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July 31, 2005
Chilao On Sunday
Well, the lesson of the day is: Follow your own first, or second – and if that fails, your third mind. While in Sunday school this morning, one of the youngsters asked if I had a band-aid. She had a small exposed sore, but I didn’t have a band-aid. I did have my little notebook with me so I made a note to ask the rector about getting a first aid kit. It occurred to me that on a number of occasions over the years, folks have had all manner of medical emergencies at church, some serious enough to call the paramedics, others of a minor nature. This past Thursday when I came down from Mt. Islip I made a note (in the same small notebook) to add these items to my camping list: handiwipes, an extra handkerchief and (you guessed it) a small first aid lit. Strike 2!
So here I am on a beautiful Sunday afternoon (4:30 pm.) and what do you think I do with my brand new Swiss Army sharp as a razor knife – while lopping off a chunk of Trader Joe’s Mozzarella cheese? Right again. I cut through the cheese, through the wrapping and into my finger. Quick, clean and deep. The very first thing I did was use an expression not particularly fit for a (few hours after church) Sunday afternoon. And as if I hadn’t heard myself the first time, I said the same word a few more times. The next thing was mental instead of verbal. I thought about the non-purchased fist-aid kit. And I remembered telling the Sunday school director that a kit should be purchased. And I remembered her writing it down and me doing the same thing days earlier. But a rapid fire memory does nothing to stop a finger from bleeding. I snatched a piece of towel paper and wrapped the finger.
When driving into Chilao picnic grounds where I am making these notes, I noticed a green truck…the kind used by forest rangers and other park service employees. The truck was near the visitor’s center so I decided to walk over and see if I could scrounge a band-aid. The finger was starting to sting. The ranger wasn’t at his truck; but there was a small group of folks who I later learned were mountain runners. I asked one of the dudes if he had this now desperately sought piece of medical paraphernalia. He said he might have one and went to his car. In the meantime, the long lost ranger came down the walkway from the visitor center only to be asked the same question by paper-towel-wrapped me. He went to the green truck and literally checked out every conceivable nook and cranny until…presto! Or is it eureka? He found 2 of them! By this time, the runner dude had located one and I had quickly but rather sloppily unwrapped it and put it on the cut. I gratefully accepted the ranger’s contribution as well, placing it on top of band-aid number 1. I thanked all parties and headed back to the waiting picnic area. Grateful and more relaxed. Laughing at myself for my experienced folly, my ever-prepared shortcomings. What else could or should I do but laugh at myself instead of revisiting those “bad words.”?
Lessons learned:
1. Buy a first aid kit before even thinking about coming back to the mountains.
2. Understand and accept the reality that accidents have a long history within the frail context of the human experience.
3. Hike, picnic where there are other (obviously better prepared/equipped) people; and most important, if you can’t avoid the innocent, accidental, low key, minor drama self-inflicted pain, of a knife
4. DON’T BUY A GUN!!!!!!
Now…tis time for some very carefully cut cheese, salami, sour cream potato chips, cold bottled water and………Shakespeare’s sonnets!!!
Posted by mbowen at 08:40 PM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2005
Old Habits
it's a truism: old habits are hard to break. and GOOD old habits are impossible to break...and, for this reason, should not be broken. last night i had intended to take biko 2 c "rize" at the bridge theater. got to the window and we learned that the projector had broken down (or was it simply broken?) so....the movie was canceled. we drifted instead over to borders bookstore. driven by some bookish demon of yesteryear i went to the info counter and asked the dude where the works of billy boy could be found. billy boy is my reference to (the man himself) William Shakespeare.
i had supposedly "loaned" my monster copy (which doc dave gave me years ago) to neal during a time when neal needed something to do and read..........scattered correspondence over the year has gone unanswered so i have had it in the back (or is it front?) of my mind for a long time to get another complete collection. the one on the borders shelf with the fancy brown leather binding cost $100. that in and of itself wasn't prohibitive. but (as uncle ray already knows) the eyesight ain't quite as sharp as the years pile up. so, i now give appropriate attention to print SIZE [size does matter!] these days.
the larger print issue by another publisher (arden) was $49. that made more $$ and practical (because of print size) sense to me. but the edges were slightly frayed. nuthin' serious but obvious to eagle-eye me. after some brief negotiating with the store manager, a 10% "ding" discount was agreed to. walking to the checkout counter, i asked the dude who had assisted me if my insistence had made me a "ding bat." he simply smiled. wise man!!
anyway, after my morning routine of reading today's forward day-by-day passage and the upbeat los angeles times (ha!) i..........you guessed it, started the introduction of my new 1300+ page monstrosity: the arden complete collected works of William Shakespeare! just the intro is bringing back those grand (truly grand) and glorious days of "doing the plays" and memorizing the countless passages as junior and senior high school REQUIREMENTS which we took in stride. wow!!
it's an occasional delight to reflect on days long gone. it's a mindblower to "go back" via the literature.
a kid in a candy or, these days video store has lots of fun. an adult in a bookstore or library knows the ecstasy of the WORD!!
film at 11 (NOT!!)
Posted by mbowen at 08:48 PM | Comments (0)
July 09, 2005
Black German Holocaust Victims
So much of our history is lost to us because we often don't write the history books, don't film the documentaries, or don't pass the accounts down from generation to generation. One documentary now touring the film festival circuit, telling us to "Always Remember" is "Black Survivors of the Holocaust" (1997). Outside the U.S., the film is entitled "Hitler's Forgotten Victims" (Afro-Wisdom Productions). It codifies another dimension to the "Never Forget " Holocaust story-our dimension.
Did you know that in the 1920s, there were 24,000 Blacks living in Germany? Neither did I. Here's how it happened, and how many of them were eventually caught unawares by the events of the Holocaust.
Like most West European nations, Germany established colonies in Africa in the late 1800s in what later became Togo, Cameroon, SPAN Namibia, and Tanzania. German genetic experiments began there, most notably involving prisoners taken from the 1904 Heroro Massacre that left 60,000 Africans dead, following a 4-year revolt against German colonization. After the shellacking Germany received in World War I, it was stripped of its African colonies in 1918.
As a spoil of war, the French were allowed to occupy Germany in the Rhineland-a bitter piece of real estate that has gone back and forth between the two nations for centuries. The French willfully deployed their own colonized African soldiers as the occupying force. Germans viewed this as the final insult of World War I, and, soon thereafter, 92% of them voted in the Nazi party.
Hundreds of the African Rhineland-based soldiers intermarried with German women and raised their children as Black Germans. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote about his plans for these "Rhineland Bastards". When he came to power, one of his first directives was aimed at these mixed-race children. Underscoring Hitler's obsession with racial purity, by 1937, every identified mixed-race child in the Rhineland had been forcibly sterilized, in order to prevent further "race polluting", as Hitler termed it.
Hans Hauck, a Black Holocaust survivor and a victim of Hitler's mandatory sterilization program, explained in the film "Hitler's Forgotten Victims" that, when he was forced to undergo sterilization as a teenager, he was given no anaesthetic. Once he received his sterilization certificate, he was "free to go", so long as he agreed to have no sexual relations whatsoever with Germans.
Although most Black Germans attempted to escape their fatherland, heading for France where people like Josephine Baker were steadily aiding and supporting the French Underground, many still encountered problems elsewhere. Nations shut their doors to Germans, including the Black ones. Some Black Germans were able to eke out a living during Hitler's reign of terror by performing in Vaudeville shows, but many Blacks, steadfast in their belief that they were German first, Black second, opted to remain in Germany. Some fought with the Nazis (a few even became Lutwaffe pilots)!
Unfortunately, many Black Germans were arrested, charged with treason, and shipped in cattle cars to concentration camps. Often these trains were so packed with people and (equipped with no bathroom facilities or food), that, after the four-day journey, box car doors were opened to piles of the dead and dying. Once inside the concentration camps, Blacks were given the worst jobs conceivable. Some Black American soldiers, who were captured and held as prisoners of war, recounted that, while they were being starved and forced into dangerous labour (violating the Geneva Convention), they were still better off than Black German concentration camp detainees, who were forced to do the unthinkable - man the crematoriums and work in labs where genetic experiments were being conducted. As a final sacrifice, these Blacks were killed every three months so that they would never be able to reveal the inner workings of the "Final Solution".
In every story of Black oppression, no matter how we were enslaved, shackled, or beaten, we always found a way to survive and to rescue others. As a case in point, consider Johnny Voste, a Belgian resistance fighter who was arrested in 1942 for alleged sabotage and then shipped to Dachau. One of his jobs was stacking vitamin crates. Risking his own life, he distributed hundreds of vitamins to camp detainees, which saved the lives of many who were starving, weak, and ill -conditions exacerbated by extreme vitamin deficiencies. His motto was "No, you can't have my life; I will fight for it."
According to Essex University's Delroy Constantine-Simms, there were Black Germans who resisted Nazi Germany, such as Lari Gilges, who founded the Northwest Rann - an organization of entertainers that fought the Nazis in his home town of Dusseldorf - and who was murdered by the SS in 1933, the year that Hitler came into power.
Little information remains about the numbers of Black Germans held in a the camps or killed under the Nazi regime. Some victims of the Nazi sterilization project and Black survivors of the Holocaust are still alive and telling their story in films such as "Black Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust", but they must also speak out for justice, not just history.
Unlike Jews (in Israel and in Germany), Black Germans receive no war reparations because their German citizenship was revoked (even though they were German-born). The only pension they get is from those of us who are willing to tell the world their stories and continue their battle for recognition and compensation.
After the war, scores of Blacks who had somehow managed to survive the Nazi regime, were rounded up and tried as war criminals. Talk about the final insult! There are thousands of Black Holocaust stories, from the triangle trade, to slavery in America, to the gas ovens in Germany. We often shy away from hearing about our historical past because so much of it is painful; however, we are in this struggle together for rights, dignity, and, yes, reparations for wrongs done to us through the centuries. We need to always remember so that we can take steps to ensure that these atrocities never happen again.
For further information, read: Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, by Hans J. Massaquoi.
PLEASE PASS THIS ON, AND ALWAYS REMEMBER...NEVER FORGET Written by A. Tolbert, III
Posted by mbowen at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)