Faces in Photographs: The Little Rock Nine

Kevin Drum, on his Political Animal blog, provides a link to an article on one of the Little Rock Nine, Elizabeth Eckford. Fifty years ago, nine African-American teens were the first to integrate Little Rock Central High School. That was also the year I was born.

I have always wondered about the faces in those photographs from the turbulent era of Civil Rights, the quiet, determined faces of the black students, the screaming, contorted faces of the white students. What happened to those folks who screamed racial epithets at their black neighbors? Did they grow up to repent of their actions? Were they ashamed? Vanity Fair provides answers to these questions in an article about two such faces in a photograph.

A Day on Pluton

On Saturday, Tom, M-M, and I headed to the countryside near Franklin, Georgia, where The Nature Conservancy has a preserve of over 100 acres, most of which is a pluton, a rocky outcrop of igneous rock. Stone Mountain, east of Atlanta is a massive example of a pluton. The plutonic ridge near Franklin rises out of the surrounding piney woods, and is covered with water-eroded depressions which fill with debris, creating habitats for mosses, native flowers, and the occasional pine tree.

We had volunteered to participate in a TNC workday. Our goal was to help eliminate Chinese privet, a very invasive exotic species. The privet takes over, edging out less aggressive native plants. After meeting up with other volunteers and the TNC land steward in charge of the day's work, we walked into the preserve carrying pruners, handsaws, and herbicide. We probably put in a couple of hours of work before breaking for lunch.

After lunch, Erik, the land steward, took us on a hike over the rocky landscape of this area of the Piedmont. Flowers--especially Confederate Daisy and Blazing Star--bloomed prolifically in the small depressions where soil had deposited. M-M's quick eye spied a fence lizard and, earlier, a tiny ring-neck snake. The day would have ended perfectly had a yellow jacket not flown up from a burned-out stump hole and stung me on the bridge of my nose!

A Closer Look

Butterfly on Blazing Star

Flowers on the outcrop

Confederate Daisy/ Stone Mountain Daisy

Blazing Star

Habeas corpus

The Senate today failed to pass a bill restoring the right of habeas corpus to detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The Senate needed 60 votes to pass the bill; 56 Senators voted for the bill. Thus, the extraordinary measures of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 still stand, preventing detainees from access to a speedy trial and from access to their choice of legal representation.

Why should we care? While habeas corpus has been suspended at different times in the history of our country, these recent changes in the law may set precedents that will permanently affect this traditional right to challenge one's incarceration or the incarceration of another, as Jeffrey Toobin suggests in a 2006 article in The New Yorker.

President Bush has said over and over again that terrorists hate our freedom. Well, based on these legal challenges to the basic rights underlying those freedoms, it seems that the Republican party hates freedom, too. Note again the names of those who voted against re-establishing the right of habeas corpus to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Only six Republicans voted to uphold this traditional right that Americans have long held to be a cornerstone of freedom.

What's Left Over

Years ago, when my grandmother first started getting rid of stuff she no longer needed, she gave me a bag of cream-colored fine cotton thread, a bedspread pattern, and several completed squares of the pattern. This material, she said, had belonged to her sister Lila. Before she died, my great-aunt Lila had given this uncompleted project to my grandmother, hoping that her sister might finish what she had not had time to complete. Grandma completed many handcraft projects, but she never got around to crocheting the bedspread her sister had started. So she passed the project on to me.

For years that bag of crochet thread and crocheted squares sat in several closets in different houses. Finally, I gave some of the thread to Benton, who wanted to learn to crochet. (Hey, it's a family tradition. Some of my uncles learned to crochet, too!) And I began using the crocheted squares as fancy coasters.

Before she died, my mother-in-law gave me needlepoint canvases on which she had drawn designs she had hoped to needlepoint. For years, those canvases sat in closets as I tried to think what to do with them, unwilling to throw them away. Finally, when I began creating my art car, I glued the canvases to the ceiling of the car, along with other left-overs from projects: buttons, quilt scraps, felt, spare crocheted flowers from a small afghan I once made a friend.

It's the dilemma every person faces who does hand crafts of any kind: what to do with the left-overs. People who do hand crafts probably tend to be pack rats, anyway; we hesitate to throw anything away that might be resurrected in a different project.

This weekend, I took out some skeins of yarn M-M and I had bought to make hair for the craft dolls she and I made two years ago to raise money for CARE. The yarn isn't the only item left over from that project, but I thought I would begin with it--transforming the left-overs. The end result can be seen in the photos below. I began with the designs at the end of the scarf; they look like crocheted pot holders. I attached them to the scarf and then crocheted a matching hat. I'm thinking maybe I could begin a line of designs inspired by kitchen items! In the second photo, M-M has turned the ends of the scarf around to expose the "pockets" I crocheted for hands.

Pot-holder scarves--dual use!

Today's Walk

Sculptures, scarecrows, friendly cats, and lonely dogs

Bikes aren't transportation?

While perusing the news this morning, I came across an article in Salon criticizing Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters for saying that bike paths and trails are really not "transportation-related" and thus are unworthy of receiving federal dollars from the gas tax. Did she really say that? I wondered. Surely not!

So I went to the original transcript of Gwen Ifill's interview with the Secretary of Transportation on the Lehrer News Hour. Here is a direct quote:

MARY PETERS: Well, there's about probably some 10 percent to 20 percent of the current spending that is going to projects that really are not transportation, directly transportation-related. Some of that money is being spent on things, as I said earlier, like bike paths or trails.

Now, my son is a student at the University of Texas in Austin. His transportation is a bike. He not only uses his bike to get around campus, but he shops for groceries and runs other errands. He also uses public transportation. He does not own a car. He's probably spewing his morning tea as he reads this quote from our eminent Secretary of Transportation now. (Yes, I'm a graduate of TAMU, and my son is a t-sipper!) Since a bicyclist or two is killed in Austin every year by a drunk or distracted driver, you bet I'm a supporter of bicycle paths and any media attention directed to make automobile drivers more attentive to sharing the road with bicyclists.

My husband rides his bicycle to a nearby MARTA station every week day to catch a train to downtown Atlanta. Tell him that his bicycle isn't "directly transportation-related." And what about all those kids who bike to school?

Can our Secretary of Transportation be any less short sighted?

My Kind of Neighborhood

Just a mile's walk from our house is a community garden, where people can rent a tiny plot to grow vegetables, herbs, or flowers. This morning I walked to the garden, and as I neared the street where the garden is located, I heard a hawk screeching overhead. When I got to the garden, I understood his excitement. The garden's six chickens were loose among the vegetables, the hawk circling overhead.

"Our Level of Confidence is Under Control"

Watching General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker facing the hours of questioning from members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, I couldn't help but feel a little sympathy for the two men. Both men looked as if they were in the hot seat--as they were and as they should be. The reports of these two men have been touted by the Bush administration for months as the Holy Grail to understanding the need to keep our troops in Iraq. Petraeus and Crocker were going to provide us with the answers.

Of the long excerpt of exchanges I watched on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, one struck me most forcefully. John McCain asked Ambassador Crocker whether he had any confidence that the Maliki government of Iraq had any hope of meeting the benchmarks the U. S. had set out for the country. Crocker's response? "Our level of confidence is under control."

Tom gave out a sharp bark of laughter when Crocker said this. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, smiling and yet also feeling some sympathy for the ambassador.

Ambassador Crocker parsed his answer very carefully. "Our level of confidence is under control." What a contrast that is to our president's saying that we're "kicking ass" in Iraq. What a contrast to Donald Rumsfeld's opinion that the Iraqis would embrace us as liberators. I think of Molly Ivins, grinning in her grave, not a triumphant grin but a bitter grin. Her words, in 2002: "The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? ... There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now."

There was no triumphalism in the voices of either of these two men. They tried to paint as positive a picture as they could, but they were far from triumphant.

After the long excerpt from the hearings, Jim Lehrer talked with Joe Biden, Democratic senator, and Richard Lugar, Republican senator. There was no triumphalism here, either.

What do you think, Lehrer asked Lugar, of the plan to keep over 100,000 troops in Iraq to next summer?

Lugar's response? “This [keeping 100,000 troops in Iraq] has a very narrow margin of success.”

Yes, I would say that our level of confidence is very much under control.

UPDATE, 12 Sept.: I've read several news reports on the hearings yesterday and noted that reporters recorded Ambassador Crocker as saying "MY level of confidence is under control"--not "Our."

Commemorating 9/11

Just a few minutes ago, I walked out into the late-morning sunshine to pull dead plants from the window boxes at the front of our "new" (mid-40s model) house. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a woman in her late 60s walking down our street, her little dog forging ahead on its leash. As I crossed the sidewalk to attend to the other window box, the woman asked me, "Where are all the American flags on this street?"

A little confused, I replied, "Uh, I don't know. Should there be flags?"

"To commemorate 9/11," she replied. "Everyone is supposed to fly the flag."

I answered, "Well, I guess people commemorate in different ways."

"Evidently not this street," she said, her voice heavy with judgment, as she walked on, assessing the neighborhood. Cowardly absolving myself from the actions of my neighbors--though I was as guilty as they since I also did not have a flag flying in my yard--I said, "Well, I'm new here." I heard the woman's short laugh in the distance.

Clearly, people judge us by our outward expressions of faith or patriotism. But I was brought up in a strict Southern Baptist culture, and I took those stories of Jesus seriously as a child:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. . . . But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. . . . .When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. . . . But when you do fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen."

This just sounds like wisdom to me, no matter what one's religious or irreligious persuasion. The advice jibes with my own tendency to Stoicism. Flying a flag reveals a person's true heart no more than praying on a street corner. I'm suspicious of people who make a great deal of praying in public; I am suspicious of people who worship the flag.

Anyway, this administration has been commemorating 9/11 every day for the past six years. I think a silent prayer and little bit of humility is in order for today.

Who determines "reliable religious teachings"?

A New York Times article describes the consequences of a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General of the Justice Department: banning religious texts in prisons in order to prevent religious radicalization of prisoners. The Bureau of Prisons has created a list of approved works, and, of course, some chaplains and religious groups are protesting the practice of removing the unapproved books from prison libraries. Among works excluded are books by Robert Schuller, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, and Cardinal Avery Dulles, all Christian writers of one sort or another.

Banning books in the name of terrorism: didn't you just know this was going to happen?

The Trees in Front of the View

Today Tom, M-M, and I drove an hour north of Atlanta to Amicalola Falls in order to hike up one of the trails to the head of the falls. It was a beautiful day, sunny but cool in the morning when we left. We reached Amicalola State Park a little before 10 a.m. and began our hike on the hour, heading up the Creekside Trail to the trail to the top of the falls. The hike was easy walking to begin with, the path following the creek through a green understory of mountain laurel and rhododendron and an overstory of mixed hardwoods: oaks, yellow poplar, red maple, and sourwood. Mary-Margaret stopped several times to take close-up photographs of some of the fall flowers blooming even in this drought.

At the base of the falls, however, the trail becomes a mite more strenuous where Georgia state inmates, working with the GA Department of Natural Resources, have built some mighty fine, steep stairs to the top of the falls: 604 steps in all, according to park records. Now I've been hauling around heavy boxes lately in this move, but I haven't done a lot of walking--at least not like I should--and I had to stop for breath a few times up those stairs. In addition, I have a bad knee that I suspect is going to require surgery here soon. I took another dose of ibuprofen before taking the first step up. But the hike was a good climb, where one can enjoy the beauty of the falls from different vantage points along the way and then be rewarded with a lovely view of the surrounding mountains from the top of the falls.

However, I was a little disappointed to see the large parking lot and the well-maintained road that allow tourists to forgo the climb for an easy reward of the view. "Okay," I thought, "the view might be better appreciated by those of us who sweated a little to get here, but the view is also available to folks who would love to walk the path but who can't, such as the elderly and the disabled."

Then Tom overheard one of those people complaining about the view. "They need to clear this stuff out so you can see the view," a woman in her sixties whined, waving her hands at the trees. Yet there from the vantage of a well-crafted wooden pathway with safety rails was the view. Sure, the space didn't accommodate a large group of people, but with patience, one could wait one's turn to have the view to one's self. And just a few hundred feet down a much less strenuous trail than the 604 steps we climbed up were several yards of path where anyone could have plenty of space to view the receding blue of the mountains against the washed-out blue of the early afternoon sky.

Later I thought about how too many times most of us are like that woman, wanting immediate access to something we desire and blaming other people or circumstances that seem to block our way. And yet with just a little patience or a few steps out of our well-worn paths, we could have what we desire--or even something better.

Taking Reponsibility, Looking Ahead in Iraq

Two articles on Iraq recently published online are worth a close read. One looks back to one of the worst errors the United States made in the early days of the war, the disbanding of the Iraqi army, thus dumping 250,000 men onto the streets, angry, armed, and jobless. Fred Kaplan, writing for Slate, discusses who was probably responsible for that disastrous decision. President Bush says it wasn't his order but L. Paul Bremer's decision. Paul Bremer has publicly replied that he received the order from Donald Rumsfeld and that President Bush commended the order. But Kaplan shows how all the principal parties, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had decided to disband only the elite Republican Guards, not the ordinary enlisted men in the Iraqi army. So where do you think the finger points for what most believe was the worst decision in the early months of the Iraq war, a decision that led to the chaos and violence? Read Kaplan's piece for one analysis.

The second article is by George Packer, in The New Yorker. Packer, a journalist who supported President Bush's decision to invade Iraq but who quickly became disenchanted with the war because of its poor execution, has written extensively on the war in Iraq and has been to Iraq several times. (I highly recommend his book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, as well as Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11 and Thomas Ricks' Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.) Packer's recent article, "Planning for Defeat", looks ahead to the decisions which will have to be made in the next few months. He rightly points out that these decisions are not ones relegated to one administration or one party. We are all responsible, and our decisions will determine America's standing in the world.

Hold the Popcorn

It seems we have another item to add to our list of foods to avoid: buttery, microwavable popcorn. For years there have been records of workers in microwave popcorn packaging plants suffering from severe lung disease and occupational asthma. The cause has been identified as diacetyl, the chemical used in the buttery flavoring of popcorn. Now a doctor has reported a case of a man with similar symptoms in the general population, a heavy consumer of microwavable popcorn. And one popcorn manufacturer is removing diacetyl from its products. (Did you know that diacetyl is also used in alcoholic beverages? According to Wikipedia, low levels of the chemical make the drinks feel smooth and slippery in the mouth.)

Some bloggers have tried to bring attention to what they think is a serious problem and blame the Bush administration for not holding manufacturers accountable and for not cautioning the public.

Judge for yourself, but I think I'm going to pass on the buttery, microwavable popcorn and return to popping my own the old-fashioned way.

UPDATE

And here are directions for making popcorn the old fashioned way: "Diner's Journal," The New York Times.

Clearing Filing Cabinets

Last week, inspectors for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Unit were cleaning out their files at the United Nations headquarters in New York and came across a startling find: several vials of lethal chemicals locked in a sealed metal container. Of course, since these were lethal weapons inspectors, the U.N. personnel secured the vials until they could identify the chemicals.

The inspectors were going through "125 five-drawer cabinets, containing 16 years of inspection reports." I identify with that kind of tedious work. Before we left Texas, I went through a file cabinet of teaching materials, throwing away student papers I had kept as good examples of writing and extra copies of handouts I had held onto for each succeeding semester. Last week, I finished the job (mostly), sifting through 25 years of files. And while I didn't find anything as toxic as those U.N. inspectors found, I did discover that I've held onto items far too long. Some of my most unusual or interesting finds:

• The paper, name place setting for my grandmother, on the occasion of my bridal luncheon 29 years ago. "Grandmother Dugat" is written on the front of the place setting, in my mother-in-law's handwriting. "Anita's bridal luncheon, Apr. 22, 1978" is written on the back in my grandmother's handwriting. Obviously, this item was something my grandmother kept to commemorate the occasion and then passed on to me during one of her own cleaning-out-the-files sessions.
  

• My best graduate papers and the first research paper I wrote in college over thirty years ago. Although I was going to throw these items away--finally!--Mary-Margaret convinced me not to do so. Against my advice, M-M hopes to become an English teacher, and she is interested, she said, in reading these papers that I wrote on my way to becoming an English teacher. Hmmmmmm.........
  

• A Dean's Honor Award from Texas A&M University's College of Engineering, recognizing me for "Outstanding Academic Achievement" for the fall semester of 1980. Of course, I was never an engineering student at Texas A&M. The award was a clerical mistake. I should have received the honor award for English, not Engineering. But I filed this award away all these years as a caution against taking even official records at face value. Now I'm sending it to Benton, who is an engineering student (though at rival UT-Austin), with directions to throw away the item after he has gotten a chuckle out of the parchment lie.
  

• Three letters written to me by Stanley P. "Choo-Choo" Dyer, in 1976 and 1977. Choo-Choo, as friends and family called him, was the son of one of my father's best friends and a member of the TAMU Corps of Cadets. About four years older than I, he had wanted to date me, but I was already seriously involved with Tom. I read the letters to Mary-Margaret, who teared up and then said, "I am impressed. I don't know any boys who can write like that. Has this generation's genetic material been diminished?!" I assured her that in nine or ten years, perhaps some of the boys she knew would be able to write like Choo-Choo Dyer.

Choo-Choo was a character. He composed great portions of the letters in rhyming couplets, with a description in one of how he ran naked through the woods to worship his god. He also gave the young, very inexperienced me, brotherly advice: "Your heart," he assured me in one letter, "wants things to hurry up and become realities & your brain says take it easy & look things over--your [thoughts] are ruled first by one & then the other. . . .You cry for letters that do say something of life. You want letters that say something of the joys of the person--the dreams, the defeats, a person's self--the truth--Settle for no less--you also maybe cry because you just feel like it--for no reason.... ."

Choo-Choo went on to marry a lovely red-haired woman named Vicki and to father two beautiful daughters, but in his thirties, he died of cancer. My mother and father attended the funeral--I was living in another state at the time--and my mother recounted later to me how Choo-Choo's mother, Patsy Dyer, came up to her to tell her how much Choo-Choo had liked me when we were teenagers. I told all of this to Mary-Margaret.

"You can't throw those letters away!" Mary-Margaret exclaimed.

"Of course, I won't," I said.

And so I placed Choo-Choo's hastily scrawled, partly rhymed letters back into the file cabinets with all those other items with which I can't bear to part. I've given my children directions to burn everything when I die.

But I bet they won't.