People, their lives and their stories, are irreplaceable.
Not so much about the fact of her death (cause when you gotta go, you gotta) but because of the possibility that her life might have been saved, had someone reached her in time.
I’ve decided to remain pissed off about this for awhile because we live in modern times, in societies in which neighbours hardly pay any attention to each other anymore, where most neighbourhoods are something between gated fortresses or lifeless ruins, where each demands their own space and privacy, and where somebody could slowly die within a few meters of where you are sitting reading this and you wouldn’t even notice.
In the cities and towns where I grew up, this would have been nearly impossible. People would actually speak to each other or say hello as they recognized one another passing on the street.
Today, we have become invisible to each other. We have become mere figments the other’s imagination, doing our level best to pretend that the Other does not exist.
I have inhaled most of Octavia Butler’s books and many of her essays at least once in my life: they get me high.
And while I know Octavia wrote Parable of the Sower as fiction, the core of that story was as real as the invisible, dog-eat-dog atmosphere inside most subway stations, companies and institutions in major western cities, as real and desperate as the day-to-day existence of people experiencing continuous invisible poverty in an eastern European metropolis, or invisible real famine + civil war in Africa, or the real terror of bombs falling on invisible people in invisible houses in Baghdad, or the chaos caused by tens of thousands of invisible people suddenly becoming real on your TV screen in New Orleans after a hurricane.
Real. Real. Chaos is real to me.
Octavia Butler died because nobody saw her laying in her front yard after she fell down.
I wonder how long it took for her to die.
I wonder how much pain she suffered.
I wonder how much she hurt.
I wonder if she tried to cry out for help and nobody heard her call.
A MacArthur Genius Grant winner. Nebula Award for Best Novel. A dozen novels translated into 10 languages. Shy but warm, a perfectionist yet incredibly generous, she treasured her solitude but was a formidable public speaker.
She was 58 years old and at least 6 feet tall.
And nobody saw her slip and fall in front of her own house.
Perhaps she had gotten used to her own invisibility.
I wonder if she knew how beautiful she was and how many people loved her.
I can only imagine that she might have thought it – her death as accident - ironic. And that she’s probably laughing at that irony right now.
Farewell dear Octavia.
Thank you for the possibilities in our future.
This is for you.
And it ain’t no fiction baby.
***
Caroline Terry was Mike Russell’s great-great grandmother.
Mike Russell and Mfa Kera are real people. They are real musicians who make real music. They are unique and irreplaceable. I’ve got proof.
You can download the interview I did with them here:Download showtwo.mp3 (54298.2K)
You can visit their website here.
And order their CD here.
James D. Russell is Mike’s Dad. He’s real too. He is one of a kind and irreplaceable.
He wrote a book that actually exists; the cover of which is at the top of this post.
You can order that book here.
Sister Caroline was real too. She actually existed. There are real pictures of her in the book. Plus, James D. and Mike are proof.
The review of the book is just below. And although I’m invisible, it is infallible proof of my existence.
***
A Book Report - Beyond the Rim: From Slavery to Redemption in Rappahannock County Virginia
by James D. Russell, 2003, ISBN 0-615-12483-6
by K. Maurice Bookerman
Brothers and Sisters, the Universe is filled with trillions of ideas; here is just one:
”Be diligent as long as you live, always doing more than is commanded of you. Do not misuse your time while following your heart, for it is offensive to the soul to waste one's time. Do not lose the daily opportunity to increase that which you have. Diligence produces gains and gains do not endure when diligence is abandoned.”(Kuumba)
Husia, Book of Wise Instructions, Ptah-Hotep, pg. 42, #IV
Having lived as an artist for more than a decade in one of the coldest of cities, in one of the coldest of countries, I have worked extremely hard to keep my groove on, in spite of the cold.
When I wake most mornings, I listen loudly (with headphone discretion) to Aretha or John Lee Hooker or Salif Keita or James Brown, and take time to meditate on a message one of my ancestors tried to give me during the previous night in a virtual reality dream sequence, or on the heavy price my family has paid to live in North America during the past century, or on what the future might hold for my young, gifted and black nephews on the highways of Virginia: such thoughts (a)alternately keep me grounded, (b)remind me why I am still here, or(c) challenge my sanity.
None of this actually wears me out: I have learned that diligence can spite difficulty.
What wears me out however is hearing people swear on their Granny's biscuits that “paying dues” is the mortgage one pays for the privilege to stand on somebody's stage and play music for complete strangers, night after night, year after year.
I have toured the ``chitterling circuit´´ in too many far-away places and countries to count and I must confess that there is not a week that whizzes by when I don’t think about giving it all up and getting a regular job like most people on the planet. After all, when you really think about it, who really needs music anyway?
It’s not a necessity.
You can’t eat it.
It can’t keep you warm in winter.
And it’s a helluva lotta trouble to make.
Yes-sir-ree, after years of setting up heavy amps and drum kits before a show, singing myself hoarse for 3 or 4 or 5 hours straight and lugging the equipment back to a basement at 6:00 in the morning, after spending thousands of days and nights practicing in dank, rodent-ridden rehearsal halls and sweating through eons of playing-time in stinky dives filled with drunk people who most likely view me as a figment of their imagination, I have often considered giving up the glamorous, show-biz life.
I think about it everyday; to borrow from Baldwin, after centuries of being assailed and copied, waylaid and imitated, assassinated and stolen from, it’s a miracle that musicians all over the world still sing and play for anybody, anywhere.
But as always, when I feel like packing up and throwing in the proverbial towel, I am granted a golden moment when I’m reminded that my struggle is a part of a continuum of struggle: that as a son of the Commonwealth State of Virginia (where the people with wealth have always been common), I exist within a context of struggle for survival, for peace, for comfort, and in spite of my own limitations, plain in spite of.
This most recent epiphany came while reading the excellent Beyond the Rim: From Slavery to Redemption in Rappahannock County, Virginia by Mr James D. Russell of Sperryville Virginia. Mr Russell’s narrative is based on an intimate portrait of the life and times of his great-grandmother, Caroline Terry, born a slave in Virginia in 1833. His historical record is fully qualified: Mr Russell completed this volume at the young age of 82 years old; therefore, it is chock full of authentic Virginia history, told by a man who actually saw it happen (which is why this book should be what historians call “original source” documentation, and probably why it should be required reading in every public school and undergrad university curriculum in the state of Virginia).
Mr Russell’s narrative works on at least three different levels: first, as a detailed glimpse into rural life in Virginia during the periods of chattel slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction and the turn of the century and second, as a detailed family and community history of the people of Rappahannock county, describing their interpersonal relationships and careers. In sum, it describes a detailed microcosm of the socio-political landscape of central Virginia from the early 1800’s up to the Reagan Era.
What makes this particular narrative compelling is the telling of Mr Russell’s personal odyssey: his growing up in the Jim Crow south, his struggle to get an education, his experiences as both a civil servant and entrepreneur, and his work as a community activist and local historian. Elegantly and honestly, with humour and without bitterness, Mr Russell reconstructs the stories that his great-grandmother, Caroline Terry, told him. She lived to be 108 years old, passing away in 1941 (when Mr. Russell was 20), but not before telling him everything that she could about her life and struggles during Virginia’s pre-Civil War, plantation south. It is fortunate that Mr Russell remembered everything that she told him and that he wrote it all down.
In his narrative, Mr Russell drops fresh bombs upon the heads of Virginia's history experts, both linguistically and factually. For example, the title of the book “Beyond the Rim” is the term slaves used to describe the invisible borderline around plantation property which they were forbidden, by the use of random violence, torture, intimidation and state sanctioned terrorism, to cross. Along with providing free, physical labour for the production of one of Virginia's most beloved tourist attractions, Skyline Drive, according to “Sistah Cah-line”, African-Americans also buried most of the corpses of both Confederate and Union troops during the Civil War, due to massive manpower shortages.
Contrary to Virginia history books used in public schools during the fifties, sixties and seventies (which were presented as fact), this narrative carves, whittles and sculpts the lingering psychic damage inflicted on American communities due to slavery, and the disastrous result of nurturing racist mythologies past their prime.
By describing the human dysfunction ignited by slavery (drudgery, hunger, social death, sexual predation), the account reveals the mental toughness, intelligence and determination that African Americans like “Sistah Cah-line” were forced to cultivate to survive.
Sold to perhaps two or three different plantations in Rappahannock and Culpeper counties, Caroline Terry stood out as a leader: smart, articulate, cunning, strong-willed and independent. Forced into life as a concubine, her first three children were fathered as a result of sexual exploitation by one of her owners. (Three additional children would be fathered during a dysfunctional marriage to a black man, only known as Jeffrey.) It is interesting to note that according to Mr Russell’s narrative, two of her first three children were born after the Civil War had begun in 1861: clear evidence of the unwillingness of plantation owners to relinquish their “property”, which ironically, helped to create social conditions that gave birth to Virginia’s stringent slave codes, miscegenation laws and later, the American eugenics movement.
However, the most moving, and worthwhile, segments of Mr Russell’s description of Caroline Terry’s life describe the intimate and complex relationships between black people who were forced to endure the inhumane conditions of plantation life. It is here that his narrative shines: for example, a clear account of the evolution of Afro-American caste systems. Using constructed dialog, Mr Russell takes us deep into the private conversations (and thoughts) of “Sistah Cah-line” and her peers, describing the light-skinned/dark skinned phobias which have divided (and continue to adversely affect) Pan-African communities during post-colonial times.
Mr Russell shows us that the slaves were completely aware that plantation owners sought to exploit this constructed division between black people. Early on, Caroline is taught about this phenomenon by older women, after a bi-racial house servant named Felicia insults her on their first meeting, referring to her in the third person as “blackberry”. (Eventually, in the course of their affectionate relationship, Caroline would nickname Felicia “Nilla” - as in Vanilla.)
“Cah-line, that girl Felicia always kids other girls like dat. We is all in the same boat. Some is jus worked in different ways.” Caroline, still fuming about the insult, shouted, “Well she’s still gotta show me what she means by blackberry patch. Caroline returned to the laundry room and told her mother what happened...”
“...What yo has don gone thru is exactly what the folks in the Big House wants,” her mother explained. “Effen the darkey folks is allus stirred up agin each other, den dey can’t organize, or help each other go outside de rim.” (page 5)
The first four segments of Mr Russell’s narrative describe Caroline’s resistance to slavery, her continual quest for freedom, her life before, during and after the Civil War and Reconstruction as well as her later years as a free woman, property owner and co-founder of the Hopewell Baptist Church, which was probably one the first black churches started in the Rappahannock region in the early 1900’s.
It should be noted that the photographs included in this section are authentic; they speak thousands of words by themselves: a photo of the Memorial Hill monument, dedicated to a burial ground of approximately 75 to 100 slaves who laboured near Sperryville between 1810 and 1865; a photo of a colt-revolver retrieved by Caroline Terry from the body of a young Union officer; a photo of Lucy Starks, a friend of Caroline Terry, shown smoking her corncob pipe while doing laundry over a washtub; a photo of Caroline at age 101, taken in 1934, sitting in front of her own home. It is powerful photographic evidence which makes the narrative come alive, serving as forensic evidence that the events that Mr Russell describes are real, that they really happened and are not works of speculative fiction.
Section five is remarkable in that it describes the incredible life of James Arthur Engham, Mr Russell’s grandfather, who became one of the wealthiest black men in Rappahannock County. Born in 1858, James A. Engham, known as “J.A.”, emerged in the post-Civil War years as a shrewd real-estate investor, a jeweller, a barber and entrepreneur. Although it is obvious in Mr Russell’s narrative that “J.A.” was his mentor, it is also obvious that Mr Russell’s grandfather was a futurist:
a man who thought ahead of his time.
Consider the fact that before the 1920’s, “J.A.” owned industrial property which housed a mill and a bottling company. Or that because of his real estate acumen, many local Afro-American families became property owners, due to the liberal “lay-away” plan that Mr Engham implemented, or the fact that he owned his own power plant(!), which provided electricity to four properties he owned.
Aside from being a role model for would-be, modern day entrepreneurs, “J.A.” was a role model for Mr Russell, providing him with one of the most valuable lessons that he would learn in his youth: that integrity is really all you have in business, or in life. Without giving away one of “J.A.’s” most memorable quotes, Mr Russell paints a loving picture of a brilliant businessman, who along with creating inherited wealth during his lifetime (he passed away in 1935), created a lasting legacy which reverberates in Rappahannock County until the present day.
Part six is a short narrative about the intimate relationship between Mr Russell and his great uncle Theodore. Along with a detailed narrative about their personal relationship, Mr Russell gives us a first hand look at what life was like during the depression years of 1931-33 for people living in the rural south. He does not provide details as to whether Rappahannock was, during prohibition, a so-called “dry county”. (I suspect that it was; in Amelia County, where my father was born in the early thirties, the public sale of alcohol was banned. This led to the illegal whiskey making industry, a parallel, underground economy, along with the career of one of the most successful, Afro-American race car drivers in Virginia history: Wendell Scott of Danville Virginia. It has been documented that Scott gained his reputation and experience by transporting illegal “moonshine” from county to county, evading local, state and federal law enforcement officials.)
What is clear from this section is that the industry was supported by, patronized by and was financially beneficial to both blacks and whites alike during difficult economic times: although nobody talked about it openly, everybody knew it. (Seems like the more things change...)
The final section of Mr Russell’s narrative is a sweet reward in itself: he talks about his own life and experiences from the early 1920’s to the present.
When he published this volume at 82, Mr Russell had already worked for 35 years as a civil servant and as a multiple restaurant owner; he had been a good father, a family man and had become a formidable, local historian.
What I appreciated most about this section of the book was being reminded, through words and pictures, that it is primitive to perceive a senior citizen as just another “old person”: the person used to be young and possesses entire life-stories, full of rich and colourful details, which can be used to keep people on the edges of their seats. This is a mark of a master storyteller.
Fact: James D. Russell is a storyteller’s storyteller.
When he was young, they called him “Jeems” and we are illuminated by word-pictures that he shines on us: we see the young James Russell, a little black boy innocently skinny dipping with his white friends on a hot summer day, turning the bellows in a blacksmith’s shop as an eleven year old, learning to read in a one-room school house only to find out in the discarded, second-hand history books that the “slaves were happy”, questioning such a statement in his mind.
Through Mr Russell’s eyes, we see a young man come of age during the era of Jim Crow, states rights and separate and unequal government facilities. We see him struggle to further his education and later, enter the segregated U.S. Army, serving in Europe during the second world war (and almost getting killed in the process). We see him returning to a segregated Sperryville in his combat boots, not quite sure what his white neighbors make of him, after risking life and limb for the liberation of western Europe.
What is amazing is when he writes of the pitfalls he endured, the acts of social sabotage he absorbed and the sheer variety of personal indignities he experienced in his lifetime, it is with only the faintest wisp of indignation in his writer’s voice. Perhaps he was removed far enough from the actual events, using the distance of time to visualize them without bitterness.
Equally stunning is when he turns his pen to the pleasant highlights of his youth (listening to Joe Louis’s victory over Max Schmeling in 1936 on one of the few radios in town, outside a country store, and having to wait until getting out of hearing distance of local whites inside before celebrating), his voice is candid yet modest. For example, he met Eleanor Roosevelt in 1943 during her visit to Hampton Institute; he mentions this meeting in a casual, as-a-matter-of-a-fact way.
Perhaps this speaks to the fact that Mr Russell is an authentic southern gentleman: discreet, subtle and cunning. Such a mind contains a kind of wisdom I do not yet possess, but hope to survive long enough to acquire.
