shoulda, woulda, coulda....three words that cause people more grief in their lives and those of their loved ones.
Here's hoping that from this day forward you don't ever have to think them, much less speak them.
~~Cee Level~~
Sunday, March 30, 2008
So Fuss and I were half asleep
and the TV was on low in the background. It was the movie "in her shoes", not a stellar movie. When you're holding a sleepy but fussy baby, you don't want to take a deep breath much less root around for the remote control.
I loved this poem read by Cameron Diaz, and written by ee cummings.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
Since I'm not by any stretch of the imagination, a fan of poetry, I was surprised I liked it.
Got me to thinking of other types of poetry....songs that mean something to me when it comes to children....mine, yours, any one's.
If I could sang by Nancy Wilson or Regina Bell
I hope you dance sang by Lee Ann Womack
Children are a precious gift...do what you can to keep them safe.
So blessed,
~~Cee...level~~
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Lest We Forget: An open letter to my sisters who are brave.
Lest We Forget: An open letter to my sisters who are brave.
The author argues that we must build alliances not on ethnicity or gender, but on truth.
TheRoot.com
Updated: 6:17 PM ET Mar 27, 2008
March 27, 2008
I HAVE COME home from a long stay in Mexico to find – because of the presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama/Clinton race for the Democratic nomination - a new country existing alongside the old. On any given day we, collectively, become the Goddess of the Three Directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is a space with which I am familiar.
When I was born in 1944 my parents lived on a middle Georgia plantation that was owned by a white distant relative, Miss May Montgomery. (During my childhood it was necessary to address all white girls as "Miss" when they reached the age of twelve.) She would never admit to this relationship, of course, except to mock it. Told by my parents that several of their children would not eat chicken skin she responded that of course they would not. No Montgomerys would.
My parents and older siblings did everything imaginable for Miss May. They planted and raised her cotton and corn, fed and killed and processed her cattle and hogs, painted her house, patched her roof, ran her dairy, and, among countless other duties and responsibilities my father was her chauffeur, taking her anywhere she wanted to go at any hour of the day or night. She lived in a large white house with green shutters and a green, luxuriant lawn: not quite as large as Tara of Gone With the Wind fame, but in the same style.
We lived in a shack without electricity or running water, under a rusty tin roof that let in wind and rain. Miss May went to school as a girl. The school my parents and their neighbors built for us was burned to the ground by local racists who wanted to keep ignorant their competitors in tenant farming. During the Depression, desperate to feed his hardworking family, my father asked for a raise from ten dollars a month to twelve. Miss May responded that she would not pay that amount to a white man and she certainly wouldn't pay it to a nigger. That before she'd pay a nigger that much money she'd milk the dairy cows herself.
When I look back, this is part of what I see. I see the school bus carrying white children, boys and girls, right past me, and my brothers, as we trudge on foot five miles to school. Later, I see my parents struggling to build a school out of discarded army barracks while white students, girls and boys, enjoy a building made of brick. We had no books; we inherited the cast off books that "Jane" and "Dick" had previously used in the all-white school that we were not, as black children, permitted to enter.
The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had had no idea – so kept from black people it had been – that such a place existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the public library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in libraries and will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair, refurbish or raise money to keep them open, enter their doors.
When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early twenties it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they'd always known, the plantations, because they attempted to exercise their "democratic" right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then and it seems to me now that white women have copied, all too often, the behavior of their fathers and their brothers, and in the South, especially in Mississippi, and before that, when I worked to register voters in Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender free.
I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered. That, for instance, at Sarah Lawrence, where I was speedily inducted into the Board of Trustees practically as soon as I graduated, I made my way to the campus for meetings by train, subway and foot, while the other trustees, women and men, all white, made their way by limo. Because, in our country, with its painful history of unspeakable inequality, this is part of what whiteness means. I loved my school for trying to make me feel I mattered to it, but because of my relative poverty I knew I could not.
I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans –black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.
When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job required. Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in any sense mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and are glad to be of our species. He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change America must have if we are to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other than our (white) selves.
True to my inner Goddess of the Three Directions however, this does not mean I agree with everything Obama stands for. We differ on important points probably because I am older than he is, I am a woman and person of three colors, (African, Native American, European), I was born and raised in the American South, and when I look at the earth's people, after sixty-four years of life, there is not one person I wish to see suffer, no matter what they have done to me or to anyone else; though I understand quite well the place of suffering, often, in human growth.
I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba, for instance, a country and a people I love; I want an end to the embargo that has harmed my friends and their children, children who, when I visit Cuba, trustingly turn their faces up for me to kiss. I agree with a teacher of mine, Howard Zinn, that war is as objectionable as cannibalism and slavery; it is beyond obsolete as a means of improving life. I want an end to the on-going war immediately and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and to drive themselves out of Iraq.
I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior towards the Palestinians, and I want the people of the United States to cease acting like they don't understand what is going on. All colonization, all occupation, all repression basically looks the same, whoever is doing it. Here our heads cannot remain stuck in the sand; our future depends of our ability to study, to learn, to understand what is in the records and what is before our eyes. But most of all I want someone with the self-confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend," and this Obama has shown he can do. It is difficult to understand how one could vote for a person who is afraid to sit and talk to another human being. When you vote you are making someone a proxy for yourself; they are to speak when, and in places, you cannot. But if they find talking to someone else, who looks just like them, human, impossible, then what good is your vote?
It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton (I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as "a woman" while Barack Obama is always referred to as "a black man." One would think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in America in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact. How dishonest it is, to attempt to make her innocent of her racial inheritance.
I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to person, with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks. I cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton who would drag into Twenty-First Century American leadership the same image of white privilege and distance from the reality of others' lives that has so marred our country's contacts with the rest of the world.
And yes, I would adore having a woman president of the United States. My choice would be Representative Barbara Lee, who alone voted in Congress five years ago not to make war on Iraq. That to me is leadership, morality, and courage; if she had been white I would have cheered just as hard. But she is not running for the highest office in the land, Mrs. Clinton is. And because Mrs. Clinton is a woman and because she may be very good at what she does, many people, including some younger women in my own family, originally favored her over Obama. I understand this, almost. It is because, in my own nieces' case, there is little memory, apparently, of the foundational inequities that still plague people of color and poor whites in this country. Why, even though our family has been here longer than most North American families – and only partly due to the fact that we have Native American genes – we very recently, in my lifetime, secured the right to vote, and only after numbers of people suffered and died for it.
When I offered the word "Womanism" many years ago, it was to give us a tool to use, as feminist women of color, in times like these. These are the moments we can see clearly, and must honor devotedly, our singular path as women of color in the United States. We are not white women and this truth has been ground into us for centuries, often in brutal ways. But neither are we inclined to follow a black person, man or woman, unless they demonstrate considerable courage, intelligence, compassion and substance. I am delighted that so many women of color support Barack Obama -and genuinely proud of the many young and old white women and men who do.
Imagine, if he wins the presidency we will have not one but three black women in the White House; one tall, two somewhat shorter; none of them carrying the washing in and out of the back door. The bottom line for most of us is: With whom do we have a better chance of surviving the madness and fear we are presently enduring, and with whom do we wish to set off on a journey of new possibility? In other words, as the Hopi elders would say: Who do we want in the boat with us as we head for the rapids? Who is likely to know how best to share the meager garden produce and water? We are advised by the Hopi elders to celebrate this time, whatever its adversities.
We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of our time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race, ethnicity, color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on Truth. Celebrate our journey. Enjoy the miracle we are witnessing. Do not stress over its outcome. Even if Obama becomes president, our country is in such ruin it may well be beyond his power to lead us toward rehabilitation. If he is elected however, we must, individually and collectively, as citizens of the planet, insist on helping him do the best job that can be done; more, we must insist that he demand this of us. It is a blessing that our mothers taught us not to fear hard work. Know, as the Hopi elders declare: The river has its destination. And remember, as poet June Jordan and Sweet Honey in the Rock never tired of telling us: We are the ones we have been waiting for.
Namaste;
And with all my love,
Alice Walker
Cazul
Northern California
First Day of Spring
The author argues that we must build alliances not on ethnicity or gender, but on truth.
TheRoot.com
Updated: 6:17 PM ET Mar 27, 2008
March 27, 2008
I HAVE COME home from a long stay in Mexico to find – because of the presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama/Clinton race for the Democratic nomination - a new country existing alongside the old. On any given day we, collectively, become the Goddess of the Three Directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is a space with which I am familiar.
When I was born in 1944 my parents lived on a middle Georgia plantation that was owned by a white distant relative, Miss May Montgomery. (During my childhood it was necessary to address all white girls as "Miss" when they reached the age of twelve.) She would never admit to this relationship, of course, except to mock it. Told by my parents that several of their children would not eat chicken skin she responded that of course they would not. No Montgomerys would.
My parents and older siblings did everything imaginable for Miss May. They planted and raised her cotton and corn, fed and killed and processed her cattle and hogs, painted her house, patched her roof, ran her dairy, and, among countless other duties and responsibilities my father was her chauffeur, taking her anywhere she wanted to go at any hour of the day or night. She lived in a large white house with green shutters and a green, luxuriant lawn: not quite as large as Tara of Gone With the Wind fame, but in the same style.
We lived in a shack without electricity or running water, under a rusty tin roof that let in wind and rain. Miss May went to school as a girl. The school my parents and their neighbors built for us was burned to the ground by local racists who wanted to keep ignorant their competitors in tenant farming. During the Depression, desperate to feed his hardworking family, my father asked for a raise from ten dollars a month to twelve. Miss May responded that she would not pay that amount to a white man and she certainly wouldn't pay it to a nigger. That before she'd pay a nigger that much money she'd milk the dairy cows herself.
When I look back, this is part of what I see. I see the school bus carrying white children, boys and girls, right past me, and my brothers, as we trudge on foot five miles to school. Later, I see my parents struggling to build a school out of discarded army barracks while white students, girls and boys, enjoy a building made of brick. We had no books; we inherited the cast off books that "Jane" and "Dick" had previously used in the all-white school that we were not, as black children, permitted to enter.
The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had had no idea – so kept from black people it had been – that such a place existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the public library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in libraries and will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair, refurbish or raise money to keep them open, enter their doors.
When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early twenties it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they'd always known, the plantations, because they attempted to exercise their "democratic" right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then and it seems to me now that white women have copied, all too often, the behavior of their fathers and their brothers, and in the South, especially in Mississippi, and before that, when I worked to register voters in Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender free.
I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered. That, for instance, at Sarah Lawrence, where I was speedily inducted into the Board of Trustees practically as soon as I graduated, I made my way to the campus for meetings by train, subway and foot, while the other trustees, women and men, all white, made their way by limo. Because, in our country, with its painful history of unspeakable inequality, this is part of what whiteness means. I loved my school for trying to make me feel I mattered to it, but because of my relative poverty I knew I could not.
I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans –black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.
When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job required. Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in any sense mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and are glad to be of our species. He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change America must have if we are to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other than our (white) selves.
True to my inner Goddess of the Three Directions however, this does not mean I agree with everything Obama stands for. We differ on important points probably because I am older than he is, I am a woman and person of three colors, (African, Native American, European), I was born and raised in the American South, and when I look at the earth's people, after sixty-four years of life, there is not one person I wish to see suffer, no matter what they have done to me or to anyone else; though I understand quite well the place of suffering, often, in human growth.
I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba, for instance, a country and a people I love; I want an end to the embargo that has harmed my friends and their children, children who, when I visit Cuba, trustingly turn their faces up for me to kiss. I agree with a teacher of mine, Howard Zinn, that war is as objectionable as cannibalism and slavery; it is beyond obsolete as a means of improving life. I want an end to the on-going war immediately and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and to drive themselves out of Iraq.
I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior towards the Palestinians, and I want the people of the United States to cease acting like they don't understand what is going on. All colonization, all occupation, all repression basically looks the same, whoever is doing it. Here our heads cannot remain stuck in the sand; our future depends of our ability to study, to learn, to understand what is in the records and what is before our eyes. But most of all I want someone with the self-confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend," and this Obama has shown he can do. It is difficult to understand how one could vote for a person who is afraid to sit and talk to another human being. When you vote you are making someone a proxy for yourself; they are to speak when, and in places, you cannot. But if they find talking to someone else, who looks just like them, human, impossible, then what good is your vote?
It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton (I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as "a woman" while Barack Obama is always referred to as "a black man." One would think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in America in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact. How dishonest it is, to attempt to make her innocent of her racial inheritance.
I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to person, with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks. I cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton who would drag into Twenty-First Century American leadership the same image of white privilege and distance from the reality of others' lives that has so marred our country's contacts with the rest of the world.
And yes, I would adore having a woman president of the United States. My choice would be Representative Barbara Lee, who alone voted in Congress five years ago not to make war on Iraq. That to me is leadership, morality, and courage; if she had been white I would have cheered just as hard. But she is not running for the highest office in the land, Mrs. Clinton is. And because Mrs. Clinton is a woman and because she may be very good at what she does, many people, including some younger women in my own family, originally favored her over Obama. I understand this, almost. It is because, in my own nieces' case, there is little memory, apparently, of the foundational inequities that still plague people of color and poor whites in this country. Why, even though our family has been here longer than most North American families – and only partly due to the fact that we have Native American genes – we very recently, in my lifetime, secured the right to vote, and only after numbers of people suffered and died for it.
When I offered the word "Womanism" many years ago, it was to give us a tool to use, as feminist women of color, in times like these. These are the moments we can see clearly, and must honor devotedly, our singular path as women of color in the United States. We are not white women and this truth has been ground into us for centuries, often in brutal ways. But neither are we inclined to follow a black person, man or woman, unless they demonstrate considerable courage, intelligence, compassion and substance. I am delighted that so many women of color support Barack Obama -and genuinely proud of the many young and old white women and men who do.
Imagine, if he wins the presidency we will have not one but three black women in the White House; one tall, two somewhat shorter; none of them carrying the washing in and out of the back door. The bottom line for most of us is: With whom do we have a better chance of surviving the madness and fear we are presently enduring, and with whom do we wish to set off on a journey of new possibility? In other words, as the Hopi elders would say: Who do we want in the boat with us as we head for the rapids? Who is likely to know how best to share the meager garden produce and water? We are advised by the Hopi elders to celebrate this time, whatever its adversities.
We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of our time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race, ethnicity, color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on Truth. Celebrate our journey. Enjoy the miracle we are witnessing. Do not stress over its outcome. Even if Obama becomes president, our country is in such ruin it may well be beyond his power to lead us toward rehabilitation. If he is elected however, we must, individually and collectively, as citizens of the planet, insist on helping him do the best job that can be done; more, we must insist that he demand this of us. It is a blessing that our mothers taught us not to fear hard work. Know, as the Hopi elders declare: The river has its destination. And remember, as poet June Jordan and Sweet Honey in the Rock never tired of telling us: We are the ones we have been waiting for.
Namaste;
And with all my love,
Alice Walker
Cazul
Northern California
First Day of Spring
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
10 weeks
Guess who is ten weeks old and counting. Yep my very own second generation of sunshine. Wow!! It seemed like Alyssa's pregnancy lasted forever, but Fuss' life is going by at the speed of light.My plan for the next few evenings is to snuggle with this little angel, listen to her laughter, and just be lifted buy this amazing gift that God has given this family.
So blessed ~~~Cee...Level
Personal Mission Statements
I've been thinking about this writing one for myself for a while. Prior to PDA's I was an avid user of the the Franklin Planner. It would talk about the purpose of mission statements and how to incorporate them into your life. Of course, I didn't pay attention then.
A few of the things that I learned is that a mission statement forces you to think about life, not just the superficial but the substantial. It should also clarify the purpose of your life.
It forces you to express in a concise method, your deepest values and goals
Your values and goals are supposed to be an integral part of you rather than something you only think about occasionally.
Also, it's supposed to be part of you daily/weekly/monthly plan, so its always in front of you.
Whew, sounds like I've bitten off a lot. Now I just have to figure out how to start. Gonna have to do some research on this.
Cee...level
A few of the things that I learned is that a mission statement forces you to think about life, not just the superficial but the substantial. It should also clarify the purpose of your life.
It forces you to express in a concise method, your deepest values and goals
Your values and goals are supposed to be an integral part of you rather than something you only think about occasionally.
Also, it's supposed to be part of you daily/weekly/monthly plan, so its always in front of you.
Whew, sounds like I've bitten off a lot. Now I just have to figure out how to start. Gonna have to do some research on this.
Cee...level
Monday, March 17, 2008
Who's ^%$+@ Idea Was Daylight Savings?
It takes me a good month to get myself together after we fiddle with the clock. Until that day, I'm a wreck. I either over sleep or don't sleep, Arrive early or extremely late.
My meals times are off and even my dog seems to have issues with the time she gets walked.
Ugh!
OH BABY!!!
Here's my little beauty. She's 9 weeks old and it's early on a Saturday morning...and I do mean EARLY. However, since she woke up laughing and smiling, I didn't really notice the time
Sunday, March 16, 2008
It's already been 2 months!!
I've been a Grandma for two months; or if you prefer 9 weeks and 2 days. Time is really flying. She's such a sweetie. Very active, and alert, and already "talking" up a storm.
Lethargic
That would explain how I've been feeling since the holidays ended. I do little projects, but don't complete them. My home could use a really good cleaning, and I need to start leaving it more on the weekends.
Anyone else have that feeling? Aside from Fuss, I'm not motivated to do anything outside of work and sleep.
I'd write more, but I'm just not feeling up to it. Actually I'm going to head over to the nursery and get a few plants for the house. Maybe seeing something different will inspire me to do the spring cleaning. On second thought, I'm going to call my former housekeeper and see if he'll do my spring cleaning for me.
Giving up my weekly allowance $75
Using my weekly allowance to have the house cleaned...priceless
Anyone else have that feeling? Aside from Fuss, I'm not motivated to do anything outside of work and sleep.
I'd write more, but I'm just not feeling up to it. Actually I'm going to head over to the nursery and get a few plants for the house. Maybe seeing something different will inspire me to do the spring cleaning. On second thought, I'm going to call my former housekeeper and see if he'll do my spring cleaning for me.
Giving up my weekly allowance $75
Using my weekly allowance to have the house cleaned...priceless
Saturday, March 15, 2008
I'm having a love affair
Yep, I admit it. Tried to remain true, but you know how it is when what yo have at home isn't satisfying your needs.
At first it was a little hint, here and there. Then when things didn't improve, I straight up had the talk. Came out and quoted a few lines of a song that was running through my head. Sorry I can't give credit to the song writer.
You gonna make make me love somebody else
if you keep on treatin me the way you do
i dont want to do
you gonna make make me love somebody else
if you keep on treatin me the way you do
i dont want to do
i done nothing to you
i just love you with my heart and soul
every time i need some lovin
you just turn cold
i aint dumb i aint stupid
i know you need love
need love like i do
cause if aint lovin me
i want to know who in the world are you lovin
tell me you dont need me around
Still to no avail. Just didn't pay attention to me. So you see it really wasn't my fault. I had to do it.
I screwed up my courage, took a deep breath and went for it.
I bought a mac.
What did you think I meant?
~~Cee...Level~~~
At first it was a little hint, here and there. Then when things didn't improve, I straight up had the talk. Came out and quoted a few lines of a song that was running through my head. Sorry I can't give credit to the song writer.
You gonna make make me love somebody else
if you keep on treatin me the way you do
i dont want to do
you gonna make make me love somebody else
if you keep on treatin me the way you do
i dont want to do
i done nothing to you
i just love you with my heart and soul
every time i need some lovin
you just turn cold
i aint dumb i aint stupid
i know you need love
need love like i do
cause if aint lovin me
i want to know who in the world are you lovin
tell me you dont need me around
Still to no avail. Just didn't pay attention to me. So you see it really wasn't my fault. I had to do it.
I screwed up my courage, took a deep breath and went for it.
I bought a mac.
What did you think I meant?
~~Cee...Level~~~
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Rest in Peace Pooh Bear 3/1/2008
One of my girls has changed her address to the Rainbow Bridge. I know she's eating all the snackus she can handle and sleeping in the softest of beds. Princess, JB, Alyssa and I miss you greatly, but knowing you're no longer in pain makes it a bit more "bear"able.
Luvis you my beary Bear,
Mommy
“Why Sit Ye Here and Die?”
Thank you GF Claire for posting this to our list.
Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879) was one of the first American women
to leave copies of her speeches. The address below is her second
public lecture. It was given on September 21, 1832 in Franklin
Hall in Boston, the meeting site of the new England Anti-Slavery
Society. Although as an abolitionist, she usually attacked
slavery, in this address she condemns the attitude that denied
black women education and prohibited their occupational
advancement. In fact she argues that Northern African American
women, in term of treatment, were only slightly better off than
slaves.
Why sit ye here and die? If we say we will go to a foreign land,
the famine and the pestilence are there, and there we shall die.
If we sit here, we shall die. Come let us plead our cause before
the whites: if they save us alive, we shall live—and if they
kill us, we shall but die.
Methinks I heard a spiritual interrogation—'Who shall go
forward, and take off the reproach that is cast upon the people
of color? Shall it be a woman? And my heart made this reply —'If
it is thy will, be it even so, Lord Jesus!'
I have heard much respecting the horrors of slavery; but may
Heaven forbid that the generality of my color throughout these
United States should experience any more of its horrors than to
be a servant of servants, or hewers of wood and drawers of
water! Tell us no more of southern slavery; for with few
exceptions, although I may be very erroneous in my opinion, yet
I consider our condition but little better than that. Yet, after
all, methinks there are no chains so galling as the chains of
ignorance—no fetters so binding as those that bind the soul, and
exclude it from the vast field of useful and scientific knowledge.
O, had I received the advantages of early education, my ideas would, ere now,
have expanded far and wide; but, alas! I possess nothing but moral capability—no teachings but the teachings of the Holy spirit.
I have asked several individuals of my sex, who transact
business for themselves, if providing our girls were to give
them the most satisfactory references, they would not be willing
to grant them an equal opportunity with others? Their reply has
been—for their own part, they had no objection; but as it was
not the custom, were they to take them into their employ, they
would be in danger of losing the public patronage.
And such is the powerful force of prejudice. Let our girls
possess what amiable qualities of soul they may; let their
characters be fair and spotless as innocence itself; let their
natural taste and ingenuity be what they may; it is impossible
for scarce an individual of them to rise above the condition of
servants. Ah! why is this cruel and unfeeling distinction? Is it
merely because God has made our complexion to vary? If it be, O
shame to soft, relenting humanity! "Tell it not in Gath! publish
it not in the streets of Askelon!" Yet, after all, methinks were
the American free people of color to turn their attention more
assiduously to moral worth and intellectual improvement, this
would be the result: prejudice would gradually diminish, and the
whites would be compelled to say, unloose those fetters!
Though black their skins as shades of night, Their hearts are
pure, their souls are white.
Few white persons of either sex, who are calculated for any
thing else, are willing to spend their lives and bury their
talents in performing mean, servile labor. And such is the
horrible idea that I entertain respecting a life of servitude,
that if I conceived of there being no possibility of my rising
above the condition of a servant, I would gladly hail death as a
welcome messenger. O, horrible idea, indeed! to possess noble
souls aspiring after high and honorable acquirements, yet
confined by the chains of ignorance and poverty to lives of
continual drudgery and toil. Neither do I know of any who have
enriched themselves by spending their lives as house-domestics,
washing windows, shaking carpets, brushing boots, or tending
upon gentlemen's tables. I can but die for expressing my
sentiments; and I am as willing to die by the sword as the
pestilence; for I and a true born American; your blood flows in
my veins, and your spirit fires my breast.
I observed a piece in the Liberator a few months since, stating
that the colonizationists had published a work respecting us,
asserting that we were lazy and idle. I confute them on that
point. Take us generally as a people, we are neither lazy nor
idle; and considering how little we have to excite or stimulate
us, I am almost astonished that there are so many industrious
and ambitious ones to be found; although I acknowledge, with
extreme sorrow, that there are some who never were and never
will be serviceable to society. And have you not a similar class
among yourselves?
Again. It was asserted that we were "a ragged set, crying for
liberty." I reply to it, the whites have so long and so loudly
proclaimed the theme of equal rights and privileges, that our
souls have caught the flame also, ragged as we are. As far as
our merit deserves, we feel a common desire to rise above the
condition of servants and drudges. I have learnt, by bitter
experience, that continual hard labor deadens the energies of
the soul, and benumbs the faculties of the mind; the ideas
become confined, the mind barren, and, like the scorching sands
of Arabia, produces nothing; or, like the uncultivated soil,
brings forth thorns and thistles.
Again, continual hard labor irritates our tempers and sours our
dispositions; the whole system becomes worn out with toil and
failure; nature herself becomes almost exhausted, and we care
but little whether we live or die. It is true, that the free
people of color throughout these United States are neither
bought nor sold, nor under the lash of the cruel driver; many
obtain a comfortable support; but few, if any, have an
opportunity of becoming rich and independent; and the
employments we most pursue are as unprofitable to us as the
spider's web or the floating bubbles that vanish into air. As
servants, we are respected; but let us presume to aspire any
higher, our employer regards us no longer. And where it not that
the King eternal has declared that Ethiopia shall stretch forth
her hands unto God, I should indeed despair.
I do not consider it derogatory, my friends, for persons to live
out to service. There are many whose inclination leads them to
aspire no higher; and I would highly commend the performance of
almost any thing for an honest livelihood; but where
constitutional strength is wanting, labor of this kind, in its
mildest form, is painful. And doubtless many are the prayers
that have ascended to Heaven from Africa's daughters for
strength to perform their work. Oh, many are the tears that have
been shed for the want of that strength! Most of our color have
dragged out a miserable existence of servitude from the cradle
to the grave. And what literary acquirements can be made, or
useful knowledge derived, from either maps, books or charm, by
those who continually drudge from Monday morning until Sunday
noon? O, ye fairer sisters, whose hands are never soiled, whose
nerves and muscles are never strained, go learn by experience!
Had we had the opportunity that you have had, to improve our
moral and mental faculties, what would have hindered our
intellects from being as bright, and our manners from being as
dignified as yours? Had it been our lot to have been nursed in
the lap of affluence and ease, and to have basked beneath the
smiles and sunshine of fortune, should we not have naturally
supposed that we were never made to toil? And why are not our
forms as delicate, and our constitutions as slender, as yours?
Is not the workmanship as curious and complete? Have pity upon
us, have pity upon us, O ye who have hearts to feel for other's
woes; for the hand of God has touched us. Owing to the
disadvantages under which we labor, there are many flowers among
us that are…born to bloom unseen, And waste their fragrance on the desert
air.
My beloved brethren, as Christ has died in vain for those who
will not accept of offered mercy, so will it be vain for the
advocates of freedom to spend their breath in our behalf, unless
with united hearts and souls you make some mighty efforts to
raise your sons, and daughters from the horrible state of
servitude and degradation in which they are placed. It is upon
you that woman depends; she can do but little besides using her
influence; and it is for her sake and yours that I have come
forward and made myself a hissing and a reproach among the
people; for I am also one of the wretched and miserable
daughters of the descendants of fallen Africa. Do you ask, why
are you wretched and miserable? I reply, look at many of the
most worthy and interesting of us doomed to spend our lives in
gentlemen's kitchens. Look at our young men, smart, active and
energetic, with souls filled with ambitious fire; if they look
forward, alas! what are their prospects? They can be nothing but
the humblest laborers, on account of their dark complexions;
hence many of them lose their ambition, and become worthless.
Look at our middle-aged men, clad in their rusty plaids and
coats; in winter, every cent they earn goes to buy their wood
and pay their rents; their poor wives also toil beyond their
strength, to help support their families. Look at our aged
sires, whose heads are whitened with the front of seventy
winters, with their old wood-saws on their backs. Alas, what
keeps us so? Prejudice, ignorance and poverty. But ah! methinks
our oppression is soon to come to an end; yes, before the
Majesty of heaven, our groans and cries have reached the ears of
the Lord of Sabaoth [James 5:4]. As the prayers and tears of
Christians will avail the finally impenitent nothing; neither
will the prayers and tears of the friends of humanity avail us
any thing, unless we possess a spirit of virtuous emulation
within our breasts. Did the pilgrims, when they first landed on
these shores, quietly compose themselves, and say, "the Britons
have all the money and all the power, and we must continue their
servants forever?" Did they sluggishly sigh and say, "our lot is
hard, the Indians own the soil, and we cannot cultivate it?" No;
they first made powerful efforts to raise themselves and then
God raised up those illustrious patriots WASHINGTON and
LAFAYETTE, to assist and defend them. And, my brethren, have you
made a powerful effort? Have you prayed the Legislature for
mercy's sake to grant you all the rights and privileges of free
citizens, that your daughters may raise to that degree of
respectability which true merit deserves, and your sons above
the servile situations which most of them fill?
Sources:
Speech delivered at Franklin Hall, Boston, September 21, 1832.
The full text appears in Marilyn Richardson, Maria W. Stewart:
America’s First Black Woman Political Writer (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1987), 45-49.
Copyright 2007 - BlackPast.org | blackpast@blackpast.org |
Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879) was one of the first American women
to leave copies of her speeches. The address below is her second
public lecture. It was given on September 21, 1832 in Franklin
Hall in Boston, the meeting site of the new England Anti-Slavery
Society. Although as an abolitionist, she usually attacked
slavery, in this address she condemns the attitude that denied
black women education and prohibited their occupational
advancement. In fact she argues that Northern African American
women, in term of treatment, were only slightly better off than
slaves.
Why sit ye here and die? If we say we will go to a foreign land,
the famine and the pestilence are there, and there we shall die.
If we sit here, we shall die. Come let us plead our cause before
the whites: if they save us alive, we shall live—and if they
kill us, we shall but die.
Methinks I heard a spiritual interrogation—'Who shall go
forward, and take off the reproach that is cast upon the people
of color? Shall it be a woman? And my heart made this reply —'If
it is thy will, be it even so, Lord Jesus!'
I have heard much respecting the horrors of slavery; but may
Heaven forbid that the generality of my color throughout these
United States should experience any more of its horrors than to
be a servant of servants, or hewers of wood and drawers of
water! Tell us no more of southern slavery; for with few
exceptions, although I may be very erroneous in my opinion, yet
I consider our condition but little better than that. Yet, after
all, methinks there are no chains so galling as the chains of
ignorance—no fetters so binding as those that bind the soul, and
exclude it from the vast field of useful and scientific knowledge.
O, had I received the advantages of early education, my ideas would, ere now,
have expanded far and wide; but, alas! I possess nothing but moral capability—no teachings but the teachings of the Holy spirit.
I have asked several individuals of my sex, who transact
business for themselves, if providing our girls were to give
them the most satisfactory references, they would not be willing
to grant them an equal opportunity with others? Their reply has
been—for their own part, they had no objection; but as it was
not the custom, were they to take them into their employ, they
would be in danger of losing the public patronage.
And such is the powerful force of prejudice. Let our girls
possess what amiable qualities of soul they may; let their
characters be fair and spotless as innocence itself; let their
natural taste and ingenuity be what they may; it is impossible
for scarce an individual of them to rise above the condition of
servants. Ah! why is this cruel and unfeeling distinction? Is it
merely because God has made our complexion to vary? If it be, O
shame to soft, relenting humanity! "Tell it not in Gath! publish
it not in the streets of Askelon!" Yet, after all, methinks were
the American free people of color to turn their attention more
assiduously to moral worth and intellectual improvement, this
would be the result: prejudice would gradually diminish, and the
whites would be compelled to say, unloose those fetters!
Though black their skins as shades of night, Their hearts are
pure, their souls are white.
Few white persons of either sex, who are calculated for any
thing else, are willing to spend their lives and bury their
talents in performing mean, servile labor. And such is the
horrible idea that I entertain respecting a life of servitude,
that if I conceived of there being no possibility of my rising
above the condition of a servant, I would gladly hail death as a
welcome messenger. O, horrible idea, indeed! to possess noble
souls aspiring after high and honorable acquirements, yet
confined by the chains of ignorance and poverty to lives of
continual drudgery and toil. Neither do I know of any who have
enriched themselves by spending their lives as house-domestics,
washing windows, shaking carpets, brushing boots, or tending
upon gentlemen's tables. I can but die for expressing my
sentiments; and I am as willing to die by the sword as the
pestilence; for I and a true born American; your blood flows in
my veins, and your spirit fires my breast.
I observed a piece in the Liberator a few months since, stating
that the colonizationists had published a work respecting us,
asserting that we were lazy and idle. I confute them on that
point. Take us generally as a people, we are neither lazy nor
idle; and considering how little we have to excite or stimulate
us, I am almost astonished that there are so many industrious
and ambitious ones to be found; although I acknowledge, with
extreme sorrow, that there are some who never were and never
will be serviceable to society. And have you not a similar class
among yourselves?
Again. It was asserted that we were "a ragged set, crying for
liberty." I reply to it, the whites have so long and so loudly
proclaimed the theme of equal rights and privileges, that our
souls have caught the flame also, ragged as we are. As far as
our merit deserves, we feel a common desire to rise above the
condition of servants and drudges. I have learnt, by bitter
experience, that continual hard labor deadens the energies of
the soul, and benumbs the faculties of the mind; the ideas
become confined, the mind barren, and, like the scorching sands
of Arabia, produces nothing; or, like the uncultivated soil,
brings forth thorns and thistles.
Again, continual hard labor irritates our tempers and sours our
dispositions; the whole system becomes worn out with toil and
failure; nature herself becomes almost exhausted, and we care
but little whether we live or die. It is true, that the free
people of color throughout these United States are neither
bought nor sold, nor under the lash of the cruel driver; many
obtain a comfortable support; but few, if any, have an
opportunity of becoming rich and independent; and the
employments we most pursue are as unprofitable to us as the
spider's web or the floating bubbles that vanish into air. As
servants, we are respected; but let us presume to aspire any
higher, our employer regards us no longer. And where it not that
the King eternal has declared that Ethiopia shall stretch forth
her hands unto God, I should indeed despair.
I do not consider it derogatory, my friends, for persons to live
out to service. There are many whose inclination leads them to
aspire no higher; and I would highly commend the performance of
almost any thing for an honest livelihood; but where
constitutional strength is wanting, labor of this kind, in its
mildest form, is painful. And doubtless many are the prayers
that have ascended to Heaven from Africa's daughters for
strength to perform their work. Oh, many are the tears that have
been shed for the want of that strength! Most of our color have
dragged out a miserable existence of servitude from the cradle
to the grave. And what literary acquirements can be made, or
useful knowledge derived, from either maps, books or charm, by
those who continually drudge from Monday morning until Sunday
noon? O, ye fairer sisters, whose hands are never soiled, whose
nerves and muscles are never strained, go learn by experience!
Had we had the opportunity that you have had, to improve our
moral and mental faculties, what would have hindered our
intellects from being as bright, and our manners from being as
dignified as yours? Had it been our lot to have been nursed in
the lap of affluence and ease, and to have basked beneath the
smiles and sunshine of fortune, should we not have naturally
supposed that we were never made to toil? And why are not our
forms as delicate, and our constitutions as slender, as yours?
Is not the workmanship as curious and complete? Have pity upon
us, have pity upon us, O ye who have hearts to feel for other's
woes; for the hand of God has touched us. Owing to the
disadvantages under which we labor, there are many flowers among
us that are…born to bloom unseen, And waste their fragrance on the desert
air.
My beloved brethren, as Christ has died in vain for those who
will not accept of offered mercy, so will it be vain for the
advocates of freedom to spend their breath in our behalf, unless
with united hearts and souls you make some mighty efforts to
raise your sons, and daughters from the horrible state of
servitude and degradation in which they are placed. It is upon
you that woman depends; she can do but little besides using her
influence; and it is for her sake and yours that I have come
forward and made myself a hissing and a reproach among the
people; for I am also one of the wretched and miserable
daughters of the descendants of fallen Africa. Do you ask, why
are you wretched and miserable? I reply, look at many of the
most worthy and interesting of us doomed to spend our lives in
gentlemen's kitchens. Look at our young men, smart, active and
energetic, with souls filled with ambitious fire; if they look
forward, alas! what are their prospects? They can be nothing but
the humblest laborers, on account of their dark complexions;
hence many of them lose their ambition, and become worthless.
Look at our middle-aged men, clad in their rusty plaids and
coats; in winter, every cent they earn goes to buy their wood
and pay their rents; their poor wives also toil beyond their
strength, to help support their families. Look at our aged
sires, whose heads are whitened with the front of seventy
winters, with their old wood-saws on their backs. Alas, what
keeps us so? Prejudice, ignorance and poverty. But ah! methinks
our oppression is soon to come to an end; yes, before the
Majesty of heaven, our groans and cries have reached the ears of
the Lord of Sabaoth [James 5:4]. As the prayers and tears of
Christians will avail the finally impenitent nothing; neither
will the prayers and tears of the friends of humanity avail us
any thing, unless we possess a spirit of virtuous emulation
within our breasts. Did the pilgrims, when they first landed on
these shores, quietly compose themselves, and say, "the Britons
have all the money and all the power, and we must continue their
servants forever?" Did they sluggishly sigh and say, "our lot is
hard, the Indians own the soil, and we cannot cultivate it?" No;
they first made powerful efforts to raise themselves and then
God raised up those illustrious patriots WASHINGTON and
LAFAYETTE, to assist and defend them. And, my brethren, have you
made a powerful effort? Have you prayed the Legislature for
mercy's sake to grant you all the rights and privileges of free
citizens, that your daughters may raise to that degree of
respectability which true merit deserves, and your sons above
the servile situations which most of them fill?
Sources:
Speech delivered at Franklin Hall, Boston, September 21, 1832.
The full text appears in Marilyn Richardson, Maria W. Stewart:
America’s First Black Woman Political Writer (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1987), 45-49.
Copyright 2007 - BlackPast.org | blackpast@blackpast.org |
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