Why

Mom says the first word I ever spoke was “why.”

I wondered why the sky was blue

And why the rain would change the smell of air.

If money didn’t grow on trees, why not?

Why boys can stand to pee but I cannot?

And why can’t babies talk when they are born?

I cried and asked her why some girls hated me

When nothing I had done deserved their ire.

And when my classmates had to go across the world

To fight and kill or die themselves, I asked her why.

Then… why couldn’t I?

If there’s a God, why does he let so many people starve?

And why do people think my brown skin stinks?

That is what they think, right?

“Ours is not to reason why,

Ours is just to do or die.”

She’d quote Lord Tennyson, trying to explain.

I would listen raptly, pause and think;

Then look up at her, sincere as I could be:

“But, why?”

 Why are lettuce and watermelon never found in freezers?

Why do people cry, but animals do not?

Why can’t people live whichever way they choose

Without being judged and criticized and ostracized?

Why does black mean bad while white means pure?

Who says it’s better to be in love than not?

And why, when we ARE in love, does it seldom last?

Photo by moi 

Killer Trees

The storm that refuses to die had its way with Metro Atlanta last night and early this morning.   We lost three of our citizens last night when they were fatally injured by falling trees.  The wind howled and the rain pummeled the parched ground so fast that many cars in certain low areas of the city found themselves windshield deep in water with nowhere to flow.

I have lived in Atlanta for more than 18 years now.  We have our issues here; growing violent crime and gang activity, rampant  homelessness, a weaker than average economy in an era of weak economies, and strange weather patterns that are tending to swing from extreme cold to extreme heat.  None of those cause me as much fear as the thick canopy of towering trees that shade our strikingly beautiful neighborhoods.

 

This century old oak dwarfs my car and stands guard outside my front door.  It is roughly 14 feet in circumference and 60 feet tall.

From National Geographic:  "For a sprawling city with the nation’s ninth-largest metro area, Atlanta is surprisingly lush with trees—magnolias,dogwoods, Southern pines, and magnificent oaks."

Current estimates state that Atlanta’s tree coverage stands at 36%, the highest for all major cities in the country.  Without this canopy, the relentless summertime heat would be beyond bearable and our ever-growing smog would choke us all to death.

 This elegant elm stands the same 60 feet tall directly opposite the oak pictured above.  Oaks to the right of me, elms to the left...

But here’s the rub.  In 1974 the tree canopy sat at roughly 48%.  Since then there has been an assault on the canopy from heavy rains, drought, aged forests, new pests, and urban construction.  The trees that are left standing have been significantly weakened from these assaults, making them far more likely to have roots more shallow than they should be to carry the massive weight and limbs less able to support themselves without snapping spontaneously, wind or no wind.

It is impossible to walk outside my door without passing under a giant tree, much less walk the neighborhood without concern.  Yesterday afternoon two 61-year-old best friends were heading home from work in a Mazda Miata, one of those spiffy little two-seat convertibles.  Reports say there was a loud snap before a huge old tree fell squarely on their car, killing them both instantly.

A 19-year-old was in his driveway last evening attempting to clear a fallen tree that was blocking access to the garage when he was struck and killed instantly by a second tree. 

My dog and I have been walking in the neighborhood on a bright sunny day, turn a corner and encounter a twenty-foot-long dead tree limb blocking the sidewalk.  When did that happen?  Was it just seconds before we turned the corner?  What if I hadn’t allowed Coqui to sniff around that bush for as long as I did? 

Men like to joke about how unpredictable we women can be.  I’m pretty sure it was a man who assigned the female gender to Mother Nature for exactly the same reason.  It is certainly true that for every thing of great beauty and utility we have been given, there is a dangerous side of it that can be equally profound.   It is the way of the world.

So, yes, I stay home when there is a threat of wind and rain, if I can.  But when I can’t I strive to shelve my apprehension and surrender to the cosmos.  Que será sera.

 Photos by L

Schmaltz in the Afternoon

You know the type of person who never wants to find herself in the dark about anything other people are discussing?  I’m like that.  Some might unkindly characterize me as a know-it-all, but I chose to think of myself as up to speed on current events.

Which is why I tuned in yesterday to Oprah’s last (if only…) hurrah, the end of her 25-year stranglehold on daytime talk television.  When I heard she was to be her own last guest, I felt my eyes rolling up into the heavens at the same time my stomach did a cartwheel.  Who else, I’m sure she asked herself, would have the stature, the wisdom or the charisma to enrapture an audience of billions for a solid hour? 

So, yes, I tuned in at 4 p.m. Wednesday and saw the Big O take the stage in her Pepto Bismol pink sheath, tailored perfectly to her waspish waist and oh-so-womanly hips.  The soon-to-be Professor Emeritus of All Things Human did not sit with her $900 Christian Louboutin pumps’ red soles carefully pointed at the camera this time. No, she was about to bestow upon her audience the priceless Gospel According to O, and that required her to hit her mark at the center of the stage and stay there, hand glued to one hip.

Pearls of Oprah wisdom spewed forth.  Her delivery style was an amalgam of her mentor Maya Angelou, Rev. Billy Graham, Wanda Sykes, Barack Obama and Minnie Pearl.   It was all about thanks, she said at the beginning.  What she didn’t say was exactly who was thanking whom.  Were we, her loyal subjects there to thank her for hanging in for 25 years, so that we could study at her knees?  Or was she there to thank us for enduring her smarmy antics for all that time?

She told us we and The Oprah Winfrey Show were the loves of her life.  That must have really gone over well with Stedman Graham, her domestic partner for most of those years, who was sitting in the audience.  She gave instructions on how to become…well, her.  Fully actualized, spiritually fulfilled and “paying it forward.”  What she didn’t go into was how to amass her $2 billion fortune.  I suppose that would have taken longer than she had.

When she left the stage, I thought I was through and that she was finally gone. After all, the screen faded to black.  But back up it came, with Oprah stepping down into the audience to be greeted by the ever-tall, ever-handsome Stedman, who she dutifully embraced and kissed, then dismissed for the next fawning audience member. 

Hundreds of Harpo Studio employees lined the hallways, the stairways and the airways as she passed, shouting “We did it!” in that tiresome Oprah way she has.   Finally, mercifully, it was just her and one of her cocker spaniels smooching.  The longest goodbye in the history of mankind was over.

I wonder where she’ll pop up next.  Democratic National Convention?

 Photo from Oprah.com

 

 

 

 

Joplin’s Survivors Have a Rougher Road Ahead Than Some Know

 

The degree of death and destruction in the city of Joplin, Missouri has some media people speculating about the amount of time it will take for the citizens to recover.  That discussion is usually geared to the rebuilding aspect of recovery, the time and resources it will take to restore the physical elements.

My thoughts went immediately to the people I see wandering zombie-like among the detritus left by a tornado of historic proportions.  While the death toll climbs, so does the trauma experienced by those who rode out the storm and managed to survive.  The recovery for them will take years as they will most assuredly suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

It has been said that winning a lottery isn’t always a total blessing.  All too often the elation felt upon learning of one’s win is soon replaced by headaches on a grander scale than could ever be imagined.  

I won a lottery once, but it wasn’t for piles of cash.  It was in 1989, when I was working in San Francisco.  The San Francisco Giants were meeting up with the mob across the Bay, the Oakland As.  The All Bay Area World Series would be played entirely “at home” for us, so I entered the ticket lottery with little hope of breaking my personal losing streak.  When I actually won, I was not only beside myself with excitement, but also the object of sudden affection from friends I hadn’t known I had the day before.

On October 17, 1989 my friend and co-worker Kathi was the beneficiary of my ticket largesse.  We took a city bus to what was then called Candlestick Park, made our way to our seats in the upper deck and settled in.  We decided to go to the concession stand before the game started.  I didn’t want to miss one pitch of the game.  When I stood up from my seat I saw that most of the 60,000 or so seats in the stadium were already filled, the crowd buzzing in anticipation.  

“This would be a terrible time to have an earthquake,” I said to Kathi.  She agreed and looked around. It was 80º and muggy.  Earthquake weather.

We were standing in a hot dog line not five minutes later when it started.  I felt suddenly nauseated before I became aware of the floor moving beneath my feet.  The Loma Prieta Earthquake began and it rumbled violently for nearly 20 seconds that felt like forever.  Grown men were screaming and so was I.  I was sure I was going to die and my thoughts went immediately to my college-aged son who was not with me.  Then I prayed for a swift and relatively painless death.  It was 5:04 p.m.

Instead of dying, I was in for a harrowing and dangerous journey from the darkened and strangely silent stadium to my home in the East Bay.  The entire city was dark, except for the flames in the distance.  The sound of sirens began to pierce the silence eventually.  Street gangs filled the streets to take advantage of the darkness.  Someone fired a bullet into the side of the NBC-TV luxury bus on which we had finagled a ride.  When we reached downtown San Francisco, we had to walk in the blindness to find our generator-powered office lobby.  After commandeering a company fleet car, I had to drive some 70 miles out of my way because the Bay Bridge, my normal span across the frigid bay, had collapsed during the temblor.  I arrived home at 1:30 a.m. to find my son pacing the floor with worry.  He was shaken but fine and the house was intact.  I had been crying off and on for more than eight hours straight, but now I sobbed with relief.

For two solid months, I couldn’t utter a single word without a trembling voice.  I suffered bouts of uncontrollable and unpredictable crying and I never wanted to leave the house.  Eventually, the symptoms subsided and I thought I was back to normal.  However, I have never since entered a stadium of any kind without wondering if something horrible would happen while I was there. 

All was well until the 1996 Summer Olympic Games.  By then I had relocated to Atlanta and was working again in AT&T Public Relations.  Although my specialty was Community Relations, all PR employees were required to staff the press room at the AT+T sponsored Global Olympic Village.  I had just completed a 12-hour shift in the stifling heat of the un-air-conditioned lower level offices when Eric Rudolph detonated the nail bomb that killed and maimed people who were standing in front of the stage where ribbon ceremonies were held.  I had already left the area and was not aware of the bombing until I got home.

As if someone pushed a button, every symptom of PTSD I had suffered in the aftermath of the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco descended at once.  The trembling voice, the stammering, the tears and the fear.  It was seven years after the fact. 

If my own experience with disaster is any indication, the people of Joplin will need lots of help to not only rebuild the city itself, but also to return to some semblance of their former selves.  I feel for them deeply.

Photo by Ryan Harper for Christian Post

From a Different Point of View

 

She gave me the name Coquette.  I thought that was kinda cute, even though I had no idea what it meant.  I heard Her telling somebody it was the perfect name for me because I was such a tease.  See, I’m not too keen on people putting their filthy hands on my head, so I always back away.  I mean, who knows where those hands have been?

When She picked me out of my litter, I was so happy.  I had done everything a puppy of 12 weeks of age knows to do to attract Her attention.  I felt Her insides go all mushy when I jumped onto the couch and snuggled against Her left thigh.  That turned out to be a good move, I must say.

I answer to Coqui because She has never once called me by my whole name.  Humans are funny people.  I heard Her tell Her friend She had thought for weeks about what to name me.  So what does She do?  She immediately shortens it.   If She was going to do that, why didn’t She just call me Rex or Fido?  Probably because I’m a bitch.

I’m nine years old now.  Apparently that makes me a senior citizen in dog years, but I still feel pretty much like a pup.  Some days I get a little sore in the joints, but since She started giving me those special treats with gluc… -- well, whatever it is – that hasn’t been a problem.  I do take a lot of naps, though.  Seems like I just can’t get enough shuteye.

I walk Her twice a day most of the time.  I like long walks.  She usually goes along with that, unless it’s raining or Her foot is hurting Her.  That foot does give Her fits.  I feel pretty bad about that foot, ‘cuz She broke it when I was walking Her about five years ago.  Talk about your freak accidents.  It was like that tree root just crept out onto the sidewalk and tripped Her backwards.

She must really love me a lot, because I am spoiled rotten.  She spends a lot of those green pieces of paper at Petsmart and everything She buys there is for me.  I get ice cubes in my water, too.  I guess you could say I have trained Her pretty well.  It wasn’t easy, but She finally got the hang of it.

My favorite thing to do is lie on the couch and watch Her.  I don’t know how to laugh, but if I did I would be laughing my tail off.  She forgets what She’s doing a lot so She just stands in the middle of the floor talking to Herself.

“What was I getting ready to do?”  She says out loud.  Like I know?!

I cock my head politely so She thinks I care about what She’s saying.  What I’m really thinking is “You know you are pathetic, right?”

I don’t like it when She doesn’t take me with Her when She leaves the house.  Just to make sure She doesn’t sneak out without me, I follow Her wherever She goes.  I don’t know why, but sometimes She seems to get fed up with that.  She calls me The White Shadow (just because I’m white, I guess) and orders me to lie down and stay there.  I make Her feel bad by laying on my chin and gazing up at Her with my big brown eyes.  It always works.

I have no idea what She would do without me around to keep Her company.  She sits on the couch for hours on end staring at that thing with the buttons She pushes with Her fingers.  I have to bark at Her sometimes just to remind Her it’s time to eat.  I don’t know what She is staring at, but every once in a while She will chuckle or even laugh out loud.  That’s the same thing She does when I do my tricks to try to attract Her attention away from that puter or whatever She calls it.  She’s so cute when She does that!

Life is pretty good for us.  The only time I really get upset with Her is when She takes me to see that guy with the white coat.  I haven’t even been bad, but this guy always sticks me with something sharp.  It’s not in my nature to snarl and bite, so I just cry.  It doesn’t hurt all that much, but She always gives me extra hugs and treats when I cry, so why not? 
 
All in all, I think I made an excellent choice when I picked Her.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to see a dog about a man.

The Surprising History of My Home Town

The thing about a home town is its randomness.  I could just as easily have been born to a different family in a different city in a different country. Sometimes I think about how lucky I was to be born me instead of, say, the unwanted child of a Romanian peasant or one of the street kids of Rio de Janeiro or even the kid three doors down the block whose parents hated him for being gay.

The village I was born in was Maywood, Illinois.  Well, the hospital my mother went to to deliver me was in Melrose Park, Illinois, the adjacent Chicago suburb notorious for its connection to The Mob, but our home was in Maywood.  It’s a good thing I learned to love the place, because, just like everybody else, I had no say in the matter.   One day I simply became aware of my surroundings and was taught to recite my address.  For the longest time, I believed the 18 mile distance between our house and the Chicago Loop was about as far as one could travel in one day, it was so far.

This week, sixty-six years later, I received from my cousin a link to a large collection of vintage historical photographs posted by a Facebook friend who also grew up in Maywood.  Swells of nostalgia washed over me like a Maui surfer’s dream wave as I moved from picture to picture.  They drew me in and captured my attention for hours at the end of which I had learned more about my hometown then I had ever thought to ask.

The Village of Maywood is an Illinois home-rule corporation that was organized on October 22, 1881. The Village is named for May, the deceased daughter of Colonel William T. Nichols, Maywood's founder.  Colonel Nichols was a State Representative and Senator from Rutland County, Vermont.  He served with the Vermont Volunteers during the Civil War.  In 1868, Colonel Nichols and six other men came to Illinois from Vermont and formed the Maywood Company, which developed the Village.[1]

Surrounded by large parcels of farmland, the Maywood Company constructed homes typical of the times:  American Foursquare, some embellished with a few touches from the by-then-dated Victorian style.

 Figure 1: The third house built in Maywood in 1870 still stands today and is occupied by a local minister. (Vintage-Historic photos from Celia Elizabeth Leon-Mason's collection)
 
Many of Maywood’s buildings were done by prominent “Prairie School” architects of the time including William Drummond, John S. Van Bergen, Isabel Roberts, Thomas E. Talmadge, Vernon S. Watson and the much beloved Frank Lloyd Wright, who lived in the neighboring Village of Oak Park, a little more than 5 miles away.  Later I will reveal a recent discovery about the surprising connection between Wright and my very own family.

Figure 2 Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park home (Wikipedia)

 In 1887 my great grandparents, Iva and Amanda Hurst bought a home on 13^th Avenue in Maywood.  Although Iva was from England, he was a descendant of a Moor and therefore considered by Americans to be Negro.  At the time there were only two or three blocks in the village designated for black newcomers, but the village has always prized its early history of diversity in a thoroughly segregated Chicago and vicinity.  Great Grandmother Amanda, also from England, was Caucasian, but her choice of husband restricted her movements within Maywood society to the same small area . 

The Hursts became known as The First Black Family of the Village of Maywood and were honored as such at a recent gala.

  Figure 3: Amanda Croucher Hurst, my great grandmother

It is easy to understand how difficult it would be for any descendant of Iva and Amanda to fly under the radar in the neighborhood.  "You're a Hurst, aren't you?" was a frequent question from people who already knew the answer.  It was both a blessing and a curse, although I have always been profoundly proud of our history.  The longevity of our residency gave us status with both white and black residents who had been around for similar lengths of time.  Although Maywood grew to a whopping 27,000 residents over the years, back in my day everybody knew everybody else or knew someone who did.

The proverbial unlocked doors and the storied discipline from the handiest mom or dad in the block were all absolutely true for us.  If Mrs. Foster caught one of the kids in my family outside misbehaving in some way, our parents would know about it before we could get home.

We were Catholic, so for a lot of reasons I have gone into in other posts, the Hurst children (no matter that my sister and I had a different last name) all went to the only local Catholic school to which we were welcome.  We were still among a very few black kids enrolled; I can name them all from memory.

                                                

Figure 4: St. James Catholic Church and School,

where the nuns laid my educational foundation  

(Vintage-Historic photos from Celia Elizabeth Leon-Mason's collection)

This picture of St. James must have been taken years after I graduated in 1958 because the infamous fire chute is missing.  A cylindrical metal silo was stuck to the right side of the building.  It became the source of utter terror for many of us, including me.  Inside was slick like a well-maintained playground slide and was, of neccessity, spiraled for emergency exits.  The sound of the fire drill bell struck me dumb with fear.  I never emerged at the bottom without a friction burn on one or more parts of my body.

Oddly enough, the only photograph (left) of a similar contraption I found on the Internet happens to be one that Atlanta's Piedmont hospital had installed back in the same period.

 Figure 5: Proviso Township High in 1951.  It looked exactly the same in 1958 when I started my Freshman year.  (Vintage-Historic photos from Celia Elizabeth Leon-Mason's collection)

Both my mother and my grandfather attended the same high school we did.  Imagine walking into a school with 4,000 students and scores of teachers and having one of those teachers ask "Aren't you a Hurst?"  Aaarrggh!  It never ended until I left town forever.

I graduated in 1962 after a wonderful four years of intense instruction and a crammed social calendar.  It would be only five years later, after I had graduated from college and moved to Milwaukee, that I would pick up a Time magazine and read of violent full-scale race riots in those hallowed halls.   I cried.  My town, which I once couldn't wait to escape because it was so "square", had been transformed in five years time to a replica of the notorious West Side of Chicago, thanks to a combination of white flight and upward mobility on the parts of African American families seeking a better environment than the gang-infested streets of the city. 

There is only one member of the Hurst clan living in Maywood today.  My mother's first cousin, Sidney Hurst and his descendants have never left.  Cousin Sid is the same age as my mother: 86.  Mama lives in Matteson, IL now and her brother and his family live in Colorado.  But before they left, he and my aunt and my cousins lived in this Maywood home:

 Figure 6:  Current view from Google maps.  Sadly, the house has been painted in a way incompatible with its legacy. 

Before the current owners made the regrettable decision to paint the burgundy red brick white, the lines and layout of that house always made us suspect it had been designed by one of the renowned architects of the Prairie School.  Last year a neighbor called my Uncle to give him the long sought after news:  it has been confirmed that this house was designed and built by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright.  It is now listed in the historical register.

There is one more source of intense pride and sorrow for all residents of  Maywood.

Maywood was the home of the 33rd Tank Company, Illinois National Guard (Company B) which was organized on May 3, 1929 with the purpose of training men for combat. On November 25, 1940, 122 men of Company B were inducted into active service to become part of the famous 192nd Tank Battalion, which fought in the Philippine Islands during World War II.  The unit became part of the notorious "Bataan Death March" in April 1942, a horror that was later called a Japanese War Crime.  Only 41 men returned to Maywood alive.


In honor of their sacrifice, Bataan Day Parades were held in Maywood on the Second Sunday in September from 1942 to 1987.  As a member of the Proviso High School majorette squad, I had the honor of marching in that parade from 1959 through 1962.   (photo from Wikipedia)
In recognition of the enormous sacrifice endured by members of the 192nd Tank Battalion and to honor the soldiers from Maywood who died on the Bataan death march, Congress designated Maywood the Village of Eternal Light.[1]  
 

Today many of the people I went to school with who sought college educations and new horizons are returning to Maywood and working to return it to its former glory.  It will be a mighty feat.  The high school is a fortress of metal detectors and armed guards.  The diversity for which we had been so proud is rapidly slipping into a distant memory, although the complexion of the majority has changed.   

The more things change the more they stay the same...but different.  I wish I had had sense enough to appreciate what I had while I had it.  I sure do now.