One does not love breathing.

Absolute most favorite book:

"I never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. In the long hours of church- was it then I learned? I could not remember not being able to read hymns. Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above Atticus's moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills To Be Enacted Into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow - anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

"I could not remember not being able to read...."

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, published 1960 (First Edition cover pictured).

For Us the Living

When thinking of historic sites, the mental picture is usually one of an old historic building, perhaps colonial, Victorian, or early 19th century.

But there are also historic sites that are chillingly ordinary. Just another house on a suburban block. Nothing unusual. Any of us might have grown up there.

2332 Margaret W. Alexander Drive, Jackson, Mississippi

Doesn't ring a bell?

On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers pulled up in the driveway, and stepped out of his car. As he walked into his home, ready to greet his wife and children, he was shot in the back with a bullet that richocheted into his home. He died 50 minutes later, just as President John F. Kennedy was concluding a nationally televised speech in support of civil rights.

The South being what it was, the shooter, a member of the White Citizens Council and the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, was arrested over a year later. The South being what it was, the shooter (who will remain nameless here, because why contribute to his memory?) was acquitted twice by all-white juries.

And yet again, the South being what it is now, brought the shooter to trial 30 years later, in 1994, and this time the jury convicted. The shooter, after living free for three decades, spent the rest of his life in prison, dying incarcerated in 2001.

From For Us, the Living, by Mrs. Medgar Evers, written in 1967:

Somewhere in Mississippi lives the man who murdered my husband. Sometimes at night when my new house in Claremont, California, is quiet and the children are in bed I think about him and wonder how he feels. I have never seriously admitted the possibility that he has forgotten what I can never forget, though I suppose that hours and even days may go by without his thinking of it. Still, it must be there, the memory of it, like a giant stain in one part of his mind, ready to spring to life whenever he sees a Negro, whenever his hate rises like a bitterness in the thraot. He cannot escape it completely.

And when that memory returns to him, I wonder if he is proud of what he did. Or if, sometimes he feels at least a part of the enormous guilt he bears. For it is not just that he murdered a man. He murdered a very special man -special to him, special to many others, not just special to me as any man is to his wife. And he killed him in a special way. He is not just a murderer. He is an assassin.

For Us, the Living by Mrs. Medgar Evers (Myrlie B. Evers) published 1967, offered for sale by Chewybooks, as of February 9, 2010.

The Medgar Evers Museum

2332 Margaret W. Alexander Drive

Jackson, Mississippi 39213

1-601-977-7710

Open by appointment

Crackers in Bed

Except that this is a boy, this could be my childhood.

Always reading in bed, with more books piled up next to me so that I wouldn't run out. Pup curled up on end of the bed and a handmade quilt.

Life should be so good for everyone.

Crackers in Bed (1921) by Norman Rockwell.

Happy Birthday Norman! Thanks for painting the memories that matter.

Monarch of All I Survey

The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, where-in all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Written by Himself, or Robinson Crusoe, is a novel by Daniel Defoe.

But before Defoe wrote his novel there was a real Robinson Crusoe by the name of Alexander Selkirk, an Scottish seaman. In 1704, he was serving on the ship Cinque Ports when it dropped anchor at the uninhabited islands of Juan Fernandez to re-stocking fresh water and supplies.

Selkirk had his doubts about the ship's seaworthiness and tried to convince his crewmates to desert and remain on the island. Unfortunately, his fellow sailors saw no need to jump ship, however the irritated captain decided he would grant Selkirk his wish, dropping him off on the island with only a musket, gunpowder, carpenter's tools, a knife, a Bible and his clothing.

Robinson Crusoe island, Juan Ferandez archipelgo, 418 miles west of South America, now a World Biospheres Reserve

Although Selkirk was marooned on the island for five years, he was correct about the Cinque Port. It later was lost at sea, along with most of its hands.

On this date, 301 years ago, February 2nd, 1709, Alexander Selkirk was rescued from his island by a privateer. He returned home to Scotland and great public acclaim, was interviewed by journalists, and then eloped to London with a sixteen year old dairy maid, whom he did not marry. By 1721 he had gone back to sea, managing to catch yellow fever and finally dying at sea off the west coast of Africa.

Statue of Alexander Selkirk in Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland

From Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe:

"September 30, 1659 - I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked during a dreadful storm in the offing, came on shore on this dismal, unfortunate island, which I called "The Island of Despair"; all the rest of the ship's company being drowned, and myself almost dead.

"All the rest of the day I spent in afflicting myself at the dismal circumstances I was brought to; I had neither food, house, clothes, weapon, nor place to fly to; and in despair of any relief, saw nothing but death before me; either that I should be devoured by wild beats, murdered by savages, or starved to death for want of food. At the approach of night I slept in a tree, for fear of wild creatures; but slept soundly,though it rained all night."

Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, published April 25, 1719.

A Radical Change in Social Consciousness

One of the joys of homeschooling your child is teaching them what you deem important. In our home, what was important was history. Accurate history, not the pablum presented in most high school textbooks.

One of my favorite historians was Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States.

A People's History was first published in 1980 with little-to-no promotion, and a first run of only 5,000 copies. Somehow, mostly through word of mouth, it became the people's bestseller, achieving sales of one million in 2003.

Howard Zinn was definitely on the far outside edges of unapologetic liberalism. He told stories of suffragettes, union organizers and war resisters. Instead of exalting Christopher Columbus he accused him of genocide. He dissected presidents from Andrew Jackson to FDR.

My favorite Howard Zinn quote:

What does it take to bring a turnaround in social consciousness - from being a racist to being in favor of racial equality, from being in favor of Bush's tax program to being against it, from being in favor of the war in Iraq to being against it? We desperately want an answer, because we know that the future of the human race depends on a radical change in social consciousness.

It seems to me that we need not engage in some fancy psychological experiment to learn the answer, but rather to look at ourselves and to talk to our friends. We then see, though it is unsettling, that we were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness - embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television.

This would seem to lead to a simple conclusion: that we all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas. It is so simple a thought that it is easily overlooked as we search, desperate in the face of war and apparently immovable power in ruthless hands, for some magical formula, some secret strategy to bring peace and justice to the land and to the world.

Howard Zinn, The Progressive, 2005

Howard Zinn, 1922-2010.

If God Had Intended....

Every once in a while, it strikes me just how different it is now to 50 or so years ago. Probably if you aren't old enough to remember it, you really can't appreciate it. Just sitting in a restaurant, watching elderly people of both races eat in the same dining room and realizing that 50 years ago that very simple act wasn't legal. The capacity of (most) humans to adapt to widesweeping change is astounding. Several years ago a friend from college brought her mother over to my mother's for Thanksgiving. She told me it was the first time her mother had ever eaten in a white person's house.

Coming from that time period, The Help by Katherine Stockett is a masterpiece. Briefly set, a young white woman in Jackson, Mississippi, decides to make a collection of stores told by black maids of what it's really like to work for white women. This happens in the dangerous climate of the early 1960's, and it's a deceptively simple act that could get someone killed.

Brief excerpts:


"See, I think if God had intended for white people and colored people to be this close together for so much of the day, he would've made us colorblind. And while Miss Celia's grinning and "good morning" and "glad to see"-ing me, I'm wondering how did she get this far in life without knowing where the lines are drawn? I mean, a floozy calling the society ladies is bad enough. But she has sat down and eaten lunch with me every single day since I started working here. I don't mean in the same room, I mean at the same table. That little one up under the window. Every white woman I've ever worked for ate in the dining room as far away from the colored help as they could. And that was fine with me."


"Even though its the third week of October, the summer beats on with the rhythm of a clothes dryer. the grass in Miss Celia's yard is still a full-blown green. the orange dahlias are still smiling drunk up at the sun. And every night, the damn mosquitoes come out for their bood hunt, my sweat pads went up three cents a box, and my electric fan is broke dead on my kitchen floor."


"She brushes a clump of blond hair out of her face, looks at me like it kills her that I got hit. Suddenly I realize I ought to thank her, but truly, I've got no words to draw from. This is a brand-new invention we've come up with.

All I can say is, "You looked mighty ..... sure a yourself."

"I used to be a good fighter." She looks out along the boxwoods, wipes off her sweat with her palm. "If you'd known me ten years ago..."

"She's got no goo on her face, her hair's not sprayed, her nightgown's like an old prairie dress. She takes a deep breath through her nose and I see it. I see the white trash girl she was ten years ago. She was strong. She didn't take no shit from anybody."



"Louvenia tells me how her grandson, Robert, was blinded earlier this year by a white man, because he used a white bathroom. I recall reading about it in the paper...there is no anger in her voice at all. I learn that Lou Anne Templeton, whom I find dull and vapid and have never paid much mind to, gave Louvenia two weeks off with pay so she could help her grandson. She brought casseroles to Louvenia's house seven times during those weeks. She rushed Louvenia to the colored hospital when the first call came about Robert and waited six hours with her, until the operation was over. Lou Anne has never mentioned any of this to us. And I understand completely why she wouldn't."

*The Help, with it's UK cover, deemed too racial for the American market.

Not offered for sale, and in fact I need another copy myself, since I was reading it too intently this morning and broke the spine on my copy.

Where We Live

The perfect way to start out a new year of the bound and printed word:

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

A film for 4th Estate Publishers' 25th Anniversary. Produced by Apt Studio and Asylum Films.