A Reflection for 8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

Here's my 8 minute 46 second reflection, suggested by Indira Allegra in the San Francisco Chronicle's July 26, 2020 Sunday Chronicle.  .But it's not my "legacy," as suggested.  I think Michelle Obama has it right when she says we're becoming.

 

 When I retired from 32 years of teaching at CCSF (following 5 years in the 1970s teaching and/or doing teacher-training in Tonga, Spain, and Algeria), I wrote a verse I still recite:

         I put off retirement?  That’s shocking and appalling.

        Now retired I realized retirement’s my true calling.

I love retirement, but I still feel connected to the college because it’s a part of our community and our world, and it feels natural to be working on a resolution for Black Lives Matter with the retiree chapter of the  AFT 2121 Teachers Union and to be joining the African American Task Force to advocate for the AFAM Studies Program and the Black faculty there. 

  I also belong to OWL, a league of older women who impressed me with their activism and spunk back in 2017, when they were at the SF Public Library as part of a workshop on Redefining Ageing:  What It Means to Grow Old in America. 

 I'm now on their board, and we spent the summer with a focus on racial justice, discussing on Zoom with leaders from SURJ Marin, Showing Up for Racial Justice, and EJI, the Equal Justice Initiative, shown in action with Bryan Stevenson and Eva Ansley in the book and movie Just Mercy

Yesterday I celebrated the birthdays of Social Security (85 years old), Medicare (55), ADA (30) and the US Post Office. (270), and Women's Right to Vote (100).  This was sponsored by CARA, the California Alliance for Retired Americans, who had a CAR-A-Van..

 I am now a Baby Zoomer, so it was unusual to be out there in real space, where the police came by--two of them without masks.  (Should I have made a citizen's arrest?)

 My usual way of getting out of the house during the pandemic is in walks.  A favorite uncle in the family is now in comfort care, so I made some huge collages of beautiful places I’ve walked in San Francisco in the shape of FAITH, HOPE, and LOVE for him, but I actually started making these collages for a  Total SF virtual event back in April, when Heather Knight and Peter Hartlaub led us Chronicle readers in a viewing of "Inside Out" and we participants each made a SF pizza.  Mine was of all the beautiful places I'd walked.  Because the character JOY (plot spoiler) triumphs over the characters Sadness, Disgust, Anger, and Fear, I used photos of my walks to form JOY too.

 So these pictures are of my living room, where my window shows a star representing the only one I knew personally who died of Covid 19 and a picture of an angel she did in pastels back in 1959, when I was her kids' babysitter and she was a beautiful young mother and artist who was kind to me at a time when most people were not.  She still shines.  I have my sign for Earth Day and the Thank you to Frontline Workers from the day back in April when the city had a sing-along.  The Racial Justice symbol is on the window too, where my bear looks out, ready to comfort whoever looks up.  

 I had her on hand because when my mother died, her partner of 40+ years had bears made from items of her clothing.  There's a poignant tale connected to that, but I’m cheating on time

 I had that Mama Bear in my bedroom looking out at the garden in back because my mother had said in her Advanced Care Directive that if she had to be in a facility, she wanted to be outdoors as much as possible.  But the effect of Alzheimer’s was a paranoia that made her afraid to go outside during the last few months of her life.

 When a friend and neighbor told me that her little boy wanted to look for bears in windows, I moved Mama Bear to the living room and propped her on the sofa looking out at Larsen Park and the ocean in the distance.  I assumed that she’d soon topple over.  But she’s still sitting there, with another beautiful view, after all these months.  I like the way she and some of the symbols on the window are reflected on the coffee table.. 

CARA's Car-a-van and Police Officers without Masks

CARA had a CAR-A-VAN yesterday to celebrate the birthdays of Social Security (85), Medicare (55), Women's Suffrage (100), Americans with Disability Act (30), and the United State Postal System (270). We put up some signs and banners around the Social Security office, which at least one passer-by thought we were protesting against because the office was closed. A police officer arrived and told us politely that we would have to take down the sign over the locked door, which we did, and then I asked him, "Why aren't you wearing a mask?" He then retrieved one but explained that he'd been in Wyoming, where he was outdoors all the time and didn't need one. Later another two officers arrived, one of them without a mask. Strange to be policing the police on that matter.

Reusable Bags Are Back

Reusable Bags Are Back

SF, wash off your reusable bags! You can bring them for your shopping trips again. Refuse the plastic and avoid the bag charge, which was raised to $0.25 effective July 1. Heath Order guidance provides for the safe way to bring your own bags. Remember these three important steps to keep everyone safe: 1) Bag your own purchases 2) Keep reusable bags in the shopping cart, making sure they don't touch employees or any other surfaces 3) Maintain social distance from others

The Dumb-Struck Witnesses of a Racial Slur

Justin Phillips, a columnist in the SF Chronicle who's also on the new podcast "Extra Spicy" with restaurant critic Soleil Ho, related an incident of shocking racism in his column today, when in Petaluma someone in a pickup truck screamed "n----" at him.

https://www.pressreader.com/usa/san-francisco-chronicle/20200709/282316797329372

He said of those in his dinner group "Reading everyone's faces, I could tell they were navigating a mix of emotions, including confusion, anger, remorse and disappointment.  But nobody shouted back at the driver."  That prompted me to write to him:

Dear Mr. Phillips,

I'm so sorry for the shocking (I hope you still find it shocking) racist epithet the truck driver hurled at you when you were eating in a spot where you thought the climate  was now supporting Black and brown social movements.  (Why is Black capitalized, but brown and white are not?)

I hope it was "just" one woman who was painting over that rock on Bernal Heights.  I think she's stopped.  Otis R. Taylor Jr.'s column today related another painting over--of a mural!

But as for the failure of the people who did not shout back at the driver, here's my thinking:  Anyone that crazy and full of hate might have gotten out his rifle and shot everyone in sight if someone had dared shout back.  

I like your optimism in believing that we can talk with family and friends so that people like him might be enlightened.  I have the feeling these conversations would have to happen very early in life before kids are "carefully taught to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made and people whose skin is a different shade."  

We late-in-life OWL members (Older--and Wiser Women's League--ranging in age from 60 through the 90s) had members of SURJ (Standing Up for Racial Justice) in June's Zoom meeting, and we're having EJI (Equal Justice Initiative) this month.  I have one-to-one conversations with friends who feel threatened by Black Lives Matter, but they would never use the n-word.  They think the omission of the Too at the end of that declaration means that other lives don't matter rather than that it's about time that we had a system that showed that Black lives matter TOO!.  They also feel threatened by the slogan "De-fund the police" because their experience hasn't been with a police officer's knee on their neck but rather with watching the Walgreen's across the street  get looted from the break in to the carrying away of goods, and when they've called the police, the police never came. 

It could be that the way we talk to people could matter, too in convincing them instead of alienating them.

I was just reading about the letter in Harper's begging people not to shut off dialogue through the Cancel Culture.  But what the truck driver shouted at you was not dialogue.

Thanks for your regular column, and good luck with your. "Extra Spicy" podcast. 

Your reader,

Tina Martin

To Replace Columbus

Here's my letter to Heather Knight, who asked what should replace the statue of Columbus.

Dear Heather,

Is it 89 statues in SF and only 2 of real women?  I think women who have never been slave-owners and are flawless in other ways should take turns standing there until at least 87 have survived the experience. It can be a designated free-speech zone.  We should start with Black and First Nation women.

Or maybe we should have a monument to 2020 that depicts what happened that year,maybe even showing why the statue was toppled.

I do NOT think we should have a statue of George Floyd.  What happened to him was a tragedy, but victims of police brutality aren't heroes.  They're victims.  Still, he could be depicted in the monument to 2020  as a victim.

Tina.