Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/arichards-gallery/3487306738/

Just turned 75.
As I think about being a year older,
my first thought is
I’m so glad to be alive.
No jive.
On my list of priorities,
breathing is most high,
as I want to take all that I’ve seen,
over the years, with these old eyes,
all the bits and pieces of life
that are memorialized
and analyzed
and crystallized into my being’s archives
and use these experiences
in a constant quest
to stay wise —
because I dare to surmise that there is no point in being 75
if you’re not wise.

At least wise enough
   to know that Fox News
   is to news as Polka is to down-home-funky-blues.
Wise enough to know that “terrorism”
ain’t just something that happened the other day
in the dear old US of A,
that it was a way of life in an earlier day
called the “Good Old Days”
and droning children’s lives away, today
I must say,
is not the pathway to creating better days down the road someday.

   Wise enough to know
   that there often is truth in “We reap what we sow.”
Wise enough to believe
that it’s the epitome of hypocrisy
when champagne is broken to launch new ships
and wine glasses are clinked
and toasts sipped through celebratory lips,
indeed,
while someone gets cited for possessing
or toking a few grains of weed.
We need a little consistency.

   Wise enough to know that, in a world of plenty,
   there should be no such thing
   as hunger
   or a homeless child,
   that political posturing
   like blustering
   and filibustering has no place
   in a world that’s gone mad and wild,
   in desperate need of something like a “timeout” for a while.
Wise enough to know,
after 75 years of being on the scene,
that I can’t just complain about what I’m seeing,
that I have to be counted
and visibly seen
actively trying to change the scenery,
and in order to do so
I have to be wise enough to know
that I’ve got to keep myself strong
and flexible
and able,
understanding that if I don’t move it
I will lose it.
So I have to walk a few miles
a day,
as I age,
and/or bust a move
to a song
with a funky groove
because there’s nothing like dancing
to spark a nice mood
for taking on all that has to be pursued.

I’m digging the age of 75,
grateful that I’m still able
to get out and exercise
and realize
more and more
that life is to be engaged
with a sense of play,
in a spirit of fun,
having come
to know
that there is no better way
to get the job, of making the world better, done.

Next trick.
Making it to 76.

Martin

Everyone, perhaps, has now seen the picture of Martin Richard, the 8 year old boy who lost his life in Boston, holding a sign that says “No more hurting people – Peace.” Oh, if we, as a society, could live in such a caring way.

And these sentiments, expressed by Mr. Rogers, of children’s television fame, have gone viral in cyberspace: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

How true, and I see Martin, even though he has been taken away from us, as one of the “helpers” of the world that Mr. Rogers has painted in our minds as he is already helping me to carry on after the madness at the Boston Marathon.

His sentiments are so simple. So innocent. So child-like. So characteristic, if you will, of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.

If the world is to ever become safer for its inhabitants won’t it happen because people have become more loving? Such thinking is idealistic, I admit, but citizens of the world treating each other in hateful ways sure hasn’t brought about any good old days.

And I’m not talking about getting rid of our armies and our navies and our air and special forces. That would scare the hell out of me in a world like ours where if you let your guard down evil rushes in to do you harm but what if we called on these devices a little less than we do?

Isn’t it true that since World War II we could have avoided so much of our warring? I’ll just go through a few. Korea? Never had to happen. Bay of Pigs? Anti- communist silliness. Vietnam? No way. Dominican Republic in ’65? More anti-red jive. Grenada? Same old same old, with socialism, this time, as the foe. Stomping through Panama chasing Manuel Noriega, our big time drug dealing friend? Big time sin. Desert Storm? Unh unh. Please. Afghanistan and Iraq with its Shock and Awe Show? Illegal as all get out; no way to go.

How many Martin Richards died innocently and needlessly in this barrage of violence?

So why don’t we listen to the soft spoken man who wore a cardigan sweater and a tie and asked our children “Won’t you be my neighbor?” many times before he died.

He once said, “The child is in me still and sometimes not so still” and maybe humankind’s problem is that we have let the child in us slip away — to the point that we can’t give into our better selves and truly explore how to make our world a better place. Perchance we could begin right away, as we move past the frightening bombs that literally destroyed our day, by paying attention to the lessons about love that Fred McFeely Rogers tried to teach us.

Relating to our day to day lives, he had this to say: “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”

That probably wouldn’t work in our country’s relations with the Koreas and Irans and Syrias of the world as they are not “touchy feely” governments but such thinking as this from the mind of Mr. Rogers might help: “When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.” If more of us subscribed to such reasoning might we achieve such a way of living?

Of course we’re angry right now, full of feelings of revenge, wanting to take scalps, eager for tit-for-tat, seeking justice for a wrong that has rocked us to our very core. Such is understandable but let’s say we find out who has hurt us and we capture them and they reap what they have sewn. What do we do after that? How do we keep the world’s children safe — and ourselves — after we’ve had our fill of eye-for-and-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth mentality?

As I ponder such a question, this statement from Mr. Rogers resonates solidly with me: “At the center of the Universe is a loving heart that continues to beat and that wants the best for every person. Anything that we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision have to continue against all odds. Life is for service.”

That should be music to our ears, an impetus for leading us to find ways to honor the likes of exemplary human beings like Martin Richards and Mr. Rogers with thoughts of how we can proceed with our lives, in as reasonable a manner as we possibly can without hurting people. In peace.

What do we possibly have to lose?

Kinya, my granddaughter

It was already a beautiful day as I observed the sun shining through the window and then I clicked into Facebook where these words brightened my outlook even more: “Today, I marched with his son to symbolize that the struggle is not over and our will to fight has not died. You did not die in vain…R.I.P. Martin Luther King Jr.”

My granddaughter, Kinya, shared such sentiments after a march in Memphis where Martin was felled 45 years to the day. It warms my heart that she took part in such an assemblage, considering that my progeny, unlike me, are not among those who hit the streets with slogans and songs in pursuit of justice and dignity. They just don’t do that. But I don’t despair because I know they care and pursue a better world in their own ways – as loving people, I’m proud to say.

But there was Kinya along with hundreds of union members and their supporters paying homage to the sanitation workers strike that brought Martin to Memphis. His son, Martin Luther King III, was one of the speakers at the occasion. Kinya met him and I know how intoxicating that can feel, as after shaking his dad’s hand close to 60 years ago I felt all aglow and firmed up my commitment to be the activist that I am today. I hope Kinya is feeling as heady as I did and gets more and more involved in the issues of the day because there’s always something to do.

Sometimes, though, it can seem like an impossible dream trying to make the world a better place. In the play, “I Am a Man,” T.O. Jones, the main character, cries out: “All the marchin’ and jailin’ and beatin’s! All that starvin’ and prayin’ and downright cryin’! King dead! Murdered! What we git in return? One piece of paper and eight bright, shiny pennies. Not even thirty pieces of silver! Eight pennies and a maybe! Ain’t a damn thing change!”

But surviving Memphis striker, the Rev. Leslie Moore, who joined the marchers when they arrived at the National Civil Rights Museum, built on the site of the old Lorraine Motel where King was shot down, looks at it another way. He says: “Something lifted off of us when Dr. King came to Memphis. Before he came, we had a hard time. When he came, it looked like everything brightened up, a light began to shine out.” Moore, 66, was in his early 20s at the time of the strike. He still drives a truck for the Memphis sanitation department.

I get the idea that that light still shines for this hardworking man. I’m sure working for the sanitation department today is better than it was back in 1968.

Oh, but it can be slow, don’t you know. King’s son made it clear, when he spoke, that workers still face challenges like those they encountered back then. Pursuits of racial and social equality never end.

My granddaughter is keeping King’s dream alive. The issue that brought him to Memphis was one of injustice, the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, its sanitation workers. Today they are engaged in a struggle to end a 4.6 percent pay cut that they were forced to accept unjustly.

The night before Martin was shot he said “Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights.” Kinya’s involvement indicates that she sees a need to continue such pursuits of basic civil rights, the rights of poor people to be treated fairly.

Martin also spoke to the threats against his life – as though he felt the end coming, saying: “Like anybody, I would like to live – a long life; longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

And my eyes have seen the glory of my granddaughter marching at the front of the line in Memphis, doing what must be done if there’s ever to be a just world for everyone. Her eyes are on the prize and that fills me with an almost indescribable pride.

Before signing out of Facebook I discovered a video on my timeline of Bobby Kennedy announcing Martin’s assassination to a gathering of black people in Indianapolis, the only major city where, many say thanks to him, there was no rioting after the assassination. He spoke ever so brilliantly to how Martin devoted his life to love and to justice between human beings and that we, as a people, should seek, in our anger, ways to continue his teachings, ending with: “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the light of the world.”

That’s what I see Kinya doing. Like a line from one of my favorite Sunday School songs growing up, I’m hearing her say, in her actions:

“This little light of mine I’m gonna let it shine.
Let it shine/Let it shine/Let it shine.”

Shine on, baby girl, shine on. Because of people like you, acting in his name, our beloved Martin has not died in vain.

My 46-point night at Arizona in 1960.

Hey, you, Wildcats!
Man!
You could never understand
how you make my heart sing
when you take to the courts and do your thing.
It’s downright thrilling, appealing,
exhilarating, fulfilling …
And I’m sitting here in my den, chilling,
thinking of rhymes about how y’all beat Belmont
like they were no more than children out to play,
no more than feathers in a hurricane’s way,
and you attached yourselves to Harvard
like leeches feasting on fat prey,
like gloom on a nasty stormy day.
And, what can I say
about that shot
in the Sweet Sixteen
that put you away
other than it’s a lesson for another day.
But you hung in there with them all the way.
Hey, like they say,
at the U of A,
you “Fought like Wildcats!”
That’s where it’s at, Jack.

There are moments when
you guys do things
that are absolutely amazing,
like that blocked shot against
the Aztecs
that seemed to come out of the rarified air
of a place called nowhere.
I mean no where in any physics book
in which I’ve looked
is there any mention
of such an insult to the “Law of Gravity!”
Feel me?
How can one’s heart not sing
after witnessing such an incredible thing?

When I see you do
what you do
I go back in time,
a few decades,
to my playing days
when the program
was in decline,
a bit behind the times,
going through
what happens when old ways
are slow to adapt to the new;
Our stagnant schemes and plays
had long seen better days.
But I ain’t lying
when I say our lack of success wasn’t due to a lack of trying.
No, we “fought like wildcats” just like you,
full of rah-rah-rah and siss-boom-boom
for the old Red and Blue.
We dove for loose balls
and blocked out
and set screens
while the cheerleaders went through
“Go! Go! Wildcats, Go!” routines.
But “wins”?
We hardly knew of such things.
That’s why you make our hearts sing.
We’re old branches on your Family Tree
and we live through you vicariously.
When you win we win.
When you lose our hearts bend.
When you “Alley-Oop”
we wonder when did man learn to fly
and sometimes we call it showboating
and the reason why
is because it is to our dismay
that we couldn’t have ever executed such a play,
back in our day,
if everybody on defense got completely out of our way.
We might talk about how everybody today
palms the ball
and takes an extra step
and pushes and shoves
but we can’t help but marvel
at how your generation
has taken the game to a level way above
anything we could have imagined
ever seeing.
You make our hearts sing
no matter what we say.
You’re our offspring
when it comes to basketball at the U of A.

The U of A.
I have to say
that you gifted athletes chose to study and play
at an institution that has come a long long way
to become as great an institution of higher learning as it is today.
If you learn all you can from this season past,
basketball-wise,
and what the school asks
of you
human-wise, critical-thinking-wise,
creative-wise, health-wise,
fun-wise, self-exploratory-wise,
loving-caring-contributor-to-the-world-for-the-sake-of-that-very-world-wise,
keeping your eyes on the prize,
“Bear, Down, Arizona!”-wise…
   Well, you will make the WORLD’S HEART SING!

Thanks for a wonderful season!
Have a nice spring!

In picture left to right, Robert Singleton, Helen Singleton, Henry Hodge, Yvette Porter, Robert Farrell, Carrol Waymon, Conley Major.

Freedom. What a concept, huh? One of the sweetest words in the world’s vocabulary.

I learned a long time ago that the pursuit of freedom will make one do almost anything. Sometimes in the spur of a moment. I used to love to hear my maternal grandfather tell about how he woke up one day on a sharecropper’s plot of land in Hawkinsville, Georgia, thinking to himself, “God, I don’t know what all is out there in this world but I just know You created something better than this.” At about the same time “big boss man” came riding up on his horse rallying what were supposed to be “free men” to the fields, “yelling and spitting tobacco every which-a-away” my grandfather would say and the next thing he knew he had snatched the man off his horse, gave him the ass kicking of his life and then ran for that very life until he reached the Gulf of Mexico — to what, he didn’t know. He just knew he had to be free.

I thought of him a little while back at a forum at the Malcolm X Library that featured four of a group of people who stand tall in my mind and soul: The Freedom Riders. Yvette Porter, of the Walter J. Porter Educational & Community Foundation, brought them to town. They, San Diego mayor Bob Filner, Robert Singleton and his wife Helen Singleton, and Robert Farrell were among an historic number of people who taught us non-violent (Gandhian) ways to pursue freedom for all, demonstrating before the eyes of the world how powerful the tactics of Civil Disobedience are and can be, teaching us all along what love can do.

Their mentor, Henry Lodge, who was then the National Vice Chair of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) was in attendance also.

Carrol Waymon, who founded and directed CIC (Citizens Interracial Committee), San Diego’s first human relations agency, moderated the proceedings — in the humorous witty fashion that I remember him calling upon back when he worked so tirelessly to open up employment and housing opportunities for all San Diegans. His work in those days, as well as his handling of this particular day in honor of the Freedom Riders, was done in a spirit of love.

It was out of love that the Freedom Riders allowed themselves to undergo the fears and beatings and jailing that they had to brave. Parchman Farm where they were sent was no exhibit at Disneyland. No. There’s no dignity in being stripped naked and searched; in being given no basic items like pencil or paper or books; in having the lights kept on all day; in being mocked with “Y’all wanna march, well march to yo cell”; in being issued clothes that don’t fit; in having your breakfast, coffee, strongly flavored with chicory and biscuits and molasses and grits; in being served beans and black-eyed peas for lunch and supper everyday; in having the governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, direct the prison guards to “break their spirit, not their bones”; in having some of your comrades murdered and raped. And there on a library stage these beautiful people sat proudly, as loving people, in full control of their minds all these years after having endured the worst of times.

Out of their ordeals they have chosen to contribute their skills as human beings to make life better for all people: Filner, recently, standing up to the powers-that-be in the tourist industry, demanding that they pay their workers decently; Mr. Singleton, a professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University, has over the years focused on, among many things, projects in the area of job training so people can learn employable skills; Mrs. Singleton provides strategic planning, project management, fund raising and research services to non-profit organizations that work for the betterment of their communities — she has toiled to highlight the work of African American artists so a people can share the feelings in their soul with the world; Robert Farrell assists individuals and organizations in Los Angeles County in money matters, in a world where money really does matter.

He said something that day that reflects what he and other Freedom Riders taught us: “In America we have the power to change.”

I know that is so true. My grandfather over a hundred years ago had to free himself from bondage by slapping an ornery racist around that he had just jerked off a horse and then running and hiding to avoid being strung up on the branch of a tree. The Freedom Riders, as time went by, wrote new chapters in pursuits of freedom without raising a hand other than to lead themselves in a song like “We Shall Overcome” — some day.

We, indeed, in America, have the power to change. And, goodness knows there’s a lot to change.