FTWMI: What (and How) Do You Recollect? / A Strenuous, Deliberate Life Photo (w/excerpt) July 12, 2025

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Art, Books, Changing Perspectives, First Nations, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Loss, Music, One Hoop, Pain, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: 988, Books, Eastman Kodak, Florence McAnaney, George Eastman, HBCUs, Henry David Thoreau, In Search of Lost Time, Life in the Woods, Marcel Proust, Nature, Philosophy, Remembrance of Things Past, Sinners, Swann's Way, The Captive, thoreau, Walden, yoga philosophy
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Peace and blessings to all, and especially to those completing the the Apostles’ (Peter & Paul) Fast during this 5^th Week after Pentecost and/or beginning the month of Kalimát (“Words”)!

For Those Who Missed It: The following compilation post containing was originally posted in 2023. Class details and some formatting have been revised. Links and a little extra note have been added for context, and one link was converted into an excerpt.

“When from a long distance past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny, and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”

— quoted from “Overture” in Swann’s Way, Volume 1 of Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust

You’re probably familiar with that old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but what’s the value of a thousand words that paint a picture? For that matter, what of a million? As I mentioned a few days ago, Marcel Proust wrote over a million words about memories and reflections — and, also, about how we recollect. He wrote about the very human thing we all do: look back over our days.

Sometimes we do it intentionally, deliberately — like the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who would end each day by reviewing what he had done between rising and retiring. The stoic emperor’s practice is a good reflection meditation, which can help us be more productive and (sometimes) can help us to sleep better. It’s a way to literally put to bed unresolved issues that might otherwise keep us awake. Unfortunately, sometimes, we find ourselves in bed regurgitating memories that no longer serve us.

“We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.”

— quoted from The Captive, Volume 5 of Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust

Memories can also pop up, unexpectedly. We can be eating a madeleine or a biscuit, sitting by a moonlit lake, reading a book, listening to music, sitting down to take off or put on our shoes, or practicing on our mat and suddenly — out of nowhere it seems — we are bombarded with a very visceral memory. It seems as if it comes from nowhere, but it actually comes from inside of us. It is visceral because we not only feel it all the way to our bones, it comes out of our bones, out of our tissues, out of our minds and bodies.

So, how do you show up, in the present, when your mind-body can — at any given moment — transport you into the past? How do you make remembering useful? How do you very deliberately, very intentionally, harness the power of your memories and your ability to reflect?

What I’m really asking is: How do you remember with the intention of Thoreau and the eye of Eastman? (And, if you have that “eye of Eastman” how do you use it without (metaphorically) losing focus of the present moment?)

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

— quoted from a journal entry dated August 5, 1851, as printed in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, Walden Edition by Henry David Thoreau, compiled and edited by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn and Bradford Torrey

Born today in 1817, in Concord Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau was a teacher and a writer, who is remembered as a writer and naturalist. He is also remembered as being very close to his brother John. I have heard that the brothers were close despite having different temperaments. Henry David was introverted and all about the books; John was out-going, extroverted, and fun-loving. Additionally, John supported Henry David’s every endeavor — helping him pay for tuition at Harvard and even started a new school when Henry David was fired for objecting to corporal punishment. They shared a lot of memories.

When John died, unexpectedly, in his brother’s arms, Henry David floundered. He lived with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s family for a period of time and served as a teacher to the Emerson children. Along with Edward Hoar, he accidentally burned down several hundred acres of Walden Woods. Not long after the fire, Emerson allowed Thoreau to retreat to a cabin located on 14 acres of land, about 1.5 miles from Emerson House.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

— quoted from “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” in Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau lived in the cabin, on the banks of Walden Pond, for two years, two months, and two days. He spent that time writing his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, which he self-published on May 30, 1849. The book was a memorial for his brother and it related the story of a trip the brothers took in 1839. He also wrote the work most people associate with the name Thoreau: a collection of essays entitled Walden, or Life in the Woods.

Both of Thoreau’s books are full of words that painted pictures. He was, after all, a “mental picture” taker. After his brother died unexpectedly, Henry David Thoreau was undoubtedly comforted by the images formed by his words, but think of how he might have felt (or might have written) had he and John been born decades after George Eastman.

“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

— quoted from “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” in Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

George Eastman, born today in 1854, in Waterville, New York, was an entrepreneur, inventor, and philanthropist who founded the Eastman Kodak Company. He and two older sisters (Ellen Maria and Katie) were initially raised on a 10-acre farm his parents purchased shortly before George was born. Unfortunately, their father — a successful entrepreneur himself — died of a brain disorder when Eastman was almost 8 years old. By then, the Eastman family was living in Rochester, NY and life on the farm was but a memory.

George, who had been self-taught until his father’s death, was sent to private school and his mother took in boarders in order to survive. By the time he was 15, the youngest of his sisters (Katie) had died of polio. Soon after her death, George left school and started a photography business. By the time he was 30 years old, he had patented the first practical “roll of film”. Before the age of 35, he had developed the Kodak Black camera, designed to use roll film. Eventually, his company became the first, and the leading company, to supply film stock. Along the way, George Eastman changed the way people remembered — and he incorporated what would become a billion dollar company (all with a made up name).

“What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are.”

— George Eastman

While some of details of their lives are very different, Henry David Thoreau and George Eastman were both very private men, who lived very solitary lives, and who believed in community. They also believed in serving the community — albeit in slightly different ways.

Henry David Thoreau was a transcendentalist and an abolitionist who read the Bhagavad Gītā and believed in civil disobedience. He was criticized for a number of things throughout his lifetime, including the decision to live alone with those regulated to the fringes of society (which some viewed as “unmanly”). His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, led a student revolt at Harvard in 1766 (the first recorded in the United States) and Henry David spent a (very) short period of time in jail for “tax evasion” — which was not the first time he had refused to pay something he thought he should not have to pay. It is possible (and probable) that he also helped others escape tax liens.

“Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained…. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.”

— quoted from “Economy” in Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

George Eastman also lived a solitary life (in that he never married or had children). He was considered a progressive in the social and political sense. He fought the labor union movement by offering worker benefit programs, which included employee profit-sharing for all employees. He also promoted Florence McAnaney to the top position in the personnel department — establishing her as one of the first women to hold an executive position in a major U. S. company. He also founded “an independent non-partisan agency for keeping citizens informed” in Rochester, which continues to this day.

“If a man has wealth, he has to make a choice, because there is the money heaping up. He can keep it together in a bunch, and then leave it for others to administer after he is dead. Or he can get it into action and have fun, while he is still alive. I prefer getting it into action and adapting it to human needs, and making the plan work.”

— George Eastman

Henry David Thoreau was not a financially wealthy man. However his contributions to the world are priceless. His philosophy and viewpoints regarding “unjust laws” (like the Fugitive Slave Law, which he frequently attacked in lectures), influenced Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. His legacy to the modern world includes over 20 volumes worth of articles, essays, journals, and poetry.

On the flip side, George Eastman was a philanthropist, who donated (often anonymously, as “Mr. Smith”) millions of dollars to a variety of organizations including the University of Rochester (which was also the beneficiary of his estate); the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT); and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He established the Eastman School of Music and schools of dentistry and medicine at the University of Rochester, as well as the Eastman Dental Hospital in London, England. Low-income residents of London and other European cities also benefited from Eastman’s generosity as he provided funds for multiple clinics across the pond. Additionally, donated millions to Tuskegee University and Hampton University — historically Black universities.

“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth….”

— George Eastman

Please join me today (Saturday, July 12^th) at 12:00 PM for a yoga practice on Zoom. You can use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

Saturday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “07122020 Strenuous, Deliberate Life Photo”]

An “Interesting” Development (especially considering the new film created for the 2025 movie Sinners)!

If you’re interested in another look at how things “develop,” click on the excerpt title below.

A Strenuous, Deliberate “Photo” of You (the “missing” Monday post)

If you are thinking about suicide, worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, you can dial 988 (in the US) or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call this TALK line if you are struggling with addiction or involved in an abusive relationship. The Lifeline network is free, confidential, and available to all 24/7. YOU CAN TALK ABOUT ANYTHING.

White Flag is an app, which I have not yet researched, but which may be helpful if you need peer-to-peer (non-professional) support.

If you are a young person in crisis, feeling suicidal, or in need of a safe and judgement-free place to talk, you can also click here to contact the TrevorLifeline (which is staffed 24/7 with trained counselors).

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)

### YS: 1.36 VIŚOKĀ VĀ JYOTIŞMATĪ ###

Pepys, peeps, and a peep [of Harmony] (the “missing” Sunday post that is also a “long lost” post w/an excerpt) February 23, 2025

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Art, Books, Changing Perspectives, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Music, One Hoop, Peace, Science, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: 988, Anne Frank, Arooj Aftab, Black History Month, Booker T. Washington, Carnival, George Frideric Handel, George Handel, Harmony, HBCUs, Henry B. Wheatley F.S.A., Lord Braybrooke’s, Mahā Kumbha Mēlā, Rev. Mynors Bright M.A., Samuel Pepys, Sir Isaac Newton, W. E. B. Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
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Many blessings to everyone, and especially those celebrating Carnival and Maha Kumbh Mela!

Peace, ease, and harmony throughout this “Season for Nonviolence” and all other seasons!!!

This is the “missing” post for Sunday, February 23, 2025 (and also 2022). You can request an audio recording of this practice or a previous practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es).

Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.

Check out the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming classes.

“Dear Kitty,

It’s lovely weather outside and I’ve perked up since yesterday. Nearly every morning I go to the attic where Peter works to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs. From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind.

He stood with his head against a thick beam, and I sat down. We breathed the fresh air, looked outside, and both felt that the spell should not be broken by words…. I looked out, of the open window too, over a large area of Amsterdam, over all the roofs and on to the horizon, which was such a pale blue that it was hard to see the dividing line. ‘As long as this exists,’ I thought, ‘and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.’”

— Anne Frank, written in her diary (“Kitty”) on Wednesday, February 23, 1944

Do you keep a diary, a journal, or maybe write “morning pages”? If so, you probably write about things that are very personal to you; things you believe no one would be interested in reading — and, in most cases, you probably write for your eyes only. However, as you chronicle your daily minutia, you probably also reference things that are happening in the world around you. Just like famous diarists (whose private musings have made it into the public), you probably include references and maybe even details about current events — and how you take care of yourself during challenging (and horrifically tragic) times. In other words, like Samuel Pepys and Anne Frank, you provide an eye witness account of things that will one day be studied.

Born in London, today (February 23^rd) in 1638, Samuel Pepys was a Tory politician who had no maritime experience, but somehow rose to the rank of Chief Secretary to the Admiralty (under two different kings). While he played a role in the reformation of what is now the Royal Navy, he is primarily remembered as a writer — and specifically as a prolific diarists. From 1660 until 1669, he wrote detailed daily entries about everything from his marriage, what he ate for any given meal, and the painful urinary tract and (urinary) bladder stone issues¹ (which he experienced from a very young age) to the “good honest and painfull [i.e. painstakingly written] sermon” he heard on Sunday, March 17, 1661, and every else going on in the world around him. In fact, his diary entries give modern readers first-hand, eyewitness accounts of the Stuart Restoration (in May 1660), the Great Plague of London (1665-1666), the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667), and the Great Fire of London (in September 1666).

“17th (Lord’s day). At church in the morning, a stranger preached a good honest and painfull sermon. My wife and I dined upon a chine of beef at Sir W. Batten’s, so to church again. Then home, and put some papers in order. Then to supper at Sir W. Batten’s again, where my wife by chance fell down and hurt her knees exceedingly. So home and to bed.”

— quoted from a 1661 diary entry, as published in the “March 1660-1661” section of The Diary of Samuel Pepys M.A. F.R.S., Clerk of the Acts and Secretary to the Admiralty by Samuel Pepys

Transcribed from the Shorthand Manuscript in the Pepysian Library, Magdalene College Cambridge, by the Rev. Mynors Bright M.A., Late Fellow and President of the College (Unabridged), with Lord Braybrooke’s Notes / Edited with Additions by Henry B. Wheatley F.S.A.

Samuel Pepys wrote his diary entries in his own personal shorthand and also used a little code that mixed English profanities with French, Italian, and Spanish words. He often used the code when talking about illicit affairs — and interactions with women that are so clearly abusive that they can only be described as rape — and/or when he was describing his very frank opinions about people in power. There are, however, some indications that he wanted his diaries to be a historical record. For instance, he preserved them, catalogued them as part of his library, and even transcribed some pages (from his shorthand). In 1669, he stopped writing his daily dairy entries because he was losing his eyesight. He considered dictating his daily entries to a scribe — and did, in fact, briefly dictate some work-related journal entries in 1669–70 and 1683). However, he ultimately decided that he did not want to give up his privacy.

In 1665, Samuel Pepys was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and was serving as the society’s president, in 1687, when Sir Isaac Newton published the first edition of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) in 1687. The treatise actually includes correspondence between the two men and a bit of a debate (about probability).

Just as the work of Samuel Pepys gives modern readers a glimpse of 17^th century England, the work of W. E. B. Du Bois gives modern readers a glimpse of 19^th and 20^th century America.

“When the physical war ended, then the real practical problems presented themselves. How was slavery to be effectively abolished? And what was to be the status of the Negroes? What was the condition and power of the states which had rebelled? The legal solution of these questions was easy. The states that had attempted to rebel had failed. The must now resume their relations to the government. Slavery had been abolished as a war measure….

The difficulty with this legalistic formula was that it did not cling to facts. Slavery was not abolished even after the Thirteenth Amendment. There were four million freedmen and most of them on the same plantation, doing the same work they did before emancipation, except as their work had been interrupted and changed by the upheaval of war. Moreover, they were getting about the same wages and apparently were going to be subject to slave codes modified only in name. There were among them thousands of fugitives in the camps of the soldiers or on the streets of the cities, homeless, sick, and impoverished. They had been freed practically with no land nor money, and, save in exceptional cases, without legal status, and without protection.”

— quoted from Black Reconstruction in America (The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois): An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 by W. E. B Du Bois

Born William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868, Dr. Du Bois was an author, sociologist, socialist, historian, a Pan-Africanist civil rights activist, and one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was the editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, from 1910 to 1933, and the author of a plethora of articles and speeches, over 24 books, and three autobiographies, including: “The Study of the Negro Problems” (1898), The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (1903), John Brown (1909), The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America (1924), Black Reconstruction in America (1935), What the Negro Has Done for the United States and Texas (1936), and I Take My Stand for Peace (1951).

While his paternal great-grandfather was ethnically French-American (from a Huguenot family) and his maternal great-great-grandfather had been enslaved, W. E. B. Du Bois’s father (Alfred Du Bois) was of mixed ethnicity and his mother (Mary Silvina Burghard Du Bois), who was also mixed heritage, was part of a small, free Black population of land owners. Dr. Du Bois, himself, grew up in a mostly European American town. After graduating with honors from an integrated school in his hometown, he earned a Bachelor’s of Art (BA) from Fisk University. He then had to start over from scratch and earn a second Bachelor’s (AB) in history, cum laude, from Harvard University — which, at the time, did not recognize credits and degrees from HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). Finally, he earned a PhD in sociology from Harvard. Part of his graduate school studies included a fellowship from the John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedman, which enabled him to attend Friedrich Wilhelm University (in Berlin) and to travel throughout Europe. Just as his upbringing shaped his perspective, his travels and studies further informed the way he saw the world, his place in the world, and what he had to offer the world.

“The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world’s need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this — with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need — this life is hell.”

— quoted from the National Guardian article entitled “To an American born last Christmas Day” by W. E. B. Du Bois, published on March 10, 1958, under the header “Dr. DuBois at 90 Offers a Piece of Advice [to his newborn great-grandson]”

Of course, all throughout his school years — even when he was on scholarship and even when he was studying abroad, he had to work and rely on extra income (in the form of loans and gifts) from friends and family. After he graduated, he started teaching at Wilberforce University (in Ohio). He eventually conducted research at the University of Pennsylvania and then accepted a position to teach history and economics at Atlanta University (in Georgia). During his tenure at Atlanta University, he started presenting articles based on his University of Pennsylvania field work, in which he described “the submerged tenth” and, later, “the talented tenth”. These two terms and the people referenced by those terms became the foundation of a late 19^th century debate that continues to this day.

The following excerpt is from a post about Social Economics:

Most people associate the two sides of the debate with W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Both were educated and both were leaders in the Black community. To a certain degree, they even had the ear of the establishment. However, they had very different ideas about the best way for formerly enslaved people and their descendants to actively participate in and benefit from the US economy.

In a nutshell, Mr. Washington advocated sticking to what people knew (from slavery) and becoming (scholastically) educated in agriculture, crafts, and other trades they had done during slavery. He also encouraged people to purchase property and to be patient when faced with discrimination (even if that discrimination hindered them in pursuing education and the opportunity to purchase property). On the flip side, Mr. Du Bois was considered a radical who believed in an “intellectual” education that would create what he called the “Talented Tenth” – the best and the brightest college educated individuals who could instigate activism in the streets as well as in the courts and in the boardrooms. As I said, this debate continues, in part because the stigma, racism, and prejudice associated with slavery still exists.

“Thus in the far-away Southern village that would lay waiting, half consciously, the coming of two young men, and dreamed in an inarticulate way of new things that would be done and new thoughts that all would think. And yet it was a singular that few thought of two Johns, — for the black folk thought of one John, and he was black; and the white folk though of another John, and he was white. And neither thought the other world’s thought, save with a vague unrest.”

— quoted from “XIII. Of the Coming of John” in The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

The thirteen essay in The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, called “Of the Coming of John”, is a study of contrasts. It is an essay/story of two popular, beloved men from the same hometown in Georgia. In some ways, they grow up together — although, like W. E. B. Du Bois and his childhood friends, one is Black and one is white. The latter is also, notably, from a wealthy family with a lot of power in the small town. The two Johns leave home (separately), but their paths awkwardly overlap in New York City, just before they return home, and then tragically overlap when they are back in Georgia.

The awkward meeting in New York happens during a performance of Lohengrin — which provides an odd bit of twisted foreshadowing. However, during today’s practice, I imagined that the music was something by George Frideric Handel, who was born today in 1685 (according to the Julian calendar) in Halle, Duchy of Magdeburg, Brandenburg-Prussia (which is now Germany) and whose music was the backdrop for the drama of it’s own time.

“All this John did not see, for he sat in a half-maze minding the scene about him; the delicate beauty of the hall, the faint perfume, the moving myriad of men, the rich clothing and low hum of talking seemed all a part of a world so different from his, so strangely more beautiful than anything he had known, that he sat in dreamland, and started when, after a hush, rose high and clear the music of Lohengrin’s swan. The infinite beauty of the wail lingered and swept through every muscle of his frame, and put it all a-tune. He closed his eyes and grasped the elbows of the chair, touching unwittingly the lady’s arm. And the lady drew away. A deep longing swelled in all his heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that low life that held him prisoned and befouled. If he could only live up in the free air where birds sang and setting suns had no touch of blood! Who had called him to be the slave and butt of all? And if he had called, what right had he to call when a world like this lay open before men?

Then the movement changed, and fuller, mightier harmony swelled away. He looked thoughtfully across the hall, and wondered why the beautiful gray-haired woman looked so listless, and what the little man could be whispering about. He would not like to be listless and idle, he thought, for he felt with the music the movement of power within him. If he but had some master-work, some life-service, hard, — aye, bitter hard, but without the cringing and sickening servility, without the cruel hurt that hardened his heart and soul.”

— quoted from “XIII. Of the Coming of John” in The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

Sunday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “022322 Pepys, peeps, and a peep”]

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature, and God…. As long as [the simple beauty of Nature] exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”

— Anne Frank, written in her diary (“Kitty”) on Wednesday, February 23, 1944

If you are thinking about suicide, worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, you can dial 988 (in the US) or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call this TALK line if you are struggling with addiction or involved in an abusive relationship. The Lifeline network is free, confidential, and available to all 24/7. YOU CAN TALK ABOUT ANYTHING.

White Flag is a new app, which I have not yet researched, but which may be helpful if you need peer-to-peer (non-professional) support.

If you are a young person in crisis, feeling suicidal, or in need of a safe and judgement-free place to talk, you can also click here to contact the TrevorLifeline (which is staffed 24/7 with trained counselors).

¹2025 NOTE: During the practice, I said that I did not know/remember if Samuel Pepys had problems with his urinary bladder or his gall bladder, but that we would address both in the physical parts of the practice.

### “breathe / take a breath / saans lo” ~ Arooj Aftab ###

Salt of the Earth, the 2024 remix (the “missing” Tuesday post) February 6, 2024

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Buddhism, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Faith, Food, Gandhi, Healing Stories, Health, Hope, Life, Lorraine Hansberry, Music, New Year, One Hoop, Pain, Peace, Pema Chodron, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yin Yoga, Yoga.
Tags: #Say No to Hate / the spirit of solidarity and peace., Ahiṃsā, Ahimsa, Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Arun Gandhi, birthdays on February 6, Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, commandments, Constance Allen Pitter Thomas, Edward A. Pitter, Female Genital Mutilation, FGM, Great Depression, HBCUs, Howard University, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes, International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, Juana Racquel Royster Horn, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Lincoln School of Nursing, Marjorie Allen Pitter, Marjorie Allen Pitter King, Mary T. Henry, nursing, precepts, salt, Salt Satyagraha, Season for Nonviolence, Season of Non-violence, Season of Nonviolence, Seattle Washington, Steve “Woz” Wozniak, Stewart Brand, The Common Word initiative, The Gospel According to Matthew, United Nations, United Nations General Assembly, University of California LA, University of Washington, World Interfaith Harmony Week, yamas, Yoga Sutra 2.35
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Happy Carnival (to those who are already celebrating)! Peace, ease, and healing on International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, the penultimate day of World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW), throughout this “Season for Nonviolence” and all other seasons!!!

This is the “missing” post for Tuesday, February 6^th. It is a revised version of a 2023 “special Black History note” with a new introduction and a slightly different focus from last year. Class details, theme details, and links have been updated. You can request a recording of the Monday practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

WARNING: A portion of this post refers to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), but there is an opportunity to skip that section.

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice. Donations are tax deductible.

Check out the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming classes.

“The mere imparting of information is not education.”

“It may be of no importance to the race to be able to boast today of many times as many ‘educated’ members as it had in 1865. If they are the wrong kind the increase in numbers will be a disadvantage rather than an advantage. The only question which concerns us here is whether these ‘educated’ persons are actually equipped to face the ordeal before them or unconsciously contribute to their own undoing by perpetuating the regime of the oppressor.”

— quoted from the “Preface” to The Mis-education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson

In 1984, at the first Hackers Conference, the author and publisher Stewart Brand said, “…the right information in the right place just changes your life.” Now, I realize that this part of Mr. Brand’s statement to Apple co-founder Steve “Woz” Wozniak is not the part most people highlight. I also realize that the most quoted part is the part that can lead to a really interesting conversation about commercialism, capitalism, and the proliferation of misinformation. But, the part about the right information really resonates with me — especially during a time when lack of knowledge is leading to so much suffering and especially on a day when part of our focus is education.

As I mentioned last week, Gandhi’s grandson (Arun Gandhi) established the “Season for Nonviolence” (January 30^th through April 4^th) in 1998. Throughout the season, the Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace offers daily practices based on principles of nonviolence advocated by Mahatma Gandhi (who was assassinated on January 30, 1948) and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (who was assassinated on April 4, 1968). We could think of these principles as little bits of salt, sprinkled throughout the days, but the thing to remember is that these principles are not unique to one culture, one philosophy, or one religion. Neither did these two great leaders/teachers invent these ideas. Ahiṃsā (non-violence or “non-harming”) is the very first yama (external “restraint” or universal commandment) in the Yoga Philosophy and one of the Ten Commandments according the Abrahamic religions. It is also one of the Buddhist precepts. Courage, smiling, appreciation, caring, believing, simplicity, and education — the principles of the first week of the “Season for Nonviolence” — all predate Gandhi and MLK; they also predate Jesus. [Spoiler alert!] So, too, does tomorrow’s principle: Healing.

Education and healing are also the focus of people who are wrapping up World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW), which was first proposed by King Abdullah II of Jordan in 2010. The United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted Resolution 65/5 on October 10, 2010, and designated the first week of February as a time to promote a culture of peace and nonviolence “between all religions, faiths, and beliefs.” The foundation for this week of harmony are the underlying principles of The Common Word initiative: “Love of the Good” and “Love of the Neighbour.” These concepts were incapsulated in the 2023 theme “Harmony in a World in Crisis: Working together to achieve peace, gender equality, mental health and wellbeing, and environmental preservation,” which stressed the fact that we are all better equipped to deal with future pandemics and natural catastrophes when we come together and work together. They also coalesce in the 2024 theme “#Say No to Hate, the spirit of solidarity and peace.”*

Of course, practicing and embodying lovingkindness — especially when interacting with people who are perceived as being different from you — requires compassion and patience. It also requires knowledge and a willingness to learn… which brings me to salt… and basic human rights.

“Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life. It is the only condiment of the poor. Cattle cannot live without salt. Salt is a necessary article in many manufactures. it is also a rich manure.

There is no article like salt, outside water, by taxing which the State can reach even the starving millions, the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless. The salt tax constitutes the most inhuman poll tax that the ingenuity of man can devise.”

— quoted from a letter by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930

Some people laughed when Mohandas Karamchanda Gandhi decided salt would be the focus of a direct action, non-violent mass protest. People who are world leaders today scoffed back then, because they didn’t get it and they didn’t have his insight and vision. However, Gandhi wasn’t the first radical leader to emphasize the importance of salt. Jesus did it, in the Gospel According to Matthew (5:13 – 14), when he referred to his disciples as “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” In both cases, the teacher whose name would become synonymous with a worldwide religious movement indicated that there was a purpose, a usefulness, to the disciples and their roles (as salt and as light). I think it’s important to remember that Jesus was speaking to fishermen, farmers, and shepherds — people who were intimately familiar with the importance of salt (and light). They knew that (different kinds of) salt can be used for flavoring, preservation, fertilization, cleansing, and destroying, and that it could be offered as a sacrifice. They knew, as Gandhi would later point out, that people in hot, tropical climates needed salt for almost everything — including healing.

Gandhi’s “audience” was different. He was living in a time of industrialization and the beginnings of these modern times in which we find ourselves. He knew that people laughed and scoffed, because they didn’t completely understand the usefulness and vitalness of salt. He understood that some people took salt for granted and, even within the pages of Young India (which he used to educate and inform people), he debated with experts about the benefits and risks of salt consumption. He also knew that some people — inside and outside of British-ruled India — just didn’t get the inhumanity of charging people a tax for something that they could obtain (literally) outside their front door; something that was part of the very fiber of their being.

Remember, the human body is 60 – 75% water… and most of that water is saturated with salt.

“Such a universal force [Satyagraha] necessarily makes no distinction between kinsmen and strangers, young and old, man and woman, friend and foe. The force to be so applied can never be physical. There is in it no room for violence. The only force of universal application can, therefore, be that of ahimsa or love. In other words it is soul force.

Love does not burn others, it burns itself.”

— quoted from “Some Rules of Satyagraha” by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930

(NOTE: The general explanation and rules were followed by a section of rules of conduct for various situations, including for “an Individual” and for “a Prisoner.”)

“Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him because you know God loves him. And he might be the worst person you’ve ever seen.”

— quoted from “Loving Your Enemies” sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (11/17/1957)

In 2017, InterFaith Works and Women Transcending Boundaries, two United Religions Initiatives groups in North America celebrated World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW) with a program called, “Love is the Answer” — a theme which, again, underscores the basic principles cultivated by Mahatma Gandhi and the Reverend Dr. King. To be clear, we‘re not talking about romantic love or any kind of conditional love. Here, we are talking about the love that Gandhi associated with satyagraha and that MLK referred to as agape. We are talking about an energy that predates us and will exist beyond us.

In speaking and writing about this energy of love, as they both did, Gandhi and MLK highlighted the fact that love is essential to healing and overcoming catastrophes. It does not matter if we are dealing with future pandemics, natural catastrophes, or human-made disasters and catastrophic events, we are ultimately dealing with the same underlying issues that plagued Gandhi and MLK — even Jesus: people who who would take away another person’s ability to be a healthy, thriving, human being. Again, we could look back at salt… or basic civil rights… or we could look at what it (sometimes) means to be like August Wilson’s Risa, “a woman in the world.”

While I do not go into explicit details, you may skip to the next big banner quote if needed.

In addition to being the penultimate day of World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW), February 6^th is also International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. Designated by the UN in 2012, this annual day of events aims to amplify and direct the efforts to eliminate the practice of FGM, which is defined by the UN as “all procedures that involve altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons and is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights, the health and the integrity of girls and women.” People who endure FGM face short-term complications such as severe pain, shock, excessive bleeding, infections, and difficulty in passing urine, as well as long-term consequences for their sexual and reproductive health and mental health. According to the UN, 4.32 million girls around the world are at risk of undergoing FGM and approximately 1 in 4, or 52 million worldwide, experience FGM at the hands of a medical professional.

This is not a new practice. In fact, when I was in college (about 30-plus years ago) I had an argument with a male student who insisted there was no such thing as FGM. He was white, from America, and (to my knowledge) had not experienced much outside of his lived experience. He only knew what it was like to be him. If I could go back, and have that discussion again, I might dig a little deeper into why he was in such denial about something that (to date) has been experienced by at least 200 million living people. NOTE: That statistic only refers to survivors.

While the UN acknowledges that cultures are different and that all are in “constant flux,” the General Assembly also recognizes that, in order for cultures to survive, the people within a society must be able to thrive, enjoy basic human rights, and have the physical and mental wellness to reach their potential. Any one of us can think of this as someone else’s problem, but the truth is that (on some level) this is everyone’s problem to solve. In fact, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called, “on men and boys everywhere to join me in speaking out and stepping forward to end female genital mutilation, for the benefit of all.”

The good news is that FGM has declined, globally, over the last 25 years and that a girl is one-third less likely to experience FGM than 30 years ago. Also in the good news category: more awareness means that healthcare professionals are in a better position to help FGM survivors heal from the physical, mental, and/or emotional trauma.

Yoga Sūtra 2.35: ahimsāpratişţhāyām tatsannidhau vairatyāgah

— “In the company of a yogi established in non-violence, animosity disappears.”

Healing begins with people. I’ve seen this up close and personal all of my life, because I grew up around healers. My father taught in medical schools and ran research labs. My mother was a hospital administrator. Her mother went to nursing school with at least one of her sister-in-laws and a couple of her future neighbors. For the most part, they all went to HBCUs (Historically Black Universities and Colleges) in the South, because the times — and the laws at the time — didn’t give them a whole lot of other options. In some ways, my grandmother and her peers would have had very similar experiences as Black nursing students before and after them. In some ways, however, their experiences would have been very different — again, because of the opportunities that were available (or not available to them) based on the color of their skin. For instance, the nurses in my family definitely had to overcome obstacles, but (maybe) not the same walls that Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes had scale in order to become a nurse.

Born February 6, 1919, in Seattle, Washington, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes was the second of three girls born to Edward A. Pitter and Marjorie Allen Pitter. Mr. Pitter, who was born in Jamaica (like Bob Marley, who was born 02/06/1945), came to the United States as a captain’s steward during the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. After leaving his position on the passenger ship, he became a King County Clerk and then a book editor and publisher. He also worked with the Democratic Party (the Colored Democratic Association of Washington). Mrs. Pitter was a direct descendent of Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, and she knew how to protect her family against the hostilities they encountered. Their daughters (Constance, Maxine, and Marjorie) grew up in the tightknit household that emphasized elegance and education.

“Marjorie Pitter King remembered, ‘Politics opened doors for us and was very helpful. During the Christmas vacations, we were able to work at the post office and earn money to help with our schooling. It also helped my father obtain his job because he had been working on WPA (Works Progress Administration) projects. Then he went from there to deputy sheriff.’ (Horn)”

— quoted from “King, Marjorie Edwina Pitter (1921-1996)” by Mary T. Henry, posted on historylink.org (Juana Racquel Royster Horn cited)

All three of the Pitter girls graduated from high school and made their way to the University of Washington. Like a lot of students, especially during the Great Depression, the sisters had financial struggles. To alleviate their economic problems, the youngest of the three (Marjorie) proposed that they go into business together doing things they had learned how to do at home: typing, printing, and writing speeches. They called their business “Tres Hermanas” or “Three Sisters” — and it would have been nice if all of their troubles could have been resolved through their own hard work. Unfortunately, –isms and –phobias don’t work that way.

All three of the sisters had to deal with racism that manifested as name-calling and teachers ignoring them. Then, they each had their individual crosses to bear. Constance Allen Pitter Thomas, the oldest of the sisters, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in theatre and became a student teacher in the Seattle School District, but was not offered a permanent position for many years. When she was finally offered a regular position by the school district, it was as a speech therapist. She worked with students with special needs for 18 years.

Marjorie Edwina Pitter King, the youngest of the three sisters, struggled academically and then struggled because there weren’t very many women in accounting — let alone Black women. She ended up transferring to Howard University in 1942, for her senior year; but then dropped out of school and went to work for the Pentagon (during World War II). Eventually, she got married, started a family and moved back to Seattle, where she started a successful tax company, M and M Tax and Consultant Services. While she worked with tax clients all along the continental coast, Mrs. Pitter King’s support extended to language translation and letter writing. She also became the first African American to be appointed to the Washington State Legislature (in 1965); served as Chair of the 37th District Democratic Party; Vice President of the King County Democratic Party; and Treasurer of the Washington State Federation of Democratic Women, Inc. While attending the 1972 Democratic National Convention, she helped draft the National Democratic Party Platform.

Then there was Maxine… the darkest-skinned of the three sisters… who wanted to be a nurse.

“It was 1939 in Seattle, and although the city had none of the formal ‘Jim Crow’ segregation laws common in the South, the result was often the same.

Being black and finding a job often meant menial work and a lower standard of living. For some black people, discrimination crushed any hope of working at all.”

– quoted from the article in The Seattle Times entitled “Seattle In The Old Days: No ‘Jim Crow’ Laws, But Blacks Were Held Back Just The Same” by Daryl Strickland (dated Jun 27, 1994)

Like her sisters, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes enrolled at the University of Washington. She enrolled as a pre-nursing student, but then she was rejected by the the Nursing School, because the degree required nursing students to be housed in Harborview Hall — and the Dean of Nursing would not allow an African American student to live with the white students. The future Mrs. Pitter Haynes had no choice, but to change her major during her junior year. She ended up graduating from the University of Washington, in 1941, with a degree in sociology. Then, she moved to New York City and enrolled at Lincoln School of Nursing where she earned the first of two degrees in nursing. She earned her second degree, a masters in nursing, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and worked in the city of angels before moving back to Seattle.

Maxine Pitter Haynes become the first African American nurse at Providence Hospital (now Swedish Medical Center/Providence Campus). She also served as education director for the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic and taught at Seattle Pacific University, from 1976, until she retired in 1981 as professor emeritus.

And, in the middle of all of that, in 1971, she went back to the University of Washington… as an assistant professor at the same nursing school that had turned her away because of her skin color.

We can look at that as progress and/or we can flip the coin and look at that as healing. Either way, education (i.e., the right information) changed Maxine Pitter Haynes’s life and, in the process, changed the lives of everyone she encountered (and everyone they encountered). Either way, the three Pitter sisters were the exact kind of people the Carter G. Woodson encouraged all of us to be: people with the knowledge to deal with whatever life threw at them.

“Wounding and healing are not opposites. They’re part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to find other people or to even know they’re alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of. ”

– Rachel Naomi Remen (b. 2/8/1938) as quoted in At Your Service: Living the Lessons of Servant Leadership by Charles E. Wheaton

MUSIC NOTE: Either playlist can be used for either practice; however, the one designated as “Noon” is purely instrumental and only has one “birthday Easter egg” (see Practice Notes, below), which I do not reference during the practice.

Tuesday’s Noon playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “06082021 Building from the Ground”]

Tuesday’s Evening playlist is also available on YouTube and Spotify.

PRACTICE NOTES: I decided to focus this practice on the ways the body naturally heals: with a little yin and a little yang; a little action/resistance and passive/resting. In 2023, the yin part of the practice was actually Yin Yoga. In 2024, however, the yin part of the practice was a adapted from a “Pawanmuktasana” series and from Somatic Yoga. In both cases, there was some dynamic motion (to engage the sympathetic nervous system) and also moments of resting and relaxing (to engage the parasympathetic nervous system). In a practice like this, I also highlighted ahimsa (as I did above) and different techniques for relaxing and getting “unhooked,” including the practice of cultivating the opposites.

I have several playlists related to Gandhi, MLK, and ahiṃsā. However, if I were going to put together a playlist specifically for today (which I did for the 2024 evening practice), I would throw in a little Bob Marley (see reference above) plus some Schumann played by Claudio Arrau (b. 02/06/1903), something by Natalie Cole (b. 02/06/1950), and — if I had the time — I’d look for something appropriate from the soundtracks of one of Robert Townsend’s movies (b. 02/06/1957). Also, cause I’m silly (and I could make it work), I might throw in the “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses ~~cover of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”~~ (cause, Axl Rose, b. 02/06/1962); however, I might toss it into the before/after music along with this little ditty on YouTube, by an artist born 2/6/1966.

*CORRECTION: During the 2024 practices, I mixed up the The Common Word initiative principles with the 2024 WIHW theme.

### “Unforgettable / That’s what you are” ~ Nat King Cole & Natalie Cole ###

Grace, Zora, & Galileo’s Moons (a “long lost” Saturday post for Sunday) January 7, 2024

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Faith, Healing Stories, Hope, Langston Hughes, Life, Love, Mathematics, Movies, Music, Mysticism, One Hoop, Pain, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Suffering, Vipassana, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: Alice Walker, Beau Lotto, Charlotte D. Hunt, Charlotte Osgood Mason, Dale Carnegie, David Block, Dr. Alan Locke, Dr. Franz Boas, Dr. Margaret Mead, Dr. Ruth Benedict, Galileo Galilei, grace, Harlem Renaissance, HBCUs, Howard University, Johannes Kepler, Jupiter, Jupiter's moons, Kenneth C. Freeman, Kenneth Freeman, Kidneys, Mary Helen Washington, Nicolaus Copernicus, physics, Ruby McCollum, Simon Marius, Stillman Drake, Tycho Brahe, Urinary Bladder, Zeta Phi Beta, Zora Neale Hurston
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From the “Season of Grace files.

This is the “long lost” post for Saturday, January 7, 2023. It is the first in a series of “missing” Saturday posts (that I will be posting on Sundays in 2024) and contains some previously posted material. Think of it as a year in review. Links and SUNDAY class details have been updated. You can request an audio recording of the 2023 or 2024 practice via a comment below or by emailing myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

“Now. as a professor of applied maths, I have fun with thinking about different ways of looking at things. There are known-knowns; there are things we know that we know. They are known-knowns. For example if you leave a cake on the stove too long, my wife tells me, it gets burned and so on. You know what I mean. There are known-knowns, ok? There are things we know that we know.

But then there are known-unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. Alright? Then, there are unknown-unknowns. There are things that we don’t know that we don’t know.

And then, fourthly, there are unknown-knowns — these are things that we don’t know that we know.”

— quoted from the lecture “From Tyndale to Galileo: Grace and Space” by David Block, professor emeritus in the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Yoga practice (on or off the mat) is an opportunity to grow and to learn about one’s self and the world around us. It’s a safe time and place to turn inward and observe how our mind-bodies respond and react to ourselves and the world around us. It’s a great time and place to explore, experiment, learn, and play. For this reason, I sometimes liken the practice (on the mat) to time in a laboratory or classroom, or even on a playground. And I think it’s appropriate to show up with a sense of curiosity, wonder, possibilities, and faith — prepared to see what happens.

Curiosity, wonder, possibilities, faith, and preparation are concepts that I repeatedly highlighted throughout the year. However, there’s often a little extra emphasis at the beginning of the year, because these are concepts shared by explorers, (physical) scientists, philosophers, and the (religious and/or spiritually) faithful. When we show up on the mat, we have the opportunity to be all of the above and also to embody all of those attributes. We have the opportunity, as Dr. Beau Lotto has said (in defining science), to “play with purpose.”

We can look at that “purpose” as finding out more about ourselves. For several years, now, I have had the great privilege of leading a 90-minute practice on Saturdays with that very explicit intention: exploring, experimenting, learning, and playing with the purpose of svādhyāya (“self-study”). We spent ~~the last~~ four years moving through Patanjali’s Yoga Sūtras. Prior to that we stepped through the different kinds of yoga as outlined in the Bhagavad Gita; explored the different kinds of yoga as they are associated with the primary chakras (energy “wheels”); and did some “deep listening.” ~~This year~~ In 2023, in thinking about our Saturday focus, I considered some of my favorite texts — like the Ashtavakra Gita or the Bhagavad Gita — and I considered telling the backstories of some of our favorite poses (because y’all know I love a good story). Without realizing it, I started stepping through the four categories of knowns and unknowns that Professor David Block mentions in a lecture about space and grace.

Full disclosure, I didn’t know about Professor Block or his lecture when I started this process. I didn’t know that anyone — let alone anyone as esteemed as Professor Block and Kenneth Freeman, an Australian astronomer and astrophysicist – had given lectures and written books about Galileo Galilei and grace. Instead, I was thinking about what I know about the 8-Limbed Yoga Philosophy (and other Indian philosophies); what I thought I knew about what “the Saturday irregulars” know about these philosophies; what I know I don’t know; and what I’m not sure “the Saturday irregulars” know — and that’s when I stumbled upon grace. Specifically, I realized that had never really delved into the four kinds of grace that show up in Yoga and Samkhya (according to the Himalayan traditions).

Ishvara kripa (grace of God / Divine grace)
Shastra kripa (grace of scriptures / sacred texts)*
Guru kripa (grace of the Guru)
Atma kripa (grace of oneself)

— the four kinds of Kripa in the Himalayan philosophical traditions

*NOTE: While some teachers/scholars (especially outside of the Himalayan traditions) translate Shastra as “sacred text” or “scripture,” a classical definition describes shastra as the laws of Nature passed down through an oral tradition. Ergo, some of these instructions became sacred texts; however, they would not be “scripture” as that is written down. Note, also, how those two go hand in hand (as indicated below).

During the 2023 New Year’s Day practices and the Saturday practices, I explained the different types of grace as follows: Imagine that you are on a journey. At some point along the way, you must cross a vast body of water. The only way to safely cross the water is in a boat. The fact that the boat you need is exactly where you need it and when you need it is an example of “Divine grace” (as is the fact that you are there when the boat is there). However, if you just sit in the boat, you are never going to get to the other shore. You could read a book and/or someone could tell you that you have to lift the anchor and untie the boat from the dock; but, even then, you might not go where you want/need to go. Sometimes you also need instruction in how to maneuver the boat and/or you might need some assistance, someone who can ferry you across. These types of guidance are examples of “grace of [sacred text]” and “grace of Guru.” Finally, some effort is required from you. Whether it is simply getting in the boat, reading the sacred texts, eliciting the assistance of the Guru-energy, and/or steering the boar, you must do something to get to the other shore — and all of that can be considered “grace of Self.”

In the Yoga Sūtras, Patanjali made it very clear that by going deeper into ourselves, we go deeper in to the world. We are, after all, microcosms of the world… which is a microcosm of the solar system… which is a microcosm of the galaxy… which is a microcosm of the universe. Which is kind of a long way to say that by observing our self, we can learn about the cosmos.

“You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him to find it within himself.”

— Galileo Galilei, as quoted in How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Just because we can, theoretically, learn about the cosmos by going deeper into ourselves, does not mean that we are the center of the universe. Some ancient philosophers perpetuated a geocentric model of the Universe, whereby everything revolved around Earth. In 1543, one of the last things Nicolaus Copernicus did was present a mathematical “theory” — based on observation — indicating that the Sun was actually the center of everything. This heliocentric model created a paradigm shift for almost everyone in the Western world, with the exception of the Catholic Church… and it’s scientists. In fact, as the Scientific Revolution ushered in more advanced technology and better observations, scientists like Tycho Brahe used their more accurate data to develop a geoheliocentric model, whereby the Sun still revolved around the Earth, but everything else revolved around the Sun.

Other scientists, in other countries, had developed similar models based on their own observations, but the Tychonic model was more than a collection of data points. In some ways, it was a desperate attempt to stay in the Church’s favor and to hold on to the old status quo. However, when Tycho unexpectedly died in October of 1601 (from an issue related to his urinary bladder and kidneys, see the 2022 practice), his assistant Johannes Kepler took over his work. Kepler and Tycho had a decent working relationship, but Kepler was convinced Tycho was coming to the wrong conclusions and proceeded accordingly as the imperial mathematician. Galileo Galilei, also a believer in Copernicus’s ideas, would further expand the ideas of Kepler. He did so, through more observations and the realization of what he was seeing.

“But now, Most Serene Prince, we are able to augur truer and more felicitous things for Your Highness, for scarcely have the immortal graces of your soul begun to shine forth on earth than bright stars offer themselves in the heavens which, like tongues, will speak of and celebrate your most excellent virtues for all time. Behold therefore, four stars reserved for your illustrious name, and not of the common sort and multitude of the less notable fixed stars, but of the illustrious order of wandering stars, which, indeed, make their journeys and orbits with a marvelous speed around the star of Jupiter, the most noble of them all, with mutually different motions, like children of the same family, while meanwhile all together, in mutual harmony, complete their great revolutions every twelve years about the center of the world, that is, about the Sun itself. Indeed, it appears that the Maker of the Stars himself, by clear arguments, admonished me to call these new planets by the illustrious name of Your Highness before all others. For as these stars, like the offspring worthy of Jupiter, never depart from his side except for the smallest distance, so who does not know the clemency, the gentleness of spirit, the agreeableness of manners, the splendor of the royal blood, the majesty in actions, and the breadth of authority and rule over others, all of which qualities find a domicile and exaltation for themselves in Your Highness? Who, I say, does not know that all these emanate from the most benign star of Jupiter, after God the source of all good?”

— quoted from Sidereus Nuncius by Galileo Galilei

Despite (or because of) the fact that he was in the middle of a long lineage of notable astronomers, mathematicians, physicists, and engineers, Galileo Galilei is the one remembered as the Father of observational astronomy, modern physics, the scientific method, and modern science. The Indigo Girls even called him “the King of Insight,” which makes sense when you consider that “insight” is “seeing things in a special way.” Thanks to advancements in telescope technology, Galileo was able to see things others had not seen. Similar to the Magi, he looked up instead of down (as others did) and sometime between December of 1609 and the beginning of January of 1610, he noticed three bright, shiny objects near Jupiter. At first he thought he was seeing stars (or new planets), invisible to the naked eye, but clear when using a telescope that magnified up to 20x. Over time, however, he chronicled the movement of these “stars” and realized there were four, not three, and that they weren’t giving off their own light, they were reflecting light. They weren’t stars/suns; they were moons orbiting Jupiter.

A German astronomer, Simon Marius, made similar observations in December of 1609 and started documenting his observations on December 29^th (according to the Julian calendar). Even though he was exonerated, because his documentation started on January 8^th (according to the Gregorian calendar), Simon Marius’s reputation was tainted by accusations of plagiarism and an ongoing dispute with Galileo. If you have ever been confused by the names of Jupiter’s moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (names suggested to Marius by Johannes Kepler) vs I, II, III, IV (as Galileo noted them in his notebooks and discussion) — you can blame it on the calendars… or the scientists’ egos.

Also, as it turns out, there were more than four — but all of that is another story, for a different day. For now, let us get back to Galileo and grace.

“What people don’t realize is it wasn’t really astronomy that was on the table at the trial in 1633 — Well, it happened to be astronomy, but the point was that the Inquisition wanted total control and total power. Total control and total power — and it didn’t matter what was on the table. I mean, he was declared to be a heretic and so he’s just very fortunate he had the correct networks to save his head because many, of course, died…at the hands of the Inquisition.”

— quoted from the lecture “From Tyndale to Galileo: Grace and Space” by David Block, professor emeritus in the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

There are lots of different ways to explore the concept of grace in Galileo Galilei’s story. We could look at all the things that had to happen for him (and Simon Marius) to be at the right time and place — with the right equipment and knowledge — to see, observe, and identify the moons. However, we can’t overlook the fact that, at the time, all of Galileo’s work was dangerous. Knowing the dangers, of going up against the Church, Galileo actively sought out the power of grace; and, by “grace,” I mean the power of those royal family members who would have been addressed as “Your Grace.”

In order to secure the Medici’s as patrons, Galileo had a copy of his work, and the telescope he used to see the heavens, delivered to the Grand Duke a few days later. In 1632, he would dedicate his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems to Cosimo’s oldest son, Ferdinando II de’ Medici (the Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1621-1670). This “dialogue” exploring the scientific merits of the Copernican view of things (heliocentric) versus the Ptolemaic view of things (geocentric) eventually landed Galileo Galilei in hot water with the Catholic Church.

As noted by David Bloke and Kenneth Freeman, however, Galileo Galilei’s penalty for heresy could have been much worse than it was. Furthermore, being convicted of heresy, placed under house arrest, and banned from working and/or publishing didn’t stop Galileo, his work, or his ideas. The astrophysicists also point out that Galileo was, himself, a man of faith. He believed, as Professor Bloke said, “…[that] God reveals himself to humanity in two books: the book of nature (I have elucidated already) and the book of Scripture. Now, here comes the punchline, Galileo suggested that both books express eternal truths. That’s very interesting, because the face of science is forever changing. Galileo suggested that both books express eternal truths and are compatible, not incompatible, but compatible of course [because] they have the same author….He’s saying, I’ve got two books in front of me, the book in front of my telescope, the scriptures, but there’s no disagreement because they have the same author.“

“There was no doubt in Galileo’s mind of the authenticity and importance of the discoveries he announced, and since he wished to have them reach astronomers and philosophers all over Europe as quickly as possible he addressed his book to them and wrote it in Latin. He called it the Sidereus Nuncius, which was generally taken to mean ‘the messenger of the stars,’ not only by Galileo’s contemporaries but by the translators in succeeding generations. Several booklets appeared in reply with titles referring to this ‘messenger,’ and there were allusions to this idea in many poems and literary works. Galileo did not correct these authors, but he may not have meant the title to be so interpreted. Several years later a Jesuit critic assailed him for having presented himself as the ambassador of heaven; in the margin of his copy of this attach Galileo noted that the word nuncius means ‘message’ as well as ‘messenger,’ and asserted that he had intended only the humbler meaning. On the basis of this and other evidence, modern scholars have suggested that the word in question has always been mistranslated in this title.”

— quoted from “Introduction: First Part” in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Stillman Drake

It may seem like a “stretch” to connect Galileo Galilei (and the moons of Jupiter) with one of the most influential voices of the Harlem Renaissance; however, in many ways, Zora Neale Hurston was first and foremost an observational researcher. Born January 7, 1891, her science was people and her “message” was for the people. She was an anthropologist, as well as an author of fiction, plays, short stories, and essays. Like Galileo, she changed the way people saw the world. In her case, she changed the way African-Americans and Caribbeans were portrayed in literature. Also like Galileo, she based her work on real time observations.

As for grace, well… all four are everywhere in Zora Neale Hurston’s story and in her stories. There was Divine grace in the fact that she was able to live the life she lived and do the things she did. There was grace of [texts] and grace of Guru-energy in her education. Finally, there was grace in her own agency — especially, when she took advantage of all the other graces she was given.

“Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural.”

— quoted from Dust Tracks On A Road: An Autobiography by Zora Neale Hurston

Prior to the Harlem Renaissance, Black people in America were mostly portrayed as stereotypes and caricatures, often without any redeeming independent qualities or motivations. Ms. Hurston’s own lived experiences didn’t fit into those commonly circulated boxes. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama and moved to Eatonville, Florida — one of the first all-Black incorporated towns in the United States — when she was three. Her father was a man of certain means, who became the town’s mayor and the Baptist minister of the town’s largest church. When her mother died (when Zora Neale Hurston was thirteen), and her father married soon after, the future writer was shipped off to boarding schools and relatives in in Jacksonville, Florida.

The stark difference between her two environments and the class differences between her primary family and her extended family was notable. Furthermore, those differences left an impact on a young woman who’s curiosity was being fueled by her education. After graduating from the high school division of a prominent HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), she started her undergraduate degree at Howard University, another prominent HBCU, and started establishing herself as an influential part of the literati. She was one of the early members of Zeta Phi Beta, the third African-American sorority; co-founded the university’s student newspaper, The Hilltop (which was the first, and is still the only, HBCU daily paper); and was invited to join Dr. Alan Locke’s literary club, The Stylus.

“’Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.’”

— Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching Gog by Zora Neale Hurston

She left Howard without her bachelor’s degree, but was eventually offered a scholarship to Columbia University’s Bernard College. She was the only black student at the all women’s college. Once again, she was in a unique position to observe the differences between people and cultures. What really interested her, however, were the similarities. She studied ethnography and conducted research with Dr. Franz Boas, known as the “Father of American Anthropology,” and with Dr. Ruth Benedict. Also, she was a student during the time that Dr. Margaret Mead was finishing up her graduate studies. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in anthropology in 1928, and spent an additional two years pursuing a graduate degree at Columbia.

It was while she was conducting research with “Papa Franz” that Zora Neale Hurston discovered her scholastic approach to research wouldn’t get her very far in the field(s). It was also during this time that she received the patronage of Charlotte Osgood Mason, a white socialite and philanthropist who also supported other Harlem Renaissance artists, like Langston Hughes. Like Galileo, Ms. Hurston found that the support of the wealthy was a double-edged sword; because the “Godmother” of the Harlem Renaissance wanted control over the artists and their work — even scholastic research around music, folklore, hoodoo (also known as “Lowcountry Voodoo”), and other aspects of Southern culture. Trying to balance the academic requirements of her advisor, along with the demands of her patron — not to mention her newly formed friendships within the Black arts community and her own burgeoning career as an author — proved to be too much, especially since she was also a newlywed.

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.

I was extremely proud that Papa Franz felt like sending me on that folklore search. As is well known, Dr. Franz Boas of the Department of Anthropology of Columbia University, is the greatest anthropologist alive, for two reasons. The first is his insatiable hunger for knowledge and then more knowledge; and the second is his genius for pure objectivity. He has no pet wishes to prove. His instructions are to go out and find what is there. He outlines his theory, but if the facts do not agree with it, he would not wrap a jot or dot of the findings to save his theory. So knowing all this, I was proud that he trusted me….

My first six months were disappointing. I found out later that it was not because I had no talents for research, but because I did not have the right approach.”

— quoted from the autobiographical essay “Research” in Dust Tracks On A Road: An Autobiography by Zora Neale Hurston

Ultimately, however, she didn’t need the degree so much as she needed the experience and the material. Her work includes the semi-autobiographical novel Jonah’s Gourd Vine, published in 1934, and Mules and Men, an autoethnographical collection of African-American folklore, published in 1935. She received support from the Guggenheim Foundation in order to conduct research about voodoo in Jamaica and Haiti, which resulted in Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (published in 1938). Her published views on race relations and, in particular, how race relations in the United States affected women of color led her to cover the trial of Ruby McCollum for the Pittsburgh Courier (Fall — Winter, 1953). In 1937, she published Their Eyes Were Watching God, her best known (and arguably) most influential novel. She followed that up, two years later, with Moses, Man of the Mountain, a re-telling and re-centering of The Second Book of Moses, Called Exodus (from the Bible) based on an African-American perspective — which, given the timing, has also been viewed as an overall criticism of fascism and the Nazi regime.

Throughout her career, Zora Neale Hurston received criticism for using dialects, for her conservative political views, and for [not doing enough for the Black race]. Even though the she was influential during the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston spent her final days in a welfare home and was buried in an unmarked grave. Pulitzer Prize-winner Alice Walker, and Hurston-scholar Charlotte D. Hunt commissioned a grave marker for the woman who had inspired them and were responsible for helping new generations discover short stories like “Spunk” (1925) and the folklore in Every Tongue Got To Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States (collected in the 1920’s and published posthumously in 2001).

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly. ”

— quoted from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Please join me for a 65-minute virtual yoga practice in-person or on Zoom today (Sunday, January 7^th) at 2:30 PM. You must be registered and confirmed to attend in-person. Use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class via Zoom. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or by emailing myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

Sunday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “01072023 Grace, Zora, & Galileo’s Moons”].

NOTE: The before/after music is slightly different, because I could only find one of the folk songs, related to Zora Neale Hurston, on Spotify.

“And when [Nanny] gained the privacy of her own little shack she stayed on her knees so long she forgot she was there herself. There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.”

— quoted from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

“‘I love myself when I am laughing.

And then again when I am looking mean and impressive.’”

— “Zora Neale Hurston, in a letter to Carl Van Vechten, December 10, 1934, referring to a series of photographers he had taken of her” as quoted in I Love Myself when I Am Laughing.. and Then Again when I Am Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader Edited by Alice Walker (Introduction by Mary Helen Washington)

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)

This can be considered “Grace, part I.” “Grace, part II” is coming soon.

### OM / LOVE NO MATTER WHAT ###

What (and How) Do You Recollect? / A Strenuous, Deliberate Life Photo July 12, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Art, Books, Changing Perspectives, First Nations, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Loss, Music, One Hoop, Pain, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: Eastman Kodak, Florence McAnaney, George Eastman, HBCUs, Henry David Thoreau, In Search of Lost Time, Life in the Woods, Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, Swann's Way, The Captive, Walden, yoga philosophy
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Peace and blessings to all!

The following is a compilation post containing new and revised material from 2020 and 2022, with a link to the 2021 post.

“When from a long distance past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny, and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”

– quoted from “Overture” in Swann’s Way, Volume 1 of Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust

You’re probably familiar with that old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but what’s the value of a thousand words that paint a picture? For that matter, what of a million? As I mentioned a few days ago, Marcel Proust wrote over a million words about memories and reflections – and, also, about how we recollect. He wrote about the very human thing we all do: look back over our days.

Sometimes we do it intentionally, deliberately – like the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who would end each day by reviewing what he had done between rising and retiring. The stoic emperor’s practice is a good reflection meditation, which can help us be more productive and (sometimes) can help us to sleep better. It’s a way to literally put to bed unresolved issues that might otherwise keep us awake. Unfortunately, sometimes, we find ourselves in bed regurgitating memories that no longer serve us.

“We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.”

– quoted from The Captive, Volume 5 of Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust

Memories can also pop up, unexpectedly. We can be eating a madeleine or a biscuit, sitting by a moonlit lake, reading a book, listening to music, sitting down to take off or put on our shoes, or practicing on our mat and suddenly – out of nowhere it seems – we are bombarded with a very visceral memory. It seems as if it comes from nowhere, but it actually comes from inside of us. It is visceral because we not only feel it all the way to our bones, it comes out of our bones, out of our tissues, out of our minds and bodies.

So, how do you show up, in the present, when your mind-body can – at any given moment – transport you into the past? How do you make remembering useful? How do you very deliberately, very intentionally, harness the power of your memories and your ability to reflect?

What I’m really asking is: How do you remember with the intention of Thoreau and the eye of Eastman? (And, if you have that “eye of Eastman” how do you use it without (metaphorically) losing focus of the present moment?)

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

– quoted from a journal entry dated August 5, 1851, as printed in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, Walden Edition by Henry David Thoreau, compiled and edited by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn and Bradford Torrey

Born today in 1817, in Concord Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau was a teacher and a writer, who is remembered as a writer and naturalist. He is also remembered as being very close to his brother John. I have heard that the brothers were close despite having different temperaments. Henry David was introverted and all about the books; John was out-going, extroverted, and fun-loving. Additionally, John supported Henry David’s every endeavor – helping him pay for tuition at Harvard and even started a new school when Henry David was fired for objecting to corporal punishment. They shared a lot of memories.

When John died, unexpectedly, in his brother’s arms, Henry David floundered. He lived with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s family for a period of time and serves as a teacher to the Emerson children. Along with Edward Hoar, he accidentally burned down several hundred acres of Walden Woods. Not long after the fire, Emerson allowed Thoreau to retreat to a cabin located on 14 acres of land, about 1.5 miles from Emerson House.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

– quoted from “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” in Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau lived in the cabin, on the banks of Walden Pond, for two years, two months, and two days. He spent that time writing his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, which he self-published on May 30, 1849. The book was a memorial for his brother and related the story of a trip the brothers took in 1839. He also wrote the work most people associate with the name Thoreau: a collection of essays entitled Walden, or Life in the Woods.

Both of Thoreau’s books are full of words that painted pictures. He was, after all, a “mental picture” taker. After his brother died unexpectedly, Henry David Thoreau was undoubtedly comforted by the images formed by his words, but think of how he might have felt (or might have written) had he and John been born decades after George Eastman.

“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

– quoted from “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” in Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

George Eastman, born today in 1854, in Waterville, New York, was an entrepreneur, inventor, and philanthropist who founded the Eastman Kodak Company. He and two older sisters (Ellen Maria and Katie) were initially raised on a 10-acre farm his parents purchased shortly before George was born. Unfortunately, their father – a successful entrepreneur himself – died of a brain disorder when Eastman was almost 8 years old. By then, the Eastman family was living in Rochester, NY and life on the farm was but a memory.

George, who had been self-taught until his father’s death, was sent to private school and his mother took in boarders in order to survive. By the time he was 15, the youngest of his sisters (Katie) had died of polio. Soon after her death, George left school and started a photography business. By the time he was 30 years old, he had patented the first practical “roll of film.” Before the age of 35, he had developed the Kodak Black camera, designed to use roll film. Eventually, his company became the first, and the leading company, to supply film stock. Along the way, George Eastman changed the way people remembered – and he incorporated what would become a billion dollar company (all with a made up name).

“What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are.”

– George Eastman

Henry David Thoreau was a transcendentalist and an abolitionist who read the Bhagavad Gītā and believed in civil disobedience. He was criticized for a number of things throughout his lifetime, including the decision to live alone with those regulated to the fringes of society (which some viewed as “unmanly”). His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, led a student revolt at Harvard in 1766 (the first recorded in the United States) and Henry David spent a (very) short period of time in jail for “tax evasion” – which was not the first time he had refused to pay something he thought he should not have to pay. It is possible (and probable) that he also helped others escape tax liens.

“Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained…. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.”

– quoted from “Economy” in Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

George Eastman also lived a solitary life (in that he never married or had children). He was considered a progressive in the social and political sense. He fought the labor union movement by offering worker benefit programs, which included employee profit-sharing for all employees. He also promoted Florence McAnaney to the top position in the personnel department – establishing her as one of the first women to hold an executive position in a major U. S. company. He also founded “an independent non-partisan agency for keeping citizens informed” in Rochester, which continues to this day.

“If a man has wealth, he has to make a choice, because there is the money heaping up. He can keep it together in a bunch, and then leave it for others to administer after he is dead. Or he can get it into action and have fun, while he is still alive. I prefer getting it into action and adapting it to human needs, and making the plan work.”

– George Eastman

Henry David Thoreau was not a financially wealthy man. However his contributions to the world are priceless. His philosophy and viewpoints regarding “unjust laws” (like the Fugitive Slave Law, which he frequently attacked in lectures), influenced Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. His legacy to the modern world includes over 20 volumes worth of articles, essays, journals, and poetry.

On the flip side, George Eastman was a philanthropist, who donated (often anonymously, as Mr. Smith”) millions of dollars to a variety of organizations including the University of Rochester (which was also the beneficiary of his estate); the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT); and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He established the Eastman School of Music and schools of dentistry and medicine at the University of Rochester, as well as the Eastman Dental Hospital in London, England. Low-income residents of London and other European cities also benefited from Eastman’s generosity as he provided funds for multiple clinics across the pond. Additionally, donated millions to Tuskegee University and Hampton University – historically Black universities.

“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth….”

– George Eastman

Please join me today (Wednesday, July 12^th) at 4:30 PM or 7:15 PM for a yoga practice on Zoom. Use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or by emailing myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

Wednesday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “07122020 Strenuous, Deliberate Life Photo”]

An “Interesting” Development

If you’re interested in another look at how things “develop,” check out my related 2021 post.

Check out the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming classes.)

### YS: 1.36 VIŚOKĀ VĀ JYOTIŞMATĪ ###

Golden Tigers Made of Steel (a Black History footnote) February 28, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Changing Perspectives, Faith, Gratitude, Healing Stories, Health, Hope, Life, Loss, Men, One Hoop, Pain, Peace, Philosophy, Science, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: A. Philip Randolph, Abraham Lincoln, Alabama, Alice Marie Coachman, Amelia Boynton Robinson, Benjamin O. Davis Jr., Benjamin O. Davis Sr., Betty Kaplan Gubert, Betty Shabazz (Ed.D.), Black History Month, Booker T. Washington, C. Alfred “Chief” Anderson, Caroline M. Fannin, Catherine Moton Patterson, Charles DeBow Jr., Charles Young, Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), Coleman Young, Danielle Spencer, David Williston, DOTA, Dr. Frederick Douglass Patterson, Dudley Stevenson, Edward C. Gleed, Eleanor Roosevelt, Elmer D. Jones, Emmett Jay Scott, Eugene Jacques Bullard, Eugene James Bullard, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Garth Brooks, George C. Royal (PhD), George S. Roberts, George Washington Carver, Gladys W. Royal (PhD), HBCUs, Henry Stimson, James Johnson, Jessica A. Scoffield (PhD), Josephine Turpin Washington, Judge William H. Hastie, Julius Rosenwald, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Lemuel R. Custis, Lonnie Johnson (PhD), Lowell Steward, Mac Ross, Milton C. Davis, Miriam Sawyer, NAACP, Nathaniel Oglesby Calloway (PhD)., Nelson Brooks, Peter Buxtun, Ralph Ellison, Red Tails, Robert Robinson Taylor, Robert Russa Moton, Ron Brewington, Rosenwald Fund, Rosenwald Schools, Season for Nonviolence, Season of Non-violence, Sir Richard Evans, Studs Terkel, Syphilis, the Black Swallow, The Commodores (including Lionel Richie), Theopolis W. “Ted” Johnson, Tuskegee Airmen, Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee University, United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF), William R. Thompson, World War I, World War II
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Many blessings to those observing and/or preparing for Lent. Peace and ease to all during this “Season for Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for February 12^th. The “Season for Non-violence” theme for February 12^th is “humility” – and this post is essentially two servings of “humble pie.” WARNING: Although not explicit, this post does contain a summary of a disturbing part of U. S. history.

“In 1982, a woman of thirty, doing just fine in Washington, D.C., let me know how things are in her precincts. ‘I can’t relate to World War Two. It’s in schoolbook texts, that’s all. Battles that were won, battles that were lost. Or costume dramas you see on TV. It’s just a story in the past. It’s so distant, so abstract. I don’t get myself up in a bunch about it.’

It appears that the disremembrance of World War Two is as disturbingly profound as the forgettery of the Great Depression: World War Two, an event that changed the psyche as well as the face of the United States and of the World”

– quoted from the oral recollections of Captain Lowell Steward, 100th Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group in “Flying High: Lowell Steward” in BOOK THREE of “The Good War” – An Oral History of World War II by Studs Terkel

Today I offer an apology (with an explanation) and an explanation (that is also an apology of sorts). First, I apologize to any e-mail subscribers who would not have seen that I updated the banner and title on the last Black History post to indicate that that post covered February 11^thand 12^th. After doing a lot more research than I initially intended, I realized that it really was more than one post, covering two days. Also, I was not super excited about where I would have gone if I posted a separate February 12^thnote unrelated to the events I had already covered. Ergo, I updated the banner and the title and I was just going to leave it at that.

Then, however, I looked back at my notes and realized I needed a footnote – which is where the explanation that is also an apology comes in.

When I decided to post these “Black History notes,” I made the decision to focus on accomplishments made by African Americans (rather than on things done to African Americans) and on people who thrived (not just merely survived). So, focusing on what some people would call “Black Excellence.” If you read even one of these notes, I think you’ll notice what I said at the beginning of the month: every demographic in America is making history every day. I think you’ll also notice that every individual aspiration that becomes inspiration involves a struggle to survive – sometimes the struggle is about the dream surviving; sometimes the struggle is about the dreamer of surviving. Ultimately, however, I wanted these notes to be about the history-making inspirations related to each day.

All that said, I’m adding this footnote. I’m adding this footnote, because I want to mention something tangentially related to yesterday’s posts. It’s not a footnote because it lacks importance – and I apologize, because I know it may come across that way. It’s a footnote simply because it doesn’t fit the paradigm I established for myself ~~(and because I’m not going to go into too many details)~~.

“Institutions, like individuals, are properly judged by their ideals, their methods, and their achievements in the production of men and women who are to do the world’s work.”

– quoted from “Tuskegee And Its People: General Introduction” by Booker T. Washington, as printed in Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements by Emmett Jay Scott, edited by Booker T. Washington

Established on July 4, 1881, as the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, Tuskegee University has had several names – including the Tuskegee Institute. It is one of the many institutions of higher learning established in the United States by virtue of the Morrill Acts, the first of which was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862, and it is one of the Historically Black Universities and Colleges (HBCUs) established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The campus (in Tuskegee, Alabama) was designed by Robert Robinson Taylor, the first African American to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, class of 1892), and David Williston, the first professionally trained African American landscape architect, who earned an undergraduate degree from Howard University (another HBCU) before becoming the first African American to earn a degree in agriculture from Cornell University (1898).

In addition to the campus’ designers, notable members of Tuskegee’s faculty and staff have included Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Josephine Turpin Washington, and Nathaniel Oglesby Calloway (PhD). Notable alumni* include Amelia Boynton Robinson, Alice Marie Coachman, The Commodores (including Lionel Richie), Milton C. Davis, Ralph Ellison, Lonnie Johnson (PhD), Betty Shabazz (Ed.D.), Danielle Spencer, and Keenen Ivory Wayans – as well as the microbiologists George C. Royal (PhD), Gladys W. Royal (PhD), and Jessica A. Scoffield (PhD). There is a much much longer list of notable faculty, staff, and alumni; however, even if you’ve only heard of half of them, there’s a good chance the reason you’ve heard of Tuskegee Institute has nothing to do with the majority of them. Many people – even here in the United States – have heard about the university for two reasons: the “experiments.”

I put “experiments” in quotes, because people don’t always think about both situations as experiments or studies. However, officially (according to the government and some of the people involved), there were two experiments conducted at Tuskegee between 1932 and 1972: a medical one conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service (beginning in 1932) and a military one conducted by the U. S. Army Air Corps (beginning in 1941). The medical study was the “The Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male in Macon County, Alabama” – which would later be known simply as the “Tuskegee Syphilis Study” – and it’s involuntary “participants” are still nameless to most people in the general population. The military study was (mostly) voluntary and officially called the “Tuskegee Experiment” (now renamed the “Tuskegee Experience”). While you may not the names of the individual men involved, you’ve probably heard of them: they are known as the Tuskegee Airmen.

“There should be no limit placed upon the development of any individual because of color, and let it be understood that no one kind of training can safely be prescribed for an entire race. Care should be taken that racial education be not one-sided for lack of adaptation to personal fitness, nor unwieldy through sheer top-heaviness. Education, to fulfil its mission for any people anywhere, should be symmetrical and sensible.”

– quoted from “Tuskegee And Its People: General Introduction” by Booker T. Washington, as printed in Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements by Emmett Jay Scott, edited by Booker T. Washington

Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington were two men from very different backgrounds who had similar ideas about what their country needed to move forward. In the early 1900’s, their collaboration led to the construction of the Tuskegee campus and several other schools in Alabama. When educators in other states heard about the collaboration, they wanted in on the action – and so it began. The initial agreement (up until about 1920) was that Mr. Rosenwald would fund the construction of the “Rosenwald Schools” and Tuskegee faculty, staff, and students would design, build, and train. When Booker T. Washington died (in 1915), the part-owner and president of Sears, Roebuck and Company continued his philanthropic endeavor. He and his family established the Rosenwald Fund (also known as the Rosenwald Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, and the Julius Rosenwald Foundation) for “the well-being of mankind.”

The Rosenwald Fund was a “sunset” fund, meaning that rather than establishing equity and funding projects with the interest, it had an end date. From it’s establishment in 1917, until 1948, it donated over $70 million to public schools, colleges and universities, museums, Jewish charities, and African American institutions. The fund also issued open-ended fellowships to minority artists, writers, scientists, journalists, and civic leaders. Unlike the individuals who received fellowships, communities, organizations, and states that received grants were expected to match some (or all) of the funds and also had to employ people within the communities being served. So, each project was an investment and a collaboration.

On March 29, 1941, a trustee of the Rosenwald Fund went to Tuskegee, Alabama; had her picture taken as she sat in a Piper J-3 Cub, between the “Father of Black Aviation,” chief civilian instructor C. Alfred “Chief” Anderson, and another African American (civilian) pilot; and then went for a ride that lasted at least 60 minutes. You might have heard of this trustee: her name was Eleanor Roosevelt. Never one to let her power and privilege go to waste, the First Lady of the United States used her position as a trustee to arrange a loan of $175,000 to help finance the building of Moton Field – which was named after Tuskegee’s second principal (Robert Russa Moton); designed by David Williston (see above); and would become the home of the 99th Pursuit Squadron Training School. She would also maintain correspondence with some of the pilots for years.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself – because all of this happened several years after civilian pilots were being trained at Tuskegee Institute and several months after the military experiment began. And, yes, I’m starting with the Airmen; because their story is a little easier to tell (and a little easier to swallow).

“The United States entered the Great War on April 6, 1917, and later that year, Bullard, with other Americans of the Lafayette Flying Corps, applied for a transfer to the U. S. Army Air Corps, understanding that all that was required for a pilot to receive a commission as an officer was an application and a physical examination.

The American doctors who conducted Ballard’s physical in Paris in October 1917 questioned him about his flight training before his health. The physical showed that he had flat feet. ‘I explained that… I did not fly with my feet.’ They told him he had large tonsils. ‘To this I replied that I was… not an opera singer.’ Finally he was told that he had passed the examination.

The other American flyers were transferred to the American Army Air Corps, one after the another, while Bullard received no word. At last he realized that all the other flyers were white.”

“The discrimination hurt Bullard deeply, but he derived some comfort from the knowledge that he was able to fight on the same front and in the same cause as his fellow American citizens. ‘And so in a roundabout way, I was managing to do my duty and to serve my country,’ Bullard later wrote.”

– quoted from the profile “Eugene Jacques Bullard” in Distinguished African Americans in Aviation and Space Science by Betty Kaplan Gubert, Miriam Sawyer, and Caroline M. Fannin

In some ways, we could say that the story of the military study at Tuskegee predates the story of the medical study; because the story of the Tuskegee Airmen is rooted in the story of men like Eugene James Bullard. When the “Black Swallow” couldn’t fly for the United States during World War I – even after being a decorated combat pilot in France – and other Black men were not even given a fighting chance to apply, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and civil rights activists like A. Philip Randolph (one of the organizers of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) started advocating get more more “Black wings” in the air. They were joined by Judge William H. Hastie, who would go on to become the first (openly and obviously) African American to serve as Governor of the United States Virgin Islands, but who spent part of World War II working as as a civilian aide to Henry Stimson, the United States Secretary of War.

Due to continuous pressure, the United States Congress passed Appropriations Bill Public Law 18 (on April 3, 1939), which specifically designated funds for training African American pilots. The War Department, backed by Congress, funneled the funds into the pre-existing Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), which was administered by the Civil Aeronautics Authority when it was established in 1938, and had been available at Tuskegee Institute since 1939. But, at the time, the War Department was not planning to hire any CPTP pilots, regardless of their race, ethnicity, and/or gender (noted because CPTP even had women instructors). A few months later, however, with the beginning of World War II, the War Department started looking at CPTP as a resource for pilots – but, they were only interested in certain pilots.

In the fall of 1940, Congress passed (and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed) the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, which required men of a certain age to register for the draft and for all departments of the military to enlist those men, regardless of race. This essentially forced the United States Army Corp – which was on the verge of rebranding as the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) – to announce that they were already working with Civil Aeronautics Authority (later known as the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB)) . They did not, however, announce that they were fully prepared to roll out all-Black squadrons, that would have white officers – like the other segregated forces of the time. They had no intention of doing such a thing, because the decision-makers believed a 1925 “study” which indicated that African Americans were not mentally, physically, emotionally, and/or energetically qualified to fly or maintain regular planes – let alone fighter planes. But, they had no proof and so, someone in the War Department had the “brilliant” idea to use Congress’ mandate to prove, once and for all, that African Americans did not have the right stuff.

“It was a tremendous success, beyond their wildest dreams. So they established quotas. They were gettin’ so many volunteers for the air force, qualified young men, that they had to limit the size of the classes. They had so many pilots graduating, in spite of Washington washing pilots out of flying school for ridiculous reasons, such as not wearing your hat on straight or not saying ‘Yes, sir’ to one of the instructors. You got washed out because of attitude, not flying ability. One fellow that washed out in advanced training as a pilot was hired two weeks later as a flying instructor. (Laughs.)

Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit, who was one of the Tuskegee Airmen, recalls: ‘I was washed out as a fighter pilot. I’m told it was because of FBI intervention. I had already graduated from officers’ school in October of ’42, at Fort Benning. They literally pulled guys off the stage, ’cause FBI, Birmingham, was accusin’ them of subversion, which may have been attendin’ a YMCA meeting in protest against discrimination.’”

– quoted from the oral recollections of Captain Lowell Steward, 100th Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group in “Flying High: Lowell Steward” in BOOK THREE of “The Good War” – An Oral History of World War II by Studs Terkel

By the time the general public heard that African Americans were going to serve as pilots, the War Department and the United States Army Corp had already implemented exclusionary policies and employed psychologists to administer standardized tests to quantify IQ, dexterity, and leadership qualities that would best serve each role. They also adjusted the qualification specifications as an additional barrier to entry. However, they grossly underestimated the intelligence, courage, and physical ability, as well as the sheer will and determination of men like the Golden Tigers from Tuskegee University. They also completely discounted the fact that most of the men who showed up to be tested were already civilian pilots who had trained (and, in some cases taught) through CPTP and the fact that the Tuskegee pilots who passed the test did so at higher rates than at other Southern schools.

There was another thing they did not consider: the cadets were prepared for the fact that many people in the government and in the military were working against them. So, as the upper echelon of the military ran their intelligence “study,” the pilots and their supporters were running a counterintelligence operation, one that ensured there would be “Black wings” in the air. The NAACP and the Black media rallied behind the pilots. The pilots kept showing up for training.

In what some people considered a purely political move, President Roosevelt’s public announcement about African American pilots came around the same time that Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. was promoted, becoming the first Black brigadier general in the Army, and that Judge Hastie was named as the advisor to Secretary of War Stimson. A few months later, on March 22, 1941, the first set of enlisted cadets started training to be mechanics in (at Chanute Field in Illinois). This was the beginning of the 99th Pursuit Squadron (later designated as the 99th Fighter Squadron) – and there was not a single person designated as a pilot by the military. Soon after the mechanical training began, Elmer D. Jones, Dudley Stevenson, and James Johnson (all from Washington, DC); Nelson Brooks (from Illinois); and William R. Thompson (from Pittsburgh, PA) were admitted to the Officers Training School (OTS) at Chanute Field. These were the first aviation cadets on the officer track and they would successfully complete OTS and be commissioned as the first Black Army Air Corps Officers. Then came that famous visit from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her very public statements that they were “good pilots.”

“The days at Tuskegee have given me much to think about. To see a group of people working together for improvement of undesirable conditions is very heartening. The problems seem great, but at least they are understood and people are working on them. Dr. Carver, whom I saw for a few minutes, has been at work for many years; and our hosts, the present heads of Tuskegee, Dr. [Frederick Douglass Patterson] and Mrs. [Catherine Moton] Patterson, are ably carrying on the work.”

– quoted from “My Day” (events from Monday, March 13, 1941) by Eleanor Roosevelt

Brigadier General Davis, Sr.’s son, Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., had followed in his father’s footsteps. Although, their paths’ were slightly different (because times had changed a little bit). Both men served with the Buffalo Soldiers – Sr. as an enlisted man, Jr. as an officer. Both men were initially commissioned as second lieutenants – Jr. in 1932, when he became the fourth African American man to graduate from the U. S. Military Academy (West Point); Sr. in 1901, after Lieutenant Charles Young (the third African American to graduate from West Point, class of 1889) encouraged him to take the officer candidate officer test. Both men were eventually assigned to teach military science and tactics at Tuskegee – so that they would not be seen as senior to white recruits. While Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. had applied to the Army Air Corps while he was at West Point – and been rejected because of race – the changes in regulations meant a change in his trajectory. On July 19, 1941, Captain Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. and twelve more aviation cadets begin their primary flight training.

By November, only Captain Davis, Jr. and four cadets we going through basic and advanced training courses at Tuskegee Army Air Field. Captain Davis Jr. of D. C.; Captain George S. Roberts of London, Virginia; 2nd Lt. Charles DeBow Jr. of Indianapolis, Indiana; 2nd Lt. Mac Ross of Selma, Alabama; and 2nd Lt. Lemuel R. Custis of Hartford, Connecticut became the first African American combat fighter pilots in the U.S. military. Captain Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. was promoted to lieutenant colonel soon after they graduated and. over the course of World War II, the five would serve as leadership for the 332nd Fighter Group (in particular, for the 99th Pursuit Squadron (later designated as the 99th Fighter Squadron), the 301st Fighter Squadron, and the 100th Fighter Squadron).

“I was brainwashed as a child that I would not be able to fly. This is what I wanted to do when I was a little kid. At Tuskegee, they assembled black men from all over the United States to go into this flying school. They recruited All-American athletes. They had mathematical geniuses. They had ministers, doctors, lawyers, farm boys, all down there trying to learn to fly. All the fellows we were with were of top notch caliber.

According to Mayor Coleman Young, ‘They set up this Jim Crow Air Forces OCS School in Tuskegee. They made the standards so damn high, we actually became an elite group. We were screened and super-screened. We were unquestionably the brightest and most physically fit young blacks in the country. We were super better because of the irrational laws of Jim Crow. You can’t bring that many intelligent young people together and train ’em as fighting men and expect them to supinely roll over….’”

– quoted from the oral recollections of Captain Lowell Steward, 100th Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group in “Flying High: Lowell Steward” in BOOK THREE of “The Good War” – An Oral History of World War II by Studs Terkel

In the air, they would be recognized by their Red Tails. But, at first, they just waited. Because, even after the United States entered World War II, the Army had no intention of sending the Tuskegee Airmen into combat. More pilots and ground crew were trained, and each unit was deployed to somewhere in the United States. Once again, their supporters stepped in. Judge William H. Hastie resigned as the civilian aid to the War Department, bringing public awareness to the fact that men were serving with distinction, but being treated in a way that was unbecoming of the military. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt stepped also in to advocate for the pilots. Finally, in April 1943, some of the Tuskegee Airmen were sent to North Africa. The assignment was designed to limit their contact with the Axis forces, so they could be deemed superfluous. Eventually, however, they proved themselves – but, even that wasn’t enough for the War Department.

In September 1943, Time magazine ran an article leaking the fact that the War Department was planning to disband the Tuskegee Airmen. Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., commander of the 332nd Fighter Group, publicly stood up for his men and their record. By the end of 1943, some Black pilots had earned medals in combat and more squadrons were being sent overseas. Although they also served as bombardiers, the “Red Tails” became known for their escort record. They would fly 1,578 missions and 15,533 combat sorties.

“According to researcher/historian and DOTA Theopolis W. Johnson, the following information relates to the ‘Tuskegee Experience’:

‘That is…. anyone–man or woman, military or civilian, black or white–who serves at Tuskegee Army Air Field or any of the programs stemming from the “Tuskegee Experience” between the years 1941 and 1949 is considered to be a documented original Tuskegee Airman (DOTA)’”

– quoted from “Tuskegee Experience” as prepared by Ron Brewington, former National Public Relations Officer, Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. (TAI)

As a Tuskegee historian and DOTA, Theopolis W. “Ted” Johnson estimated that 16,000 – 19,000 people were part of the “Tuskegee Experience” – 14,632 of whom he was able to personally document before passing in 2006. This estimate included 929 American pilot graduates, 5 Haitian pilots (from the Haitian Air Force), 11 instructor pilot graduates, and 51 liaison pilot graduates. Based on other estimates, I believe the overall total also includes 1 pilot from Trinidad and at least one Hispanic or Latino airman born in the Dominican Republic. From 1941 until 1946, 84 Tuskegee Airmen were killed overseas (including 80 pilots – 68 of whom were identified as “Killed In Action” or “Missing in Action” (with 30 possible “Prisoners of War”) and 4 enlisted people killed while performing their duties. In addition to a Congressional Gold Medal, awarded to all members of the “Tuskegee Experience,” the Tuskegee Airmen individually and/or collectively received the Presidential Unit Citation (3); Legion of Merit (1); Silver Star (1); Soldier Medal (4); Distinguished Flying Cross (96); Purple Heart (60); Bronze Star (25); Air Medal (1031 = 265 Air Medals + 766 Clusters); and a Red Star of Yugoslavia.

As for the original five Tuskegee officers, all would serve with distinction; be promoted (with Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., eventually becoming the first African American brigadier general in the USAF and being promoted to a four-star general after he retired); and, in some cases, they commanded integrated squadrons. Captain Mac Ross was the only one of the original five who did not make it back home after the war; but, all are remembered and have been honored in a variety of ways.

They were Tuskegee’s Golden Tigers flying “tin cans” with Red Tails, but what really made the difference was that they had will, determination, and hearts of steel. They also had dreams and they thought – hoped and prayed – that their service would make all the difference; that coming home as veterans, heroes, and victors would mean a change in the way they were viewed and they way they were treated in the United States.

Little did they know.

Maybe, if they had known what was going on – literally in their own backyard – they would have had different dreams, hopes, and prayers.

“…I had saved money, was married, and had a little child.

I went to buy a house in Beverly Hills, advertised for sale for veterans. I had the qualifications and the financing. They told me I couldn’t buy it. So I started studying real estate. I’ve been at it thirty years. My main reason for going into real estate was to find a good home for myself. A lot of work I’ve done much of that time was finding neighborhoods and homes that blacks could buy. That’s the way I’ve made a living for thirty years.

World War Two has had a tremendous impact on black people as a whole. There have always been strides for black people after every war, especially that one. But after the war is over, they revert back to bigotry. That war has definitely changed me. Colonel [Edward C.] Gleed and I are just two of the 996 black pilots of World War Two. He’s changed as a career man and I, as a civilian minute man. We helped win the war for our country and now I’m back home.”

– quoted from the oral recollections of Captain Lowell Steward, 100th Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group in “Flying High: Lowell Steward” in BOOK THREE of “The Good War” – An Oral History of World War II by Studs Terkel

Syphilis is a venereal (i.e., sexually transmitted disease) that was first described by a European physician in the late 1400’s and known as “syphilis” by 1553. Over the centuries, incidence rates waxed and waned – but it was still mostly associated with Europe. All of that changed, however, during World War I when it came back with a vengeance and spread all over the world. By the time World War II started, leaders like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt were pushing for someone to find a solution and a cure. A cure, penicillin, had actually been discovered in 1925 – but, it would be almost two decades before anybody documented using it to cure syphilis. In the meanwhile, a whole bunch of things were tested… and not tested.

In 1929, the Rosenwald Fund decided to fund syphilis treatment pilot programs in five Southern states, including Alabama. In fact, on Wednesday, February 12, 1930, the executive committee of the Rosenwald Fund approved two grants (totaling $10,000) to the Alabama State Board of Health. The bulk of the grants ($7,750) was an outright gift. The second grant ($2,250) was “conditional upon the state’s appropriating of an equal amount toward the salary and expenses of the state v. d. control officer.” For a variety of reasons, Macon County and Tuskegee Institute were chosen as the program site. Testing and recruitment began almost immediately; but the Rosenwald Fund ended their contributions (in 1932) when the state failed to hold up their financial end of the bargain.

But, remember, the United States government was really eager to resolve the syphilis issue and so the study didn’t end when the funds dried up. The U.S. Public Health Service took over and 660 men were promised free medical care, meals, transportation, health care, and burial payments for their widows. This was at a time when many people in the rural South, regardless of ethnicity or race, were too poor to afford healthcare. People were use to making do and pushing through – until the couldn’t – and the primary nurse (a graduate of Tuskegee, who also recruited most of the men) recommended telling the men (including those in the control group, who were not infected) that they had “bad blood.”

The men were not told, however, that intention of the program had changed and that they would not actually receive treatment for their ailment. Nor were they offered penicillin when it started being widely used as a cure in the mid-1940’s. Neither were they told that the U. S. Public Health Service was working with the government in Guatemala to actually infect and “study” Guatemalan citizens (1946 – 1948); nor that the white doctor in charge, John Charles Cutler, also oversaw a “study” where prisoners in the Terre Haute federal penitentiary were being infected with strains of gonorrhea in exchange for $100, a certificate of merit, and a letter of commendation to the parole board. (1943 – 1944). Remember, they weren’t even told that they had syphilis!

“Infection rates soared as a result of the First World War. In the mid-1920s syphilis was killing 60,000 people a year in England and Wales, compared to tuberculosis, which was causing 41,000 deaths a year. An enormous propaganda effort unfolded, led by governments and a whole variety of voluntary associations, for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. In the USA, Roosevelt’s New Deal pushed a major public health programme centred [sic] on the disease.”

– quoted from the Microbiology Today [Issue: Sexually transmitted infections (STIs). 21 May 2013] article entitled “Syphilis – The Great Scourge” by Sir Richard Evans, Regius Professor of History and President of Wolfson College, Cambridge

While the other experiments were shut down after a year or two, the “Tuskegee Syphilis Study” continued until 1972 – when a whistleblower’s tip led to a story that appeared in the Washington Star and then landed on the front page of The New York Times. Peter Buxtun, the whistleblower, is a Prague-born American of Jewish and Czechoslovakian descent, who (in his inexperience and naivete) spent several years going through proper government channels in order to report the unethical misconduct endured by the men in Tuskegee. In the four decades of gross misconduct, at least 28 patients died directly from syphilis, 100 died from complications related to syphilis, 40 wives of patients were infected with syphilis, and 19 children were born with congenital syphilis.

The NAACP filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of the men and their descendants. As part of a 1974 settlement, the U. S. government paid the plaintiffs $10 million (the equivalent of $60,683,569.98 in 2022) and agreed to provide free medical treatment to surviving participants and surviving family members infected as a consequence of the study. The settlement also required the government to publicly disclose information about the incident and provide future oversight, which led to the National Research Act of 1974, the creation of the Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research, Report of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (issued on September 30, 1978; published in the Federal Register on April 18, 1979.); and the establishment of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, and (eventually) the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP), which is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

While the “Tuskegee Syphilis Study” is one of the worst parts of American history and has created decades upon decades of mistrust within the African American and Southern communities, the aftermath includes oversight that can prevent such extreme (and systematic) disregards of the Hippocratic Oath from ever happening again. Or, at least that is what I would like to believe. I am not suggesting that all medical racism was resolved in the 1970’s – healthcare discrepancies today clearly show that that is not the case – neither am I suggesting that the government is completely transparent when it comes to public health issues. However, I don’t believe what happened in Tuskegee could quietly happen again. Don’t get me wrong: There’s not enough preventing it from happening today. But, today [I believe/hope/pray], someone would speak up… loudly.

Tuskegee University motto: “Scientia Principatus Opera”

– “Knowledge, Leadership, Service”

Practice Notes: See previous note for a practice that would work for a Tuskegee Airman class. As for the rest…

I do not, necessarily, steer away from hard themes. I lead classes on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Martyrs’ Day (which is also the anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Ireland), Sophie Lancaster Day, and the anniversaries of Bloody Sunday (in the U. S.), the Black Wall Street massacre, D-Day, 9/11, Kristallnacht, and Pearl Harbor. But, I also pick and choose what I bring to the mat – and, I apologize, but I don’t think I will ever do a class about the “Tuskegee Syphilis Study.”

“One school is better than another in proportion as its system touches the more pressing needs of the people it aims to serve, and provides the more speedily and satisfactorily the elements that bring them honorable and enduring success in the struggle of life. Education of some kind is the first essential of the young man, or young woman, who would lay the foundation of a career. The choice of the school to which one will go and the calling he will adopt must be influenced in a very large measure by his environments, trend of ambition, natural capacity, possible opportunities in proposed calling, and the means at his command.”

– quoted from “Tuskegee And Its People: General Introduction” by Booker T. Washington, as printed in Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements by Emmett Jay Scott, edited by Booker T. Washington

*NOTE: Not all of the indicated alumni received their graduate degrees from Tuskegee.

### “Lord, I can’t condemn / The fear that they feel // … For that river of red / Could be the death of me / God, give me strength / And keep reminding me / That blood is thicker than water / Oh, but love is / Thicker than blood” ~GB ###

The Space Between Need, Conceive, & Invention (a special Black History note) February 14, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, First Nations, Healing Stories, Health, Hope, Life, Music, Pain, Science, Suffering, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: Adam Kirsch, Allan Bloom, Benjamin Jowett, Black History Month, Brown v Board, Davis v Board, Dorothy Vaughn, Ellington West, HBCUs, Hidden Figures, Hilary Kates Varghese, HistoryMakers, James West, Keith Jarrett, Kevin Murnane, Matilda Omega Miller West, Mike Szczys, Miles Davis, NAACP, NASA, Plato, Pullman, Samuel Edward West, Season of Non-violence, Season of Nonviolence, Technology, Wookiefoot
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for February 10^th. The word for this date is groundedness. Click here if you are interested in other events and people I’ve covered on this date.

“‘Come , now,’ I said, ‘let’s make a city in speech from the beginning. Our need, as it seems, will make it.’”

– quoted from the exchange between Socrates and Adeimantus in 2.XI of The Republic of Plato, translated and with an interpretative essay by Allan Bloom, 1968 (with a new introduction by Adam Kirsch)

(1894 translation by Benjamin Jowett: “Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.”)

If we consider the very beginning of something (or someone) as Socrates and the others do in Plato’s Republic, we find that everything (and everyone) begins as a flicker of something out in the ether. We can call that flicker an idea, for lack of a better word, or we can call it a need – the word Plato uses. Either way, that flicker of something (or someone) is out in the either and then it gets grounded and rooted into something (or someone) – or it sets off a spark – and then from that conception there is creation and then being/existing in reality as we know it. And, even though we can follow that train of thought, there are a lot of things we use on a regular basis that we don’t think about in this way.

We don’t often think about the initial idea/need – unless our need is sudden and acute. Neither do we think very often about the space between that initial idea/need and all the steps that brought it into reality – which means, we don’t think about the people we have to thank for things we use everyday. But, let’s say we were going to think about the inventor of something – like, let’s say, we wanted to thank the person or people responsible for the microphones (and speakerphones) in our phones and other electronic devices. Let’s say, we wanted to thank the person or people responsible for the technology inside hearing aids, audio recording devices, video recorders, baby monitors, computers, and cell phones.

Be honest. If you were to imagine such a person (or people), what’s the first idea of a person that comes to mind?

Be honest.

Would you be surprised that one of their parents worked for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at Langley Research Center? Probably not. Would you guess that they were still in college when they started inventing things that would change the world? Probably not. But, if you weren’t think of this person in the context of this special post, would you imagine someone whose grandparents were enslaved and who was born in a house because the local hospitals wouldn’t admit their mother (that NASA employee)? Possibly not. And yet…

“James’ approach to learning sounds very familiar: ‘If I had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, anything that could be opened was in danger. I had this need to know what was inside.’”

– quoted from “James West Began 40 Years at Bell Labs with World-Changing Microphone Tech” by Mike Szczys (posted at hackaday.com on February 17, 2021)

Let’s start with Matilda Omega Miller West. She worked at Langley Air Force Base as a teacher and also as one of the NASA (human) computers that we now recognize as “Hidden Figures.” In fact, she was distantly related to Dorothy Vaughn, who became the first African American woman to receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at the center when she was named acting supervisor of the West Area Computers in 1949. Mrs. West was also an active and prominent member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as well as at least one other organization that the government viewed with suspicion. When she lost her job at NASA because of her political activism, she started teaching at a Native American reservation in Pennsylvania. She was married to Samuel Edward West, who held a variety of jobs, including owning a funeral home owner, working as an insurance salesman, and as a Pullman porter on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The Wests had two children (James and Nathaniel); however, as they had to travel in order to work, their two sons were left in the care of Matilda West’s mother – who had formerly been enslaved.

The oldest of the West children, James Edward Maceo West, was born February 10, 1931, in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. He was a super curious kid, who wanted to understand how things worked. At an early age, he was taking things a part and poking around in things. He once took apart his grandfather’s pocket watch and discovered it had 107 parts, but then couldn’t put it back together again. Another time, he found a broken radio in the trash and set out to fix it. When he thought he was successful, he needed to plug it in; so, he climbed up on a bed, held onto the brass headboard, and plugged into a light socket. Needless to say, he shocked himself and probably would have died if his brother Nathaniel hadn’t knocked him off the bed. The family would have probably loved it, on some level, if either of those incidents had discouraged young James West from tinkering. Since, however, he was not deterred, they had to find other ways to channel his energy and inquisitive nature and he ended up working with a cousin who wired electricity for houses in rural Virginia.

“Describing the experience later, he said that when things happen that he doesn’t understand ‘… I have to figure them out. I have to learn. And that’s essentially what led to some of the discoveries that I made, you know, the curiosity. Well, why does nature behave in that way? You know, what are the compelling parameters around the way nature behaves? And how can I better understand the physical principles that I’m dealing with? You know, it’s still a big part of my life.’”

– quoted from the Biz & IT section of Ars Technica, in an article entitled “Listen up: James West forever changed the way we hear the world – Now in his 80s, the legendary inventor still pursues research and fights for education.” by Kevin Murnane (dated 5/8/2016)

Growing up in Farmville, in the twentieth century, was challenging for African Americans. It was a time when education and job opportunities were subpar in areas like Virginia. There was an all-white school across the street from where he grew up. There was a an all-Black school (Robert Russa Moton High School) on the other side of town; but, that school lacked some very important resources, including: a gym, a cafeteria, indoor bathrooms, and blackboards. There were no science labs and a lack of classrooms, in general, meant that some classes were held inside of a school bus. On top of all that, R. R. Moton High School received the discarded books from the all-white school; so, they were dog-eared and out-of-date.

James West was scheduled to start high school long before 16-year old Barbara Rose Johns Powell led a student strike in April 1951, and long before Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Docket number: Civ. A. No. 1333; Case citation: 103 F. Supp. 337 (1952)) was rolled into Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Since the Wests valued education, and had the means to do so, they decided to send their son to Phenix High School in Hampton, Virginia. Phenix HS, established the same year James West was born, was an all-Black feeder school for Hampton Institute (now known as Hampton University), one of the private Historically Black Universities and Colleges (HBCUs), and it trained students to be teachers, even requiring them to be student teachers. The Wests expected their son to to follow a plan that included pre-med at Hampton, medical school, and a job with an uncle who had built a clinic and started a practice – and he did follow the plan, for a while, but he was still compelled to tinker.

“In life, racism was my biggest obstacle. I always felt like if I was white, would I have had a better life? I don’t know because I really do have fun. But I had to pay attention to things that more directly affected me than others. For example, I got an email from a colleague a few days ago that said basically I wish I hadn’t accused you of conspiracy theory as much as I did. We used to have lunch together and talk about the disparities between the races, and now he finally understood why I was so upset by getting continuously stopped by police on my way to work through an all-white community.

Now more people understand why the fear is there.”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

In high school, James West and a friend built their own telephone system. When he graduated from high school, he followed the plan, but he couldn’t get into it; so, he made plans to transfer to Wilberforce University (another HBCU) in Wilberforce, Ohio. His parents tried to dissuade him – even introducing him to two Black PhDs who couldn’t find jobs because of their race. James West, however, had that will and determination – that compulsion – that can only be considered a calling. He would not be moved off the course he had set for himself. But then, he was drafted by the United States Army during the Korean War.

After being wounded in combat, and receiving two Purple Hearts, James West went back to school. This time he decided to study Physics at Temple University, an integrated school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There were, however, some race-related challenges. Temple was founded around the idea of study groups, but the study groups in his department kept rejecting him because of his race. Taking a page from women in his family (like his mother and Dorothy Vaughn), James West decided to show the white students what he could do – what his mind could do. Being able to solve complex equations earned him invitations to the very groups that had rejected him. Suspecting that he might face similar issues on the job front, he applied to pretty much every internship he could find. In 1957, he started his first summer internship at Bell Telephone Laboratories (now Nokia Bell Labs) and felt like it could be his professional home.

“I found Bell Labs to be among the few places that I felt as a Black male, that I would have a comfortable and prosperous career. I measured and monitored this is terms of the number of underrepresented minorities and women that I saw in roles that I might eventually want to be a part of.”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

As part of his internship, James West started working in the Acoustic Research department where he studying interaural time delay (ITD), which is the time lapse between when each ear detects a sound and is a major part of how humans locate the source of a sound. The lab was re-purposing microphone technology, but the results were limiting their research – the system produced frequencies so low that very few people could hear the full spectrum of frequencies. The future Dr. West, still in college, dug up a German research paper (on solid dielectric elements) and completely revamped the test equipment. His new system produced more sound; thereby, creating better testing conditions. The professional scientists were impressed and James West was energized when he went back to school. Two or three months later, there was a problem: the intern’s system had stopped working. Since none of the professionals had done the research to understand the system, they sent the young Temple student a ticket back to Murray Hill, New Jersey.

James West could fix the problem, but he couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. In order to make that guarantee, he had to understand the technology better. That was his need; that is what compelled him to make an even better sound system. As he researched electrets (basically, electricity magnets), he started working with Gerhard Sessler, a scientist originally from Germany. Dr. Sessler was exactly five days younger than James West, but he his education had not been interrupted by war. He studied physics at the Universities of Freiburg and Munich (where he earned his diploma in 1957); earned his PhD (from the University of Göttingen in 1959; and then moved to the United States to work at Bell Labs. In 1962, James West and Gerhard Sessler invented the electroacoustic transducer, the technology for the foil electret microphone.

US Patent No. 3118022 would be the first of over 100 (US and international) patents for Gerhard Sessler and over 450 (US and international) patents for James West. It would revolutionize the way people hear sound via electronic equipment and it would change James West’s life. To this day, 90% of all devices that relay sound do so using this technology. As for it’s American co-inventor, he would never go back to Temple (as a student). James West would continue working at Bell Labs, moving over to Lucent Technology, Inc. after it was created through a 1996 divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business unit of AT&T Corporation (which included Western Electric and Bell Labs). Throughout his career, his work has been published in journals and books.

After over 40 years of service, James West retired and was recognized as a Bell Laboratories Fellow. That same year, in 2001, he started teaching at Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research at Johns Hopkins has included studying the acoustics of hospitals in order to find noise-cancelling solutions and developing technology for a smart stethoscope that cancels out background noise and can detect things like pneumonia and lung cancer. One of his daughters*, Ellington West, is CEO of the company that would take that digital stethoscope to market.

“I turned down the lower level management opportunities because I did not see a clear ladder of progress in management as a Black male. I remained in the lab and retired in 2001 at the highest rank of non-management, a Bell Labs Fellow. ”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

As I already mentioned, James West has always been curious and he was fortunate to have parents and extended family that fostered his ingenuity – even when they thought he was applying it in the wrong way (and they withdrew financial support). But, he proved himself to his parents, just as he proved himself to the Temple study groups and to the world. He was named New Jersey’s Inventor of the Year in 1995; elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1998; inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1999; received an honorary doctorate from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in 2007; and received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering (along with Gerhard Sessler) in 2010.

Throughout his career, Dr. James West has supported opportunities for others to follow in his footsteps and to stand on his shoulders: to fill needs and discover opportunities regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, and/or perceived ability. He is the co-founder of Bell’s Association of Black Laboratory Employees (ABLE); helped create and develop the Corporate Research Fellowship Program (CRFP) for graduate students pursuing terminal degrees in the sciences and the Summer Research Program (SRP); and has served on the board of directors of the Ingenuity Project, “a comprehensive, advanced math and science instructional [non-profit] program for Baltimore City students in grades 6-12.”

“‘My father is my hero, role model, my greatest inspiration,’ [Ellington] West, 34, once told an interviewer.”

– quoted from the Citybiz+ article entitled “Sonavi Lab’s CEO Ellington West: Black Entrepreneur On A Mission To Fight Bias And Save Lives” (dated August 10, 2022)

Practice Notes: As I write this post, I am listening to jazz (beginning with Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert) – music I always associate with being fearless, engaging in fearless play, and improvising. A practice dedicated to James West would be a practice where we delve into how things work and how things don’t work (or don’t work well). Then, we would be fearless and play – remembering the rules of improv: not breaking the flow, saying “yes and,” knowing the rules in order to break the rules, and (from the musical side) playing what’s not there. This would be a vinyāsa krama practice, with “things placed in a special way” “for a step-by-step progression” towards a peak pose (possibly Naṭarājāsana, “Dancer Pose.” The primary goals here would be to have fund and to listen to your mind-body.

*NOTE: James West and his wife Marlene have four adult children: Melanie, Laurie, James and Ellington. I would normally include more information, but could not find accurate information about when/how they met and what the other West children do for a living. He does talk about his family and his life choices in the interview conducted by The HistoryMakers, but I do not have access to those interviews. Many of the above quotes (except where indicated) are originally from The HistoryMakers® Video Oral History Interview with James West, February 13, 2013. The HistoryMakers® African American Video Oral History Collection, 1900 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.

### “And up on a hill in Rishikesh I came across a holy man / With shining eyes and a toothless smile / He grinned and this is what he said / ‘There’s nothing so tall we can’t climb over / There’s nothing so wide we can not cross / The time has come to raise your voices / The light burns brightest when all hope seems lost / Be Fearless and Play’” ~ Wookiefoot ###

Space and the Power of Hearing(s) (a special Black History note, w/a Tuesday link) February 8, 2023

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Tags: Alabama Supreme Court, Andy Wright, Beth Birmingham, Bhamwiki.com, birthdays on February 7, Black History Month, Charlie Weems, Christopher Isherwood, Civil Rights Movement, Clarence Norris, Countee Cullen, Creed Conyers, dreaming, Dred Scot, Eeva Sallinen, Ella Virginia Eaton Adams, Emily Sarmiento, Eugene Williams, Frank “Doc” Adams, Garth Brooks, Hallie Rubenhold, Haywood Patterson, HBCUs, James Baker, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Mann Act, Myal Greene, niyamas, Olin Montgomery, Oscar William Adams Jr., Oscar William Adams Sr., Ralph D. Cook, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, Roy Wright, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, santosha, santoşā, Scottsboro Boys, SCOTUS, Season of Non-violence, Season of Nonviolence, Sinclair Lewis, Supreme Court, Swami Prabhavananda, Tom Gordon, U. W. Clemon, Willie Roberson, yamas
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for Tuesday, February 7^th. Please note that only the Tuesday evening practice references this profile. You can request a recording of the Tuesday practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

WARNING: The following includes a recounting of the Scottsboro Boys trials.

Post revised March 2024.

“It’s a bad habit we have: We tell the tale of the murder and not the murdered.”

“I’ll also explain why my research has enraged so many people who claim to be experts in the Ripper case.”

“If you want to know how we got the Ripper story so wrong, what those mistakes tell us about ourselves, and why putting the record straight makes some people so very angry, join me, Hallie Rubenhold for Bad Women: The Ripper Retold.”

— quoted from the podcast trailer for Season 1of Bad Women: The Ripper Retold, hosted by Hallie Rubenhold

How we tell a story, especially a story about real life and real events, says a lot about how we feel about our circumstances. Same goes for what we read (if we are in the habit of reading for pleasure) and/or what other kinds of media we consume. On a certain level, it is all about escape. But, are we “escaping” because we need to decompress and give our brains a rest? Or are we “escaping” because we’re not satisfied with our lot in life? If it’s the latter, what would it take to be content, satisfied — happy even — with our lot?

These are the kinds of questions I pose during classes on February 7^th. They’re questions that serve as entryways into the practice of santoşā (“contentment”), which is the second niyama (“internal observation”) in the Yoga Philosophy. (Of course, for today, you can think of it as Number 7 in the philosophy’s list of ethics.) Answering the question requires turning inward and doing a little svādhyāya (“self study”), which is the fourth niyama. One way to turn inward and take a look at yourself is to reflect on what you would do and how you would feel in certain situations. Classically, it might be understood that such reflection would be done in the context of sacred text; however, it is also possible to simply put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

For example, would you be content, satisfied — happy even, if you were a girl born in “a little house on the prairie” — or, would you dream of something more? Would you stay on the prairie, unsatisfied, like “a hard luck woman” waiting for your man? Or, would you be like Laura Ingalls Wilder (b. 02/07/1867, in Pepin Country, Wisconsin) and make your dreams come true by writing about your experiences (and all the people you knew)? Even then, how many of your dreams would need to come true for you to be grateful and, therefore, satisfied?

Or, perhaps, like Sinclair Lewis (b. 02/07/1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota) you were born in a northern town with “one light blinking off and on.” Would you be content, satisfied — happy even — or, would you dream of something more? Would you be the one in the song who never does the things they thought they would and never knew they could leave? Or, would you be the one, like Mr. Lewis, who left for the big city, wrote about your experiences (and all the people you knew), and became what everyone’s talking about down on Main Street? Even then, would you be grateful (and, therefore, satisfied) or would you be like Carol Milford and want to change everything?

The thing is, there is nothing wrong with dreaming, hoping, and praying for change. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to improve your situation and/or the situations of others. Nor is there anything wrong with wanting to change injustice laws and breakdown systems of inequity. You could be a common man, a simple man, a sweet man born in Tornado Alley — like Troyal Garth Brooks (b. 02/07/1962, in Tulsa, Oklahoma) — and dream of sharing your storytelling gifts with the world. But would you be satisfied? Would you be “happy in this modern world? Or do you need more?” And when would the “more” be enough for you to be grateful and, therefore, satisfied?

Take a moment to consider being yourself in one of those other people’s circumstances. Then, let’s go a little deeper.

Click here to read my 2021 post about practicing santoşā on the 7^th.

On Monday, I referenced the daily contemplation elements offered by the Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace during this Season for Nonviolence. Remember, these are elements found in the teachings of both Mahatma Gandhi and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The element for February 7^th is dreaming and it brings to mind the fact that MLK (as well as Gandhi) dreamed of better worlds, more just worlds, more equitable worlds. They were committed to practicing non-violence and passive resistance, but they were not satisfied. They were not content (with the social status quo). Nor should they have been. Some things, after all, are unacceptable.

To practice santoşā, however, we must accept what is (i.e., what exists as it exists in the moment — or as we understand it to exist). Acceptance, in this case, does not mean that we just casually throw our hands up and accept violence, injustice, and inequity as basic staples of life. Neither does it mean that we ignore what is happening around us. Instead, the practice requires us to be truthful about the situation, our roles in the situation, and what we can do to change the situation. The practice also requires us to proceed with clear-minded awareness of how we are connected to everything and everybody and to be dedicated and disciplined in our practice of non-violence and non-harming. Finally, the practice requires that we practice non-attachment; meaning that we do all we can do and then let go with a kind of trustful surrender. This is basically a summary of 9 of the 10 elements that make up the ethics of the Yoga Philosophy.

The elements that make up the corner stone of the Yoga Philosophy overlap commandments found in the Abrahamic religions, precepts found in Buddhism, and values found in philosophies and indigenous religions around the world. These are shared values that stretch back into eons and yet we still have problems… big problems — which means we still need leaders, thinkers, and speakers who can hear what is needed in the world and respond wisely, safely, and justly. Such a man was born in Alabama, during the period of violence that directly preceded the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. His life and his legacy are yet another illustration of a dreamer who was not satisfied, yet made choices for which we can all be grateful.

“Editorials expressed hope that through participation in war, black citizens would gain opportunities at home. Among the outrages that the Reporter chronicled were frequent lynchings across the South, a topic that led [Oscar William Adams, Sr.] to write, ‘It is a shame before the living God and man that we should continue to preach democracy and permit such autocracy and savagery within our own borders.’”

— quoted from Bhamwiki.com (citing Gordon, Tom (May 2, 2018) “Civil decency. Human honesty.” B-Metro

Born in Birmingham, Alabama on February 7, 1925, Oscar William Adams, Jr. was the oldest of two sons born to Oscar William Adams, Sr. and Ella Virginia Adams (née Eaton). His brother, Frank “Doc” Adams became a great jazz clarinetist, saxophonist and bandleader, who was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. Meanwhile, Oscar, Jr. became the first African American member of Birmingham Bar Association (in 1966) and co-founded Birmingham’s first integrated law firm and its first African American law firm. He also litigated a variety of civil rights cases before becoming the first African American to serve on an Alabama appellate court and a well respected member of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Just like with the other dreamers born on this date, to understand the story of Judge Adams, we have to look back at the causes and conditions of his circumstances — which means going a little deeper into history. And, if we are going a little deeper into Alabama history that informed the dreams of the Adams brothers, we can start with their father, Oscar William Adams, Sr., a journalist and publisher who founded The Birmingham Reporter in 1906.

Unlike Black newspapers published in the North at the time, southern media outlets like The Birmingham Reporter had to tread carefully and be circumspect in it’s coverage of race-related news. To be too critical in opinion pieces or — in many cases — too honest about the facts of certain news stories, might mean that the newspaper, the journalists, and their families could be physically attacked. By all accounts, Oscar William Adams, Sr. had a real knack for creating layouts and crafting articles that told the whole story without explicitly telling the whole story. He couldn’t always tell his readers what happened, but he could show them. He could juxtapose articles about 9 Black kids being tried for rape with articles about almost twice as many white teenagers being exonerated before a trial. His readers had to perfect the skill of reading between the lines. It was like his readers understood the practice of focusing, concentrating, and meditating on the space between the ears and the process of hearing.

“In this state of withdrawal, ‘Great Disincarnation’ the mental coverings composed of rajas and tamas dwindle away and the light of sattwa is revealed.”

— quoted from How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali (3:42), translated and with commentary by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood

That aforementioned example is not random; it is one of the ways Oscar William Adams, Sr. covered the Scottsboro Boys, a group of nine African Americans teenagers (age 12 – 19 years old) who were accused of raping two white women on a train full of “hoboes.” Nowadays, people might think of hoboes, tramps, and bums as one and the same. During the Great Depression, however, people very clearly understood that a hobo was someone who was traveling in order to work (but didn’t have the means to pay for their travel). On March 25, 1931, a fight broke out (in Tennessee) on a Southbound train full of Black and white hobos, because a group of white teenagers declared the train “whites only.” Even though there were reportedly the same number of hoboes of each race on the train, the white teenagers ended up leaving the train. Defeated and angry, they told the local sheriff that they had been attacked by the Black teenagers. The sheriff — plus some local residents that he deputized — intercepted the train in Paint Rock, Alabama, and arrested the Black teenagers.

They also arrested two young white women (age 17 and 21 years old).

Now, if you know anything about “bad women,” you know that two unaccompanied white women traveling in the presence of men — especially Black men — didn’t have a lot of choices. They could be labeled as prostitutes — which, in this case (because they crossed state lines) would mean they had violated The White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910, also called the Mann Act, and could face lengthy prison terms. The other option was to say they were raped. Unlike most of the men, the two women knew each other and were actually traveling together. They decided (or, possibly the older one convinced the younger one) that it was in their best interest to say they were raped. A doctor was called in to examine them, but could find no signs of rape or trauma. It would later turn out that no one could truthfully confirm if the women and the teenagers were ever even in the same car. But, none of that mattered: it was 1931; the teenagers would go to court in Scottsboro, Alabama.

At the end of three speedy trials, all eight of the nine teenagers — including one who was almost blind and another who was so disabled that he could barely walk — were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries. The youngest of the nine was convicted, but his trial ended in a hung jury, because they couldn’t agree on the penalty: some wanted him to receive the death penalty, despite his age. All of the cases were appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court and then the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), which overturned the convictions and sent the cases back down to Alabama. A change of venue was granted and all nine headed to court in rural Decatur, Alabama in the Spring of 1933.

Despite the decision for the cases to be re-tried, all nine were under heavy guard and the eight previously sentenced to death were in prison garb. Despite arguments from the defense attorneys (Samuel Leibowitz and Joseph Brodsky, who had also served as second chair on the earlier trials), the trials again had all-white juries. Despite the fact that the youngest of the alleged victims recanted, the defendants were again convicted. The first of the nine was convicted despite the fact that many of the jurors knew he was innocent. But, Decatur was Klan country and the Ku Klux Klan made it very clear what they thought the outcome of the trials should be and what would happen to any juror who didn’t convict and recommend the death penalty. Judge James Edwin Horton set the verdict aside and indefinitely postponed the other trials. He did this, knowing it would end his political career. He also considered a change of venue, but, in the end, the first of the Scottsboro Boys faced his third trial in Decatur.

With a new judge, but no National Guard protection, the second set of retrials took place in Winter 1933. They resulted in two more convictions. Appeals to SCOTUS, in 1935, resulted in the convictions being overturned and the Scottsboro 9 were back in court. This time, however, there was one African American juror: Creed Conyers, the first Black person to serve on an Alabama grand jury since 1877. The newly elected Attorney General served as the prosecuting attorney and the trials lasted from January of 1936 until the summer of 1937. After spending over six years in prison (as adults on death row), the legal fate of the Scottsboro Boys was as follows:

After 4 trials, Haywood Patterson (18 when arrested) was convicted and sentenced to 75 years in prison. This was the first time a Black man in Alabama had been convicted of raping a white woman and had not received the death penalty. He escaped in 1949; end up in Michigan; but then went back to prison on a different case in 1951.
After 3 trials, Clarence Norris (19 when arrested) was convicted and given the death penalty. His sentence was commuted in 1938; he was paroled (and jumped parole) in 1946. He was pardoned in 1976.
After 2 trials, Charlie Weems (19 when arrested) was convicted and sentenced to 105 years. He was paroled in 1943.
After 2 trials, Andrew “Andy” Wright (19 when arrested) was convicted and sentenced to 99 years. He was paroled; violated his parole; and then was placed on parole again (in New York) in 1950.
During his 2nd trial, Ozie Powell (16 when arrested) was shot by a sheriff and suffered brain damage. Somehow, he pleaded guilty to assaulting an officer and received 20 years. The initial rape charges were dropped as part of his plea agreement. He was paroled in 1946.
After 2 trials, the final prosecutor declared Olin Montgomery (17 when arrested) “not guilty” and dropped all charges.
After 2 trials, the final prosecutor declared Willie Roberson (16 when arrested) “not guilty” and dropped all charges.
After 2 trials, Roy Wright (12 when arrested) was deemed “too young” to be convicted and all charges were dropped.
After 2 trials, Eugene Williams (13 when arrested) was deemed “too young” to be convicted and all charges were dropped.

NOTE: The number of trials (noted above) does not count appeals or the fact that the defendants were often in the courtroom when others were being tried. Nor does it reflect the fact that sometimes jurors were swapped (like school kids moving between classrooms). Several of the aforementioned had additional legal issues, but I have not listed them all.

In 1938, the Governor of Alabama (Bibb Graves) made plans to pardon those who were imprisoned, but changed his mind because he didn’t like their attitude and the fact that they continued to declare themselves innocent. In 2013, 82 years after they were arrested, the state of Alabama issued posthumous pardons for Haywood Patterson, Charlie Weems, and Andy Wright.

“Remembering their sharp and pretty
Tunes for Sacco and Vanzetti,
I said:
Here too’s a cause divinely spun
For those whose eyes are on the sun,
Here in epitome
Is all disgrace
And epic wrong.
Like wine to brace
The minstrel heart, and blare it into song.

Surely, I said,
Now will the poets sing.
But they have raised no cry.
I wonder why.”

— quoted from the poem “Scottsboro, Too, Is, Worth Its Song” by Countee Cullen

The trials and tribulations of the Scottsboro Boys inspired a plethora of writers, including Langston Hughes (Scottsboro Limited), Harper Lee (To Kill A Mockingbird), Ellen Feldman (Scottsboro: A Novel), Richard Wright (Native Son), Allen Ginsberg (America), Countee Cullen (“Scottsboro, Too, Is, Worth Its Song”), Jean-Paul Sartre (The Respectful Prostitute [La Putain respectueuse]), Utpal Dutta (মানুষের অধিকারে [The Rights of Man]); as well as creators of the musicals The Scottsboro Boys and Direct from Death Row The Scottsboro Boys; musicians like Lead Belly (“The Scottsboro Boys”) and Rage Against the Machine (“Scottsboro, Too, Is, Worth Its Song”); and filmmakers and political cartoonists.

The events also, inevitably, shaped the thoughts and desires of Oscar William Adams, Jr. — who would have turned 6 years old shortly before the teenagers were arrested and his father started covering the story. He was 12 (the same age the youngest had been when arrested) when the final trials concluded and around 18 (the same age the first to be convicted was when arrested) when the first man was paroled. Can you imagine what it would have been like to grow up in the Birmingham at that time? Regardless of if you visualize yourself as you are, in that situation or if you see yourself as the junior Mr. Adams, can you imagine how this situation might have informed your opinions — of yourself, of people who look like you, as well as of people who don’t look like you? Can you imagine how this situation would have informed your dreams and your decisions about the world?

And, this is all without considering “The Talk.”

I can’t imagine any Black child being satisfied with these circumstances. I can’t imagine any Black kid being content with these circumstances. I can’t imagine any Black teenager not dreaming about a better world; a more just, equitable, and peaceful world.

“The black man does not wish to be the pet of the law. The more blacks become enmeshed in meaningful positions in our society, then the more that society will be come non-discriminatory. His goals and ideals will become identical with goals and ideals of the rest of society. To insist on special treatment, and demand and get integration in other aspects of society is to pursue inconsistent approaches. If a black man is allowed to go as far as his talents will carry him, he will not need special protection from the courts. If he is not, the courts will once again be asked for special protection.”

— quoted from the special concurrence opinion for Beck v. State, 396 So. 2d 645 (1980) by Alabama Supreme Court Justice Oscar W. Adams

We can never know what dreams he would have had and decisions he would have made if Oscar William Adams, Jr. had been someone else’s son and/or had experienced Birmingham in the mid-20th century through someone else’s circumstances. What we do know is that after he graduated from high school, Mr. Adams, Jr. attended two historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs): Talladega College, Alabama’s oldest private HBCU, where he earned a degree in philosophy (1944) and Howard University, where he earned a law degree (1947). We also know that he came back to Alabama to practice.

Soon after he graduated, Mr. Adams, Jr. was admitted to the Alabama State Bar and opened up his own private practice, where he specialized in civil rights cases. He worked very closely with the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, founder of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was instrumental in organizing the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in 1965. He became the first African American member of Birmingham Bar Association (1966) and, in 1967, he and Harvey Burg co-founded the first integrated law firm in Alabama. Two years later, in 1969, he co-founded Birmingham’s first African American law firm with James Baker, an Ivy League lawyer from Philadelphia. The firm became known as Adams, Baker & Clemon, when the original partners were joined by U.W. Clemon, who would become a lot of notable firsts (including Alabama’s first African American federal judge).

Throughout his career as an attorney in private practice, Oscar William Adams, Jr. litigated various kinds of cases on behalf of Martin Luther King Jr. and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as cases focused on school desegregation (e.g., Armstrong v. Board of Education of City of Birmingham, Ala., 220 F. Supp. 217 (N.D. Ala. 1963)); discrimination cases (e.g., Terry v. Elmwood Cemetery, 307 F. Supp. 369 (N.D. Ala. 1969) and Pettway v. AMERICAN CAST IRON PIPE COMPANY, 332 F. Supp. 811 (N.D. Ala. 1970)); and voting rights cases.

He became the first African American to serve on an Alabama appellate court on October 10, 1980, when an Alabama Supreme Court justice retired due to health issues. Eleven days before he was sworn in, the court heard arguments for Beck v. State, 396 So. 2d 645 (1980), a case about the death penalty and how it was applied. The court’s decision would include a history of the death penalty in Alabama and highlight a period of injustices. However, the court’s statement that “during part of Alabama’s history, [what offenses authorized the imposition of death] reflected the interaction and relative position of the races, especially during the period prior to the Civil War, when slaves and free Negroes were admittedly singled out for special treatment insofar as capital punishment was concerned. Nevertheless, with that one exception…” made it sound as if the death penalty was rarely applied to innocent people purely based on their race — completely negating the fact that (in their lifetimes) it had been thusly applied multiple times. Mr. Adams, Jr. was sworn in on December 17^th, listened to a recording of the argument and, two days later, wrote a special concurrence. It was his first official statement from the bench.

“In the early seventies, blacks argued for bifurcated jury trials, and this Court today has mandated such for the State of Alabama. In the seventies, blacks asked that sentences for rape and other offenses be not discriminatorily and freakishly imposed.”

— quoted from the special concurrence opinion for Beck v. State, 396 So. 2d 645 (1980) by Alabama Supreme Court Justice Oscar W. Adams

After completing the remaining two years of the unexpired term he had assumed, he decided to run for the office. The largest bar associations endorsed him, rather than his white counterparts, and in 1982, he became the first African American to be elected (by popular vote) to a statewide constitutional office in Alabama. He served on the Alabama Supreme Court until October 31, 1994, when retired from the bench. After his retirement from being behind the bench, he returned to the front: working with the Birmingham law firm of White, Dunn & Booker (now White, Arnold & Dowd). He also served as co-chairman of the Second Citizens’ Conference on Judicial Elections and Campaigns.

Oscar William Adams Jr. was replaced with the state’s second African American Supreme Court Justice, Ralph D. Cook. It would make for a great story if, in the intervening years — between 1980 and 1994 and between 1994 and today — more African American lawyers had become judges who became justices in the state of Alabama. That would be super satisfying.

Unfortunately, I can’t truthfully tell that story.

Associate Justice Cook retired from the bench in 2001. John H. England Jr served as a justice on the Alabama Supreme Court justice from 1999 until 2001. (His son, John H. England, III is one of a handful of African American judges serving in Alabama’s federal courts.) According to the Brennan Center for Justice’s 2022 update, Alabama is currently one of 28 states with no Black justices. Furthermore, it is one of six states where Black residents make up at least 10% of the population. Specifically, 35% of Alabama’s population is classified as people of color and 27% of the total population identifies as Black. Yet, all nine of the Supreme Court justices, all five members of the Court of Criminal Appeals, and all five of the Court of Civil Appeals are white.

Quite often, when statistics like these are presented, some people will say representation doesn’t matter as much as education and experience. Well, I am just grateful that more and more people are getting the education and the experience that puts them in the pipeline. That appreciation for the way things are changing is part of the practice of santoşā. If you ask me if I am actually satisfied and content to wait, I can honestly say that I have no choice; because I can’t (directly) do anything about it. And that acceptance (and awareness of what is and is not in my control) is the non-attachment part of the practice.

Of course, the next logical question is: Well, when will you be satisfied? When will you be content? When posed with a similar question, SCOTUS associate justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg had a pretty succinct answer. I’m not sure if it would be my answer; but it is worth considering what the country would be like — what the world would be like — if the tables turned.

“Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said, ‘I’m sometimes asked, “When will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]?” And I say when there are nine. People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.’

Asking, ‘How diverse is diverse enough?’ still represents a tick–the–box mentality rather than embracing the types of cultural, innovation, and bottom–line changes we have described here. When organizations start to embrace the breakthrough diversity can represent, we can move beyond thinking about quotas and targets. The real change we are talking about takes us far past ‘the one/the few’ to as many hires as it takes to create a culture of belonging and move our sector into the future.”

— quoted from “What Is Diverse Enough” in “Chapter 4. A Clear Case” of Creating Cultures of Belonging: Cultivating Organization where Women and Men Thrive by Beth Birmingham and Eeva Sallinen Simard (forward by Myal Greene and Emily Sarmiento)

PRACTICE NOTES: I don’t necessarily have a standard sequence for a February 7^th practice, but it is a practice that leans towards having a fair amount of balance. Sometimes, after completing a portion of the practice, I pose the questions, “Would you be satisfied if this was the end of the practice? Would you grateful (if you got what you needed), or would you still be wishing, hoping, praying for what you wanted? What would cause you to be more grateful and, therefore, more joyful?”

Every once in a while, I’ll even throw in a tolāsana (scale pose).

### 7 of 9 (1857) ###

Salt of the Earth (a special Black History note for Monday) February 7, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Buddhism, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Faith, Food, Gandhi, Healing Stories, Health, Hope, Life, Lorraine Hansberry, Music, New Year, One Hoop, Pain, Peace, Pema Chodron, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yin Yoga, Yoga.
Tags: Ahiṃsā, Ahimsa, Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Arun Gandhi, birthdays on February 6, Black History Month, commandments, Constance Allen Pitter Thomas, Edward A. Pitter, Female Genital Mutilation, FGM, Great Depression, HBCUs, Howard University, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes, International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, Juana Racquel Royster Horn, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Lincoln School of Nursing, Marjorie Allen Pitter, Marjorie Allen Pitter King, Mary T. Henry, nursing, precepts, salt, Salt Satyagraha, Season of Non-violence, Season of Nonviolence, Seattle Washington, The Gospel According to Matthew, United Nations, United Nations General Assembly, University of California LA, University of Washington, World Interfaith Harmony Week, yamas, Yoga Sutra 2.35
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for Monday, February 6^th. You can request a recording of the Monday practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

WARNING: A portion of this post refers to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), but there is an opportunity to skip that section.

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice. Donations are tax deductible.

Check out the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming classes.

“Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life. It is the only condiment of the poor. Cattle cannot live without salt. Salt is a necessary article in many manufactures. it is also a rich manure.

There is no article like salt, outside water, by taxing which the State can reach even the starving millions, the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless. The salt tax constitutes the most inhuman poll tax that the ingenuity of man can devise.”

– quoted from a letter by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930

Some people laughed when Mohandas Karamchanda Gandhi decided salt would be the focus of a direct action, non-violent mass protest. People who are world leaders today scoffed, because they didn’t get it and they didn’t have his insight and vision. However, Gandhi wasn’t the first radical leader to emphasize the importance of salt. Jesus did it, in the Gospel According to Matthew (5:13 – 14), when he referred to his disciples as “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” In both cases, the teacher whose name would become synonymous with a worldwide religious movement indicated that there was a purpose, a usefulness, to the disciples and their roles (as salt and as light). I think it’s important to remember that Jesus was speaking to fishermen, farmers, and shepherds – people who were intimately familiar with the importance of salt (and light). They knew that (different kinds of) salt can be used for flavoring, preservation, fertilization, cleansing, and destroying, and that it could be offered as a sacrifice. They knew, as Gandhi would later point out, that people in hot, tropical climates needed salt for almost everything – including healing.

Gandhi’s “audience” was different. He was living in a time of industrialization and the beginnings of these modern times in which we find ourselves. He knew that people laughed and scoffed, because they didn’t completely understand the usefulness and vitalness of salt. He understood that some people took salt for granted and, even within the pages,, he debated with experts about the benefits and risks of salt consumption. He also knew that some people – inside and outside of British-ruled India – just didn’t get the inhumanity of charging people a tax for something that they could obtain (literally) outside their front door; something that was part of the very fiber of their being.

Remember, the human body is 60 – 75% water… and most of that water is saturated with salt.

“Such a universal force [Satyagraha] necessarily makes no distinction between kinsmen and strangers, young and old, man and woman, friend and foe. The force to be so applied can never be physical. There is in it no room for violence. The only force of universal application can, therefore, be that of ahimsa or love. In other words it is soul force.

Love does not burn others, it burns itself.”

– quoted from “Some Rules of Satyagraha” by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930

(NOTE: The general explanation and rules were followed by a section of rules of conduct for various situations, including for “an Individual” and for “a Prisoner.”)

As I mentioned last week, Gandhi’s grandson (Arun Gandhi) established the “Season for Nonviolence” (January 30^th through April 4^th) in 1998. The Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace offers daily practices based on principles of nonviolence advocated by Mahatma Gandhi (who was assassinated on January 30, 1948) and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (who was assassinated on April 4, 1968). We could think of these principles as little bits of salt, sprinkled throughout the days, but the thing to remember is that these principles are not unique to one culture, one philosophy, or one religion. Neither did these two great leaders/teachers invent these ideas. Ahiṃsā (non-violence or “non-harming”) is the very first yama (external “restraint” or universal commandment) in the Yoga Philosophy and one of the Ten Commandments according the Abrahamic religions. It is also one of the Buddhist precepts. Courage, smiling, appreciation, caring, believing, simplicity, education – the principles of the first week of the “Season for Nonviolence” – all predate Gandhi and MLK; they also predate Jesus. So, too, does today’s principle: Healing.

Healing is also the focus of people who are wrapping up World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW), which was first proposed by King Abdullah II of Jordan in 2010. The United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted Resolution 65/5 on October 10, 2010, and designated the first week of February as a time to promote a culture of peace and nonviolence “between all religions, faiths, and beliefs.” This year’s theme is “Harmony in a World in Crisis: Working together to achieve peace, gender equality, mental health and wellbeing, and environmental preservation” and it stresses the fact that we are all better equipped to deal with future pandemics and natural catastrophes when we come together and work together.

Of course, future pandemics and natural catastrophes are not the only things that plague the world. We also have human-made disasters and catastrophic events. We’re still dealing with some of the same things Gandhi and MLK – even Jesus – fought: people who who would take away another person’s ability to be a healthy, thriving, human being. Again, we could look back at salt… or basic civil rights… or we could look at what it (sometimes) means to be like August Wilson’s Risa, “a woman in the world.”

While I do not go into explicit details, you may skip to the next big banner quote if needed.

In addition to being the penultimate day of World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW), February 6th is also International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. Designated by the UN in 2012, this annual day of events aims to amplify and direct the efforts on the elimination of the practice of FGM, which is defined by the UN as “all procedures that involve altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons and is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights, the health and the integrity of girls and women.” People who endure FGM face short-term complications such as severe pain, shock, excessive bleeding, infections, and difficulty in passing urine, as well as long-term consequences for their sexual and reproductive health and mental health. According to the UN, 4.32 million girls around the world who are at risk of undergoing FGM and approximately 1 in 4, or 52 million worldwide, experience FGM at the hands of a medical professional.

This is not a new practice. In fact, when I was in college (about 30 years ago) I had an argument with a male student who insisted there was no such thing as FGM. He was white, from America, and (to my knowledge) had not experienced much outside of his lived experience. He only knew what it was like to be him. If I could go back, and have that discussion again, I might dig a little deeper into why he was in such denial about something that (to date) has been experienced by at least 200 million living people. NOTE: That statistic only refers to survivors.

While the UN acknowledges that cultures are different and that all are in “constant flux,” the General Assembly also recognizes that, in order for cultures to survive, the people within a society must be able to thrive, enjoy basic human rights, and have the physical and mental wellness to reach their potential. Any one of us can think of this as someone else’s problem, but the truth is that (on some level) this is everyone’s problem to solve. In fact, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called, “on men and boys everywhere to join me in speaking out and stepping forward to end female genital mutilation, for the benefit of all.”

The good news is that FGM has declined, globally, over the last 25 years and a girl is one-third less likely to experience FGM than 30 years ago. All the good news category: more awareness means that healthcare professionals are in a better position to help FGM survivors heal from the physical, mental, and/or emotional trauma.

Yoga Sūtra 2.35: ahimsāpratişţhāyām tatsannidhau vairatyāgah

– “In the company of a yogi established in non-violence, animosity disappears.”

Healing begins with people. I’ve seen this up close and personal all of my life, because I grew up around healers. My father taught in medical schools and ran research labs. My mother was a hospital administrator. Her mother went to nursing school with at least one of her sister-in-laws and a couple of her future neighbors. For the most part, they all went to HBCUs (Historically Black Universities and Colleges) in the South, because the times – and the laws at the time – didn’t give them a whole lot of other options. In some ways, my grandmother and her peers would have had very similar experiences as Black nursing students before and after them. In some ways, however, their experiences would have been very different – again, because of the opportunities that were available (or not available to them) based on the color of their skin. For instance, the nurses in my family definitely had to overcome obstacles, but (maybe) not the same walls that Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes had scale in order to become a nurse.

Born February 6, 1919, in Seattle, Washington, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes was the second of three girls born to Edward A. Pitter and Marjorie Allen Pitter. Mr. Pitter was born in Jamaica (like Bob Marley, who was born 2/6/1945) and came to the United States in as a captain’s steward during the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. After leaving his position on the passenger ship, he became a King County Clerk and then a book editor and publisher. He also worked with the Democratic Party (the Colored Democratic Association of Washington). Mrs. Pitter was a direct descendent of Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, and she knew how to protect her family against the hostilities they encountered. Their daughters (Constance, Maxine, and Marjorie) grew up in the tightknit household that emphasized elegance and education.

“Marjorie Pitter King remembered, ‘Politics opened doors for us and was very helpful. During the Christmas vacations, we were able to work at the post office and earn money to help with our schooling. It also helped my father obtain his job because he had been working on WPA (Works Progress Administration) projects. Then he went from there to deputy sheriff.’ (Horn)”

– quoted from “King, Marjorie Edwina Pitter (1921-1996)” by Mary T. Henry, posted on historylink.org (Juana Racquel Royster Horn cited)

All three of the Pitter girls graduated from high school and made their way to the University of Washington. Like a lot of students, especially during the Great Depression, the sisters had financial struggles. To alleviate their economic problems, the youngest of the three (Marjorie) proposed that they go into business together doing things they had learned how to do at home: typing, printing, and writing speeches. They called their business “Tres Hermanas” or “Three Sisters” – and it would have been nice if all of their troubles could have been resolved through hard work. Unfortunately, -isms and -phobias don’t work that way.

Marjorie Edwina Pitter King, the youngest of the three sisters, struggled academically and then struggled because there weren’t very many women in accounting – let alone Black women. She ended up transferring to Howard University in 1942, for her senior year; but then dropped out of school and went to work for the Pentagon (during World War II). Eventually, she got married, started a family and moved back to Seattle, where she started a successful tax company. M and M Tax and Consultant Services worked with clients all along the continental coast and Mrs. Pitter King’s support extended to language translation and letter writing. She also became the first African American to be appointed to the Washington State Legislature (in 1965); served as Chair of the 37th District Democratic Party; Vice President of the King County Democratic Party; and Treasurer of the Washington State Federation of Democratic Women, Inc. While attending the 1972 Democratic National Convention, she helped draft the National Democratic Party Platform.

Then there was Maxine… the darkest-skinned of the three sisters… who wanted to be a nurse.

“It was 1939 in Seattle, and although the city had none of the formal ‘Jim Crow’ segregation laws common in the South, the result was often the same.

Being black and finding a job often meant menial work and a lower standard of living. For some black people, discrimination crushed any hope of working at all.”

– quoted from the article in The Seattle Times entitled “Seattle In The Old Days: No ‘Jim Crow’ Laws, But Blacks Were Held Back Just The Same” by Daryl Strickland (dated Jun 27, 1994)

Like her sisters, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes enrolled at the University of Washington. She enrolled as a pre-nursing student, but then she was rejected by the the Nursing School, because the degree required nursing students to be housed in Harborview Hall – and the Dean of Nursing would not allow an African American student to live with the white students. The future Mrs. Pitter Haynes had no choice, but to change her major during her junior year. She ended up graduating from the University of Washington, in 1941, with a degree in sociology. Then, she moved to New York City and enrolled at Lincoln School of Nursing where she earned the first of two degrees in nursing. She earned her second degree, a masters in nursing, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and worked in the city of angels before moving back to Seattle.

But, in the middle of all of that, in 1971, she went back to the University of Washington… as an assistant professor at the same nursing school that had turned her away because of her skin color.

We can look at that as progress and/or we can flip the coin and look at that as healing.

“Wounding and healing are not opposites. They’re part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to find other people or to even know they’re alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of. ”

– Rachel Naomi Remen (b. 2/8/1938) as quoted in At Your Service: Living the Lessons of Servant Leadership by Charles E. Wheaton

PRACTICE NOTES: I decided to focus this practice on the ways the body naturally heals: with a little yin and a little yang; a little action/resistance and passive/resting. There was some dynamic motion (to engage the sympathetic nervous system) and also moments of resting and relaxing (to engage the parasympathetic nervous system). In a practice like this, I also highlighted ahimsa (as I did above) and different techniques for relaxing and getting “unhooked,” including the practice of cultivating the opposites.

I have several playlists related to Gandhi, MLK, and ahiṃsā. However, if I were going to put together a playlist specifically for today, I would throw in a little Bob Marley (see reference above) plus some Schumann played by Claudio Arrau (b. 2/6/1903), something by Natalie Cole (b. 2/6/1950), and – if I had the time – I’d look for something appropriate from the soundtracks of one of Robert Townsend’s movies (b. 2/6/1957). Also, cause I’m silly (and I could make it work), I might throw in the Guns N’ Roses cover of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” (cause, Axl Rose, b. 2/6/1962); however, I might toss it into the before/after music along with this little ditty on YouTube, by an artist born 2/6/1966.

### “Unforgettable / That’s what you are” ~ Nat King Cole & Natalie Cole ###

First Friday Night Special #15: “A Reflective Moment” (a post practice post) January 9, 2022

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Books, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Healing Stories, Hope, Langston Hughes, Life, Love, Mathematics, Movies, Music, Mysticism, One Hoop, Pain, Religion, Science, Suffering, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yin Yoga, Yoga.
Tags: Alice Walker, Beau Lotto, Charlotte D. Hunt, Charlotte Osgood Mason, Dale Carnegie, Dr. Alan Locke, Dr. Franz Boas, Dr. Margaret Mead, Dr. Ruth Benedict, Galileo Galilei, Harlem Renaissance, HBCUs, Howard University, Johannes Kepler, Jupiter, Jupiter's moons, Kidneys, Mary Helen Washington, Nicolaus Copernicus, Ruby McCollum, Stillman Drake, Tycho Brahe, Urinary Bladder, Yin Yoga, Zeta Phi Beta, Zora Neale Hurston
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Happy 2022, Everyone!

This is the post for the “First Friday Night Special” #15 from January 7^th. This practice featured a YIN Yoga sequence focusing on the Urinary Bladder and Kidney meridians (but with a little more back bending than the last two Yin Yoga practices.

You can request an audio recording of Friday’s practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.

Check out the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming classes.]

“You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him to find it within himself.”

– Galileo Galilei, as quoted in How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Yoga practice (on or off the mat) is an opportunity to grow and to learn about one’s self and the world around us. It’s a safe time and place to turn inward and observe how our mind-bodies respond and react to ourselves and the world around us. It’s a great time to is a place to explore, experiment, learn, and play. For this reason, I sometimes liken the practice (on the mat) to time in a laboratory or classroom, or even on a playground. And I think it’s appropriate to show up with a sense of curiosity, wonder, possibilities, and faith – prepared to see what happens.

Curiosity, wonder, possibilities, faith, and preparation are concepts that I have repeatedly highlighted during this week’s practices, because they are concepts shared by explorers, (physical) scientists, philosophers, and the (religious and/or spiritually) faithful. When we show up on the mat, we have the opportunity to be all of the above and also to embody all of those attributes. We have the opportunity, as Dr. Beau Lotto has said (in defining science), to “play with purpose.” We can look at that “purpose” as finding out more about ourselves; however, in the Yoga Sūtras, Patanjali makes it very clear that by going deeper into ourselves, we go deeper in to the world. We are, after all, microcosms of the world… which is a microcosm of the solar system… which is a microcosm of the galaxy… which is a microcosm of the universe. Which is kind of a long way to say that by observing our self, we can learn about the cosmos.

Just because we can, theoretically, learn about the cosmos by going deeper into ourselves, does not mean that we are the center of the universe. Some ancient philosophers perpetuated a geocentric model of the Universe, whereby everything revolved around Earth. In 1543, one of the last things Nicolaus Copernicus did was present a mathematical “theory” – based on observation – indicating that the Sun was actually the center of everything. This heliocentric model created a paradigm shift for almost everyone in the Western world, with the exception of the Catholic Church… and it’s scientists. In fact, as the Scientific Revolution ushered in more advanced technology and better observations, scientists like Tycho Brahe used their more accurate data to develop a geoheliocentric model, whereby the Sun still revolved around the Earth, but everything else revolved around the Sun.

Other scientists, in other countries, had developed similar models based on their own observations, but the Tychonic model was more than a collection of data points. In some ways, it was a desperate attempt to stay in the Church’s favor and to hold on to the old status quo. However, when Tycho unexpectedly died in October of 1601 (from an issue related to his urinary bladder and kidneys, see the practice), his assistant Johannes Kepler took over his work. Kepler and Tycho had a decent working relationship, but Kepler was convinced Tycho was coming to the wrong conclusions and proceeded accordingly as the imperial mathematician. Galileo Galilei, also a believer in Copernicus’s ideas, would further expand the ideas of Kepler. He did so, through more observations and the realization of what he was seeing.

“But now, Most Serene Prince, we are able to augur truer and more felicitous things for Your Highness, for scarcely have the immortal graces of your soul begun to shine forth on earth than bright stars offer themselves in the heavens which, like tongues, will speak of and celebrate your most excellent virtues for all time. Behold therefore, four stars reserved for your illustrious name, and not of the common sort and multitude of the less notable fixed stars, but of the illustrious order of wandering stars, which, indeed, make their journeys and orbits with a marvelous speed around the star of Jupiter, the most noble of them all, with mutually different motions, like children of the same family, while meanwhile all together, in mutual harmony, complete their great revolutions every twelve years about the center of the world, that is, about the Sun itself. Indeed, it appears that the Maker of the Stars himself, by clear arguments, admonished me to call these new planets by the illustrious name of Your Highness before all others. For as these stars, like the offspring worthy of Jupiter, never depart from his side except for the smallest distance, so who does not know the clemency, the gentleness of spirit, the agreeableness of manners, the splendor of the royal blood, the majesty in actions, and the breadth of authority and rule over others, all of which qualities find a domicile and exaltation for themselves in Your Highness? Who, I say, does not know that all these emanate from the most benign star of Jupiter, after God the source of all good?”

– quoted from Sidereus Nuncius by Galileo Galilei

And, as it turns out, there were more than four – but that’s another story, for a different day.

Galileo first mentioned the celestial orbs in a letter dated January 7, 1610. He tracked and documented the movement of the spheres from January 8^th until March 2^nd. After seeking the counsel of an advisor to Cosimo II de’ Medici (the Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1609-1621), Galileo named the objects the “Medicean Stars” and published his findings on March 13, 1610. In order to secure the Medici’s as patrons, he had a copy of his work, and the telescope he used the see the heavens, delivered to the Grand Duke a few days later. In 1632, he would dedicate his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems to Cosimo’s oldest son, Ferdinando II de’ Medici (the Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1621-1670). This “dialogue” exploring the scientific merits of the Copernican view of things (heliocentric) versus the Ptolemaic view of things (geocentric) eventually landed Galileo Galilei in hot water with the Catholic Church.

A German astronomer, Simon Marius, made similar observations in December of 1609 and started documenting his observations on December 29^th (according to the Julian calendar). Even though he was exonerated, because his documentation started on January 8^th (according to the Gregorian calendar), Simon Marius’s reputation was tainted by accusations of plagiarism and an ongoing dispute with Galileo. If you have ever been confused by the names of Jupiter’s moons – Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (names suggested to Marius by Johannes Kepler) vs I, II, III, IV (as Galileo noted them in his notebooks and discussion) – you can blame it on the calendars… or the scientists’ egos.

“There was no doubt in Galileo’s mind of the authenticity and importance of the discoveries he announced, and since he wished to have them reach astronomers and philosophers all over Europe as quickly as possible he addressed his book to them and wrote it in Latin. He called it the Sidereus Nuncius, which was generally taken to mean ‘the messenger of the stars,’ not only by Galileo’s contemporaries but by the translators in succeeding generations. Several booklets appeared in reply with titles referring to this ‘messenger,’ and there were allusions to this idea in many poems and literary works. Galileo did not correct these authors, but he may not have meant the title to be so interpreted. Several years later a Jesuit critic assailed him for having presented himself as the ambassador of heaven; in the margin of his copy of this attach Galileo noted that the word nuncius means ‘message’ as well as ‘messenger,’ and asserted that he had intended only the humbler meaning. On the basis of this and other evidence, modern scholars have suggested that the word in question has always been mistranslated in this title.”

– quoted from “Introduction: First Part” in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Stillman Drake

Prior to the Harlem Renaissance, Black people in America were mostly portrayed as stereotypes and caricatures, often without any redeeming independent qualities or motivations. Ms. Hurston’s own lived experiences didn’t fit into those commonly circulated boxes. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama and moved to Eatonville, Florida – one of the first all-Black incorporated towns in the United States – when she was three. Her father was a man of certain means, who became the town’s mayor and the Baptist minister of the town’s largest church. When her mother died (when Zora Neale Hurston was thirteen), and her father married soon after, the future writer was shipped off to boarding schools and relatives in in Jacksonville, Florida.

“’Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.’”

– Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching Gog by Zora Neale Hurston

She left Howard without her bachelor’s degree, but was eventually offered a scholarship to Columbia University’s Bernard College. She was the only black student at the all women’s college. Once again, she was in a unique position to observe the differences between people and cultures; but, what really interested her were the similarities. She studied ethnography and conducted research with Dr. Franz Boas, known as the “Father of American Anthropology” and Dr. Ruth Benedict, and was a student during the time that Dr. Margaret Mead was finishing up her graduate studies. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in anthropology in 1928 and spent an additional two years pursuing a graduate degree at Columbia.

It was while she was conducting research with “Papa Franz” that Zora Neale Hurston discovered her scholastic approach to research wouldn’t get her very far in the field(s). It was also during this time that she received the patronage of Charlotte Osgood Mason, a white socialite and philanthropist who also supported other Harlem Renaissance artists, like Langston Hughes. Like Galileo, Ms. Hurston found that the support of the wealthy was a double-edged sword; because the “Godmother” of the Harlem Renaissance wanted control over the artists and their work – even scholastic research around music, folklore, hoodoo (also known as “Lowcountry Voodoo”), and other aspects of Southern culture. Trying to balance the academic requirements of her advisor, along with the demands of her patron – not to mention her newly formed friendships within the Black arts community and her own burgeoning career as an author – proved to be too much, especially since she was also a newlywed.

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.

I was extremely proud that Papa Franz felt like sending me on that folklore search. As is well known, Dr. Franz Boas of the Department of Anthropology of Columbia University, is the greatest anthropologist alive, for two reasons. The first is his insatiable hunger for knowledge and then more knowledge; and the second is his genius for pure objectivity. He has no pet wishes to prove. His instructions are to go out and find what is there. He outlines his theory, but if the facts do not agree with it, he would not wrap a jot or dot of the findings to save his theory. So knowing all this, I was proud that he trusted me….

My first six months were disappointing. I found out later that it was not because I had no talents for research, but because I did not have the right approach.”

– quoted from the autobiographical essay “Research” in Dust Tracks On A Road: An Autobiography by Zora Neale Hurston

Ultimately, however, she didn’t need the degree so much as she needed the experience and the material. Her work includes the semi-autobiographical novel Jonah’s Gourd Vine, published in 1934, and Mules and Men, an autoethnographical collection of African-American folklore, in 1935. She received support from the Guggenheim Foundation in order to conduct research about voodoo in Jamaica and Haiti, which resulted in Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (published in 1938). Her published views on race relations and, in particular, how race relations in the United States affected women of color led her to cover the trial of Ruby McCollum for the Pittsburgh Courier (Fall – Winter, 1953). In 1937, she published Their Eyes Were Watching God, her best known (and arguably) most influential novel, and followed that up, two years later, with Moses, Man of the Mountain, a re-telling and re-centering of The Second Book of Moses, Called Exodus (from the Bible) based on an African-American perspective – which, given the timing, has also been viewed as an overall criticism of fascism and the Nazi regime.

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly. ”

– quoted from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Friday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify

“And when [Nanny] gained the privacy of her own little shack she stayed on her knees so long she forgot she was there herself. There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.”

– quoted from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

“’I love myself when I am laughing.

And then again when I am looking mean and impressive.’”

– “Zora Neale Hurston, in a letter to Carl Van Vechten, December 10, 1934, referring to a series of photographers he had taken of her” as quoted in I Love Myself when I Am Laughing.. and Then Again when I Am Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader Edited by Alice Walker (Introduction by Mary Helen Washington)

### Love No Matter What ###

« older posts

A Joyful Practice

FTWMI: What (and How) Do You Recollect? / A Strenuous, Deliberate Life Photo (w/excerpt) July 12, 2025

— quoted from “Overture” in Swann’s Way, Volume 1 of Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust

“We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.”

— quoted from The Captive, Volume 5 of Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

— quoted from a journal entry dated August 5, 1851, as printed in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, Walden Edition by Henry David Thoreau, compiled and edited by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn and Bradford Torrey

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

— quoted from “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” in Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

— quoted from “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” in Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

“What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are.”

— George Eastman

— quoted from “Economy” in Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

— George Eastman

“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth….”

— George Eastman

If you’re interested in another look at how things “develop,” click on the excerpt title below.

### YS: 1.36 VIŚOKĀ VĀ JYOTIŞMATĪ ###

Pepys, peeps, and a peep [of Harmony] (the “missing” Sunday post that is also a “long lost” post w/an excerpt) February 23, 2025

“Dear Kitty,

— Anne Frank, written in her diary (“Kitty”) on Wednesday, February 23, 1944

— quoted from a 1661 diary entry, as published in the “March 1660-1661” section of The Diary of Samuel Pepys M.A. F.R.S., Clerk of the Acts and Secretary to the Admiralty by Samuel Pepys

— quoted from Black Reconstruction in America (The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois): An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 by W. E. B Du Bois

— quoted from the National Guardian article entitled “To an American born last Christmas Day” by W. E. B. Du Bois, published on March 10, 1958, under the header “Dr. DuBois at 90 Offers a Piece of Advice [to his newborn great-grandson]”

— quoted from “XIII. Of the Coming of John” in The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

— quoted from “XIII. Of the Coming of John” in The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

— Anne Frank, written in her diary (“Kitty”) on Wednesday, February 23, 1944

### “breathe / take a breath / saans lo” ~ Arooj Aftab ###

Salt of the Earth, the 2024 remix (the “missing” Tuesday post) February 6, 2024

“The mere imparting of information is not education.”

— quoted from the “Preface” to The Mis-education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson

“Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life. It is the only condiment of the poor. Cattle cannot live without salt. Salt is a necessary article in many manufactures. it is also a rich manure.

There is no article like salt, outside water, by taxing which the State can reach even the starving millions, the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless. The salt tax constitutes the most inhuman poll tax that the ingenuity of man can devise.”

— quoted from a letter by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930

Love does not burn others, it burns itself.”

— quoted from “Some Rules of Satyagraha” by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930

— quoted from “Loving Your Enemies” sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (11/17/1957)

While I do not go into explicit details, you may skip to the next big banner quote if needed.

Yoga Sūtra 2.35: ahimsāpratişţhāyām tatsannidhau vairatyāgah

— “In the company of a yogi established in non-violence, animosity disappears.”

— quoted from “King, Marjorie Edwina Pitter (1921-1996)” by Mary T. Henry, posted on historylink.org (Juana Racquel Royster Horn cited)

“It was 1939 in Seattle, and although the city had none of the formal ‘Jim Crow’ segregation laws common in the South, the result was often the same.

Being black and finding a job often meant menial work and a lower standard of living. For some black people, discrimination crushed any hope of working at all.”

– quoted from the article in The Seattle Times entitled “Seattle In The Old Days: No ‘Jim Crow’ Laws, But Blacks Were Held Back Just The Same” by Daryl Strickland (dated Jun 27, 1994)

– Rachel Naomi Remen (b. 2/8/1938) as quoted in At Your Service: Living the Lessons of Servant Leadership by Charles E. Wheaton

### “Unforgettable / That’s what you are” ~ Nat King Cole & Natalie Cole ###

Grace, Zora, & Galileo’s Moons (a “long lost” Saturday post for Sunday) January 7, 2024

But then there are known-unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. Alright? Then, there are unknown-unknowns. There are things that we don’t know that we don’t know.

And then, fourthly, there are unknown-knowns — these are things that we don’t know that we know.”

— quoted from the lecture “From Tyndale to Galileo: Grace and Space” by David Block, professor emeritus in the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Ishvara kripa (grace of God / Divine grace)

Shastra kripa (grace of scriptures / sacred texts)*

Guru kripa (grace of the Guru)

Atma kripa (grace of oneself)

— the four kinds of Kripa in the Himalayan philosophical traditions

“You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him to find it within himself.”

— Galileo Galilei, as quoted in How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

— quoted from Sidereus Nuncius by Galileo Galilei

— quoted from the lecture “From Tyndale to Galileo: Grace and Space” by David Block, professor emeritus in the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

— quoted from “Introduction: First Part” in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Stillman Drake

“Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural.”

— quoted from Dust Tracks On A Road: An Autobiography by Zora Neale Hurston

“’Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.’”

— Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching Gog by Zora Neale Hurston

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.

My first six months were disappointing. I found out later that it was not because I had no talents for research, but because I did not have the right approach.”

— quoted from the autobiographical essay “Research” in Dust Tracks On A Road: An Autobiography by Zora Neale Hurston

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly. ”

— quoted from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

— quoted from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

“‘I love myself when I am laughing.

And then again when I am looking mean and impressive.’”

This can be considered “Grace, part I.” “Grace, part II” is coming soon.

### OM / LOVE NO MATTER WHAT ###

What (and How) Do You Recollect? / A Strenuous, Deliberate Life Photo July 12, 2023

– quoted from “Overture” in Swann’s Way, Volume 1 of Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust

“We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.”

– quoted from The Captive, Volume 5 of Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

***Shastra kripa* (grace of scriptures / sacred texts)***