Our parents’ generation derived meaning from the Depression and World War II. For many years, I thought our generation would be defined by Viet Nam. It hasn’t. It has been and will continue to be defined by the Civil Rights Movement.

What a shift we have seen, from the Jim Crow south with its unabashed racism to a black president. We are now at the cusp of 2016. Despite how far society has come, there is still so much further to go. I cannot yet really imagine a “post-racial” America.

Having grown up in Atlanta and gone to college in New Orleans in the last four years of the 1960s – before the completion of the Interstates – my route took me through Selma on US 80 and across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I have no clue how many times I have driven across the bridge. But I never stopped in Selma. It scared me.

I knew the bridge was important. I knew the history of Bloody Sunday and the march from Selma to Montgomery that led to the National Voting Rights Act. Like many bright undergraduates, I knew it in my head, but I knew nothing about it in my heart and soul. That knowledge has taken me a lifetime to begin to acquire.

As Rebecca and I planned our “Transition Tour” with its obligatory stops in Atlanta and New Orleans, spending time in Selma became equally important. We needed to walk across the bridge, following in the footsteps of some of America’s most important heroes.

Interestingly, I have almost-personal connections with four of the march’s most important leaders. My parents met Martin Luther King, Jr.; many of the people I knew from The Temple in Atlanta, especially our Rabbi, Jack Rothschild, knew him personally and closely. In the summer of 1970, I spent an afternoon in the rec room of the Ebenezer Baptist Church with Daddy King when I escorted a church choir group from Greensboro, NC as a Gray Line tour driver. I worked on Andrew Young’s campaign when he first ran for Congress in 1970, stuffing envelopes and driving voters to the polls. He once commented to my mother that “I was a fine young man,” one of those moments that becomes a lifelong source of pride. Many of my political friends from Atlanta have come to know John Lewis. And I recently learned that my lifelong friend Alan Begner, an attorney in Atlanta, represented Hosea Williams for 18 years until his death in 2000.

The walk was far more emotional than I could have anticipated. That emotion was compounded by some of the poverty conditions we drove through on our way to Selma. From Atlanta, we took I-85 about 25 miles to Newnan, and from there, we drove only state and county highways to Selma. We saw some of the most impressive clusters of “manufactured homes” I have ever seen, and we left Selma heading south with a tornado watch to our west. A community of single-wide trailers in a flat, unprotected Alabama field during a tornado watch leaves a deep ache in the pit of my stomach. We have come so far, but we still have so far to go.

The National Voting Rights Museum fills an old building at the southwest end of the bridge. It’s a tired-looking place with no real outstanding features, privately run, and apparently chronically under-funded. It was closed for the week between Christmas and New Year, so sadly we couldn’t visit. Its only visible outstanding feature was the storage building between it and the river. Eight murals on eight garage doors told a powerful story that began with “Education is the Key to Control our Destiny” and ended with “Hands that picked cotton picked a President!”

My experience of driving through Selma almost 50 years ago was one of fear of the police and the good-ole-boys. I was an uppity city Jew-boy with long hair and a beard going to college in New Orleans. They’d go out of their way to find a way to bust me. Fortunately, they never did.

When a Selma police car pulled behind us as we were trying to find an open restaurant, my heart went into my throat. I prepared for the worst. As we approached a traffic light, the police car pulled alongside us, a young black cop at the wheel. We rolled down the window and asked if he could recommend a restaurant. We stayed at that light through three cycles as he thought of places we could try, explained what they were like, and gave us directions to each.

When we arrived at a small bustling family restaurant we were pleasantly surprised. We fully expected a totally integrated establishment. What we did not expect was how many of the tables had black and white diners eating together, many of them apparently family; all of them obviously good friends. The arc of justice is indeed bending.

Selma’s two lagniappes proved to be our lodging and our breakfast. Built in 1837, the St. James Hotel is reputedly the most haunted site in Alabama. We didn’t get to meet any of it “haints,” but we did bask in its splendid luxury, even if only overnight, and even if the beds were a tad on the soft side. We’d stay in places like that every night if we could find them … especially if they had a staff like the St. James. Breakfast at the Downtowner on Selma Street approached southern perfection: grits, fluffy biscuit, well-cooked egg, amazing bacon and sausage, plenty of hot coffee, and world-class conversations to eavesdrop. (The most important takeaway: my deep southern accent ain’t half bad!)

After breakfast, I visited the newspaper office for a quick chit-chat while Rebecca returned to the hotel to shower. A half-hour or so later, I too returned to the hotel. Rebecca had not made it past the lobby, where she stood grinning and jawboning with the hotel manager, Annette.

Annette, I really hope you enjoy reading this blog, and we cannot wait to see you and stay at the St. James again for the 2017 Jubilee and march from Selma to Montgomery!!

WOW! Do we ever have some great friends in Atlanta despite a 50-year absence! Bill and my older brother were already friends by the time I was born; I have lived none of my life without him in the picture. Ricky and I go back to when our mothers pushed us in baby carriages, followed by Sunday School, college fraternity brothers, and subsequent roommates. Wolbe and I met in nursery school when we were 2, and our friendship has never waned. His wife Judy and I don’t go back nearly as far; we only met in kindergarten. Joel was my younger brother’s best pal.  Bruce and Alan date back to elementary school. Their wives are somewhat more recent, and utterly wonderful people. Danny and I became friends in college at Tulane and our friendship grew through his law school years in Atlanta. Gus and Marsharee are my most recent Atlanta friends, from graduate school at West Georgia College starting in 1971, a mere 45 years ago.

It has been a real thrill spending time with them. They are remarkable people: four lawyers, two therapists, a mortgage broker, a fishmonger , and a CPA, and all of them hilarious, successful, and wise.   Of them, the best bird watcher I know, the best guitar player I know, the most amazing wine collector I know, and the TWO best First Amendment lawyers I know. Since Rebecca and I have only been married for 16 years, she and they are still getting to know each other. I am pretty confident that after this visit, they all approve of each other 100%! We have just had a fantastic time.

We are sad to leave and totally excited to re-hit the road. Sunday, Atlanta to Selma (all on back roads of course) for an evening at the St. James Hotel alongside the Alabama River and Edmund Pettus Bridge (http://www.haunted-places-to-go.com/st-james-hotel.html) followed by a walk across the bridge and Monday morning at the National Voting Rights Museum. Monday, a leisurely drive to New Orleans where we hook up with our great friends Jon and Elisa for the New Year. On Wednesday, my best pal in the world, my brother Joe from Oregon, will join us in New Orleans.

After the New Year, Joe and I will spend the next 11 days driving to Tucson.  Rebecca will be with us for most of that time …. but not all. She will be taking a detour through Omaha (by plane, of course) for Granddaughter Ella’s 13th birthday. Rebecca’s daughter Melissa has three kids, Ella, Seff, and Aaden. Next year, Aaden starts his senior year in high school. Rebecca has NEVER missed a birthday. Transition Tour be damned; she’s not going to miss one this year either!

This blog is eye opening. There is so much to write about … and much more NOT to write about! It feels like personal dark matter: there’s an unimaginable amount of it around. Unlike dark matter, however, I can see it, but no one else should. It’s taboo … forbidden. In my case, it isn’t forbidden by anyone, it’s just that I don’t want to go there because it is none of your damn business!  I’ll share it with my wife and my therapist. Period.

A large portion of this adventure is about visiting family. I have this theory about why God invented families: families force us to get to know and spend time with people who we would either never have a chance to get to know or, if we did get to know them, they might never enter into our circle of friends. Family makes us better people despite the craziness.

I think the ratio of dark matter to the observable universe is about 95 : 5. The ratio of stuff I won’t write about to stuff that I will is about the same. Maybe it’s because I don’t think it would be fun or interesting. Mostly, though, I just don’t think it would have any value. If you are interested in the human insanity surrounding me, you shouldn’t be.

My friend/teacher/mentor Howard Zinn once said in an interview that, “All history is subjective, all history represents a point of view. History is always a selection from an infinite number of facts, and everybody makes the selection differently based on their values and what they think is important.”   This blogging experience adds depth and meaning to that already deep and meaningful thought.

Then there is the crossover point of public reflection. If an experience or encounter makes me think of something important, isn’t that worth taking in and perhaps even worth sharing? Maybe so, but carefully. How much transparency is too much? How much honesty? Some people give birth or experience death publicly. Good for them. Others of us hold some things sacred and private. Good for us. I hope that at some point, I make sense out of some of this internal debate. For now, it is what it is: some experiences are just taboo. Maybe at some point, I will figure out why.

 

I reckon that we all have moments in our early years that make indelible marks on who we are. One of those moments for me was the summer of 1964, when I spent six weeks in a YMCA summer camp program and two weeks at the national Boy Scout Jamboree in Valley Forge, PA. That summer just replayed itself as I visited the Okefenokee Swamp in southeast Georgia.

Interestingly, another life changing summer – 1974 – also involved the Boy Scouts. It led to my doctoral research and career. But 1964 was no less significant: it led to my love of the outdoors, my sense of environmentalism, my confidence in the face of utter uncertainty, my sense of social and racial justice, and my love of large communal meals.

I was 15 years old and had always attended summer camp. That summer broke the mold. Instead of “attending” a summer camp, I experienced 8-weeks of summer camp-like activities, all out of a tent.

The first four weeks were with the Y in the north Georgia mountains: One week hiking the Appalachian Trail, one week horseback riding (which included being totally responsible for my horse all week), one week whitewater rafting, and one week on a lake boating, skiing, and fishing. It was exhausting, exhilarating, scary, challenging, memorable, etc., etc.

The 1964 Boy Scout Jamboree filled the next two weeks. We cooked all of our own meals, heard the President speak, met other kids from all over the world, and generally had a wonderful time. One of the best parts was that my father went too, though in a different troop, and my experience of him may be my most indelible memory.

My father only agreed to go because he would have a chance to be the Assistant Scout Master of the first racially integrated troop from the Atlanta Council. To be in that troop, the scouts all agreed to be part of the experience. Together, they elected a black scout — Jimmy Williams — to be the Senior Patrol Leader. My dad and Jimmy fell in love with each other and stayed close for many years! Jimmy paid for his college by working for my dad. Jimmy became my first black friend. I have no clue where he is now or what became of his life, but he humanized an entire race for me, a naïve southern kid from Atlanta. I am deeply grateful for his gift.

After the Jamboree, I returned to the YMCA experience, this time spending two weeks with about 18 other boys and two guides canoeing the Okefenokee Swamp. We carried two week’s worth of food in the canoes. We set up camp each night on firm land, securing our jungle hammocks to pine trees. We fought off mosquitoes, communed with endless alligators, marveled at the wildlife and birds, and hoped that we would not encounter any poisonous snakes.

After two weeks in a swamp, we all emerged as transformed people, with amazing new levels of self-confidence. That might have been the moment when I realized that I really could do virtually anything.

This trip to the Okefenokee was not nearly so adventurous. In fact, it was incredibly tame. Our food entailed two fabulous restaurants: Steamboat Lilly’s in Hilliard, Florida, and the Steeplechase Tavern in Vidalia, Georgia. (Yes, that Vidalia: home of the Georgia Sweet Onion.) Our time outdoors covered a couple of miles of walking along trails and boardwalk. The wildest life we saw was a foraging raccoon and one sunning alligator. We only encountered one carnivorous plant, a lonely but beautiful pitcher plant. A couple of Great Egrets provided terrific entertainment.

Nevertheless, the visit provided a real window into why I am who I am. Not bad for a few hours.

I am so relieved! For my entire life, I have attributed the thought that “golf is a good walk spoiled” to Mark Twain, but thankfully (according to the Web), he apparently never said it. I thought about that quote all morning as I wandered the fairways of Indian Hills, a perfectly average public golf course in Fort Pierce. Mostly I thought about how much I hated the idea of disagreeing with Mark Twain about anything, and golf is assuredly NOT a good walk spoiled. It is a wonderful way to wile away a few hours in a state of blissful relaxation … if you approach it with the right attitude.

The right attitude begins with an acceptance of reality. 1) Golf is hard! Ted Williams once said that he had no idea it could be so hard to hit a ball that isn’t moving. 2) Golf takes practice. At 4 or 5 hours a round and fees of $30 up to hundreds, who has the time or patience to get really good? Not me! 3) Golf requires a fair amount of athleticism: strength, balance, and hand-eye coordination. I possess none of those.

To my friends who have their competitive juices ramp up on the course, my sympathies. (You know who I am talking about, Matt M, but I can’t wait to get back out on the course with you!) The game is simply too hard to master.

My brother Joe calls golf “urban fishing.” I agree wholeheartedly. You don’t go fishing to catch fish. You go fishing to hang out on the water in a state of totally chill relaxation, taking in nature and forgetting about reality. Catching fish is a bonus … a “lagniappe” in the language of south Louisiana.

I have also come to equate golf with a good game of cribbage. Unlike bridge or chess, cribbage players rarely care who wins; the game is a tapestry of beautiful patterns and unexpected combinations. Unlike poker or gin, there is rarely much at stake. A few of my cribbage partners play for $1 a game; the others just play for fun. Rebecca and I try to get in at least one game every day just for the sheer pleasure of it.

Golf is a game to be savored, despite its astounding difficulty. I have been playing for just over 50 years. For all practical purposes, I am no better and no worse than I was 50 years ago. I will never learn how to play the game. On two consecutive holes today, I had short shots to the green, both over sand traps, one about 25 yards and the other about 75 yards. The short one went about 15 yards at a perfect 90˚ angle to the direction of my swing, staying safely on the far side of the trap. The long one stopped 4 inches from the hole. What’s up with that?

The weather was perfect. The birds were plentiful, magnificent, and highly entertaining. The greens were true and in terrific shape. The long walk felt great. The guy I played with, though boring, was really nice. My only complaint is that my right hand started sweating so my grips got slippery. It’s my own damn fault for not having new grips.

I plan to play fairly often on this trip … which in my case means a couple of times a month. My brother Joe and I will do some urban fishing while we are together. My brother-in-law in Arizona lives in a development with 3 courses, so I hope to play there every day.

Many years ago, I realized that I am basically a double-bogey golfer. Today, I shot one-under double bogey … but I had some real beauties, and my putting was deadly: my length was right on, and inside about 2 feet, I couldn’t miss.

Regardless of when or where the next round happens, I am already excited about it. It will be a good walk, and nothing about it will be spoiled, no matter how lousy I shoot.

I have lived my entire life without a plan, taking whatever has come along and making the best of it. No regrets.

Now that we are 2.5 weeks into the transition tour, that lifelong dearth of planning has changed. We planned, and the plans are working out!

Plan 1: Stay off Interstate highways as much as possible and eat local roadside grub

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The title is misleading. Miss Donna has not cut my mother’s hair for fifty years. But she has been involved with my mother’s haircutting for that long. Miss Donna was 22 and my mother 45. At the time, Mom had her hair cut by a man at the salon where Donna worked. He was chronically late. Mom HATES late. One day when her appointment time passed and he still wasn’t there, Miss Donna said to her, “Let’s just get it done.” By the time he arrived, Mom had a new hairdresser. He was history.

My mother has gone to that beauty parlor weekly for my adult life. It is part of her sustenance. A clock hangs on the wall of Donna’s that my mother gave her as a gift when they moved into a new space. Donna has gifts at her house that Mom has brought her from around the world.

These days, Mesha cuts Mom’s hair. Mesha is the newest employee at the salon. She’s only been there 8 years. (Rose, who did Rebecca’s manicure/pedicure, has been there 35.) Mom has a husband and wife housekeeping team, Keena and Dimitri. Keena is Mesha’s mother-in-law. May as well keep it all in the family!

In the late 1970s, my father fought cancer for a few years then died in 1979. Donna came to the house to cut my father’s hair when he was too weak and sick to go out … and never charged Mom for the service.

Donna vividly remembers the day in 1980 when my mother met her second husband, Herman. “On Saturday mornings,” Donna told Rebecca and me, “Shirley would always take our orders, go to a take-out restaurant, and bring us breakfast. When she was here, we would all eat, and she would just cry. Then one Saturday, we all wanted something different to eat, so she went to a new restaurant. When she returned…” Donna grinned and started mimicking Mom by walking on her toes… “your mother had a smile on her face, walked like she was on air, and announced, ‘I just ran into an old friend.'”   Mom and Herman married a year later and stayed married 16 years before he ran out of steam too. She is still going strong!

It’s funny. I know I have met Donna before, but I don’t really remember. Nevertheless, we are very good old friends!

This year, my best pal Smokey was the Grand Marshall of Atlanta’s Gay Pride Parade. The city painted the crosswalks along the parade route in rainbow colors. Thousands of people marched and lined the route, including the Mayor and who knows how many other muckety mucks showing their support for a large and engaged portion of Atlanta’s populace. The south, like the rest of the world, is indeed changing, and sometimes we can grab a glimpse of that hope that Martin Luther King, Jr. described to us as the “arc of the moral universe bending toward justice.”

And sometimes we can’t.

With all of the south’s apparent transformations, I keep hoping that my experience of the south transforms as well. Alas, I am not so lucky.

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Those of you who know me know that I am not very keen on religion, though some people say they think of me as being pretty spiritual. (I guess I’m OK with that, but I’m just not sure what “being spiritual” means.)

Regardless, I have come to love the pagan significance of the Festival of Lights, and since tonight marks the first day of Chanukah, the event deserves recognition.

Today is December 6. The date of the new moon is December 11, so the darkest night of the lunar cycle is also the exact midpoint of the eight nights of Chanukah. The Winter Solstice is December 21, the shortest period of daylight in the year.

Chanukah spans the eight darkest nights of the time of the year when the nights are the longest. What better time to burn candles and celebrate “light” than the eight darkest, longest nights of the year?

Happy Winter Season everyone, regardless of whether it be for Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, the Solstice, or just being alive.

Only two hours north of Atlanta heading south on I-85, I couldn’t resist the lure of visiting Tri-County TEC, five miles west of the Interstate. I had taught psychology there just over a year after finishing my Master’s degree at West Georgia College. In between finishing at West Georgia in March 1973 and starting at Tri-County in August 1974, I had acted in the Legend of Daniel Boone in Harrodsburg, KY, worked as a journeyman actor at Kelly’s Seed and Feed Theater in Atlanta, and Program Directed a Boy Scout camp at the Buckskin Scout Reservation in Marlinton, West Virginia. If it seems like I might have been a bit directionless, your sense is correct. I had no clue what might appear over the next horizon.

I left the scout camp in West Virginia on August 8, 1974. The date is deeply etched since, as we stood in the parking lot bidding each other farewell, Richard Nixon delivered his resignation speech. (I skipped around the lot singing “Ding-dong the witch is dead.”)

From Marlinton, I drove to Atlanta to pick up my brother and head to Florida. My folks were flying to Florida the next day, so we planned to spend a few days hanging out together. During the afternoon as my brother Joe and I were on the road, my mother received a telephone call from a professor from West Georgia, Jim Thomas. Jim told Mom that he had just learned of a teaching opening at a two-year college in South Carolina. The school was rather desperate to fill the position since another classmate had accepted the job several months earlier then backed out that very day to take a position in his native state of Minnesota. School would be starting in a week; they needed someone! Jim told my mother that I should call him as soon as she could get word to me in Florida … which was when we all met up with each other the following day. (No cell phones in 1974, you know!)

I called Jim immediately. He had told the school to “look no further. I have just the person for you.” When I called the school, they were delighted and asked if I could start work tomorrow. I spent all of about 1.5 hours in Florida!

Many hours of driving later, I arrived at Tri-County, got oriented, and started work. What a thrilling job: Tri-County had spent the first ten years of its existence – like all of the “Technical Education Centers” in South Carolina – as a strictly voc-tech school. A decade into that experiment, the state realized that it needed to offer Associate’s Degrees as well. I had the rare opportunity to develop a two-year college-level psychology curriculum including courses in Intro, Abnormal, and Social Psych. I had no clue what I was doing, but OMG I had fun doing it!

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