My Surge of Patriotism

The moment it was determined for certain who was responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on our country’s eastern edges, a switch was flipped in my soul.  A surge of an emotion I had never truly experienced before that moment possessed my being.   

My inner city-street-fighter woke up and shouted “Oh no they di-ent!”  

In all my 56 years (at the time) I had never even thought about owning a flag.  I saluted the flag, sang to the flag, sang about the flag, raised the flag, carried the flag in parades…but never did I feel the need to have a flag to call mine. Yet, on September 13, 2011, I was on the internet searching for a vendor who hadn’t completely sold out of their inventory.  Ebay prices for American flags were rising to ludicrous levels, the demand was so urgent.

Every time I heard Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” my vision blurred with pride and emotion. When it got to the line “I’m proud to be an American, ‘cuz at least I know I’m free” I would sing it out, loudly.

I even gave George W. Bush an attaboy for his handling of the immediate aftermath.  I liked his cowboy-style bravado as he stood atop a pile of steaming rubble shouting through a bullhorn to the heroes at Ground Zero.   I didn’t care which party he came from or that he was usually a doofus.  On that day, he was OUR doofus and we needed him.  My burning desire to strike back at the a-holes who dared to kill all those people on our turf far outpaced my usual disdain for the gunslinger in the White House.

I bought every article of clothing with a flag motif I could find in the stores:  socks, bandanas, jackets, and blouses.  I even wore a flag pin on my clothing!

For the first time in my recent adult memory, it felt like all Americans were on the same page.  Ideology didn’t matter.  Color didn’t matter.  Social status didn’t matter.  All that mattered was that we had been attacked and we don’t play that.

Sometimes I look back and feel so sad we couldn’t sustain that dynamic.  The other day I picked up my bandanna with the flag motif as I dressed for my exercise class.  I looked at it for a few seconds and put it back in the drawer.   I’m not feeling it anymore.

The Case Against Kronk is a Crock

After watching the direct examination of Roy Kronk, the utility meter reader who found the remains of little 2-year-old Caylee Anthony in a Florida woods, I don’t know why any citizen would ever report such a discovery to the police.

Kronk stopped in the woods located within a mile of defendant’s home to relieve himself on August 11, 2008.  Although a lot of the swampy terrain was underwater from a recent tropical storm, Kronk saw something about 25 to 30 feet in the distance that caught his attention.  Later that night Kronk called the local police to report what he saw:  something white that didn’t look like it should have been there.” 


On each of the next two days, Roy Kronk made a follow up call to police to see if they found what he had seen in the woods.  On the third day, an officer met Kronk at the site.   According to Kronk’s testimony during the murder trial of Caylee’s mother Casey, the officer stood in one place, looked left, then right, took a step and slipped down into the muddy mire.  For the next 30 minutes, according to Kronk, the officer “chewed him out” for making him come out to that location made muddy by Tropical Storm Faye.
Exactly four months later, Roy Kronk again went into the same woods to relieve himself.  This time he came across the skull and skeletal remains of a young child.  They belonged to Caylee Anthony.

After watching every minute of Mr. Kronk’s testimony, I believe the man is telling the truth.  In the age-old no-good-deed-goes-unpunished tradition, instead of being credited for his tenacity while attempting to aid in the solution of the Anthony mystery, Kronk became a scapegoat and a suspect.  The defense team’s theory of defense for Casey Anthony alleges Kronk stole the child’s body from they-don’t-know-where; kept it stored in an unknown place; and dumped the remains in the woods so that he could “find” it and claim the $225K reward offered by something called the Never Lose Hope Foundation.  In my opinion, the defense failed to support the allegation.

I am reminded of the case of Richard Jewell, the man who discovered the backpack containing the pipe bomb that detonated at the 1996 Olympic Games here in Atlanta.  Jewell saved many lives and injuries that night by attempting to clear the area around the bomb before it exploded.  Wikipedia summarizes Jewell’s “reward:”

Initially hailed by the media as a hero, Jewell later was considered a suspect.  Despite having never been charged, he underwent what was considered by many to be a "trial by media" with great toll on his personal and professional life. Eventually he was exonerated completely: Eric Robert Rudolph was later found to have been the bomber. [2][3] In 2006, Governor Sonny Perdue publicly thanked Jewell on behalf of the state of Georgia for saving the lives of those at the Olympics. [4]

It wasn’t until Eric Rudolph pled guilty to the Centennial Olympic Park bombing that Mr. Jewell was fully exonerated.  By then, it was too late for him to have any semblance of a normal life.

Richard Jewell died at the early age of 44 from so-called natural causes, but it is difficult to believe the ordeal he was put through by the FBI and the national media didn’t have everything to do with his physical and emotional ruin.  

In my opinion, the same thing has happened to Roy Kronk.  My hope is for him to find a way to go on with his life and put the grisly accusations against him behind him.  Is it any wonder that anonymous tip lines have become de rigueur in today’s criminal justice?

Photos:  cbs news

Casey Has Her Head Examined...Again

Lead defense lawyer Jose Baez halted the Orlando-based Casey Anthony trial last Saturday when he requested and got a court order from Judge Belvin Perry to have his client examined by three court-appointed psychiatrists to determine her competency to stand trial.  Hmmmm.

Feeling a lot like Angela Lansbury in an episode of the erstwhile television series “Murder, She Wrote,”  my mind’s wheels went to work to guess at the reason Mr. Baez would make such a move, and more interestingly, why the judge granted the request. 

I am no attorney – never spent five minutes in a law school classroom– but it would seem logical to me that such examinations would ordinarily take place before the trial began.  The court has put the details of these weekend events under seal, meaning we will never know definitively.  I, however, have come up with a few possibilities.

Maybe the defense has finally noticed that their case is disjointed and as full of holes as a colander.  Although in the opening statement Baez asserted that Caylee Anthony, the victim in the case, was not murdered by her mother Casey, but had accidentally drowned in the family’s swimming pool.  There was no mention, however, of how the child’s body -- which Baez claims was found and carried out of the pool Casey’s father George—got from the pool to the woods located less than a mile from the Anthony home.  There was no mention, either, of why neither George nor Casey called 911 when Caylee was found floating face-down and pulse-less in the pool.

Maybe the defense team has concluded that their strategy has no hope of succeeding unless they put Casey Anthony on the stand to testify in her own defense.  Baez alleged in the opening statement that his client has become a pathological liar, capable of fabricating non-existent nannies and bogus jobs at Universal studios because her father and her brother sexually abused her for many years.  She copes by telling well-constructed, but false stories.  If they put her on the stand, they need to be reasonably assured she understands the meaning of the oath she takes, and she can participate in her own defense.

Maybe Casey made a failed attempt at suicide on Friday night, after her brother’s testimony had the entire family in tears.  It turns out Casey Anthony was examined by psychiatrists and psychologists prior to trial.  The abrupt insertion of new examinations seems to indicate an emergent development that caused her attorneys to question her current mental status.  If not a suicide attempt, perhaps her general affect and private comments are the reason for their concern.

Whatever the cause, the examinations were made.   Based on the reports from the three professionals, the judge declared Ms. Anthony competent to stand trial.  The trial goes on…

Would You Lie Under Oath to Save Your Kid's Life?

 abc news photo

Cindy Anthony might have just fallen on the sword to save her daughter’s life.

Cindy is the grandmother of Caylee Anthony and the mother of Casey Anthony.  Casey is charged with the first degree murder of little Caylee, her own daughter.  The State of Florida believes that Casey murdered her daughter to free herself from the responsibilities of motherhood in order to freely pursue her preferred party-girl life.  The State of Florida believes Casey sedated Caylee using chloroform and subsequently suffocated the child using duct tape over her mouth and nose.

It appeared from the highly circumstantial evidence amassed by the prosecution that the deck was seriously stacked against the defendant – until this afternoon.

Cindy took the stand on behalf of the defense -- after having testified several days ago for the prosecution -- and blew the roof off the trial.   The prosecution was blindsided big time when Cindy Anthony testified it was she who in March 2008 had conducted the damning internet searches on the family desktop computer, not her daughter.  A series of searches for topics such as “how to make chloroform” “household items used for making weapons” and “neck breaking,” among others was presumed by observers of the trial to be the basis upon which the prosecution would establish the pre-meditation required to support the death penalty.

There was something about Cindy’s totally reversed demeanor on the witness stand that gave me immediate pause.  Whereas before this testimony, Cindy was an emotional mess most of her time on the stand, today she was quick to respond, almost too quick.  There was no emotion when the prosecution, visibly furious with what they say is a new twist on Cindy’s story, drilled her with references to her deposition, in which she said she had only looked up “chlorophyll.”  Today she claimed to have looked up “chloroform” but she never typed “how to make chloroform” into the search engine.  Her voice didn’t waiver.  She spoke with few fillers like um, aaaa, etc.  I thought she appeared to have been coached.

Never mind that she failed to make that distinction in her deposition.  Never mind those pesky work records that indicate Cindy was at works at the precise times that those searches were conducted on the home computer.  Cindy had an answer for everything and clearly felt she had explained all the discrepancies away.
Here’s what I want to know, from myself and from you the reader.  If you found yourself in this identical Catch22; i.e., your grandchild is lost and it appears you might lose your child to lethal injection, would you commit perjury in a capital murder case to save your kid from death row? 


There is one more bit of information you should have:  yesterday (Wednesday 6/22/11) Cindy and her husband George’s attorney let it slip to the press that Cindy and George do not believe their daughter is innocent!  It is not clear if the attorney leaked this knowledge with or without the Anthony’s permission, but today they released a clarifying statement, saying they are interested in justice, but they don’t want their daughter to be executed.

I can’t be sure how I would behave under the same circumstances, but I suspect I would risk my own fate with charges of perjury to save my son’s life, no matter what he had done.  Sure, I can say all the right things about justice being required regardless of my personal feelings.  But honestly, I would, if nothing else, consider lying under oath to save my kid’s skin.
What would you do?

Human Histrionics Threaten Anthony Trial

Once again I find myself riveted by a murder trial that comes replete with sex, lies and videotape.  As I write this post I am battling that sense of emptiness that comes when some anticipated something I was looking forward to has suddenly been withdrawn.  

The trial of Casey Anthony for the murder of her two-year-old daughter went dark on Sunday after a drama-filled Saturday session that ended with defense lawyer Jose Baez being soundly chastised by a serious-as-a-heart-attack Judge Belvin Perry.  The pit-bull prosecutor Jeff Ashton had been springing out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box on speed, objecting every two minutes or so it seemed.  Now THIS is the stuff Perry Mason episodes were made of!

So I rose early this morning in order to get my laundry started and the dog walked before court re-convened at 9 a.m.   One would think I had been stood up at the altar, I felt so crushed when the judge recessed court this morning before it ever got started.  The jury had been hanging out in the jury room from 9 a.m. until around 10:30 a.m. while Judge Perry continued his harangue against the lawyers’ combative behavior and held several in-camera huddles in his chambers.  Suddenly, he called a recess until 9 a.m. Tuesday!

Exactly what is going on here?  I am always searching my conscience trying to determine the underlying reasons for whatever I am feeling at the moment.  As a student of human behavior, I am also trying to figure out what would cause an otherwise rational human being to camp outside the Orlando, Florida courthouse all night with the hopes of getting one of the 50 seats in the courtroom open to the public.  My poor brain went on sensory overload when I watched a petite woman deliver a left-hook upside the jaw of a man twice her weight and a foot taller.  One of them – I still don’t know which – had the audacity to try to cut into the line at 3 a.m., and fisticuffs ensued.

I have completed my analysis of my own motivation and now understand what is driving me to stay riveted to this case, much as I was when O.J. Simpson had his friend Al Cowlings leading a “low-speed police chase” around Los Angeles County. 
 
I find it nearly impossible to grasp the mindset of a person who deliberately kills another innocent person.   I’m not at all sure I would even be able to shoot someone who was threatening to harm me, much less plot the demise of anyone.  I look for signs in the accused of the insanity that I am convinced resides in anyone capable of doing such a thing. 


Then there is the sheer gravity of the proposition that the defendant – in this case a 5-foot-tall twenty-five-year-old woman – could be executed by the state if found to be guilty of first-degree murder.  In a sense, the state of Florida is empowered to commit a kind of first-degree murder itself, and sometimes I struggle mightily with that notion.

Much like the antics our elected politicians frequently demonstrate, the courtroom players often seem to get so caught up in their personal “performances” in the courtroom, they lose sight of the ponderous responsibility they have been given in a life-and-death scenario and get tangled in theatrics.

The jury of Casey’s so-called peers sit there trying to decipher the science-speak of one forensics expert after another, only to have experts of allegedly equal status refute the previous testimony from the other side.  These ordinary citizens on the jury must sift through all this unintelligible jargon to try to glean an understanding of how, when and why little Caylee Anthony died and at whose hands.

While the prosecution places its long and tedious evidentiary testimony into the record, the defendant Casey Anthony sits stoically with the flat-faced affect of a person in a catatonic trance.  When her mother mouths the words “I love you,” after testifying for the prosecution, Casey rolls her eyes slightly and looks annoyed.
When the defense is cross-examining a witness or when graphic photographs of her tiny daughter’s remains are flashed on the courtroom screen, Casey becomes animated and tearful, anguish creasing her pretty face into an ugly caricature.  Is this real?   Is this remorse or is it guilt?  I strain to see the answering signs.
This is Jose Baez’s first capital murder trial.  It shows.  He bumbles and stumbles, misspeaks and misleads.  He was reportedly chosen by Casey Anthony at the suggestion of a fellow inmate.  Watching prosecutor Ashton making mincemeat of Baez’s witnesses is at first entertaining, but later becomes cringe-worthy.  As I watch even my untrained eye can spot the bases for appeal piling up.

At some point Baez is going to have to flesh out the sensational allegations he made in his opening statement that little Caylee drowned in the family pool; that George Anthony, Casey’s father, encouraged and helped execute a cover-up; that while Casey is an admitted habitual liar, she does so because she had been sexually abused by both her father and her older brother, Lee.  The fodder for those with prurient interests in the dysfunction of the Anthony family will be abundant.  The fireworks between the defense and the prosecution will be undoubtedly spectacular.

In the meantime, the judge has accused Baez of deliberately ignoring a portion of his order regarding discovery and depositions.  Judge Perry has mentioned the possibility of a contempt of court charge against Baez, or a referral to the Bar. 


The thing that will keep me riveted to this trial, though, will be the multiple opportunities for the cast of characters in this drama to run the trial off into a ditch.  With all the courtroom tricks and schemes, all the drama outside the courthouse, all the admonitions and threats of contempt of court issuing from the bench, the spirit of a little girl whose remains are on display like a prop for a TV show awaits justice.  Are we mere humans even capable of delivering?

A Dad Is Not About Biology

My sister loved this post so much last year, I decided to repost it in honor of our late Dear Old Dad.  I changed the title, but the message stays the same.

---

A dad is a guy who tells his daughter how to handle boys.  He teaches her the responsibilities of driving a car, insisting that she demonstrate to him her ability to change a flat tire without assistance.

A dad is a man who delights in his daughter's every triumph.  He brags shamelessly to his cronies and carries her picture in his wallet.


A dad sends the evil-eye across the room to her waiting date as she descends the stairs after four hours of preparation.  He's the one who talks her mother into allowing the red lipstick, but is silently daring the poor guy to even THINK about kissing those cherry ripe lips.

A dad calls his daughter back into the house for just a second so he can give her an extra $20 for cab fare in case what'shis name gets *fresh.*

Not all dads are fathers and not all fathers are dads.


My dad was not my father.   My birth father was divorced by my mother when I was four and he was barred from seeing me.  And so he didn't.  A dad would have fought tooth and nail, done whatever it took to see his little girl.

My dad was my mother's husband.  They married when I was already 17 years old.  He was crazy about my mother, had been for many years, and soon he was crazy about my younger sister and me, too. 
Not long after they married, I went off to Ripon College.  It was legal for 18 year-olds to drink beer in Wisconsin.  When I came home for the first Christmas break, my dad surprised me with a six-pack of Heineken's, a huge step up from the Old Milwaukee I drank to save money.  The two of us sat at the kitchen table until well into the next morning, doing what we both loved to do --arguing about philosophy, women's lib, politics, religion, books--and drinking beer.  He was the most well-educated man I've ever known, and he never finished high school.

I never called my dad Dad.  It's complicated, but I just couldn't do it at that stage of my life.  He never minded that.  He introduced me to his friends as My Daughter.  He cried in the audience as I became the first person in my entire family to graduate from college.  He walked me down the aisle at my wedding.  I'll always remember the sound of his rich bass voice when he answered the priest's query "Who gives this woman in marriage?"  "Her mother and I do," he boomed.

He cheered me on during my career, beaming whenever I did something notable.  He held my hand while I cried about my marriage breaking up.  He said, " I don't care who wins, as long as it's you."

My dad is gone now.  It was I who rubbed Capsaicin on his joints to try to ease the pain he endured from end-stage bone cancer.   I don't carry his genes.  No DNA test will ever confirm that we were related.  He was not my father.  But he was the best dad a girl could ask for.

My own son could have written a similar post.  My second husband married us when my son was only eight.  He legally adopted Steve, gave him his name and devoted his fatherly instincts to helping me raise the fine man we call our son today.  Despite our eventual divorce, father and son remain close and share a love of golf.  Steve appears to be a clone of his biological father, who is deceased; but his manhood was shaped and modeled by his Dad.  Biology had nothing to do with it.

The Moneyball Train Has Left the Station

Only my newest readers  have escaped my probably excessive boasting about my son's role in a new Aaron Sorkin movie based on the best-selling book Moneyball.


Stephen Bishop -- the actor, not the aging musician -- plays major league baseball star David Justice in the film which opens in theaters on September 23, 2011.

Here is the official Sneak Preview that aired on Entertainment Tonight Wedenesday, June 15,    2011.  My son, Baby Dave, as he was called when he was in the minor leagues of the Atlanta Braves because of his strong resemblance to Justice, is first spied in this trailer standing at a soda machine.  We are beside ourselves with pride and excitement.


 At premiere of Hancock

Twain Knew What He Was Doing

Nigger.  The most hurtful word anyone could hurl my way?  Yes.  Should the publisher have made the controversial decision to change the more than 200 appearances of that word to the word slave in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?  I don’t think so.

On Sunday, June 12, 2011, “60 Minutes” re-broadcast a segment about the controversy surrounding the “sanitization” of the classic, which originally aired on March 20, 2011.  The story is old news, but the question is not.  Imagine how screwed up our kids would be if we went back and cleaned up all the things in literature that have fallen out of favor since its writing.

Nigger is just a word.  I hate the word as much as anyone you can name, but I can look at it sitting here on the page after I have typed it and have absolutely no emotional reaction to it.   If you, the reader, wrote it on your post, it would get my attention for sure, but I wouldn’t have any emotion about it until I have determined the context in which it was used.

Call me a nigger and you’ll have a fight on your hands.  I fight with my tongue, not my fists, but when I am finished, you will be injured.  Teach me about how the word was used in the history of the United States of America and I will be enlightened, not offended, at least not by the teacher.  I might feel a little uncomfortable if I were the only African American sitting in the classroom when the teacher read Twain’s novel aloud, like the young student who was interviewed on 60 Minutes.  

In fact, that is exactly what happened to me when the time came to study Huck and his friend Jim.  Just like the interviewed African American student, I was acutely aware of the entire class furtively glancing at me to see if I was upset.  Big deal.  It wasn’t the first time and it likely won’t be the last time something said in a classroom or a conference room makes me squirm.  My teacher, instead of getting flustered and embarrassed, had prepared himself to have an in-depth discussion of the use of the word.  He used me to help him explain the feelings the word engendered in a black person.  Everybody learned…together.

I don’t buy into the notion that the decision to sanitize and, therefore, rewrite one of the greatest books in American literature is in deference to the feelings of African Americans.  I think it has more to do with the discomfort it causes white Americans who just don’t seem to know how to deal with the confusing rules surrounding the word nigger in 2011, and I sympathize with them.  Look at all the trouble Dr. Laura Schlessinger got into for repeating the word on the radio.  

Substituting the word slave for nigger in Huckleberry Finn did not change the hateful way black slaves were used and abused at the time.  Saying “the n-word” instead of “nigger” changes not one iota the underlying intent of the word when used to denigrate and dehumanize an entire race of people.  THAT is what is important.  We cannot go back and change history because that history causes us embarrassment today. 

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." –

 George Santayana, in his Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1,

What Kind of Animals ARE We?

These have been a rough couple of weeks for the humanoids of America, especially the ones who have genitalia of the penile variety.  Schwarzenegger, Edwards, Spitzer, Woods, Sanford…I’ve lost count of all the prominent men in America who have gone woefully astray.  And now caught, literally, with his pants down is the Democratic pit bull with the unfortunate surname, Weiner.

Today I heard someone say dolphins are the only other animals besides humans that have sex just for the fun of it.   That’s not true; there is a wide range of species that engage in both autoeroticism and homosexual behavior, and some have been known to fool around together even when the female is not in estrous.   But I’ve never heard anything about a dolphin sending photos of his nether parts to females in another pod.  I could be wrong.

I have given this subject a lot of thought over the years.  At one time I was thoroughly convinced there was something lacking in me because I never had a serious relationship with a man who didn’t find it necessary to seek sexual activity elsewhere.  Lately, however, I ‘m thinking somewhere along the line the human species has run itself off into a ditch in a desperate effort to use their superior brainpower to bring order to an ever increasing population.

I don’t have to be an expert in human sexual behavior to observe that a lot of men and women fail to comply with the sexual monogamy our modern societal construct requires of them.  They seem to be comfortable enough in the social monogamy practiced in so much of the world – two spouses, one set of offspring living in one house, of which he is supposed to be the head.  But sex with the same person week in (or month…or year) and week out just doesn’t cut it for many.   Then there’s that whole thing about needing to be appreciated and adored.

In six decades of living I have seen what was once confined to clandestine perusal of girlie magazines, strip clubs and secret trysts become an in-your-face barrage of internet pornography, sexting and indiscretions on jetliners.  The means to the end may have changed, but the underlying reason for the quest has always been the same.  Some people cannot comfortably keep the commitments they naively make because social customs and mores say it is required.

And then there are women.   Again, I have no credentials except my long and active life to support this theory, but I do believe most women are raised to think they will pair up with their “soulmate” (I hate that word), have a family and live happily ever after.  The fairy tales most beloved by little girls seem to feature a damsel in some sort of calamitous distress who is saved by an always handsome prince, no less, and swept off to live happily… well, you know. 

Society has created all kinds of safeguards against a mate’s predilection for sexual variety by inventing religions that weigh in and weigh them down with the threat of eternal damnation for breaking their vows, especially if it is with somebody else’s spouse. 

Women, on the whole, internalize that approach from the time they get their first baby doll. They start practicing their nesting behaviors with shocking pink plastic appliances before they even go to school.  Variety is not nearly as important to most women as is security.   She needs to know that if she goes ahead and produces those offspring with the guy, he will be around later to feed and clothe them.  It would also be nice to have him around to love her and allow her to love him back.  Since leaving the *nest* is not an option for the majority of women, thanks to their built-in instinct to nurture their young, if the mate strays too far, she knows the burden will fall squarely on her shoulders. Random women swinging on her playground equipment represent a threat to that security, so no random women allowed.

Cue the webcam!

Is it the testosterone that causes this?  Isn’t there some antidote for that stuff?  A 12-step program of some kind?  The world is spinning off its axis, the climate changes have us sweltering in 90 degree heat in the middle of spring, wars are breaking out everywhere and the economy has forgotten which way up is.  So what are we doing?  We are amusing ourselves with the ridiculously stupid antics of another man. 


I know, I know.  He’s not just ANY moron.

I Worked on a Georgia Plantation

It never occurred to me.  When I made reservations to hold a customer barbecue event at the Archibald Smith Plantation in Roswell, Georgia, I was in full public relations mode.  It seemed like the perfect departure from the usual chi-chi cocktail parties and hot hors d’oeuvres  and I was excited to see how the sales force and their guests would respond.

It never occurred to me that a routine work project would result in one of the most unexpected and disturbing spiritual experiences of my life.

Hailing as I do from the Chicago suburbs, my image of a plantation had been gleaned from history books and Mark Twain tomes.  Through recent research on Ancestry.com I knew my paternal grandparents had migrated to Illinois from Georgia and Tennessee.  That they were both descendants of slaves and slave masters was a pretty safe bet.  But I was never allowed to get to know that side of myself, so the only family I knew had no historical connection with the South and slavery at all.  My frame of reference was no different than any other school child's at the time.

In preparation for the customer event I did my homework and read the history of the place we would visit.  The Town of Roswell took its name from Roswell King, a wealthy coastal businessman who  in the 1830s encouraged his fellow Presbyterians to move inland with him to establish a mill town along the Chattahoochee River.


Archibald Smith and his wife Anne were struggling with two failing plantations along the coast, so in 1838 they answered King's challenge and moved to Roswell with their four children and 30 of their slaves.  The house and outbuildings they built on the 300 acres of cotton-producing land they purchased became the Archibald Smith Plantation.  Every plank and brick of that place was placed by the hand of a slave, but that didn't occur to me until later.               
                                                                              Archibald and Anne Smith                                                                                                                                                                         

 

   (smithplantation.org)  

A graphic model of the Smith Plantation shows the relative scale of the mansion versus the outdoor kitchen (with chimney) and the tiny slave quarters.

(sketchup.google.com)

The "Big House" today

       

(merchantcircle.com)

Since way back then, despite a 25-year span during which the place sat totally empty, it never left the possession of the Smith family and its descendants.   Every generation kept every piece of the house's  furnishings for posterity.  When the widow of Archibald Smith Sr.'s grandson Arthur Smith died in 1981, the estate was willed to her niece who four years later sold it to the City of Roswell with two major provisions: The house would become a house museum using all the furniture and artifacts collected by three generations of Smiths; and Ms. Mamie Cotton, a black woman who had worked for the Smith family for 54 years, would be allowed to live in the house until she died.

The big day arrived.  When I arrived at the venue about an hour before the guests were expected, I drove up the serpentine driveway and soon saw the snow white house rise from the horizon.  Suddenly, I was stunned speechless.  It finally occurred to me that I was entering a haunted place that was built -- every last inch of it -- on the backs of enslaved black people.

I started hearing faint whispers.  I thought I heard the distant strains of slow, drawling Negro spirituals coming from fields of cotton bolls, dancing like bolts of dotted Swiss fabric used in the white women's dresses.
I shook my head hard to clear the phantom sounds.  Instead of Miss Cotton, the curator of the museum answered the door.  It very well could have been Mamie Cotton had she not died about two years before that, in 1994.

The special events manager led me through a quick tour of the home.  Everywhere I turned there were antiques of obvious great value.  The Smiths must have been congenital packrats, because the place was loaded to the rafters with the trappings of the rich.  I was starting to feel very strange -- even a little angry.

 We exited through the home's back door and descended into the part of the expansive back lawn that led to the separate cook house.  This was where the slave women prepared every meal in the sweltering Georgia heat in order to spare the Smiths the stifling discomfort in their airy mansion.

Every footstep I took felt as if I were stepping in a bog, soggy with the sweat, tears and blood of so many before me.  My knees literally buckled with the weight of the scenes playing in my head.  Over there was a large woman carrying a huge caldron into the cook house.  She wore a clean but shabby long-skirted dress, long sleeves and a white bandana on her head.  I saw all that but I could also see through her.

I glanced to the right and saw a row of crude shanties.  No one had to tell me those were the slaves' quarters.  I excused myself and walked trance-like to the entrance of the first hovel.  

I could almost see the waves of heat radiating from those thin, uninsulated walls.  Gaps between the floorboards revealed bare, dusty earth.  The ladder led to what appeared to be a sleeping loft, no wider than a standard twin bed.  I saw eight small, transparent children sitting up there with their grimy bare feet swinging off the side. A single tear slid down the side of my nose; I caught it with my tongue.

When I turned to leave I almost tripped over the skirts of my long muslin skirts.  I looked down to see a dress like the one the cook was wearing, only mine was slightly nicer.  I could see through my hand.  I realized that because I am what was called "high-yellow" back then, I would be a house "nigra," someone light-skinned enough to be suitable for work inside with the family, cleaning and serving meals.  I also knew I would be at the beck and call of the men of the house, should they be so inclined.

Again I shook my spinning head.  Guests were wandering from the house tour out the back door.  The tent under which the barbecue would be served by a local restaurant was beginning to fill and I was needed for seating arrangements.   The band, which I had searched for weeks to find, was playing music that now sounded to me as if it was straight out of the movie Deliverance.  Banjo.  Fiddle.  Southern.
It was a long, long evening.

Photos from www.archibaldsmithplantation.org

Parents: Please Dont't Overreact to Little League Tragedy

Thirteen-year-old Hayden Walton of Winslow, Arizona approached home plate Tuesday with a swagger familiar to any seasoned Little League baseball player.  Eyes locked with those of the opposing pitcher, he adjusts his batting helmet, tugs at his twin wrist bands and scratches the home plate dirt with the toe of his left cleat.  He’s about to execute a bunt, probably to draw the infield players away from their positions in order to allow his teammate(s) on base to advance unmolested.

I know this scene.  Intimately.  For more than 30 years I sat upon the butt-numbing benches of ball fields all over the U.S. watching similar seemingly routine baseball scenarios unfold.  From Pee Wee League through the pros, every time my son stalked home plate with the intention of sending “the Pill” into the middle of next week, I held my breath.  I have never understood where little children and big men alike find the courage to stand on that plate while an opponent hurls a 2 and 7/8 to 3-inch diameter rock at their heads.

This time it was Hayden’s mother who was probably sitting there breathless.  And this time, our fears were justified.  When Hayden turned to face the mound, sliding his right hand to the fat end of the bat for the bunt, the pitched ball slammed into his chest, just above his heart.  His heart stopped after he took two steps toward first base.  It stopped.  And it never started again.

There are parents all over the country this morning discussing this heart-breaking turn of events.  Many, mostly mothers, probably, are reaffirming their belief that hard ball is far too dangerous for kids to be playing.  How can we let our sons and daughters continue taking these unnecessary risks knowing it could result in their deaths?

To all you parents of young Major League wannabes I say this:  Please take a breath and think.  Yes, it is our jobs to keep our kids safe and out of harm’s way.  We make sure the infant seats are installed correctly before we bring our new infants home from the hospital.  We child-proof the electric sockets and bolt the kitchen cabinets.  We do what we need to do to protect them from their not-ready-for-prime-time selves.  But it is also our jobs to raise complete and productive human beings to adulthood.  Part of that job is to teach the relationship between risk and reward and how to skew our chances toward success.  Facing our fears is a great part of growing up strong and effective.  We parents do that every single time we allow our kids to leave our field of vision…because we have to.

My son has had more than his share of serious injuries.  Every single one of them has been related to some form of competitive sport.  A second-base-stealing slide into the bag caused his career-ending knee injury.  Do I regret any of the thousands of games he played, standing at the plate daring a pitcher to hit him?  Not one.  Danger is everywhere, more often than not when we least expect it.  And of the dozens of times my son has been hit by a baseball pitched by men throwing at speeds averaging around 90 mph, not once has he ever been hit in the chest.  Does that mean your child won’t be?  Of course not.  But look at the odds and don’t let your fears for your child deprive him or her of the opportunities to learn about life from the game.

Anything You Can Do...

Anything You Can Do...

myTunes

If there were a way for another person to somehow tap into my inner sound track, I would be committed to the nearest psychiatric facility before sundown this evening. 

My mind is constantly blaring some form of music unless I am reading, talking or typing on this keyboard.  Has it always been like that?  I’m not sure, but lately I am cracking myself up when I catch myself humming and/or whistling silently to some of the most bizarre tunes imaginable.

This morning I staggered into the bathroom to get ready for the day.  As I swirled a neat strip of toothpaste on my brush, the noise broke through to my consciousness.  Here is what I was humming, with gusto:

Tantum ergo Sacramentum

Veneremur cernui:

Et antiquum documentum

Novo cedat ritui:

Praestet fides supplementum

           Sensuum defectui.          

My Catholic readers, fallen or otherwise, will recognize these lyrics and chime right in just as soon as the church organist slams fingers onto the keyboard, producing a thunderous introductory chord.  For many of you the sound will trigger an immediate memory of the cloying incense used in the rituals marking transubstantiation, the conversion of what appears to be plain bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.  Why on earth would I be humming this solemn hymn while I stare into the mirror at a sleepy-eyed woman who, at the moment, is foaming at the mouth?

Yesterday I was walking Coqui the Spoiled Dog and her friend Romeo.  It was 95º on a day when the normal high in Atlanta is allegedly 84º.  All three of us were panting like porn stars and anxious to get the deed done.  When one of the four-legged ones stopped to inspect a fire hydrant, I tuned into the MP3 player in my head.  Frosty the Snowman was thumpety, thump, thumping through my pathetic brain.  Look at Frosty go!

I spend a major portion of my time with only Coqui as company, so unless I turn on something electronic in the house, I am surrounded by silence.  Since I find silence too deafening in large doses, I guess my subconscious does what it can to fill the void.

Whatever the reason, my lips have taken on a semi-permanent pucker from what can only be described as a facial tick that accompanies the sound of whistling that occurs only in my head.  I look like I am sucking on a soda straw or worse, taking a toke on a joint.  When someone I know suddenly drives by and waves, I am always wondering if they got a look at that mouth of mine.

Come to think of it, a lot of myTunes come from the liturgical charts rather than any top 40.  Another one that pops up often is this:

Bring flowers of the fairest,
Bring flowers of the rarest,
From garden and woodland
And hillside and vale;
Our full hearts are swelling,
Our Glad voices telling
The praise of the loveliest
Rose of the vale.

 This one refers to the Virgin Mary, whose statue was crowned every May with a circlet of fresh flowers.  Down the center church aisle, little girls in snow white dresses slowly preceded the eighth grade girl deemed the holiest in the school and named the May Crowning Queen.  Needless to say, I never had the honor.

In fact, heathen that I am, I haven’t been near a church of any denomination since 2006, and that was only because my grandmother’s celestial sendoff was held in our hometown Catholic church.  Either my daily incantations of Latin hymns and other church-related songs are signs of Somebody trying to get my attention OR the part of my brain that remembers details from grade school is having a second childhood.  And here’s the worst part.  I remember these things word…for…word!