A Great Teacher

My middle daughter–-age 7--asked me why history is important.   

This question came as somewhat of a challenge to my ongoing quest to insert historical information into the lives of all my girls on a regular basis.  

About 18 years ago I was introduced to scholar, historian, and teacher Dr. John Henrik Clarke via a DVD given to me by an acquaintance.   After I'd watched that DVD a few times, I asked about others.  More were shared with me.  Then I got into one of his books. 

From the beginning, there was something familiar to me about Dr. Clarke.  He reminds me of elders from my neighborhood in Louisiana when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. In fact, he reminds me so much of my maternal grandmother and would have fit right in as her older brother.  

The primary difference between him and them was that he'd sought to and managed to escape the back-breaking labor cycle that the South forced on him and those of his generation, color, and class. He broke free of the mundane system of oppression and injustice and went on a quest for knowledge.

Dr. Clark possessed and shared freely so much information.  The wisdom has greatly impacted my understanding and thinking.  His natural humor always had the best timing and has often left me in tears from laughter.

I’m very thankful to be a consumer of his various speeches and lectures so many years after his death and appreciate the legacy he left behind that allows me to be a better history teacher to my own children.

*****

History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day.  It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography.  History tells a people where they have been, what they have been, where they are, and what they are.  Most importantly, history tells a people where they still must go, what they still must be.  The relationship of history to the people is the same as the relationship of a mother to her child.  –Dr. John Henrik Clarke

*****

I did not have children when I first came into Dr. Clarke’s teachings. Quite honestly, I had never even considered a context in which I would be talking to any children I might have in the future about our history, world history.  What I did know was that any information I shared would be based in truth.  The truth.  

Recently I’ve gotten back into Dr. Clarke’s lectures and am again experiencing a deepening of understanding.  My daughter’s question about the importance of history came at a time when I was well-prepared to give her a thoughtful reply.  That reply was the culmination of so many experiences over the years.  It was also a reflection of his teachings. The contributions of Dr. Clarke have been a great influence on my capacity to impart historically important information to my girls as they grow and come to an understanding of themselves and the world.  

Below is the first video I ever saw featuring John Henrik Clarke.   I watched it on a DVD. Many before me had it on VHS tape.  It’s good to see it online now.  

Here are a few notable quotes from various videos I've watched of Dr. Clarke speaking.   If interested in his work, you can find quite a few videos of him speaking on a range of topics. 

*****

I would be slow to criticize Dr. Martin Luther King.  He was brave enough to put his life on the line for what he believed.  We are still here talking.  That’s proof enough of his bravery over ours.

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All knowledge in the world belongs to everybody in the world.  

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When you don’t read history, anybody can tell you anything.

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Freedom is something you take with your own hands.  You do not inherit it from a will.  It is not handed down from one generation to another.  When you get it, you must resecure it in your own times with your own hands.  Freedom is never secure, and you can never take it for granted.  It’s a precious substance.  

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Do your best work. (A spiritual message to Dr. Clarke from Malcom X following Malcolm's assassination.)

Pick Up Your Shirt

My girls and I were riding home one day after running some errands.

One of my daughters, newly age 7 on the day this article is published 🎉🎊,  asked in the curious way she always does:

Mom, what does Pick Up Your Shirt mean?

I was confused. I asked her to repeat the question, and she said it again.

In my mind I was mostly trying to understand the context of the question but I was also trying to place what she'd asked.

I know Jazmine Sullivan sings Pick Up Your Feelings.

I know the girls need to pick up their clothes (including shirts) after a shower/bath or just in general from the floor of the house.

Maybe it had something to do with  t-shirt printing business, and people aren't picking up their orders on time??

My mind was computing, but solutions weren't being generated.  Pick Up Your Shirt. Hmmmmm...

Why had she asked that?  Before I could ask for clarification, she said:

"I saw a sign in someone's yard that said Pick Up Your Shirt."

My mind still computed for a second, then.

Ooooooooooh!! 

It hit me:

She had added an 'r' to the last word of the statement where there was none.😅

Without having seen the sign myself, I knew it was posted in the yard of someone likely frustrated with people not picking up after their dogs when said dogs relieve themselves on the homeowner's grass.  

Usually such signs are more friendly in their approach:

Please Pick Up After You Dog.

Please Be A Good Neighbor. Pick Up After Your Dog.

But apparently this person has had it.

After having a good laugh about it, I had to explain to my daughter what the sign is referencing and that...the word isn't shirt. 

We drive past the house on  regular basis, and now when we do, I always laugh to myself.

I'm not sure how I feel about such a sign being visually accessible to all. It reminds me of the anxiety I've experieced when encountering one of those F* Cancer car decals with my girls in tow.  

But I do appreciate the humor that's been generated from the sign geared toward dog walkers.**

PICK UP YOUR SHIRT!  🐕

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**I'm not making a judgement one way or another about dog ...matter... being in walkable areas, but I have told my girls that the whole thing of dog walking and plastic baggies isn't something I recall when I was growing up.  However, I grew up in a very rural area where houses were far apart and where dog's just did their business, maybe attempted to cover it, and no one had a second thought.  

Different times and different environments call for different measures, I suppose. 

I'm All For It

Since my oldest child started attending public school in 2019 at the age of five, I have despised the 8:00 am start time.  What's more, all of my adult life I've not been able to relate much to the urgency of going in to a work place early in the morning--for those whose work starts in the morning as opposed to later times of the day or even night.   

And I'm saying this as an early riser who is usually  up between 4 and 6 am.  

I've been considering homeschooling in the coming year, as I recognize the benefits my children receive from getting a later start in the mornings. (Plus, they've been begging to homeschool and I just feel the need to mix things up at this point.  Not sure I will, though!)

On Saturdays when they're able to sleep in until about 8:30 or 9:00--sometimes even later--everything about their dispositions is better.   That whole thing of getting down to the school before the 8 am tardy bell has persistently irked my soul.  The one year that we did do independent homeschool was an absolute blast, and the girls didn't really get going until 9:30 or 10:00.  They have decent bedtimes and aren't up late nights.  Still, the ability to have a slower, more-natural-for-them start to their mornings is a major plus.  

So, when I was scrolling on YouTube trying to find something to listen to in my earbud while cleaning the kitchen and came across this, my interest was certainly piqued:

Article here: https://tinyurl.com/325uhazs

While reading the comments, I came across this:

My 2 oldest children go to an elementary school in Honolulu.  Hawai'i DOE can y'all implement this, please? I realize the focus is on teens, but I can attest to the fact that my elementary-aged children benefit as well.

And I'm blown away that a school could start at 7!

From the article:

The reasons why high schools start as early as they do — many begin their day before 7:30 a.m. — are “lost to the sands of history," Buxton said. But now, he said, ”everything is baked into that: traffic light patterns, bus schedules and adults’ work.”

Just overhaul the entire system!  It's really played out anyway.

Ok, that's my rant.

Who made up these schools, I say? Who made up these rules, I say?--Lauryn Hill

3 Things That Had Me Feeling Old On The Internet This Week + Foolishness On The Radio

(This is strictly shallow humor.  I understand plenty people know these things, not everyone is going to know, and not everyone is even going to care to know for that matter, but some things I witnessed online this week have had me thinking to myself...)

1.  People don't know what G.I. Jane is?

2.  People don't know it was "California Love" &  "Nuthin but a G. Thang" that was referenced/sampled by Beyonce in her performance on Sunday? 

3.  People don't know about the time Stephen slapped Irene on The Real World Seattle (which seems like a massage now by comparison to the current televised drama) and how that was the original "slap heard 'round the world?"  All week that's what's been coming to mind for me when that phrase has come up, yet before reading a very few YouTube comments on the above referenced link, I hadn't noticed it mentioned in voice or text anywhere, which really had me befuddled, lol! I remember it being a big deal at one point.)

Those were my thoughts during these...dynamic... times, then I saw this on YouTube and was taken all the way back!

😆

_____

Writing the above reminded me of something that happened on Monday.  I was driving home from dropping my oldest two girls off at school and had the radio tuned in to our favorite local station, which plays R & B and other jams from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.  I mean they do not miss when it comes to broadcasting so much of the music that I grew up on and love.  Now, a lot of the actual commentary on the morning show is pretty basic and silly, but it's not such that I'd not tune in (as is the case for the morning show on another station here that I listen to from time to time, reggae and what's called Jawaiian music here.  The commentary coming from their morning show hosts can be atrocious).

 On the morning show for the  station that we're dialed in to 99.9999 percent of the time, they're cute, a bit unread, but cute and mean no harm whatsoever.  I get a good laugh from them from time to time.

Well, there I was driving home with my littlest one buckled in her car seat, and I heard that they were talking about the incident that happened on t.v. in America that apparently has the whole world talking.  Up to that point I was out of the loop, but I listened to try to figure out what all the hoopla was about.  They were sharing their views and inviting callers to share theirs.  The remarks were generally similar in nature, with most people speaking out against the actions that took place.  Then a woman called in and shared her thoughts, which were not much different from those of the others who had called. Then she said it:

"Not to be racist, but..."

Now, if you're black in America, you might know that when that phrase is used to introduce commentary, things are about to get real, whether what follows is about your people or other people in the country who get heat for just trying to have their physical body on Earth.

I perked up.  This lady--who to me sounded to be of Hawaiian ancestry  based on what I've learned in the past 8+ years about voice tones among the numerous cultures of people who make up Hawai'i--proceeded to tell the show hosts, me, and everyone else who was in earshot of the station something like, "Well, you know African Americans are violent by nature. That's what black people do."

😐

(I honestly had second-hand embarrassment for this woman.)

I'm not naive, but I swear something about hearing that come from her mouth as I was driving among these beautiful mountains and trees touched me somewhere deeeeeeep in my soul.  

I'm not ignorant of the fact that this is a thing.  People believe this.  But hearing her say this live on the air on a station where I'm sure 90 something percent of the music that's played was written, produced, and performed by black people/African Americans AND the majority of the listeners likely are not black/African American (just given our low numbers here) threw my morning off.  (The hosts and everyone on the air there are of Filipino and mixed Asian/Hawaiian descent).  

I thought

1.Why did she think that was ok to say?

2. Is anyone else offended?  (I'm not easily offended at.all., but none of the callers after her gave a rebuttal to her statement. But to be fair, I really only ever hear one person call in to the show who I know is black.  BUT, that brought up the point that not only black people need to be offended by this.)

3. I'm SO glad I'd already dropped off my girls who could understand her remarks.

And it's point three that prompted me to take action on the matter.  The children.   

There are so many different people in Hawai'i in general. I mean, people come here from everywhere.  

When it comes to black/African American/black American people (whatever the phrase is these days that's supposed to categorize all of us), I've seen a few different.."groups"...that include but aren't limited to those who were born here, those who came and have been here on their own free will for decades, those like me who are here on based on free will but have only been present a few years, those who are here due to military, and those who were born and raised here and they have one black parent, but the other side of their family is considered "local", whether that be Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, etc.  

In regard to the latter group mentioned, the Black parent as an individual is sometimes the only connection that the child has to "the Black side" of their family, since that parent likely came here solo, had a child with a local person, and just sort of integrated into that family.  The rest of their family is back in Oklahoma or where ever.  So, these children have this black parent but they don't necessarily identify as black or really know anything about that part of their biological identity. Also, the black parent may no longer be in the picture, which makes things even more complex. 

(For five years we lived in a community here where these children were prevalent, and I personally had experiences with many of these children who were often confused by me, my hair, the familiarity they had with me despite their unfamiliarity with the bigger story of me.  Who was I? What was I? Tongan? Fijian? American? Black? Black or African American was never the first assumption.   A lot of them didn't "get" me, but they seemed to want to so badly.  They had no clue where I came from.  I'm just adding this to say I'm speaking from first-hand knowledge.)

Some of these children are out of touch with being black or being seen as black, yet they do know that's a part of them.   Thankfully they're being raised in a place like Hawai'i where everything is really just cool and laid back.  Typically.

But then this woman calls in to one of the most listened too stations in their area and tells them that they are violent by nature, potentially adding more confusion to the mix.

I had a very important video call that morning, but once I was home I had to send an email and ask  could the meeting be pushed back by 30 minutes. It was imperative for me to write the radio station since I hadn't been in a position to call in, be on hold, all that.  I was so flustered that there was no way I'd get through the meeting without writing and getting that weight off my chest on behalf of all of the people and children who may have been listening that morning and who--whether they knew it or not--were misrepresented in a dangerous way by what the woman said.

My letter wasn't an angry one.  The intention was for it to be informative.  I didn't threaten to never tune in again.  I wanted the people at the station to understand why what she said was baseless, inappropriate, and diminishing especially to the children of Hawai'i.    People are big on 'ohana (family) here, and in fact, prior to letting callers speak on air, the hosts let them know that "this is a family show" to hopefully keep them from using profanity and other obscenities.  Although this lady did not use curse words, the ones she did use were certainly not family-friendly. 

The show hosts--shocked themselves by what she'd said--gave the best rebuttal they could, but they really couldn't address it like it needed to be addressed.  Their effort is appreciated though.  

I've learned that people can be dismissive of racism toward Black people out here based simply on the fact that they don't have context.  They've spent all or most of their lives on these islands in the Pacific, see very few people of African descent, and the racism that many of us know from the contiguous US is not a hard issue here, generally speaking.  

I really did it for the children.  I'm from The South.  So was my husband.  And we're black in America.  We've heard it all before.  But these children deserve more care, concern, and respect than that.   

I sent the letter that morning but have not received a reply.  That's fine.  I just hope that my words helped them better understand their audience and know just how problematic that caller's remarks were.    

She Doesn't Like Fish: A Case Study

My oldest daughter says she doesn't like fish.  

But I bought some fish.  It's good fish!  Good taste and good quality. 

Her sisters like fish.  She'll eat the fish, too. It's good fish!  

She didn't eat it last time. Or the time before that. Or the time before that. But she'll eat it this time. It's good!

What?? Does she expect me to cook something separate for her? Come on, now! Fish is good!

I'll broil the fish.  She'll like that.  I'll broil it with herbs that we grew ourselves!  Can't beat that.  She'll like it. What does she mean she doesn't like fish?   She used to eat fish.  She'll like it!

Man! I LOVED eating fish as a child.  My family caught and cooked fish regularly.  Still does! 

And they didn't do all this broiling stuff with herbs. They fried it. That was the only way. Fried fish.

***

I broil the fish with herbs and olive oil.  It smells so good. Tastes good, too! 

There's her plate. There's the fish on it. 

Now they're done eating.  Her sisters ate their fish.  But she didn't.  The fish is still on her plate!

Why didn't she eat the fish?!?!

"Why didn't you eat the fish?!?

"I cooked the fish. I wanted you to eat it. 

"Oh, am I supposed to just throw it away? You picked at it, now who wants to eat it after you? That's wasteful! 

 

"Nope! No snacks. No desert.  You should've eaten your food--the food I cooked for you. 

"I put a lot of effort and nice ingredients into cooking the fish.  You should've eaten it. What is the problem???"

****

It's actually quite simple: THE CHILD DOESN'T LIKE FISH.

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It could all really be so simple.  But at times I choose to make it hard.  Why is this still a thing in 2022?

My oldest child has a great appetite. She knows what she likes and what she doesn't.  She eats well.  So, if she says she doesn't like something, it would be in my best interest to just flow with that.  

She does like many things. However, she.does.not.like.fish. 

And that's that.

Where Credit Is Due

I was recently on the campus of the University of Hawai'i Manoa flower foraging with my youngest baby girl, age 2.  In the not-too-far distance, we heard someone speaking into a microphone.  Their words were intermittently followed by clapping which came from a small crowd gathered around.  

Buttercup, one of our favorites flowers from campus

The person speaking wasn't visible to me, and the words being spoken were unclear either due to distance or a muffled microphone.  I'm not too sure.

"Clapping!" Baby Girl exclaimed from time to time as we gathered petals of various colors and varieties from where they'd fallen from the trees up above.  We had a fun time in the 15-20 minutes we were in that area.  Once we'd collected all flowers relevant to our mission, we trekked back across the open lawn past the nearby crowd to head to our next adventure.

*******

Two days after our morning outing, I received an email--which I do regularly--informing me of the latest news concerning the University.   The first words in the email read "Ball honored."  

Alice Ball

I knew then that what Baby Girl and I heard that morning was a ceremony of some sort honoring Alice Ball, the first woman and the first African-American person to graduate from the University of Hawai'i Manoa (formerly the University of Hawai'i )  with a master's degree. My knowledge of Alica Ball was minimal, yet it felt sufficient. Once I clicked through the links in the email, it hit me that I'd missed a lot about her work in the field of science.

Here are a few highlights about Ms. Alice Ball:

In 1915 she graduated from UH Manoa with a master's degree in chemistry.

She was the first woman chemistry professor at the university.  

At the age of 23, she discovered an effective treatment for leprosy.

Prior to her work regarding leprosy, she was studying the properties of kava. 

The leprosy treatment was derived from the oil of the chaulmoogra tree (the dedication ceremony took place under one such tree planted in her honor some years ago).

Alice Ball died at the age of 24.  Her cause of death is unclear, but it was speculated that she succumbed to chlorine poisoning from the labs in which she worked or tuberculosis.  

The then president of the Univerity (Hawai'i College at that time), Author Dean, continued her work, published her research, and mass-produced the treatment without giving her credit.

Author Dean called the treatment "The Dean Method."

Harry Hollmann--a doctor who had encouraged Ms. Ball to research chaulmoogra oil--gave her proper credit for the work she'd done.  He published a paper regarding her work and renamed her technique "The Ball Method."

Source

Now.  When I read this information, my mouth literally dropped open upon learning about the tactics of Author Dean, the college president who stole her work!

I'm not naive about these things.  I'm aware that historically black/African-American people have done many groundbreaking things for which they have not received credit.  It's nothing new.  

For some reason, though, I was a little bit stunned to learn this had happened to Alice Ball.  It was as if I felt like I'd betrayed her legacy by knowing about her but not knowing enough to know she was a scientist who made a profound discovery then--in her untimely death--had her work stolen by the president of her school, no less! 

(A president for whom a building was named.)

****

History has shown us that people can operate in ways that are contrary to righteousness.  It's just the reality of the situation now and then.  

The contributions Alice Ball made were profound.  As far back as 1860, Hawai'i residents diagnosed with leprosy were arrested and exiled to a small peninsula attached to the Hawaiian island of Moloka'i at the Kalaupapa Settlement. People were taken away from their families and quarantined due to the nature of leprosy as a contagious disease.  

Although I recall learning about this several years ago, re-visiting it in the context of the recent/current global pandemic brought me to a better understanding of how Alice Ball's work toward treating leprosy changed the way that people lived and coped with the disease.  Although previous efforts had been made to use chaulmoogra to treat it, the application was impractical and essentially ineffective due to inconsistent results.  Alice Ball's method made the results stemming from the use of the oil more consistent.  Her research and work brought her to conclusions on how the oil could be injected and absorbed by the body.  

Because of her research, discovery, and formulation, Alice Ball came up with a useful treatment that would allow those affected by leprosy to remain in their homes with their family instead of being banished to the settlement on Moloka'i, which came to be seen by those forced to live there as hell in large part due to isolation.

The injectable chaulmoogra oil treatment significantly improved outcomes for disease sufferers and kept families together.   

Imagine having an illness and being told that your condition requires that you be sent to a secluded location with no access to your family all while you're battling the deadly disease.   This mostly affected native Hawaiians.  Others of more affluence were allowed to see private physicians or go to hospitals.  Because of this, the disease came to be called "the separating sickness."  A treatment such as the one Alice Ball developed allowed patients to stay home with their families while simultaneously improving their health conditions. 

Her previous work which analyzed the properties of the kava plant was also relevant in the leprosy treatment since patients drank kava to assist with the stress they dealt with.

*****

The mysterious event that was happening the day we went plant foraging on the campus of the university was definitely one that I would have attended had I known what it was.  Despite my absence, it feels divine that we were even in the vicinity.  My knowledge has increased in so many ways as a result of my awareness of the ceremony.  

In the course of writing this, I learned a 19 minute short was produced about Alice Ball's work.  

Here's the link to the super short trailer: https://vimeo.com/378570246

And here's the video that came with the email I received.

Take a Look. It's in a Book!

I don't know.  Maybe it's sort of cliché now to say or allude to the importance of books and reading and taking them on as a partner of sorts in learning.  Now, in this post I'll be referring primarily to books that teach, show, demonstrate.  Yet, what I want to say applies to texts of other genres as well.  

"YouTube University" is a thing. I get it.  Just about anything you want to know how to do is there.  It's served as a teaching tool for so many people globally for so long, and the effective ways in which many of its users interact with the platform to impart knowledge and understanding to others is undeniable.  Just last night I watched a man in India demonstrate to anyone interested how to revive a seemingly dying plant.  I needed this info. in order to rejuvenate our beloved Nanu, a native Hawaiian gardenia.

The plant after being uprooted, checked for signs of life. and cleaned. It has definitely seen better days.  Too much water in a rainy valley has been her downfall, but I did everything the man said to do.  We'll see how this goes.

As a person who's attempting to start a plant business that entails growing plants from seed, from cuttings, from leaves, etc., YouTube has been and continues to be an excellent resource.  No doubt.

But y'all.  Ain't nothing like a book.  And all that it takes in America (and on remote islands that once existed as independent kingdoms but were taken over by America.  But I digress!)  where public libraries are in abundance is to go to the library's website or use the app to inquire about a topic of interest.  The titles just pop up like...

Here!

Here!

Here!

Here!

That's just a sample.  It's really incredible.  I've pulled so much useful, even old-school information from these books that helps to shape my overall vision of what it is I need to be doing and how I need to be doing it if I'm going to do this.  

Books just "hit different", as the folk like to say.

***

When I was pregnant with my first child, we knew she would be a girl without ultrasound or anything else signifying to us that she'd be a girl other than our own knowing.  We just knew.  We also knew what we planned to name her and the deep importance of the legacy left behind by the woman after who she'd be named.  Yet, I was unable to find anywhere online what the name means--the literal translation of the word parts.  Of course, we needed to know the meaning.  However, not being from Kenya or having much knowledge of the Kikuyu language, it was a challenge to figure it out.

My husband--who chose the name and taught me about the woman he admired greatly whose name it was--had a general translation, but we both wanted to get more to the core of it

Google was cute in its efforts to fill me in, yet that resource failed.   To know the meaning of the name Wangari just seemed impossible for me.  It got to the point where I was trying to find people who spoke the language so that she/he could help me better understand.  No luck there.

As I got closer to delivery, the thought of the name meaning was always in my mind, but with all that was going on, it wasn't as pressing an issue.  We were just going to go with the name.  It was a nice name. Strong. We knew it had something to do with a leopard.  

Well, it was around that same time that I came across Unbowed, a memoir by Wangari Maathai.  

It was such a great read.  Going in, my expectation was to learn more about this amazing, tree-growing woman who had given so much of herself for her country only to be mistreated and abused. By the time I was done with the book I knew all that I had hoped to learn and so much more.  One of the most notable points was that in her language, wa is how a word is made possessive, and ngari is how you say leopard.  Prior to the book, I didn't have knowledge of the language to know how the word was to be separated to decipher its meaning! 

It was in that book that I got the story of how her mother told her to tell the leopards she might encounter on her way to school that she is Wangari--she is of them.  They are the same.  She poses no threat.  All of that stunned me so much, and I remember sitting there reading those sentences like 😲.   Yes, at the fact that she encountered leopards as a child on her way to school, but mostly at how that name meaning was out of my grasp until I read her book. So simple right there in a few lines of text just waiting for me to read it and solve the riddle. 

I also learned in the book that the original spelling of her last name was Mathai.  When she divorced her husband (...or he abandoned her.  All sorts of drama there), she wanted to keep the name but wanted a slightly different spelling.  That's where the additional a came from.  She added it cause she wanted to! As we were filling out the paperwork to establish what our first daughter's name would be, we threw Maathai in at the very last minute.  So she has that one, too, as one of her middles.

All that to say, books are important!  Books bring clarity! Books reveal otherwise unknown information!  Books inspire! Books are powerful!

Ok, that's all.  I'll let Chaka sing it!