world the British realized the days of the East India Company were over. The best way to continue to get rich from the middle east was to allow them to govern themselves and to let whomever they put in charge become INCREDIBLY rich in the process. Wealthy men want to protect their wealth and absolute rulers became the norm in the middle east. What is the advantage to dealing with an autocrat? No pesky legislatures to deal with because one man's word IS law.
         The problem being that these regions tend to be unstable. The people realize they live in a dictatorship and look at where the dictator gets his money and blame the wealthy western nations who in their minds put the guy in place. How does this relate to Major Hassan? I'll get back to that in a second. The middle east changed forever when in 1979 a group of Islamic fundamentalist overthrew the Shah of Iran a strongman whose father was put in place by the British who was able to keep his father's throne after the CIA helped to oust an attempt at democracy in the 1950s. Yes the CIA ousted a DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED GOVERNMENT IN IRAN to put the Shah back in charge.
        The Iranian revolution and the birth of the group the American CIA funded Mujahadin in Afghanistan after the Russians invaded created anti western fervor that grew.

         Radical Islamic clerics see any non Muslims in the middle east as an affront and those within their respective governments who allow it as traitorous. The war in Afghanistan was meant to hunt down the Al Quaida network which sprang from the Mujahadin we created after they cowardly attacked us on September 11th.  The war in Iraq supposedly was about "Weapons of mass destruction" which never actually existed or which many claimed were destroyed or simply vanished into thin air. After no weapons were found, then president George W. Bush claimed the war "was never about finding weapons but about freeing the Iraqi people."
         While fighting a war on two fronts we sent soldiers on multiple tours of duty in BOTH theatres. Combat plays havoc on the psyche of those who fight wars and those men and women have access to medical and psychiatric care.  Enter Major Hassan.
        
           Hassan spent time at Walter Reed Army hospital before being sent to the middle east and then to Fort Hood. Somewhere along the way he stopped seeing enemy combatants and saw a people with which he identified. The army should have removed him when this presented itself and didn't.
            Combat veterans I know have told me that they felt they had to dehumanize their enemy. If they considered those whom they fought human it made it difficult to do their jobs. A friend of mine who fought in Vietnam said he never killed a single "person" in Vietnam. He killed well armed "animals" who were attempting to kill him.  Hearing this on a daily basis probably made Hassan develop an us/them mentality. Rather than remembering that he was an American Army Officer he regressed to being one of a handful of Muslims in the neighborhood where he grew up. Rather than being an intelligent decorated field grade officer he was that guy in college who took flack about the ENTIRE Arab world whenever there was a terrorist action anywhere.
         At the end of the day Major Nadiq Hassan decided he was one of the "them" that we created and opened fire on US.

        Many wish to call Hassan a traitor and I am among them. You respect your uniform and the others who wear it ESPECIALLY if you are supposed to be a leader of troops. SOME call him a terrorist and TECHNICALLY he is. Should he be treated as one? I don't think so. Before anyone gets pissed at me here's why.  Terrorist belong to given groups and organizations. If we declared Hassan a "terrorist" we have to treat him under the Geneva accords and possibly hand him over to some terrorist organization which would call him some kind of hero. By declaring him a traitor (as we did) we were able to prosecute him under the fullest extent of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. What does that mean? As a service member the constitution does NOT apply to you the UCMJ does. People have been prosecuted under the UCMJ for "Assaulting a superior officer with a glass of kool aide".  As a document the UCMJ is incredibly unfair to those being prosecuted to the point where most being court marshalled opt to get civilian lawyers,
         Major Nadiq Hassan didn't deserve a "fair" trial that a terrorist would have gotten. He deserved the stacked deck that only a military court marshall would provide. As a terrorist he MIGHT have gotten life imprisonment. The penalty for treason in time of war for service members in a time of war is death by hanging or firing squad.  Hassan as a terrorist would have a chance at being a free man, Hassan as a traitor to the Uniform and flag of the United States of America will get a firing squad.

Black Dynamite examines "white" slavery

Martial arts actor Michael Jai White elected to produce a film in 2010. The genre he selected was comedy and was a parody of 1970s blacksploitation films that made stars of Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree, Jim Brown, Rudy Ray Moore & Fred Williamson.  The film was entitled "Black Dynamite" and it follows a larger than life John Shaft-like detective whose given name is Black Dynamite who seemed to be the embodiment of every "positive" black male macho stereo-type.
         The films release was limited and its box office receipts resulted in it breaking even, but it became a cult classic.  Someone at The Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" division thought Dynamite should be an animated series and it became an unlikely hit. Dynamite is still a detective, ladies man and all around tough guy, but in the animated series he owns and operates a combination bordello and orphanage which he calls the "whore-phanage."

        The series pokes fun at people and events which were at the peak of their popularity in the 70s and thus far Elvis Presley, Richard Pryor, O.J. Simpson and young Michael Jackson have been fair game. The most recent episode centered around the black community in which Dynamite lives viewing Alex Haley's Roots when it airs on TV, becoming enraged at the white community as a whole and then overthowing and enslaving them including a young Woody Allen whom Dynamite calls a "Child molester lookin' mutha-f#cka."
      Dynamite is initially indifferent towards slavery but after running over runaway slave Woody Allen in his Cadillac and preparing to pummel him for scratching his paint when  he allowed himself to get hit, Dynamite changes his point of view then works to emancipate the white slaves.
     Woody Allen being the agitator tells the black community that he (and others) simply can't go back to Beverly Hills (or Beverly Hills Adjacent) as they're now PART of the black community and he and his fellow former slaves take over Roscoe's Chicken and waffles while clad in dashikis. The episode ends with a speech from black Dynamite where he threatens EVERYONE of every race and all simply go home.

            The episode made me think about the nature of slavery, not just the AMERICAN institution, but slavery in general. Americans didn't INVENT the concept of owning another human being. One would think that for as long as man has existed and figured out that he could take from his fellow man slavery has been alive and well.  Slave and master's roles could be decided by race, religion, gender or geographic location.
            What dawned on me while pondering the allegory which was an adult cartoon airing at 9:30 on a Saturday evening was that as long as there have been slaves (and they still exist) is that there have always been three groups of non slaves in every society which permitted it. 1. Slave owners who often owned them for convenience or essentially as livestock 2. Those indifferent to slaves and slave owners and 3. Those opposed to the institution for one reason or another.

     The question I asked myself was this: Could I have owned slaves in any scenario?  As the descendant of slaves my short answer is "no," but I also grew up reading about how horrible an institution it was and how generations of fear based laws came into existence to insure that former slaves and their descendants would still be treated like a servant class.
    What if I had grown up in a privileged family in which owning another person was as common as having a cup of coffee with breakfast, would I have the same view?  What if I were the descendant of some hard working immigrant who didn't care one way or another about the "peculiar institution" (as one American called it) and simply saw anyone who brought up it's history as either a malcontent or a whiner?

      The fact of the matter is that most Americans regardless of their race, have no idea how they would feel about the "peculiar institution" if they had been born in 1840 and were either slave or master.  Slavery in the Caribbean was MUCH worse than it was here in the United States, as slaves in the Islands were literally worked to death, but that's not to say that southern plantations were resorts where slaves sat by the side of olympic sized pools being waited on hand and foot.
      I'm of the opinion that a few things need to happen. We Americans need to acknowledge the fact slavery will always be the elephant in the room.  We shouldn't attempt to erase it from history books or even water it down, but at the same time we shouldn't spend the next century acting as if it all transpired yesterday.
     The descendants of the enslaved, their masters the indifferent and those who opposed another person being owned need to stand up to the institution where it still exist. Reverend Rob Parsley raises money to go into Africa and purchase the freedom of those still enslaved. Singer Ricky Martin fights tirelessly to end human trafficking around the world.  Back to the slave owner question. Living in the 21st century it's easy to say that one wouldn't do something as abhorrent as owning another person, but 19th century morality could use biblical scripture to justify it.  At the end of the day we'd all like to think we'd easily say "no" but were we to go back in time, we'd learn that most who owned other people considered themselves good "Christians", "Muslims" or whatever faith they belonged to. For the record not having skin the color or mahogany or ebony it would be safe to assume I can see both slave and master in my own family tree so I'd have little rational choices other than to attempt to see the issue from as many  points of view as possible.

     One wishes such a complicated issue could be solved in 30 minutes by a cool ladies man with a bad attitude and a 44 magnum who need only threaten to kick the butfs of those who allowed themselves to be devoid of empathy or simply allowed themselves to be awash in ignorance.  TV always makes it look so easy doesn't it?
    

Geneva Dejean Riggs: Civil Rights Pioneer?

In the summer of 1989, I was going though the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego California. We were going through the second phase of training when I was pulled off a training exercise, shoved into the back of a hummer and transported to the rear where I was ordered to call my mother from a pay phone. When I did, I heard my mom hit me with the sad news that her mother, my grandmother had passed away. I was devastated.  Mamí as we called her was the Riggs family matriarch. She was a bespectacled, slender, chain smoking freak of nature who had hearing so acute that most bats envied her. She had a dry sarcastic wit, which could make almost ANYTHING sound funny and was possibly the best cook I've ever known and you had better stay out of her kitchen if you knew what was good for you.
         When Geneva Dejean was born in Opelousas, Louisiana in the 20s she had two things going against her. She was black and a woman back when neither blacks nor women had any voice at all. What's more, she was the second daughter of a beautiful black woman and a white man at a time when persons of mixed race (male or female) were treated as pariahs by both the black AND white communities.  She met and married a man named Alvin Riggs and raised a big family which included an adorable daughter with a funny voice named Lee Etta who would eventually have five children of her own including myself.
         For reasons I'll never quite understand the Department of defense & Marine Corps in their infinite wisdom would not allow me to attend Mamí's funeral. This made the loss seem that much worse.

       I didn't know this until a few days ago but paying last respects to Mamí changed the HISTORY of small town of Church Point, Louisiana.  My mother had made Mamí's arrangements years earlier with a mortician in Church Point. Contracts had been signed, fees had been paid and all had been taken care of, at least that's what any sane person would have assumed; however, the good people at the mortuary informed the grieving children of Geneva Dejean Riggs, widow of Alvin Riggs that their mother could not be interred at their facility because she was "colored." My mother, aunts and uncles were then informed that "colored" funerals were handled by the mortuary near the old Handy place.
      
      Those who have met my mother describe her as an unassuming, very humble person. She is as sweet as a peach cobbler unless you're stupid enough to make her mad and unfortunately the good people at the un-named funeral home did precisely that.  My mother can be called many things, but I've never heard the time shrieking violet used to describe her. When you mess with those she loves mom digs in her heels and you're in for one hell of a fight.
      Over the course of two days mom battled an idiot mortician and his son, mentioned getting the NAACP and their lawyers to stop by, threatened to call the Louisiana Attorney General AND the State Licensing board of morticians to review his license and at the end of all of that she reminded him that unless he was ready to go outside and put up "Whites Only" and "Coloreds Need Not Apply" signs outside he needed to look at a calendar to remind him that it was 1989 and not 1959.

         The mortician yelled, screamed and nearly had a small heart attack but in the end relented.
So it came to pass that Geneva Dejean Riggs who grew up and spent the better part of her life being told to use the rear entrances, who was relegated to using certain water fountains and public facilities because of the color of her skin was the first person of color (well technically bi-racial person) interred in Church Point, Louisiana at a mortician who had previously served an exclusively white clientele.  All the while this was happening I was flat on my back in California receiving intravenous fluids and some beautiful medications to help me rest and recuperate from dehydration I suffered in the desert,  oblivious to the events in the part of the world which I frequently call "The ancestral homeland".
         I've always respected my mother, she's a person of character and if there is any good in me she most certainly is responsible for it.  Being a humble person mom waited more than 20 years to tell me of those events and while I didn't think it POSSIBLE my already towering respect for my mother grew.

      Some would have been content to have had the wake and services some place else and would have gone away threatening a lawsuit that would have never materialized, but my mom fought and by doing so gave Mamí the dignity and respect that she had been denied so many times in her lifetime by men and women who had no reason save the color of her skin.
      When I remember my grandmother the first thing that came to mind was a gumbo recipe which I try to emulate each time I'm standing over a cast iron skillet attempting to re-create her roux. I remember a woman who woke up in the morning and lit a cigarette on her stove and seemed to have one dangling from her lip for the rest of the day. I remember a woman with a quick, dry sarcastic wit who could always quickly clown me, my cousins Darnell, Junior, Terry & Jason with impeccable timing and relative ease, and NOW I'll remember a civil rights pioneer.
        She wasn't told to go to the back of a bus, but she forever changed the small town in which she had quietly lived her life and for that I'm even more proud to be her grandson. Happy Mother's day Mamí.

Love,
          Tiny

Imortality...but at what cost?

There is an episode of an old science fiction TV show in which a pool hustler racks his brain coming to terms with the fact that he will never be as great as his idol who has passed on. He wishes he could play just one game against his idol to prove his worth. At that his idol walks into the pool hall and plays him for the highest stakes of all. Those stakes? Immortality.  A prophet who may or may not have been the son of God (depending on your religion) was scourged and crucified for it but to the average man it remains elusive.

        Desi Arnaz was a Cuban bandleader in the 1940s who married a redheaded actress/model and comedienne named Lucile Ball. He would have died unknown to all but diehard fans of samba music were it not for the fact that someone offered his wife a TV show in the 50s.  In those days television programs were live but many commercials were filmed to be aired between acts of the show and between shows. Desi got the brilliant idea of filming television shows so that they could be aired at later times. He also had the idea of putting multiple cameras on the floor of a soundstage to capture the action from several angles.
       In other words he invented multiple camera shoots and the television re-run and became a wealthy man in the process. Ask anyone under 30 who he is and most won't even know that he was on a tv show much less what he did. In his lifetime he was rich and famous and but as the generation who remember "I Love Lucy" (the show he did with his wife Lucile Ball) age and die off eventually so will he.
           Does it matter in the end? Desi could wind up like a brilliant English Business man who went from being a humble plumber to being knighted. He didn't invent the flush toilet, another Englishman by the name of John Harrington did that, BUT this man got a contract from the British Royal family to modernize the plumbing in Buckingham Palace and a great deal of London's sewer system. His name has become a crude euphemism for a place to use the toilet. While it's doubtful that Desi Arnaz name will ever become a verb Sir Thomas Crapper now belongs to the ages.

          If you're wondering what happened in out pool game. The legend defeats the challenger and the challenger resigns his fate and is prepared to go to the great hereafter. His idol laughs and tells him essentially  No, you don't die today, but you will and your name will die with you. Had you beaten me you would have lived forever.