For Barbara, and For Lisa, and For Miracles

Barbara Garcia. Image from CBS News video.

I'm sitting in a hotel room yesterday morning, noticing how the hair on the sides of my head catch so much light and reflect silvery strands in the mirror, eventually realizing that the sunlight is reflecting silver because, you know, the hairs on the side of my head are turning gray, and that's the difference between gray hair and brown hair. You get a little older, and all of the sudden your head starts reflecting more light.

The paragraph above was really a diversion, a way of trying to avoid slapping you, dear reader, in the face with a cold fish paragraph.

I really wanted to start out that yesterday morning was awful, all because of the news about the tornado in Oklahoma. About the only redeeming story I saw to come out of the entire thing was the dear, sweet lady, Barbara Garcia, who is literally standing on the wreckage of her home when she finds her dog, trapped beneath some kind of metal frame, so terrified he doesn't bother barking even when there are clearly plenty of humans there to help. Listening to that tender woman as she tries to free her dog, hearing her choke up as she admits her second prayer--that the dog comes out okay--just got answered.

And we're left to wonder, this plump Oklahoma woman cradling her pooch, set against a background of death and destruction and terrible wonder, if God stopped answering prayers after two.

Sundays | Some Just Hide it Better

Two days ago, when I wrote about an alarmingly racist conversation I overheard while out eating breakfast, I didn't finish the story. There is, in fact, another part that I purposefully left out, a part that doesn't nullify the behavior of the foursome seated at the table behind mine at the cafe, but one that paints them in a far more understandable light. They weren't four Klansmen who had taken off their hoods for a cup of coffee, after all.

How do I know this? Well, there's the second part of the conversation, the part I left out.

I wrote Friday that after about ten minutes of railing on and on about black people, the foursome was approached by a pair of young college girls, one of whom knew a couple of the men, and the polite conversation that followed more or less put a damper on the venomous topic of bigotry.

But after that, after the girls paid their check and left, the men didn't return to their discourse diminishing African-Americans. Instead, they talked about a fifth man, someone who seemingly had joined them at that very cafe for many breakfasts. He wasn't there that morning, because he'd had a stroke (or some other illness had befallen him).


The men spoke quietly to each other about his condition and how he'd deteriorated. One became so embarrassed when visiting him--he couldn't understand what the fifth man was saying because the stroke left his speech slurred--that he resorted to bringing him a typewriter. Even that took him a while, he said.

Another piped in that they'd been up to visit and had brought the fifth man some food and visited with his wife. Before I knew it, the fangs of racism had retreated into the jowls of ordinary men, whose fraternal concern for one of their own grew out of something genuine and human.

So, I Overheard this Racist Conversation...

This little Instagram picture is of my bucolic downtown home, Statesville. The phrase "bucolic," meaning "of the country" and "downtown," which brings images of a city, might not inherently make sense together, but that's what Statesville is--a city that sits in the middle of a crossroads framed by fields, the vestigial history of agriculture and textiles built into its DNA.

I wanted to give you that introduction to frame what happened this morning. I was getting my oil changed at my local shop, and I walked a couple of blocks across town to eat breakfast at a local cafe while I waited. There were a handful of folks in there with me, and I sat at a table beside another group of four white men, ranging in age from 50 to 75. Here's the first thing I overheard:

"Well, it ain't like it's a black thing or a white thing. But our President is the most arrogant sumbitch in the White House in American history. He's bringing shame to us all, and he's acting like an uppity n----r."

The other three grunted or otherwise responded with their affirmation of the first fellow's statement.

I almost turned around just then, astonished as I was about the first sentence he spoke attempting to frame his argument not as one based on race--and then ending his next breath with a disgusting racial epithet.

But I didn't. I gritted my teeth. It didn't stop there.

Don't Mess with a Son of a Fitch

Lots of folks have been up in arms this week about the stunningly candid exposition of sleazy, unrepentant elitism put on by the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch, Mike Jeffries, who told Salon in 2006 that Abercrombie goes "after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong."

I'm still not sure why this seven year-old interview has suddenly shot to the forefront of national attention, but it has. And, as of about 48 hours ago, a somewhat humorous response to Jeffries' comments has soared into the spotlight as Greg Karper of Los Angeles videotaped himself buying A&F clothes from thrift stores and handing them out to homeless people.

Young Mr. Karper, who is rightly getting a few burns himself for objectifying the homeless as less than the "attractive all-American kid" Jeffries is chasing with a thousand gallons of teenage cologne, but his point is well-intentioned. Take that, asshole, Karper seems to be saying, and a million people--nay, 1.8 million as of the writing of this post--have tuned in to watch a good guy take on the Mr. Burns of the textile world.

Stop NC Senate Bill 236

UPDATE #3 (5/15/2013): According to this article, just published in the Statesville Record and Landmark, NC Senator David Curtis has succeeded in removing Iredell County from Senate Bill 236! Of course, this doesn't mean the fight is over for Alexander, Beaufort, Davie, Guilford, Harnett, Lee, Rockingham, Rowan, Wake, Wayne, or Yadkin Counties. If you live in these districts and oppose this legislation aimed at taking school ownership away from boards of education, I encourage you to keep calling and writing your representatives. 

Read on:

If you're reading this, and you live in the North Carolina area, there's an urgent matter before our state General Assembly that could use more input and attention from citizens--and threatens to be railroaded into law before we know it.

If you live in Iredell, Alexander, Beaufort, Davie, Guilford, Harnett, Lee, Rockingham, Rowan, Wake, Wayne, or Yadkin Counties, you've just been included in NC Senate Bill 236, otherwise known as the School Property Ownership Transfer Bill.

This bill, authored by Rowan County Senator Andrew Brock (R), effectively uses state authority to transfer ownership of all school properties from local school boards to county commissioners. All rights and responsibilities become the domain of county boards, not school boards.

Iredell-Statesville Schools Superintendent Brady Johnson issued the following statement today in an urgent email:

Late Monday afternoon, May 13, Iredell-Statesville Schools was informed by the North Carolina School Boards Association that Iredell County has been added to Senate Bill 236—School Property Ownership Transfer Bill.