Toni and Ernest: Two Who Mattered

Remembering Two Who Mattered So Much

One of the things people do just after the start of a new year is look back at the year just passed and the events that had an impact on us as a nation,  members of a group or groups, and as individuals. It is a necessary attempt, I believe, to “sum up;" to do that human thing of trying to make sense of whatever has  happened: and make it make “sense.” We acknowledge certain things as ‘important’ or “vital,” and construct some sort of narrative. We need to put things in some sort of order and try to find meaning from doing that. This is one of the things that makes us human.

For me, this act often reminds me of the effects certain people  have had on my life- how what they said, sang, wrote, played and/or stood for spoke to me and influenced me. I know Americans like to think of themselves as self-motivated and self-made, but I know that so much of who I am, how I think, and what I do I owe to others.  People who encouraged me, guided me, provided an inspiration, gave me a new idea or new way of looking at things, and helped me see things in a different or clearer way. In 2019 I had the opportunity to think back on two particular people who played such roles in my life: the writers Ernest J. Gaines and Toni Morrison.  I never got to meet them, and I heard them read live only one time each. But the impact they both had and have on my thinking, reading, looking at the world, and sense of what it means and meant to be an African-American in this country and in this time is immeasurable.

  I came upon these writers in my early and mid-20’s-a time that is often the time of a quest for identity, self-knowledge, and exploration for so many of us.  And it was a time-the 60’s into the late 70’s- when openly questioning narratives we were handed was supported by much of the culture. As I mentioned in my November 13^th newsletter, written shortly after Gaines had died, I stumbled onto him via John Oliver’s great book, Interviews with Black Writers. I had not yet read him or many other Black Writers whose lives and works were not rooted in the urban arena with which I was familiar. But Gaines’ love of language and his upbringing, his sense of place, and his connection to Russian writers and to Faulkner drew me in. He was intriguing. And his themes and insights, as I started to read him, were startling in their power and importance.  Stated and implied, his characters represented and illustrated different ideas about color, history, family, manhood and more, and they gave me tons of things to mull over for the next half century of my life. I began to understand and appreciate more fully my family’s Southern background and the way that past formed such a large and powerful part of this country’s history and culture. And as I was interacting with, meeting and learning from so many Southern bluesmen at that time, it was serendipitous.

   Likewise, I came to Toni Morrison’s writing indirectly. She edited, The Black Book, that marvelous wide-ranging scrapbook of Black life both here and worldwide. That book exposed me to a lot of little-known tidbits of history, both big picture and small, and gave me tons of things to research and think about. I was also impressed that a major publishing company put all of the money and resources into a book about African-American life and had African-Americans write and edit it. And one of those editors, Toni Morrison, had a job as a full-time editor at this publishing company! This was 1974, after all, and it was a major development at that time. So when I saw a novel written by this same Toni Morrison, I just had to read it. Sula, her second novel, immediately grabbed me with its description of the thoughts and life of this sad but amazing and often infuriating woman who, because she had no art, became quite dangerous. Compelling, dramatically phrased, full of feeling and insight, Ms. Morrison’s prose cut into me like a Sonny Boy Williamson harp riff; intense, deep, and lovingly bringing me almost to the point of tears. Her way of depicting life in a small-town Ohio miles removed from my urban Philadelphia also widened my understanding of a whole other aspect of Black life and experience. Like Gaines’ Louisiana, this was literally new landscape for me, and it helped my appreciation and understanding of another segment of Black life and American life; my world was getting larger. So I joyously read more, including Song of Solomon, to me her greatest work. With its mix of magic, poetry, religion, identity, use of names, family relations, and pictures of different struggles to make meaning of life in this world, this is one of the most beautifully written and wonderfully complex books I have ever read. Thinking of some quotes and situations in that book still moves me today.

   But the beauty and power of the writings of these two authors is so much more than just the socio-political. Their prose is magical, capable of conveying moments of wonder, insight, thoughtfulness, and beauty at the same time  it is bringing their characters or a situation into focus. They are first and foremost WRITERS: people who create quiet miracles with the English language in ways that stick with a person and have him re-reading certain passages again and again:

   “There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind — wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one’s own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.” 

                                                         Toni Morrison-Beloved

“It came from a piece of old wood that he found in the yard somewhere. That's what we all are, Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood, until we--each one of us, individually--decide to become something else.,,”

                                                          Ernest J. Gaines-A Lesson Before Dying

  I am fortunate to have had the works of these two authorial “guiding lights” in my life. It is fitting, I think, that they both died in the same year and within months of each other. For they each came into my life in rapid succession and gave me much to drink in and enjoy, learn from, marvel at, and they both deepened my sense of myself, the world and the places where they interact. Thank you, Brave Authors. Thank you for the pleasure, surprise, beauty and knowledge  your words gave me. 

 (Here are links to my newsletters after the deaths of each of these authors)

Ernest Gaines

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?tab=mj1&blogID=5445161819200274659#editor/target=post;postID=7638156261178924929;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=2;src=postname  

Toni Morrison https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?tab=mj1&blogID=5445161819200274659#editor/target=post;postID=188162580597909851;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=6;src=postname

The Magic of December Nights

DUKES FANS:

December Skies:

    I have been spending parts of several evenings since Daylight Savings Time ended standing outside at about 8PM and looking up at the southwest part of the sky. It gets dark noticeably earlier now, and I am unabashedly in love with December and winter skies. The moon has gone through several phases over the last weeks, and it seems so powerful and quietly majestic up there, particularly when there is that seeming haze and shadow surrounding it. The stars seem brighter and more dramatic against the deeper and darker blues that characterize the night sky at this time of the year. The constellations seem clearer and larger. At times like this I think much more about light and dark-about how those two concepts so clearly manifest themselves as winter draws closer. As Christmas lights and candles appear on porches, houses and streets and trees and store windows I am once again awakened to the importance of light to us humans, particularly now. It is quietly wonderful. I remembered a piece about light several years ago, and I thought I would dig it out and share it again...

Let There Be Light:

   December is a month overflowing with observances and ritual. There are so many celebrations from so many different religious and ethnic traditions from around the world taking place during this month. There is, of course, Christmas and the various minor celebrations leading up to and associated with it: Advent, the 12 Days of Christmas, Yule, and others depending on your ethnicity, culture, and religious tradition. There is also Hanukkah with its 8 days of oil-based food, candles, and dreidel playing, and Kwanzaa with its celebration of Pan-African culture, candles, and values. And if you are Buddhist, Hopi, Hindu, traditional Persian, Wiccan, or West African Dogon, there are celebrations for you as well during this month. What so many of these celebrations and observances have in common is the prominence of light in their observances. Candles, bonfires, logs, electric lights, tree lights, flashing lights-light is a common element, metaphor and symbol world -wide at this time of the year. And our rituals bring that home.

 It make perfect sense that humans are so light conscious in December. Humans look to nature to try to figure out what is coming and what God or the gods have in store for us. For most of our history that has meant looking to the sky-to the sun, the moon and the stars. Humans have known for centuries that the length of the days was changing at this time of the year and that the winter solstice was coming. This became a time of deep spiritual meaning for early humans, and it was marked in many different ways depending upon geography and culture. As the length of the days slowly increased it was as if the earth was being reborn, and we were living through and witnessing that process. We had to acknowledge it and honor it, else it may not happen again. So symbolically, many cultures created rituals that recognized it as a time of rebirth. Many of the stories, myths and traditions from different times and places began to associate this time leading to and just after the solstice with miraculous births, enlightenment, miracles, and/or new beginnings. The Druid bonfires and the Germanic and Norse Yule logs, for example, were symbolic and metaphoric symbols of cleansing, sacrifice, and the simultaneous death and rebirth of the earth-from the shortest day of the year to gradually more and more hours of sunlight. To the ancient Persians this was the time of the Yalda festival, and Mithras, the symbol of truth, strength, goodness and light, was born to a virgin mother at this time of the year. His birth was celebrated with flame and holy fire. Sol Invictus, the Roman sun god, was also celebrated at this time. We humans even long ago seemed to know that we had to meet the darkness with light. 

   New beginnings are important in most religious traditions, and light was a strong metaphor for that. Our language today shows that it still is. We speak of, “seeing the light, or “coming into the light.” There is the “inner light,” and we also “let our light shine.”  We use light as a symbol for transformation and rebirth, and these qualities are readily spoken of and alluded to in many of the rituals and ceremonies that occur at this time of the year. Hanukkah is about rebirth and new beginnings as it celebrates the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem from its desecration when Antiochus made it into a Greek temple. The candles symbolize, in part, the rebirth of the religion. The candles in Kwanzaa symbolize the reawakened connection and awareness of African values and connections for people of African descent. To Buddhists, Bodhi Day in December celebrates the Buddha becoming a Buddha-an enlightened one who suddenly could see beyond illusion. To Christians, the Star of Bethlehem led to a new beginning for humans, as it led the Wise Men to the birthplace of Jesus. Light was symbolically leading us forward.

   And light is as powerful today to us humans as it was long ago when we first figured out what the solstice was and what it could mean. Tradition has it that Martin Luther saw stars one night as he was composing a sermon and tried to capture their beauty by adding lighted candles to the Christmas tree inside his house. Whether that is true or not, by the time the Germanic tradition of the Christmas tree reached the US the idea of lights were a fixture. And now there are lighted houses, malls, streets, yards, shops and more. We are awash in lights; there are even whole streets and neighborhoods that collaborate to plan what their light scheme is going to be each holiday season. And many families now have a tradition of driving to visit different neighborhoods just to see the light displays.

   So our ancient connections to the rhythms and structures of the natural world are still with us, even if we do not recognize them as such. As up to date and modern as we are in this digital age, we are still human. That means we are still connected to our ancestors in some important and primal ways. As we celebrate our various rituals, traditions and personal rituals this season, I hope you can spend some time thinking on the links between what we do now and what we as a species have always done. And I hope you can spend some evening time outside looking up and taking some time to marvel at what is going on up there. It is quite miraculous, and it still influences so much of what we do down here. Do have a safe, warm, happy, love and light filled holiday season however you celebrate it.  And enjoy the solstice. Let there be light and let it be good.

The Power of "Thanks"

DUKES FANS:    

 “If the only prayer you said was, “Thank you”, that would be enough.”  

                             Meister Eckhart        

 

 “Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”      

                           A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

 “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”     

                            Epicurus

    

 Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. This holiday is all about things that really please me: good food, being around people in a joyful and happy setting, reflection, and expressing gratitude for what I have and for where I am in my life. The relative lack of advertising and the tiny focus on what to buy when compared to Christmas gives me an opportunity to focus more on the day itself and to think about what the holiday is supposed to mean. In that light, I get a chance to look beyond myself and to acknowledge all the people, things and circumstances that are a part of my life that I had little, if anything, to do with. Particularly given the changes in my life over the last year and a half, I am incredibly aware of the value and wonder of family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues. Yes, we have disagreements, and yes, we do not always see eye to eye. But this day, Thanksgiving, is one day for me to join with many other people to formally acknowledge and embrace the fact that without them my life would not be as rich, as joyous or as full as it is. And how and why it happens as it does is something that is in many ways beyond me.

  This "giving of thanks" has always been a human and universal thing; it is probably a human need. It has happened in every part of the world, in every culture, and at all times. Throughout the centuries this giving of thanks has always involved some acknowledgement of forces outside of ourselves and expressed through public and group acknowledgment. Will the crops have a good season of growth? How high would the river be this year? When would the rain come? When and where will the next herd pass by? When would the heat come? Or go? Or stop? Will there be enough to eat? When would the war stop? These were all things that mattered to us, and we asked for help as a group and also expressed gratitude the same way. We know that these are not things that humans control all by ourselves, and we need the help of other people and other forces. We can get away from that somewhat in a modern civilization such as ours, as most of us are generally not so directly faced with struggles for the basics of life-food, shelter, etc. So it is good that we have at least one occasion when we can take a wider and broader look at ourselves and our lives and see the importance of family (by birth or chosen), and friendship. And for most of us it also involves an awareness of happenstance and/or some type of spirit or spirits. This is what we observe and celebrate when we observe Thanksgiving.

 Of course, it can be hard to hold on to that feeling in our civilization. We have been bombarded for several weeks now with advertisements for “Black Friday’ and “Cyber Monday” sales. Commerce is and always has been a key part of civilization, and the post-Thanksgiving time period is awash in sales, offers, and “special deals.” The time after the traditional autumn thanksgivings has always been the “get ready for winter” time. After the 1924 debut of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade this time became became the start of our “get ready for winter shopping time.” This became the time period when many retailers started turning a profit and going into the “black” and out of the red in accountant’s terms. Thus, the first day of the winter shopping season became known as “Black Friday, and it continues to be one of the biggest business days of the year. “Cyber Monday” came into being in 2005 as a marketing company’s idea to build online business. It has been very successful, taking in nearly 8 billion dollars last year.  This seasonal urge to spend is quite powerful in our culture; this move past gratitude into commerce will be a part of our culture for years to come.

   There is a way to extend that feeling of gratitude, though, even in the midst of so much commerce. Due in part to year end concerns about tax deductions, about 50% of all charity giving occurs in the last three months of the year. This led to the creation of “Giving Tuesday,” a day of donations to fund good, charitable causes following Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The founders wanted people to focus on extending the feeling of gratitude by following a weekend shopping spree with giving to help others and/or support good causes. The idea quickly took off, and it is now an international movement.  It even has its own website- https://www.givingtuesday.org/ which serves as a conduit to connect groups, causes, organizations and individuals. The website has history, tools to get organized, and connections to local movements from around the world. So that feeling of gratitude and giving can go on beyond Thursday, co -existing with the shopping frenzy. 

    I wish all of you a fun, thoughtful, comfortable and delicious Thanksgiving however you celebrate the holiday. I hope that you get the chance to reflect on people, situations and things for which you can be truly thankful. Even if things are tough, we all have some things, people, memories, and/ or moments for which we can be grateful. Here's hoping we can slow down enough to really acknowledge those things and to discover the quiet pleasure and joy in giving thanks.

Ernest J. Gaines

DUKES FANS:

ERNEST J. GAINES: January 15, 1933-November 5, 2019

Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow.”     Ernest J. Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men

“Ain't we all been hurt by slavery?”

                         Ernest J. Gaines, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

"Everything's been said, but it needs saying again".

             Ernest J. Gaines; Interviews with Ernest J. Gaines

     Sometime in the1970’s I was haunting the literature stacks at the Parkway Main Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia like I did on a regular basis. I had always been a reader, but my high school experiences combined with the times in which we lived made me an insatiable and voracious reader, and I spent a great deal of time at libraries. I was reading everything: beat and modern poetry, revisionist histories of the United States, Russian and African writers, books about Blacks in the American West, and tons of poetry and novels by Black authors. In the literature section that day I stumbled across a book that would become one of my guidelines for the next decade:Interviews with Black Authors, by John O’Brien. This book contained interviews with several of my favorite authors at the time-Ralph Ellison who wrote Invisible Man, Robert Hayden, whose poem, Frederick Douglass haunts me to this day, and Al Young, whose touching coming of age and music novel, Snakes, I learned about from a Nat Hentoff column in the Village Voice. There were a bunch of other authors with whom I was not familiar, and over time I read all of the interviews,  and I went on to read books by the people whose interviews intrigued me the most.That is how I discovered such wonderful and creative writers as Ishmael Reed, John Wideman and Alice Walker. And it is how I became acquainted with a Louisiana born writer by the name of Ernest J. Gaines.

       Gaines’ interview immediately captured me for two reasons. One was because he talked about capturing the sounds, dialect, time, and feel of the places in which his writing was set. I had read a little William Faulkner by then, and I knew what Faulkner was doing with  Yoknapatawpha county in his novels. Gaines acknowledged being influenced by Faulkner, but he also said that he knew that all the people who Faulkner portrayed were not like people he knew in real life on Southern plantations. He also did not see them in the Russian peasant novels he loved by Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, so he decided he would portray them as he knew them. Gaines also talked about his Louisiana plantation setting he used in most of his novels almost as if it was a character  focusing, for example, on the role dust played in one of his novels, And he talked about how his characters related to struggles between the past and the present, how many of them were trying to define what it meant to be a man, and the various meanings death could have in not only his novels, but in real life. WOW! All of this was heady stuff for a young, urban Black boy in the 1970's, on the edge of “manhood,“ trying to play the blues, exploring his cultural past, loving history, and looking at all of this in different ways. I had to read this man.

   I read Catherine Carmier first and got acquainted with how Gaines could capture the dialect and sounds of characters-almost so I could hear them as I read the conversations. I could see how he could hint at themes and meaning without necessarily making it obvious. I was also impressed  by how he could present emotions in such a quietly intense way and how he could make the ordinary lives of so many of his characters feel real and compelling. I don't think i had ever at that point really identified with and really appreciated a female character in a novel before, but Catharine really affected me. This was a wonderful revelation that awakened me to new insights in reading. I was hooked. 

From there I read The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and I then had to read everything he wrote. His characters, ideas, setting, plots and quietly stated themes would sit with me for days after I finished reading one of his works. Some of his books, including, A Lesson Before Dying and A Gathering of Old Men, I read several times, getting something new out of each reading.  Ernest Gaines became one of my favorite writers, and he taught me and awakened me to so much.

  The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Gathering of Old Men, and A Lesson Before Dying were each made into powerful films. If you are not familiar with Gaines' work but are reluctant to jump right into reading a new author, I would recommend seeing those films. They are incredibly powerful, well-acted and well-directed (although I do have one little problem with a scene in Miss Jane Pittman.) I will see those films over the next week or two, and I may go back and re-read one or more of his books. Ernest J. Gaines wanted to bring the world he grew up in and knew to life in a full and meaningful way. He did that and much, much more.

(Here are a few websites about Ernest J. Gaines: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ernest-J-Gaines

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3533.Ernest_J_Gaines

Learn more about Ernest Gaines’s writing, published books, and more #readingblack )

Humans and Time

DUKES FANS:

 “TIME HAS COME TODAY….”

                         The Chambers Brothers

  We “turned our clocks back” a little while ago and ended what we call “Daylight Saving Time.” We do these manipulations of the clock twice a year, and we have been doing this for over a hundred years in most parts of the country. As a kid it took me some time to learn how to “spring forward and fall back,” but once I got it, I didn’t think too much about what it meant or what it showed about us as a species or what it might mean about the universe. I simply adjusted my clocks, was grumpy or happy about “gaining” or “losing” an hour, and that was that. But the last year or so has found me thinking and wondering about this Daylight Saving thing and thinking about this thing we call “time?” How many different ways do we use and experience it?  What does how we relate to and use time tell us about us? Just what is “time” anyway??

   According to Webster’s College Dictionary, time is ,1.“indefinite, unlimited duration in which things are considered as happening in the past, present, or future; every moment there has ever been or ever will be… a system of measuring duration and 2.the period between two events or during which something exists, happens, or acts; measured or measurable interval.”  In both of those definitions there are a lot of words and ideas that depend on other words for those definitions to make any sense. It is assumed we all have an idea of “future” or an “event,” for example, and that we all agree on what those ideas mean. But that, of course, is not always true. Different cultures, professions, philosophies, etc. all have their own concepts of this thing we call time.   Is there really a universal definition of time?    

    We do not have one clear definition of “time” that is universal to all circumstances; what we call “time” can be and is often many things simultaneously. We have all been in situations where time seems to slow down or stop; boring class lectures, bad films, or conversations in which someone goes on and on and on. And we have been in situations where we ae excited, having a great time, and things seem to go by too fast. “Time flies when you are having fun” is a saying most of us can relate to. But the fun experience and the boring experience could have lasted for the same duration in measurable reality; they could have both been 45 minutes when we look at the clock. So if “a system of measuring duration” works as a definition of “time,” 45 minutes is 45 minutes. But there is also a psychological and emotional measure of time, and they go beyond something a clock can capture. And we often live within those emotional/psychological definitions: they are valid to us. So there is often a difference between “clock time” and the time I feel and experience. As a human I have to navigate a world in which actual time and my emotional experience of it can be at odds with each other. Think about anxiety attacks and panic attacks over what might happen “later.” That is the personal nature of time, and sometimes we have to wrestle with living both definitions simultaneously. For we have to live in the world that is about us.

   We humans are communal. We live in groups and groups need to share some ideas about time in order to function. Different groups have spent countless amounts of time thinking about how to measure, regulate, capture, and make use of time. That measuring and regulating are thing humans do. We all acknowledge something we call “time” and we want to at least understand it in some way and get whatever use we can from it. We used the changes in river height or temperature or rain or animal movements or crop growth to let us know what we should be doing at certain points of the regular earth cycle: seasons. As we observed more of the world around us and used our thinking and toll making skills we came up with sundials, water clocks, hourglasses, and eventually mechanical and later digital clocks. Colonization and global trading systems meant that certain ideas spread around the world, so the universality of Western ideas about “Clock Time” eventually became the norm for much of the world. So when most of the Western world went to Daylight Saving Time, much of the rest of the world had to also.

   The theory behind early versions of Daylight Saving Time was that it would extend periods of daylight and therefore save energy and money.  If this was enacted cities would save money by having the electric lights turn on an hour or two later. It was also believed DST would lead to people being outside the house longer, spending money and helping the economy. It was not an easy sell to many people, but by the end of World War I most Western countries had adopted some type of DST. Germany did it first as they wanted to minimize the use of expensive artificial light during World War I. They were the first to use it nationally in 1916. After the war other European nations slowly adopted the idea largely for the same economic reasons. In the US DST was passed into law in 1918. There was originally no nationwide idea of how DST would be observed, and states had different version of what DST meant. The Universal Time Act of 1966 set a national standard country wide. Arizona and Hawaii eventually opted out of the practice, so 48 states now spring forward and fall back.

   There is still a quietly ferocious debate as to whether DST is a good idea or not. In what ways is it still economical? In what ways isn’t it? How does it help society? Hurt it? The European Union wants to scrap DST, and there are arguments regularly made in the US Congress to scrap it as well. DST may well be on the cultural endangered species list.

    Regardless of how this plays out, though, one of the major things DST shows is that humans will measure, regulate, make use of and/or alter that which is around us. Whether it is something tactile, tangible or jut and idea or concept, we seem to need to do that. So whether I am grumbling about or happy about the “extra” or “lost” hour, when I turn that clock back or forward I am a participant in that very human thing: measure, regulate, and/or make use of what is around me. Happy Daily Standard Time.

(Here is a link to an article that examines pros and cons about Daylight Saving Time:https://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/daylight-saving-debate.html