I. The Natural History Museum at the
Smithsonian.
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| Atoms, organize yourselves! |
Initially, I was just happy roaming:
passing by the elephant, eye level with his knees; gazing at the underbelly of
the very impressive life size Right Whale floating overhead; admiring the giant
squid in his giant-squid tomb; becoming engulfed in bones and butterflies and
emeralds; watching the videos of the strange gelatinous impossible creatures
that roam the deep blue sea, some so delicate that they can be shattered by
light. All this was spiced with the kids zooming around and the occasional kid-call
ringing out, “Daddy, look at THIS!” A
big quartz crystal had a sign that said, “Touch some atoms!” A kid says, “Ooh!
atoms” as his fingers traced the golden surface.
But my
museum free-style ramble came to a dead halt in front of my favorite thing of
all: the museum volunteer named Henry.
Henry
noticed me reading the fine print on the climate change exhibit, and he offered
to “bore me to snores” with the history of the Earth’s climate patterns. Henry
was a geophysicist by profession, and had spent happy seasons in Antarctica,
collecting ice cores, and then doing complex systems modeling of our planet’s
changing climate patterns, past and present. He professed his way through a
university career, and then retired to become a full time sharer-of-knowledge.
He did his best to spin me through 4 million years in less than an hour,
talking me through the Milankovitch cycles, cyclical patterns that change the
how the sun’s radiation reaches and impacts our Earth’s surface. So I learned: The
eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit about the sun cycles about every 100,000
years. Is it more a circle, or more elliptical? So goes the warmth of our
mother Earth. Her axial tilt brings the gift of seasons, cycling about every
40,000 years. Her wobbling precession shapes
the seasonal contrast: how cold the winter, warm the summer, cycling every
23,000 years. Our perfect moon, as she whirls around us in gravity’s smooth
arch, steadies her dance-partner Earth, keeps her from weather extremes she
otherwise might teeter into. Wheels-within-wheels. The intertwining of these
intricate planetary cycles help shape our climate, its ups and downs, its
transitions. But that must all be
understood together with the chemistry of the biosphere, as earth has wrapped
herself in life, and this is impacting everything, and we life forms create
complicated webs of chemistry that include the atmosphere, the buried carbon
from past life, and the chemistry of the seas. The story is intricate and in
continual flux. As we all know, remnants from lives millions of years past, carbon
folded deeply into the Earth’s crust, is being released into the skies at an
unprecedented rate these past 100 years. Henry shows me, we are at CO2 levels
higher than any time in the last 100 million years. So scientists are trying hard
to sort out what this means. There were some pretty wild swings in temperature on
the Earth in the last 200,000 thousand years, as our ancestors pulled
themselves up on two legs and began to walk the planet, but this carbon release
is something new.
We
have evolved, adapted, and then occupied the earth as we have known her, and know
her now – how we will we be impacted by this flood of CO2 from layers of life-past
that we are ripping, pumping, pulling from the earth and pouring into the sky? Here
Henry’s voice ends, mine starts, as he didn’t want to become political. I do. We
continue to play with fire, and justify taking grave risks with our children’s
and our planet’s future because our science can’t precisely predict something as complex as the Earth’s climate
patterns. Of course it is difficult,
modelers do their best given what we collectively know, and what we don’t know
is a lot. Some would claim models with uncertainty
should not dictate policy. But that is absurd when we are gambling with such
high stakes. The models show us realistic views of probable and possible
futures, try to quantify the uncertainty, and this guidance is more than enough
to help map ways for us to make choices that bring hope, rather than continue
to invite apocalypse.
Back
to Henry: he was busy discussing a trace of the direct interaction between
Neanderthal and Homo sapiens (something physical and beyond Neanderthal DNA
that spirals through our own). It was the damaged rib bone of a Neanderthal man. Being at the Smithsonian, my eyes were gazing
on his actual bones, not just a cast. His lethal wound had begun to heal over a
bit he endured 2 weeks of pain before he died.
The nick in his rib was likely the deathblow that killed him, and also likely
to have been inflicted by a Homo sapiens’ rock-tipped spear. To clarify this “point”, bunches of scientists
apparently got to throw rock tipped spears at bones to see if they could
emulate his broken rib (I want that job!).
But it startled me to see this. We seem to leave violent traces as far
back as history can look.
But there was also this: a clear imprint of beauty
too, also tucked back in with our origins. It was time for me to bid farewell
to the bones, and I was in a rush to head over to the African American History
museum, as my ticket-time had arrived. As I was hurrying out of the museum, I
noticed a small broken flute on display, and ducked into a small “cave” area behind
it: a replica cave painted with replica cave art. One could hear the sweet sounds
of a model based on the small flute in the display, filling the space. The
flute was pentatonic, 5 perfect sweet notes, made of mammoth ivory by some
expert hand who carved it about 35,000 – 40,000 years old. I’ll dream this dream
up: one of us (that would be the little one with the smaller brain) playing it for a Neanderthal friend, sitting by a hearth. My
little share of Neanderthal DNA ripples at the imagining. Flutes and drums, they’ve been with us, as long
as there has been there has been an us. Haunting sweet sounds, from that little
flute.
II. The Museum of African American
History, the Smithsonian.
(This
slice of life is for my friend Kshitij Wagh.)
This
museum is wonderful and I’m going back. And back. I only had and hour and a half,
so the top floor with its music called first. A meteor shower at the Musical
Crossroads: A spiritual to bring you in, with a hello nod from Scott Joplin. Chuck
Berry’s dazzling red convertible Cadillac, commanding attention. It’s the very
one he drove on to the stage during an
encore performance at the Fox Theater in St Louis, a theater that had turned
him away because of his race when he was a kid.
Sax and drums and Max Roach’ s
Tuxedo: elegance and rhythm. The sounds of hip hop from the Bronx, kids dancing
the impossible. Standing in between 4 giant screens with Aretha Franklin
demanding just a little bit of RESPECT. Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner, howling.
‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky, because the Mothership is landing.
Two stories from the hall ”Making a
Way Out of No Way”. It’s Mexico City,1968.
Tommie Smith, the gold medalist, just ran 200 meters in less than 20 seconds.
He and his friend and competitor John Carlos, stood on the winners’ podium, bowed
their heads, and raised their fists to the sky to protest discrimination; they were
shoeless, their black socks and glove a protest. Their white Australian
colleague Peter Norman, wore a Human Rights badge in solidarity. They were
booed by the crowd and forced out of the games by the president of the
International Olympics Committee, and out the American team; they came home to death
threats to their families. But they sent a wave of courage and power out.
When I
was 16, 1974-1975, I was bused from my almost all white suburban high school to
a school in the “inner city”, a school with kids of all colors. SEA school was in part a reverse integration project, testing some ideas about “alternative”
education. My dad was a sociologist,
taught race relations. In his life, he fought for human rights and human dignity.
He was Dept. Chair at Long Beach State, and in the 1960s, he hired black
professors into his department and fought to keep them on (his nickname was “Crowbar”
for a reason). He brought black activists to campus to speak. He had a gift of
listening carefully, and of giving, and so receiving, respect. Over his desk
was a big poster of two kids, hands held in friendship, black and white. So
when I wanted to do this, volunteer to be bused, my parents let me go. Sept
1975 came round, my best friend Shelly and I linked arms, boarded Ma Padrone’s
bus (the red haired and raucous bus driver – you had to love her, but you didn’t
mess with her), and we took the ride across town. SEA school was wonderful, and
I was blessed to make my first black friends, Mark Patterson among them. Thank you Barbara Rose Johns, thank you for Mark.
Memories came flooding back, of another friend SEA school gave me, Johnny
Kimbrough. My favorite teacher was Hermione Baker, a Quaker with all the
gentleness that implies. Her hair a soft white cloud, up in a bun, her eyes
bright, always amused. If recollection serves, (its been a long time…) Johnny
and I both had a special studies class with her, creative writing. We would
pass each other going in to and out of her office. My task for her was every
week to find and witness something new in the world to me, and write my
impressions. I remember some of my essays:
A black Baptist church service. A walk down into the broken concrete world of
the Los Angeles River. Passing through an empty doorframe into an abandoned
house, discovering the traces of a family left behind. A time alone with the
birds, out on the jetty of the harbor at sunset. Climbing a pepper tree in a
warm wild wind, a Santa Ana, on a dark night.
Johnny
was black, and we stepped through different experiences. Very Different. If I remember right, his task for
Hermione was poetry, but in any case Johnny was a poet. That much is clear. He and I hung out
sometimes in a usually empty student lounge, sitting together on a ratty old
couch; our space. He read his poetry to
me. I shared my essays with him. We listened. We helped each other find words. His
poetry was a kind of RAP before RAP. It was gorgeous, and fierce,
and full of rhythm when he spoke it.
And it dawned on me this morning, a
realization, that these little essays I sometimes write, like this one I’m
writing here and now, I am still writing for Hermione and Johnny.
There is
a new and honorable movement this week, kids leading, shaking America with the pain in
their cries. They are rising up in response to the series of school shootings
that have left of our country in a stunned sorrow. Broken all our hearts, but out of their sorrow
like a phoenix, is coming their strength. #Neveragain. Too many killed, too many lost, so
the students are demanding good gun laws and safe schools. They will not be silenced. We have to listen. Like Barbara Rose Jones, they are right.
III. The Metro
A river
of people flowing down the silver cycle of escalator steps, into the crust of
the Earth, into the tunnels of rushing trains. As moving stairs take us
into the Earth, the subterranean winds whoosh up, the cool breathing of
the tunnels. There is a roar of the clapping air that slams into the space the
trains leave behind as they accelerate into their next stop. It just one
of the sounds of a city's circulation, always exciting to me, though
perhaps so familiar to city-dwellers to have faded into their background, just
as the swish of the blood through our veins, the beating of our hearts, goes to
silence so we can hear beyond them. But I come from a place of canyons and
mesas, where humanity does not flow in subterranean streams, so there is
still, always, some magic for me in subways.
With my
tired feet, I descend into the Earth perfectly still, standing to the
right on my claimed step, an eddy in the current of people-flow. A sweet lady claims
the step behind me, and she says, with New York in her voice, "I
love your purse, did you know those were Binko leaves?" I say, "Thank
you so much", and pet my purse, covered with leather stamped Ginkgo
leaves. I am really pleased both that I now have a new term of endearment
tucked away, to whisper I next time I encounter a Ginkgo tree, and that this nice lady likes my purse.
She is friendly, and so we exchange a list of what we did at the Smithsonian
that day, while her husband beams at us. It is nice to share our lineup of
adventures, as I am on my own, so happy to have someone to exchange
stories with. Common ground: we both LOVED the right whale exhibit.
We part ways.
I head for my line, and am swallowed up in the group heading out on the Blue.
The train doors open, our invitation in, and we all jostle into our own
places and start pretending not to see each other.
Two
power-women are loudly speaking in a language I do not follow. They have
Good Hair, in place. (How do they do that?) Nice pumps. They
say: Jiggering Networks, Approaching Standards, Serious Movement,
Facilitating ways to Initiate Improving Interpersonal Stuff, Drilling Down by
Modulation, Taking It for What Its Worth, Editing Yourself with a Presence
Thing, ‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. Alright, so they didn't really say that last
bit. But I do think The Vorpal blade went snicker-snack, a sharp quick attack
cleverly disguised in the "Editing Yourself" section of the dialogue.
One of the two women, the loudest, looks triumphant, and the other like she is
about to cry. Even if speaking in tongues, it doesn't seem right to be attacking
a colleague on the metro. Everyone else attempts to turn their attention
elsewhere, trying very hard to give the lady with tears brimming in her eyes
some privacy.
And so
the gentleman with closed eyes sitting next me comes into focus. He must be
adept at closing out Jabberwockies, as he looks so calm, a faint quiet smile
sometimes twitches at his lips. The gentleman has laugh lines by his eyes, red-gold
lashes rest on his cheeks. As he is rocked in the cradle of the subway sway,
stop, start, accelerate, sway, there is peace on his face and quiet in his
breathing that is speaking a language with a greater clarity than the
loud power-woman across from us. I should not be invading his privacy by
this scrutiny, but I cannot help it, he is beautiful, and he draws my eye. His
grey blue eyes flutter open for a moment, take in the scene, and close again,
this simple act a direct transport to another time and place.
There is
an old woman, brown skinned, and she is yet more beauty on the
subway, chin high, spine straight, eyes wide. Dignity settled in around her.
Like me, she is traveling alone, watching, and weary. We see each other for a
moment, exchange recognition of this. She has old skin now, like my own,
decades of gravity is pulling us both in home towards the earth; we are both
sagging bit around the edges. The bones of her face are elegant and bold,
and you can look through time in that face, to see the beautiful young woman
she was, peering out through the beautiful old woman she is, and wonder at the
stories in between.
She sits
next to a young woman, they are strangers pressed thigh-to-thigh with the odd
intimacy of a crowded subway. They are separated by 40 years, but both are
bound through a similar bearing. The young woman has her long black hair in a
hundred braids, which she has woven further into a glorious intricate
sculpture, slipping in a few lines of silver thread into the soft blackness of
her hair -- an impression that she has woven the night-sky and
stars, dark and perfect, on top of her head. The Pleiedes come to mind,
but if I tell you she is one of the seven sisters you won’t believe me.
The way
her hair sits on her head also brings to mind the sweetgrass baskets I saw in
the African American Museum an hour before. Sweetgrass woven based on
traditions slaves brought from the rice coast of Africa to the Carolinas, a beauty
they carried in their hands, a tradition they carried through lives, held away
from their brutal treatment. They then passed on this knowledge through
generations. So my mind skitters around, from stars to baskets, and takes a
sharp left to land on the thought of the rich sweet smell of the
little sweetgrass baskets that were in the Smithsonian gift store.
The little baskets looked empty, but in fact held some deep history alongside the
smell of meadows, the edge of the sea, and wild green places. The sweet smell
of the Earth mixed with a life scent, for sale, right there in the DC Mall. I
am regretting not coming home with one of those small baskets.
Our
train emerges from the earth, hurtles into the sun,
to rumble briefly through a land of giants: the leaf-bare trees, their
limbs branching intricate complications against the blue sky and white clouds.
The train screeches to a halt at the Reagan Airport. The people re-assort in
the leave-the-car shuffle, a wave of push as we leave the train, juggling our
luggage. There is tug of urgency, like everybody's just a little later than
they should be to get to their planes. I find myself next to two too cool
20-somethings, jeans tight, elegant shirts button down, hair vertical, the men
are deep into a conversation that proximity opens up to me -- they are at my
ear, just for a moment. One says, "I’m tired of this shit. I feel like I
have no control over my own destiny." The other says, "Yeah
man, I know what you mean."
For God's
sake! I just left the African American History Museum, that celebration of a
whole people taking their destiny into their own hands, and I'm not about to
let that comment alone. So I summon all my height and courage, trying to look
the part of the Oracle that I want to be for them, and say sternly,
"That's not true. You're responsible for your destiny. Choose it."
Guy number one says, "Hope you're right." and flashes me a smile over
his shoulder. I think, but don't say, "Please, please, please make me
right!" as they are already lost in the crowd.
And then I think that I make a pretty damn silly Obi Wan, an old lady clutching her Binko
leaves, hair all akimbo, limping on tired feet, wearing my too-heavy tattered
backpack like a shirt-of-hair. Ah well.
__________________________
This
essay comes with a link to sweet potato pie recipe, in honor Mr. Coleman of
Coleman’s Soul Food in Long Beach. He
served the best pie! After remembering it fondly for all these years, I finally
made my very first sweet potato pie last night, I’m just linking to the recipe
as I have no experience of my own to call on. But James, Tango and Grace agree it
worked out fine, including the maple syrup in the cream.
And music to cook by? RESPECT, of course.
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