For those who love history, dream of adventure, riches, and fame; for those really believe they'll hit the jackpot on the lottery scratch-off, for those still look up at night to see the stars and passing clouds. and for those who love to touch the past, here's a challenge to give meaning to your visions and put money in your pocket.: Whatever happened to the Confederate gold?
If you worry about the fiscal state of the country or the money in your own pocket, the gold spoils of the civil war offer hundreds of chances to expand your net worth.
Thought the Confederacy was poor and in a state of penury by the war's end? The central government still had great wealth even as the war put the administration on the run. The last Confederate Cabinet meeting presided over by Jefferson Davis was held on May 2, 1865, in Abbeville, SC, at the Burt-Stark House.
By the time Lee surrendered, five wagons of gold and silver—coins, bricks, and bars, the remains of the Confederate treasury's reserve--were loaded May 24, 1865 in Richmond, at the train depot. Captain Parker of the Navy and an escort of armed troops, guarded the gold on the ride from Richmond, Virginia, to Anderson, South Carolina. There the gold was reloaded to wagons for shipment to Savannah or Charleston.
Confederate president Jefferson Davis met the caravan at Washington, GA. Later, scouts observed Union troops near Augusta, and the caravan returned to Washington (which is now in Lincoln County).
Unknown raiders attacked the wagon train near the Dionysius Chennault Plantation (the home of an elderly Methodist minister)--only a 100 yards from the house. During the attack, the gold disappeared. Most researchers and contemporary observers believe it was hidden, but the location of this cache of riches remains a mystery.
The financial agent for the Confederacy was the English financial firm of Fraser, Trenholm & Company in Liverpool. One account has Jefferson Davis, at the meeting before the attack, authorizing two Confederate Navy officials, James A. Semple and Edward Tidball, to deliver $86,000 in gold to the firm in England.
After taking possession of the gold, the two immediately split up. Tidball headed north, returned to Virginia, and his subsequent activities offer compelling evidence that kept his share of the gold.
Semple's record is less clear. He managed to reach Nassau, returned to the States, struck a relationship with the Julia Gardiner Tyler, the widow of President James Tyler, but seemed to deplete his share after two years on the run.
Other scenarios for stash sites include wrecked ships—the gold was to be shipped out of either Savannah or Charleston--family farms, tombs and grave sites, and submerged islands, and river beds.
The most reliable account of any of the Confederate fortunate involves 39 kegs of silver coins (Mexican silver dollars, receipts for cotton sales) buried in a Danville, VA cemetery. Even with strong evidence of its presence, the city, which owns the cemetery land, steadfastly refuses to permit any survey, digging, or test drilling. The estimated current value for the silver is a million dollars.
Many gold stories settle on Georgia.
In the autumn of 1862, the mint shipped $40,000 worth of gold and silver bars bars from New Orleans to Augusta. Around the same time, after the New Orleans fell to the Union, Confederate officials seized $2.3 million in gold and $216,000 in silver specie from a New Orleans bank that stored the gold and silver in Columbus, GA
By the war's end, Union general E. L. Molineux had gained possession of $275,000 in gold and silver in Macon alone. Molineux had seized $188,000 in gold assets from a single Savannah Bank.
Yet an another $200,000 in gold coins hidden in Macon were never found.
Towns in GA, SC, and NC are frequently mentioned in folklore and first person accounts, by researchers and treasure hunters as hiding place for gold and silver caches from local banks. Much of this gold has not been found.
When the Confederate reserve was lost, Charleston's George Trenholm, the model for the movie's Rhett Butler, was the Confederate Treasurer at the time.
Walter Rhett writes Southern Perlo from Kudu Coffee, in Charleston, SC. Stir the perlo; leave a comment.
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Walter Rhett and Southern Perlo support Water Missions International, providing safe water systems to a million people worldwide.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
If it flies, it dies:" Tour the USS Truxtun, the Navy's newest ship
The USS Truxtun steamed into the port of Charleston near the end of April, and when the ship opened its gangplank for public tours, I couldn't resist stepping aboard. The Truxtun is the US Navy's newest ship. Built in a Pascagoula, Mississippi shipyard building naval ships since 1938, the USS Truxtun is an AEGIS guided missile destroyer, the 25th of its generation built for the Navy by defense contractor Northrop-Grumman. When I saw the ship, it had not yet been commissioned.
The 521-foot Truxtun is the newest of a class of ships that are the largest and most powerful destroyers in the world. During its 2008 builder's trails, U.S. Navy Capt. Beth Dexter, The Navy's Supervisor of Shipbuilding, Gulf Coast, praised the Truxtun's performance: "She needs some polish -- but make no mistake -- I'd have no hesitation in taking this one to the fight!"
The Truxtun's motto? It's taken from words spoken by its namesake, Thomas Truxtun, who went to sea at 12 and commanded his own ship at 20, and later commanded the Navy's USS Constellation, a 3-mast, 38-gun frigate built in 1797 at Baltimore's Fells Point, Harris Creek Shipyard, from a controversial design by Quaker master ship builder, Joshua Humphreys. That ship, under Thomas Truxtun's command, was the first naval ship put to sea and became the first US Navy ship to defeat an enemy ship when, in 1799, the fastest warship in the French fleet was forced to strike colors, outmaneuvered and outfought by the Constellation's attack of hull shots and racking broadsides. Truxtun's quote: “Attack. Pursue. Vanquish.”
Today, the current guided missile destroyer Truxtun uses the AEGIS computer-commanded combat system and the SPY-1 radar to power and operate the most powerful force deterrent in the fleet.
The AEGIS combat system, at its heart, is a computer controlled combat and data system. It can simultaneously launch strikes against missiles or other targets in the air, and on land and sea, either surface or underwater.
The Truxtun can withstand and still operate successfully after taking a direct missile, but such a hit is unlikely with defensive measures that include construction angles for sleath design, radar absorbing construction materials, electronic counter measures, anti-submarine measures, and physical anti-aircraft chaff.
In fact, the AEGIS combat system is so advanced it pioneered a new approach to Navy ship building. The Truxtun's steel hull, mechanical, and electrical systems are designed and built to support its combat systems and mission. Its computer programs and back-ups, the ship's records of repair parts, maintenance, personnel, and tactical plans are linked and integrated to constantly determine the ship's multi-mission capacity, readiness and best options.
AEGIS is the most capable missile launch system the Navy has ever put to sea. In any weather, including full cyclones, AEGIS can attack multiple targets underwater, and from wave top to directly overhead, at all speeds from subsonic to supersonic. The ship hangars two attack helicopters, including one specifically designed for anti-submarine missions.
The eyes of the AEGIS system is the AN/SPY-1, a phased-array radar that can detect, identify, and track over 100 targets at the same time, until each is killed.
Phased construction of AEGIS destroyers allows for new technology or improvements in any aspect of operation to be built in immediately, in the shipyard. The Truxtun, however, ran into a myriad of obstacles that hindered and delayed its construction. Hurricane Katrina shut down the Pascagoula ship yard and made it impossible to receive supplies and parts for construction. The ship caught fire while under construction, and all of the fire-damaged areas had to be ripped out, repaired, and rebuilt. A union strike also held up work.
The AEGIS system and the class of destroyers it supports inherits the tradition of anti-missile defense developed by the Polaris submarines, originally based in Charleston. A Polaris submarine could stay at sea for up to 3 years, and its 16 missiles had a strike range of 2,500 miles.
Today, the USS Truxtun has 16 vertical missile launchers that fire 3 different types of missiles, including “smart” tomahawks. Its arsenal includes more than 50 Tomahawks. But its major weapon is the Standard missile (SM-3), a solid fuel anti-ballistic 3,000 pound missile armed with kinetic warheads that have the capacity to knock down satellites or enemy ballistic missiles at 300 miles, the distance from Charleston to Atlanta, Georgia. A kinetic warhead carries no explosives or nuclear charges. It destroys its target by the blunt force of its high speed impact, similar to a rock shattering a windshield, or a battering ram splintering a door.
The ship carries the Sea Sparrow, a missile used for ship self-defense and a cache of Harpoons, surface-to-surface missiles. The ship also has a large arsenal of other specialized missiles and guns, including anti-submarine missiles.
As mighty as the AEGIS combat system is and as powerful as its battery of missiles and weapons, the ship's mission is made even better its personnel. The USS Truxtun has a crew of 265, 23 of which are officers. Fifty members of the crew are women, including the executive officer, the second in command, who I met in Mellow Mushroom, a popular pizza parlor in downtown Charleston. Pascagoula also has a Mellow Mushroom; the EX-O recognized the name when she decided to break for a few from the ship. Born in upper New York state, the Navy has been her only career job since graduating from college. She first served in communications, and by successfully completing a long series of Navy schools, and gaining outstanding performance evaluations, she now stands second in command on the Truxtun's maiden cruise.
Many members of the crew, men and women, were on board during the civilian tours. Relaxed, alert, respectful, cooperative, close knit, ready to work, including bringing boxes of tee shirts to the souvenir tables where hats, fleece, tee shirts, and other Truxtun items were for sale.
The transformation of the Navy into a service that reflects the American ideal of equal opportunity based on merit and performance open to all genders and nationalities in the highest service of nation is a model for armed forces around the world. Morale has improved, and the esprit de corp is a tangible asset; the differences have added to a common respect.
The Arleigh Burke class of destroyers, to which the Truxtun belongs, was in danger of being replaced by a new class with improved capacity for land attacks and a radical increase and redesign of the missile storage and launch systems. The new system, however, proved too expensive to build, with costs rising 50 percent over initial plans. Little improvement in defense against long range missiles weighed in torpedoing the new class.
The AEGIS combat system is being used in the naval ships of Japan (4), Norway (5), Spain (5), and Korea (2). China has developed a similar system that appears to have size and launch advantages. The US, the world leader by far, has 64 destroyers and 22 cruisers employing AEGIS.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found food for thought.
Walter Rhett posts Southern Perlo from Kudu Coffee in Charleston, SC. A Perlo is rice enriched with local bounty, carefully crafted, enjoyed by all.
By its witness, Southern Perlo, in print and photos, connects the American experience and builds a global heritage. Please, stir the perlo, add your spice; leave a comment below.
Southern Perlo supports Water Missions International, providing safe water to more than a million people in 40 countries, at firstgiving.com.
All photos and images used under fair educational use. From top: USS Truxtun, USS Constellation, AN/SPY-1 Radar, Pascagoula's Ingall's Shipyard, Standard SM-3 launching, Naval Officier saluting, The USS Truxtun insignia.
The 521-foot Truxtun is the newest of a class of ships that are the largest and most powerful destroyers in the world. During its 2008 builder's trails, U.S. Navy Capt. Beth Dexter, The Navy's Supervisor of Shipbuilding, Gulf Coast, praised the Truxtun's performance: "She needs some polish -- but make no mistake -- I'd have no hesitation in taking this one to the fight!"
The Truxtun's motto? It's taken from words spoken by its namesake, Thomas Truxtun, who went to sea at 12 and commanded his own ship at 20, and later commanded the Navy's USS Constellation, a 3-mast, 38-gun frigate built in 1797 at Baltimore's Fells Point, Harris Creek Shipyard, from a controversial design by Quaker master ship builder, Joshua Humphreys. That ship, under Thomas Truxtun's command, was the first naval ship put to sea and became the first US Navy ship to defeat an enemy ship when, in 1799, the fastest warship in the French fleet was forced to strike colors, outmaneuvered and outfought by the Constellation's attack of hull shots and racking broadsides. Truxtun's quote: “Attack. Pursue. Vanquish.”
Today, the current guided missile destroyer Truxtun uses the AEGIS computer-commanded combat system and the SPY-1 radar to power and operate the most powerful force deterrent in the fleet.
The AEGIS combat system, at its heart, is a computer controlled combat and data system. It can simultaneously launch strikes against missiles or other targets in the air, and on land and sea, either surface or underwater.
The Truxtun can withstand and still operate successfully after taking a direct missile, but such a hit is unlikely with defensive measures that include construction angles for sleath design, radar absorbing construction materials, electronic counter measures, anti-submarine measures, and physical anti-aircraft chaff.
In fact, the AEGIS combat system is so advanced it pioneered a new approach to Navy ship building. The Truxtun's steel hull, mechanical, and electrical systems are designed and built to support its combat systems and mission. Its computer programs and back-ups, the ship's records of repair parts, maintenance, personnel, and tactical plans are linked and integrated to constantly determine the ship's multi-mission capacity, readiness and best options.
AEGIS is the most capable missile launch system the Navy has ever put to sea. In any weather, including full cyclones, AEGIS can attack multiple targets underwater, and from wave top to directly overhead, at all speeds from subsonic to supersonic. The ship hangars two attack helicopters, including one specifically designed for anti-submarine missions.
The eyes of the AEGIS system is the AN/SPY-1, a phased-array radar that can detect, identify, and track over 100 targets at the same time, until each is killed.
Phased construction of AEGIS destroyers allows for new technology or improvements in any aspect of operation to be built in immediately, in the shipyard. The Truxtun, however, ran into a myriad of obstacles that hindered and delayed its construction. Hurricane Katrina shut down the Pascagoula ship yard and made it impossible to receive supplies and parts for construction. The ship caught fire while under construction, and all of the fire-damaged areas had to be ripped out, repaired, and rebuilt. A union strike also held up work.
The AEGIS system and the class of destroyers it supports inherits the tradition of anti-missile defense developed by the Polaris submarines, originally based in Charleston. A Polaris submarine could stay at sea for up to 3 years, and its 16 missiles had a strike range of 2,500 miles.
Today, the USS Truxtun has 16 vertical missile launchers that fire 3 different types of missiles, including “smart” tomahawks. Its arsenal includes more than 50 Tomahawks. But its major weapon is the Standard missile (SM-3), a solid fuel anti-ballistic 3,000 pound missile armed with kinetic warheads that have the capacity to knock down satellites or enemy ballistic missiles at 300 miles, the distance from Charleston to Atlanta, Georgia. A kinetic warhead carries no explosives or nuclear charges. It destroys its target by the blunt force of its high speed impact, similar to a rock shattering a windshield, or a battering ram splintering a door.
The ship carries the Sea Sparrow, a missile used for ship self-defense and a cache of Harpoons, surface-to-surface missiles. The ship also has a large arsenal of other specialized missiles and guns, including anti-submarine missiles.
As mighty as the AEGIS combat system is and as powerful as its battery of missiles and weapons, the ship's mission is made even better its personnel. The USS Truxtun has a crew of 265, 23 of which are officers. Fifty members of the crew are women, including the executive officer, the second in command, who I met in Mellow Mushroom, a popular pizza parlor in downtown Charleston. Pascagoula also has a Mellow Mushroom; the EX-O recognized the name when she decided to break for a few from the ship. Born in upper New York state, the Navy has been her only career job since graduating from college. She first served in communications, and by successfully completing a long series of Navy schools, and gaining outstanding performance evaluations, she now stands second in command on the Truxtun's maiden cruise.
Many members of the crew, men and women, were on board during the civilian tours. Relaxed, alert, respectful, cooperative, close knit, ready to work, including bringing boxes of tee shirts to the souvenir tables where hats, fleece, tee shirts, and other Truxtun items were for sale.
The transformation of the Navy into a service that reflects the American ideal of equal opportunity based on merit and performance open to all genders and nationalities in the highest service of nation is a model for armed forces around the world. Morale has improved, and the esprit de corp is a tangible asset; the differences have added to a common respect.
The Arleigh Burke class of destroyers, to which the Truxtun belongs, was in danger of being replaced by a new class with improved capacity for land attacks and a radical increase and redesign of the missile storage and launch systems. The new system, however, proved too expensive to build, with costs rising 50 percent over initial plans. Little improvement in defense against long range missiles weighed in torpedoing the new class.
The AEGIS combat system is being used in the naval ships of Japan (4), Norway (5), Spain (5), and Korea (2). China has developed a similar system that appears to have size and launch advantages. The US, the world leader by far, has 64 destroyers and 22 cruisers employing AEGIS.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found food for thought.
Walter Rhett posts Southern Perlo from Kudu Coffee in Charleston, SC. A Perlo is rice enriched with local bounty, carefully crafted, enjoyed by all.
By its witness, Southern Perlo, in print and photos, connects the American experience and builds a global heritage. Please, stir the perlo, add your spice; leave a comment below.
Southern Perlo supports Water Missions International, providing safe water to more than a million people in 40 countries, at firstgiving.com.
All photos and images used under fair educational use. From top: USS Truxtun, USS Constellation, AN/SPY-1 Radar, Pascagoula's Ingall's Shipyard, Standard SM-3 launching, Naval Officier saluting, The USS Truxtun insignia.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The Symbols and Substance of Barack's Bow
Rich Lowry and the hundreds of others who becry Obama's breach of the unstated rules of Presidential conduct fail to realize that these very rules, originally initiated for outdated purposes, have to be challenged and broken in order to bring about progressive change, inside and outside of American affairs.
For persons and nations, history offers clear insights and examples of rules challenged and broken to bring about greater freedom and progress. Obama breach of the old rules is not do to ineptness, defiance, or indifference—or inexperience. Instead, his actions are part of his clear pattern of redefining the symbols and signals of American power to enhance and extend its reach and influence by a new matrix. More than any other American leader,
Obama is comfortable with power, and uses its trappings to serve purposes beyond previous limits. Obama willingly fits his actions into the new international framework; he has the keen good sense to see opportunities and prosperity for America on all shores.
In looking at the old standards and assessing change, it is important to separate appearance from actual essence, signals from real substance, form from bonafided content, puffery from sincerity. The current moral intuition of America is strongly tied to appearances. But Barack's instincts take him in another direction. He relaxes the elements of imperial behavior that have caged the conduct of American Presidents, court rites, in effect, borrowed from Europe's monarchies.
In doing so, he radically alters the sense of democratic relations and standings among world leaders.
While many at home are shocked by the bow or the smiling handshake, world leaders saw the gesture in a different light. By stepping down, Obama was actually stepping up. He signaled not weakness or disrespect, but began a new phrase of American national conduct: one of open regard; problem-solving rather than mischief-making, exchanging mutual dialogue rather than mongering in power. Simply, it's the carrot rather than the stick.
Obama is creating a new nuance in American foreign policy, separating his actions and personal gestures in meetings and conferences from his executive actsas head of state. It is a tactic Bill Richardson used successfully in international negotiation and one Ollie North attempted to use when he flew to Tehran, personally carrying a Bible and a key-shaped chocolate cake for the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in a deal in which President Reagan ended up swapping guns for hostages, sending the Iraqis more than $8 million in missiles.
The difference is Obama is President, and is skilled in the politics of personal statecraft and is willing to break with conventions to advance his policy goals. And he has not offered any regime a thin dime. Don't think the world is laughing. They, are, in fact, applauding.
McClatchy Newspapers reports:
“Obama returned from his first trip overseas Tuesday confident of at least one thing: He had managed to put his face indelibly on American foreign policy for much of the rest of the world.
Using personal diplomacy to advance his broad policy goals, Obama charted a new course as he moved rapidly across the continent, attending three summits, visiting six countries and meeting at least 15 foreign leaders, wrapping up with a surprise visit to Iraq on Tuesday.
Everywhere he went, Obama was a figure of fascination to foreign leaders eager to take his measure, as well as to everyday citizens.
"It was so easy to work with him," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said.
"He's a great, great man," said Elisabeth Vogel, a teacher from Colmar, France, who came to see Obama when he appeared in nearby Strasbourg.
"Obama No. 1," said a broadly smiling taxi driver in Istanbul, flashing a thumbs up.
Jordan's Queen Noor acknowledges and supports the potential global impact of Obama's new direction, fully endorsing Obama's commitment to ending the spread of nuclear weapons.
“I, and all of the 100-plus leaders of Global Zero, are thrilled that Presidents Obama and Medvedev are demonstrating bold and historic leadership on this agenda, and taking an approach that is fully in line with the plan we presented at the launch of Global Zero in December 2008.”
Queen Noor goes on to say: Today, nine countries have more than 23,000 nuclear weapons. Terrorist groups have been trying to buy, build, or steal nuclear weapons, and in the last two decades, there have been at least 25 instances of nuclear explosive materials being lost or stolen.
The two presidents -- the first to ever jointly commit the U.S. and Russia to work for the elimination of all nuclear weapons worldwide -- declared that they had "agreed to pursue new and verifiable reductions in [their] strategic offensive arsenals in a step-by-step process . . .”
In her praise for Barack's position, Queen Noor, often criticized for not wearing a hijab, the traditional head scarf worn by women of Muslim faith, a religion and culture that also finds women shaking hands as taboo, makes no mention of the bow.
Around the globe, government and citizen leaders understand this. The content and view of his actions in world capitals is at odds with the American perception that his gesture implied obeisance.
Actually, it was Obama being Obama. He loves the quip, the vocal repartee, the exaggerated gesture, the grand overture, he is playful and mocking of symbols that he believes are empty of meaning. His essence, core, and substance come into play when he makes decisions, and Obama relishes the tough call.
I, for one, believe, imperial notions of American power and pomp need to end. Just as the social and legal rules that denied women the right to vote and denied equal opportunity have been banished. Just as its okay to work in the White House in shirt sleeves.
Rules based on intimidation and power flexing have no place in modern diplomacy.
In fact, a Nigerian pundit, Okello Oculi, writing in the Abuja Daily Trust, called Obama a “charm weapon, a diplomatic warrior.” He went on to say: “The very sprouting of Obama himself into America's presidency [begins] a dawn of hope for change, not only for Americans but for a world citizenry disgusted with arrogant criminality and morally blind impunity.”
This change of tone is an important first step to re-asserting American leadership.
Another report read, “Clearly the big stories coming out of the Trinidad Summit revolve around what is being called a “new beginning” for US relations with the hemisphere, particularly with Latin American states.”
Chinaview.com quoted one Latin American leader as saying, “the summit successfully led to a new atmosphere."
Barack's cool has given him enormous street-cred, at home and abroad. Another story offers compelling evidence of how Barack's greetings and his coolness under fire has been internalized into the behavior of inner city youth.
In Albany, NY, Sam Fullwood at Politico.com reports, middle school African-American males are peer-correcting each others behavior with the phase, “Barack's in the house.” Imagine the former extremes to which this same group might carry issues of respect for symbolic slights.
For the first time in more than a decade, the cultural connection that these young male students have with Barack has reduced the perception that “respect” is a value that must be aggressively defended at all costs, and that power is the ultimate expression and prized possession of the strongest, most intransient, unbendable will. Achievement and appropriate conduct, including reducing fights and confrontations, are the new peer generated goals. This shift in values among school aged youth is an extraordinary gain—directly connected to Barack's style.
"I believe we'll likely see a positive evolution in the relations between the United States and Latin America. It is possible to create a new dynamic of partnership and contribution," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said afterward.
While we are making the world safe for democracy, we must be careful about being attached blindly to the old ways; moving forward, Americans must not continue habits and beliefs that place us among our own worst enemies. Let's re-examine our moral intuition.
In essence, what we have to gain is far more than what we appear to be giving up.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found food for thought.
Walter Rhett posts Southern Perlo from Kudu Coffee in Charleston, SC. A Perlo is rice with local bounty, enjoyed by all. By its witness, Southern Perlo, in print and photos, connects the American experience and builds a global heritage. Please, stir the perlo, add your spice; leave a comment below.
Southern Perlo supports Water Missions International, providing safe water to more than a million people in 40 countries, at firstgiving.com.
For persons and nations, history offers clear insights and examples of rules challenged and broken to bring about greater freedom and progress. Obama breach of the old rules is not do to ineptness, defiance, or indifference—or inexperience. Instead, his actions are part of his clear pattern of redefining the symbols and signals of American power to enhance and extend its reach and influence by a new matrix. More than any other American leader,
Obama is comfortable with power, and uses its trappings to serve purposes beyond previous limits. Obama willingly fits his actions into the new international framework; he has the keen good sense to see opportunities and prosperity for America on all shores.
In looking at the old standards and assessing change, it is important to separate appearance from actual essence, signals from real substance, form from bonafided content, puffery from sincerity. The current moral intuition of America is strongly tied to appearances. But Barack's instincts take him in another direction. He relaxes the elements of imperial behavior that have caged the conduct of American Presidents, court rites, in effect, borrowed from Europe's monarchies.
In doing so, he radically alters the sense of democratic relations and standings among world leaders.
While many at home are shocked by the bow or the smiling handshake, world leaders saw the gesture in a different light. By stepping down, Obama was actually stepping up. He signaled not weakness or disrespect, but began a new phrase of American national conduct: one of open regard; problem-solving rather than mischief-making, exchanging mutual dialogue rather than mongering in power. Simply, it's the carrot rather than the stick.
Obama is creating a new nuance in American foreign policy, separating his actions and personal gestures in meetings and conferences from his executive actsas head of state. It is a tactic Bill Richardson used successfully in international negotiation and one Ollie North attempted to use when he flew to Tehran, personally carrying a Bible and a key-shaped chocolate cake for the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in a deal in which President Reagan ended up swapping guns for hostages, sending the Iraqis more than $8 million in missiles.
The difference is Obama is President, and is skilled in the politics of personal statecraft and is willing to break with conventions to advance his policy goals. And he has not offered any regime a thin dime. Don't think the world is laughing. They, are, in fact, applauding.
McClatchy Newspapers reports:
“Obama returned from his first trip overseas Tuesday confident of at least one thing: He had managed to put his face indelibly on American foreign policy for much of the rest of the world.
Using personal diplomacy to advance his broad policy goals, Obama charted a new course as he moved rapidly across the continent, attending three summits, visiting six countries and meeting at least 15 foreign leaders, wrapping up with a surprise visit to Iraq on Tuesday.
Everywhere he went, Obama was a figure of fascination to foreign leaders eager to take his measure, as well as to everyday citizens.
"It was so easy to work with him," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said.
"He's a great, great man," said Elisabeth Vogel, a teacher from Colmar, France, who came to see Obama when he appeared in nearby Strasbourg.
"Obama No. 1," said a broadly smiling taxi driver in Istanbul, flashing a thumbs up.
Jordan's Queen Noor acknowledges and supports the potential global impact of Obama's new direction, fully endorsing Obama's commitment to ending the spread of nuclear weapons.
“I, and all of the 100-plus leaders of Global Zero, are thrilled that Presidents Obama and Medvedev are demonstrating bold and historic leadership on this agenda, and taking an approach that is fully in line with the plan we presented at the launch of Global Zero in December 2008.”
Queen Noor goes on to say: Today, nine countries have more than 23,000 nuclear weapons. Terrorist groups have been trying to buy, build, or steal nuclear weapons, and in the last two decades, there have been at least 25 instances of nuclear explosive materials being lost or stolen.
The two presidents -- the first to ever jointly commit the U.S. and Russia to work for the elimination of all nuclear weapons worldwide -- declared that they had "agreed to pursue new and verifiable reductions in [their] strategic offensive arsenals in a step-by-step process . . .”
In her praise for Barack's position, Queen Noor, often criticized for not wearing a hijab, the traditional head scarf worn by women of Muslim faith, a religion and culture that also finds women shaking hands as taboo, makes no mention of the bow.
Around the globe, government and citizen leaders understand this. The content and view of his actions in world capitals is at odds with the American perception that his gesture implied obeisance.
Actually, it was Obama being Obama. He loves the quip, the vocal repartee, the exaggerated gesture, the grand overture, he is playful and mocking of symbols that he believes are empty of meaning. His essence, core, and substance come into play when he makes decisions, and Obama relishes the tough call.
I, for one, believe, imperial notions of American power and pomp need to end. Just as the social and legal rules that denied women the right to vote and denied equal opportunity have been banished. Just as its okay to work in the White House in shirt sleeves.
Rules based on intimidation and power flexing have no place in modern diplomacy.
In fact, a Nigerian pundit, Okello Oculi, writing in the Abuja Daily Trust, called Obama a “charm weapon, a diplomatic warrior.” He went on to say: “The very sprouting of Obama himself into America's presidency [begins] a dawn of hope for change, not only for Americans but for a world citizenry disgusted with arrogant criminality and morally blind impunity.”
This change of tone is an important first step to re-asserting American leadership.
Another report read, “Clearly the big stories coming out of the Trinidad Summit revolve around what is being called a “new beginning” for US relations with the hemisphere, particularly with Latin American states.”
Chinaview.com quoted one Latin American leader as saying, “the summit successfully led to a new atmosphere."
Barack's cool has given him enormous street-cred, at home and abroad. Another story offers compelling evidence of how Barack's greetings and his coolness under fire has been internalized into the behavior of inner city youth.
In Albany, NY, Sam Fullwood at Politico.com reports, middle school African-American males are peer-correcting each others behavior with the phase, “Barack's in the house.” Imagine the former extremes to which this same group might carry issues of respect for symbolic slights.
For the first time in more than a decade, the cultural connection that these young male students have with Barack has reduced the perception that “respect” is a value that must be aggressively defended at all costs, and that power is the ultimate expression and prized possession of the strongest, most intransient, unbendable will. Achievement and appropriate conduct, including reducing fights and confrontations, are the new peer generated goals. This shift in values among school aged youth is an extraordinary gain—directly connected to Barack's style.
"I believe we'll likely see a positive evolution in the relations between the United States and Latin America. It is possible to create a new dynamic of partnership and contribution," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said afterward.
While we are making the world safe for democracy, we must be careful about being attached blindly to the old ways; moving forward, Americans must not continue habits and beliefs that place us among our own worst enemies. Let's re-examine our moral intuition.
In essence, what we have to gain is far more than what we appear to be giving up.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found food for thought.
Walter Rhett posts Southern Perlo from Kudu Coffee in Charleston, SC. A Perlo is rice with local bounty, enjoyed by all. By its witness, Southern Perlo, in print and photos, connects the American experience and builds a global heritage. Please, stir the perlo, add your spice; leave a comment below.
Southern Perlo supports Water Missions International, providing safe water to more than a million people in 40 countries, at firstgiving.com.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Tea Leaves and Smiling Handshakes: How Newt Gingrich Missed the Message
I am often called “old school,” and I agree. I keep alive a tradition in my writing that writers must be committed to the truth as they know it. That writers, use reason and experience, take words, and craft ideas to evaluate the acts and ideas of others. That writers compare, analyze, and argue about dramatic changes that, underneath, are often simple common sense. In this tradition, writers provide evidence when they take a point of view. As a member of the old school, I thrive to offer concrete examples. History is my supply chain, writing is my weapon; you, the reader, assess my aim.
In my old school calling, the purpose of writing is to lead to new and wider human choices, a more noble sense of freedom, and the banishment of nonsense as a frivolous waste of time.
Today, in writing about the “smiling handshake” between Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, I want to achieve all three.
Let's begin first with the nonsense. I agree with Newt Gingrich that leaders must speak out with forceful courage, but when he opened his mouth, I see clear evidence, in history and by analogy, that Newt's point of view is more misleading and harmful than the handshake between Obama and Chavez that Newt stridently slammed. Newt called the handclasp “the wrong signal.” He said he was “not for deluding [himself] by handshakes and smiles.” Oh? Not deluded? Nonsense. Newt was completely tricked.
Newt, a former Speaker of the House and member of Congress from Georgia, asked rhetorically how a Head of State can greet warmly a dictator who repeatedly calls for the destruction of the other's country and makes quips that blast and disrespect its leadership? That smiling handshake, according to Newt, will become propaganda to suggest that Chavez's views and insults are magnanimous and legitimate in the court of world opinion and in the central yards, courtyards, and porches of the global masses.
Newt contends the shake acknowledged the Latin despot, Hugo Chavez, and will lead to his distorted views about America being accepted and commonplace in world opinion. The handshake symbolizes our acquiescence and acceptance of Hugo Chavez's invectives, negatives, and political mission.
First, the evidence of history, especially in looking at diplomacy, tells a different story. And history has the weight of truth.
Ah, Hitler. European indulged his aggression instead of acting decisively. True. But Hitler went to war; he moved troops, conquered nations, directed air strikes and tanks. History since then, in Bosnia, Rwanda, Georgia, and Israel, has pointed out that military expeditions must be met with firm, rapid and unwavering responses.
Will the smiling handshake lead to a grab for power, an armed invasion, a massing of troops to cross national borders, a dramatic shift in American strategic interests? No. Military actions are not “signaled” by handshakes; any leader who views a smile as a “strategic” or symbolic weakness is deluding himself.
But Chavez's words have rightly angered many Americans. Does the handshake meaning we accept, even symbolically, his disrespect? No. No more than a teacher accepts a student into a classroom the next day who was fighting and cursing, and yelling epithets at authority figures. No. No more than political opponents, including Gingrich, who label their domestic adversaries as “socialist,” or suggest that opponents were “sowing the seeds of hatred,” or pals “with terrorists,” or possess a desperate hope for current policies “to fail.” No. Although Chavez has called America “the biggest menace of the planet,” that “capitalism leads straight to hell,” and claims his “assassination is cheaper than an invasion.” Chavez has also said, “the axis of evil is Washington,” and on 9/11,“US imperial power planned and carried out this terrible attack against its own people.” He called Obama an ignoramus.
No one accuses Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, of being a wise man or careful with words. He craves attention. He pursues it relentlessly, by good and bad ends.
As the Peck's bad boy of statecraft, Chavez is a braggart, a blowhard, an idiot and class clown who seeks legitimacy through mischievous behavior. And Chavez will find none through his non-conforming political insults and taunts unless we in America give it to him by our reaction to his antics.
Don't engage the erstwhile bully. Don't show an obsession and thin skin. Don't make it obvious that Chavez has touched a nerve or gotten under the veneer. Don't govern in anger. Instead, ignore Chavez. Smother him with kindness, thereby outrageously exposing and rendering him ineffective by contrast. Be loose, but stay firm. Reveal by the example of courtesy and regard, Chavez's belittling and silliness for what it is.
I say, shake the hand, make the contrast. It can not be, by any stretch of mind, to endorse Chavez's insane views.
In fact, a number of historical examples are evidence for this approach. In Charleston, during the Revolutionary War, Mrs. Rebecca Motte hosted a thank you dinner for British and American officers who helped put out a fire at her plantation house. Despite her unwavering support of the American fight for liberty, her even-handedness toward the enemy and offer of hospitality to friend and foe won her the honor of being the namesake for Charleston's chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
But Gingrich angrily resents Obama's breach of the unwritten American rules of statecraft: silence and the back of your hand to your enemies. For Gingrich, Obama overstepped.
In Gingrich's criticism and in his logic is a hidden idea.
History lets us pull out this hidden idea. Statecraft's source of prescribed conduct is borrowed from European states led by Monarchs. The rules have been passed down from the times when Kings and Queens ruled the Western world. In the old days, the breach of the arcane labyrith of rules could enrage a Sovereign and result in a beheading, the lost of status, a forfeit of priviledge, or banishment. Kings and Queens often used imidation and fear as weapons. In monarch states, fear was a healthy sign of respect.
Newt brings this royal mindset and sense of the imperial presence into modern times. He seeks to continue its ancient role in modern-day diplomacy.
Yet the current groups that keep this tradition alive are gansters, too many legions of inner city youth, and a few dictators. For many gangsters, dictators, and lost youths, the failure to show deference or fear, justifies an aggressive indifference, and sometimes agression.
This is the heart of Newt's position. He embraces the same views as who demand “props” by increasing tension, isolation, and threats until others break in fear. His criticism implies to win election to the highest national office is to “jump in” a code of behavior that the Head of State is honor bound to maintain, lest the national “rep” be tarnished and the other “gangs/nations” get the wrong signal. He seeks to have the US pursue and aggressive indifference.
Casually thumbing through history provides abundant credible evidence that the Ginrich “rule” of statecraft, emplyed by monarchs, gangs, and dictators has been violated many times for good means and with good results.
Northern Ireland experienced a historic handshake of unity between Ian Paisley and Bertie Ahern in 2007.
Ronald Reagan shook hands with Mikhail Gorbachev, and the cold war ended. But at the time, a
Soviet leader had pounded a shoe on a New York UN conference table, promising America “we will bury you,” and the Soviet Union had tried to install missles in Cuba, and had 1000s of megaton nuclear warheads pointed at America, ready to launch.
Begin and Sadat shook hands and earned a Nobel Prize when they crafted a peace accord.
Lincoln extended extraordinary courtesies to family members from territories in rebellion. A member of Charleston's Middleton family received a handwritten pass to ensure her safety travel through troop lines.
Henry Kissinger and China's Chou En Lai shook hands and opened the door to this once coummunist arch-enemy becoming America's largest trading partner.
Nelson Mandela and F. W. De Klerk's 1992 handshake on Mr. Mandela's release from 26 years of solatary imprisonment on Robben Island marked a new chapter in South African history, when soon after, Mr. Mandela becoming the country's first universally elected African leader.
Lee and Grant's handshake at Appomattox ended a war that had left America a house divided, and begin the healing of America into one nation.
Other handshakes rocked the status quo: Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi ('04), Kim Jong-Il and Kim Dae-Jung ('00), Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak ('93), and Ireland's Gerry Adams and Bill Clinton ('95).
Only Donald Rumsfeld's handshake with Saadam Hussein is seen to have backfired.
And with the exception of Lee-Grant, Mandela-De Kerk, or Sadat-Begin, none of these handshakes, including Obama-Chavez, led to a transfer of power, or a re-assignment of policy or authority, or confused the world community about the policies, stands, and strategic interests the disparate leaders pursued.
Thirdly, seen from the Venezulan side, history again weighs in, and creates a shudder about Newt's position. From the Venezulan view, motives and issues go far beyond indignation about appearances, inappropiate signals, and the proper trappings of power. Seen plainly from the Venezulan side is a huge trap that Newt, and former Vice President Chaney, Senator Judd Gregg of NH, and Senator John Ensign, NV, in their dark bombast of temper and haste to score political points flat out missed. In their rush to dissent and to enflame public passions, they missed the trap. Not only did they miss it, by their call, they are actually urging the country to go against its strategdic interests!
Like chess, the trap begins with a simple objective and operates on a simple misdirection. Chavez's main ambition is to tighten his grip on domestic power. Ask yourself for a minute, why does Chavez consistently lash out against America? Does this somehow fit into his goal? Do his strident, off-base attacks serve his embedded agenda? Yes. Chavez asserts the nonsense claim that Venezula suffers because the US inflicts Venezula's distress.
Chavez blames the domestic pain on the unseen hand of the corrupt, greed, immoral US, the one described and colored in his rhetoric. He argues the US works against Venezula through his opposition, entering the country through the backdoors of shady subtefuge. Thus justified, this compells Venezula to turn to Chavez with fear and faith in his leadership.
By his own logic, Chavez is the only one with the strength to stand up to and turn back the consuming, insatible, morally blind dragon of the US. Disease epidemic breaks out? The US is conducting biological warfare. Building burns? US agents set the fire. Even Simon Bolivar's death is redefined as American meddling in Latin affairs.
To justify and expand his power, Chavez claims the hand of the CIA, US government, and its proxies in every problem Venezula has, in every attempt by Venezulans to break his stranglehold on power.
Under previous policy, Chavez had the perfect foil. Ignoring him played right into his hand. Untouchable, removed, and unknown, America was feared--and became an easy target for “gringo-baiting.” And Chavez perfected his anti-US rants as his prime means of widening his control of Venezula.
The handshake changed that. What appeared to be outrageous breach actually tamped down the credibility and viability of a dictator inside his own country. The smiling handshake dismantled and defeated his previous strategy. Because Obama wouldn't take the bait, Chavez is now forced to search new scapegoats. Unfortunately, many of those who disagree with him inside Venezula are now the object of his scorn and oppressive actions. But change in Venezula has advanced; that handshake deprived Chavez of one of his major weapons. That handshake was not the wrong signal, it substantially reduced the substance of a tyrant's threat.
Republican Senator Connie Mack, who attended the Summit, issued this statement about the handshake upon his return: “President Obama was right not engage in the theatrics of others and to instead deliver a message that the United States seeks to be a friend, an ally and a partner with all of the people of Latin America.”
But you wouldn't know it, listening to Newt Ginrich.
Thanks for reading! Southern Perlo is posted by Walter Rhett from Kudu Coffee (African coffees and good conversation!), in Charleston, SC. In a Southern voice, it gathers stories to share with local communities, and was recently featured on the Lou Dobbs radio show. Please, stir the Perlo--add your comments below!
In my old school calling, the purpose of writing is to lead to new and wider human choices, a more noble sense of freedom, and the banishment of nonsense as a frivolous waste of time.
Today, in writing about the “smiling handshake” between Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, I want to achieve all three.
Let's begin first with the nonsense. I agree with Newt Gingrich that leaders must speak out with forceful courage, but when he opened his mouth, I see clear evidence, in history and by analogy, that Newt's point of view is more misleading and harmful than the handshake between Obama and Chavez that Newt stridently slammed. Newt called the handclasp “the wrong signal.” He said he was “not for deluding [himself] by handshakes and smiles.” Oh? Not deluded? Nonsense. Newt was completely tricked.
Newt, a former Speaker of the House and member of Congress from Georgia, asked rhetorically how a Head of State can greet warmly a dictator who repeatedly calls for the destruction of the other's country and makes quips that blast and disrespect its leadership? That smiling handshake, according to Newt, will become propaganda to suggest that Chavez's views and insults are magnanimous and legitimate in the court of world opinion and in the central yards, courtyards, and porches of the global masses.
Newt contends the shake acknowledged the Latin despot, Hugo Chavez, and will lead to his distorted views about America being accepted and commonplace in world opinion. The handshake symbolizes our acquiescence and acceptance of Hugo Chavez's invectives, negatives, and political mission.
First, the evidence of history, especially in looking at diplomacy, tells a different story. And history has the weight of truth.
Ah, Hitler. European indulged his aggression instead of acting decisively. True. But Hitler went to war; he moved troops, conquered nations, directed air strikes and tanks. History since then, in Bosnia, Rwanda, Georgia, and Israel, has pointed out that military expeditions must be met with firm, rapid and unwavering responses.
Will the smiling handshake lead to a grab for power, an armed invasion, a massing of troops to cross national borders, a dramatic shift in American strategic interests? No. Military actions are not “signaled” by handshakes; any leader who views a smile as a “strategic” or symbolic weakness is deluding himself.
But Chavez's words have rightly angered many Americans. Does the handshake meaning we accept, even symbolically, his disrespect? No. No more than a teacher accepts a student into a classroom the next day who was fighting and cursing, and yelling epithets at authority figures. No. No more than political opponents, including Gingrich, who label their domestic adversaries as “socialist,” or suggest that opponents were “sowing the seeds of hatred,” or pals “with terrorists,” or possess a desperate hope for current policies “to fail.” No. Although Chavez has called America “the biggest menace of the planet,” that “capitalism leads straight to hell,” and claims his “assassination is cheaper than an invasion.” Chavez has also said, “the axis of evil is Washington,” and on 9/11,“US imperial power planned and carried out this terrible attack against its own people.” He called Obama an ignoramus.
No one accuses Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, of being a wise man or careful with words. He craves attention. He pursues it relentlessly, by good and bad ends.
As the Peck's bad boy of statecraft, Chavez is a braggart, a blowhard, an idiot and class clown who seeks legitimacy through mischievous behavior. And Chavez will find none through his non-conforming political insults and taunts unless we in America give it to him by our reaction to his antics.
Don't engage the erstwhile bully. Don't show an obsession and thin skin. Don't make it obvious that Chavez has touched a nerve or gotten under the veneer. Don't govern in anger. Instead, ignore Chavez. Smother him with kindness, thereby outrageously exposing and rendering him ineffective by contrast. Be loose, but stay firm. Reveal by the example of courtesy and regard, Chavez's belittling and silliness for what it is.
I say, shake the hand, make the contrast. It can not be, by any stretch of mind, to endorse Chavez's insane views.
In fact, a number of historical examples are evidence for this approach. In Charleston, during the Revolutionary War, Mrs. Rebecca Motte hosted a thank you dinner for British and American officers who helped put out a fire at her plantation house. Despite her unwavering support of the American fight for liberty, her even-handedness toward the enemy and offer of hospitality to friend and foe won her the honor of being the namesake for Charleston's chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
But Gingrich angrily resents Obama's breach of the unwritten American rules of statecraft: silence and the back of your hand to your enemies. For Gingrich, Obama overstepped.
In Gingrich's criticism and in his logic is a hidden idea.
History lets us pull out this hidden idea. Statecraft's source of prescribed conduct is borrowed from European states led by Monarchs. The rules have been passed down from the times when Kings and Queens ruled the Western world. In the old days, the breach of the arcane labyrith of rules could enrage a Sovereign and result in a beheading, the lost of status, a forfeit of priviledge, or banishment. Kings and Queens often used imidation and fear as weapons. In monarch states, fear was a healthy sign of respect.
Newt brings this royal mindset and sense of the imperial presence into modern times. He seeks to continue its ancient role in modern-day diplomacy.
Yet the current groups that keep this tradition alive are gansters, too many legions of inner city youth, and a few dictators. For many gangsters, dictators, and lost youths, the failure to show deference or fear, justifies an aggressive indifference, and sometimes agression.
This is the heart of Newt's position. He embraces the same views as who demand “props” by increasing tension, isolation, and threats until others break in fear. His criticism implies to win election to the highest national office is to “jump in” a code of behavior that the Head of State is honor bound to maintain, lest the national “rep” be tarnished and the other “gangs/nations” get the wrong signal. He seeks to have the US pursue and aggressive indifference.
Casually thumbing through history provides abundant credible evidence that the Ginrich “rule” of statecraft, emplyed by monarchs, gangs, and dictators has been violated many times for good means and with good results.
Northern Ireland experienced a historic handshake of unity between Ian Paisley and Bertie Ahern in 2007.
Ronald Reagan shook hands with Mikhail Gorbachev, and the cold war ended. But at the time, a
Soviet leader had pounded a shoe on a New York UN conference table, promising America “we will bury you,” and the Soviet Union had tried to install missles in Cuba, and had 1000s of megaton nuclear warheads pointed at America, ready to launch.
Begin and Sadat shook hands and earned a Nobel Prize when they crafted a peace accord.
Lincoln extended extraordinary courtesies to family members from territories in rebellion. A member of Charleston's Middleton family received a handwritten pass to ensure her safety travel through troop lines.
Henry Kissinger and China's Chou En Lai shook hands and opened the door to this once coummunist arch-enemy becoming America's largest trading partner.
Nelson Mandela and F. W. De Klerk's 1992 handshake on Mr. Mandela's release from 26 years of solatary imprisonment on Robben Island marked a new chapter in South African history, when soon after, Mr. Mandela becoming the country's first universally elected African leader.
Lee and Grant's handshake at Appomattox ended a war that had left America a house divided, and begin the healing of America into one nation.
Other handshakes rocked the status quo: Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi ('04), Kim Jong-Il and Kim Dae-Jung ('00), Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak ('93), and Ireland's Gerry Adams and Bill Clinton ('95).
Only Donald Rumsfeld's handshake with Saadam Hussein is seen to have backfired.
And with the exception of Lee-Grant, Mandela-De Kerk, or Sadat-Begin, none of these handshakes, including Obama-Chavez, led to a transfer of power, or a re-assignment of policy or authority, or confused the world community about the policies, stands, and strategic interests the disparate leaders pursued.
Thirdly, seen from the Venezulan side, history again weighs in, and creates a shudder about Newt's position. From the Venezulan view, motives and issues go far beyond indignation about appearances, inappropiate signals, and the proper trappings of power. Seen plainly from the Venezulan side is a huge trap that Newt, and former Vice President Chaney, Senator Judd Gregg of NH, and Senator John Ensign, NV, in their dark bombast of temper and haste to score political points flat out missed. In their rush to dissent and to enflame public passions, they missed the trap. Not only did they miss it, by their call, they are actually urging the country to go against its strategdic interests!
Like chess, the trap begins with a simple objective and operates on a simple misdirection. Chavez's main ambition is to tighten his grip on domestic power. Ask yourself for a minute, why does Chavez consistently lash out against America? Does this somehow fit into his goal? Do his strident, off-base attacks serve his embedded agenda? Yes. Chavez asserts the nonsense claim that Venezula suffers because the US inflicts Venezula's distress.
Chavez blames the domestic pain on the unseen hand of the corrupt, greed, immoral US, the one described and colored in his rhetoric. He argues the US works against Venezula through his opposition, entering the country through the backdoors of shady subtefuge. Thus justified, this compells Venezula to turn to Chavez with fear and faith in his leadership.
By his own logic, Chavez is the only one with the strength to stand up to and turn back the consuming, insatible, morally blind dragon of the US. Disease epidemic breaks out? The US is conducting biological warfare. Building burns? US agents set the fire. Even Simon Bolivar's death is redefined as American meddling in Latin affairs.
To justify and expand his power, Chavez claims the hand of the CIA, US government, and its proxies in every problem Venezula has, in every attempt by Venezulans to break his stranglehold on power.
Under previous policy, Chavez had the perfect foil. Ignoring him played right into his hand. Untouchable, removed, and unknown, America was feared--and became an easy target for “gringo-baiting.” And Chavez perfected his anti-US rants as his prime means of widening his control of Venezula.
The handshake changed that. What appeared to be outrageous breach actually tamped down the credibility and viability of a dictator inside his own country. The smiling handshake dismantled and defeated his previous strategy. Because Obama wouldn't take the bait, Chavez is now forced to search new scapegoats. Unfortunately, many of those who disagree with him inside Venezula are now the object of his scorn and oppressive actions. But change in Venezula has advanced; that handshake deprived Chavez of one of his major weapons. That handshake was not the wrong signal, it substantially reduced the substance of a tyrant's threat.
Republican Senator Connie Mack, who attended the Summit, issued this statement about the handshake upon his return: “President Obama was right not engage in the theatrics of others and to instead deliver a message that the United States seeks to be a friend, an ally and a partner with all of the people of Latin America.”
But you wouldn't know it, listening to Newt Ginrich.
Thanks for reading! Southern Perlo is posted by Walter Rhett from Kudu Coffee (African coffees and good conversation!), in Charleston, SC. In a Southern voice, it gathers stories to share with local communities, and was recently featured on the Lou Dobbs radio show. Please, stir the Perlo--add your comments below!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
மாஸ்டர் வொர்க்ஸ்: த மிச்சிச்சிப்பி போடோக்ரப்ஸ் ஒப் டோரோதேபட்ட லங்கே, 1937
4th of July, 1937; Hillhouse, Mississippi
Two photographs taken in Mississippi in 1937 by one of America's photography masters lay in the Library of Congress archives for half a century. Today, I am proud to present these two photographs. I am excited about the remarkable story these two pictures tell.
Dorothea Lange, a woman trained as a portrait photographer in New York and who apprenticed with prominent society photographers, was the photographer for these two environmental portraits. Born Dorothea Nutzhorn in 1895, as a child she changed her name to her mother's maiden name after her father left and her parents were divorced. Two of her five photos of a Mississippi woman are overlooked master works.
A Sharecropper's Family that moved to Mississippi, 1937
Dorothea Lange took the long road to Mississippi. She traveled west to San Francisco in 1918, and opened a successful portrait studio, married a painter and gave birth to two boys. In 1935, she divorced. She married a economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and as the Great Depression drew near, she begin to make photographic images that documented the impact of the economy on daily lives of her subjects. Her photographs of human character find people on the edge of survival, working in poverty, standing in meal lines, alone, with their family, or in groups. Their faces are a deep study of the impact of these conditions.
A Sharecropper from Issaquena County, MS
In 1936, Dorothea Lange was hired by the federal government's Farm Security Administration's Office of War Information to travel across the South documenting a rural America. When she got to Mississippi, she photographed the sharecroppers and agriculture of the Delta. Her eye connected the relationships of work to living through the simple mechanism of image and composition. She raised these two photographic techniques to an art which at its best, is still surpassed.
Negro Children, Mississippi Delta, 1936
As a photographer, she waited on each story to appear in the faces before her lens. For Dorothea Lange, sharing was a natural action, and she valued what was within. She was not interested in matching her images to variations of external social ideals. She waited until her subjects' faces got past the apparent doom, relaxed from the usual cliches ,and finally opened a window to her and her camera that offered an inner glimpse into the expressions and emotions held dear in their inner heart. Working with spare back drops of natural settings, a porch or a field, her photos are careful documents of the hardships and hopes that lived and collided within her subjects. Her images somehow acquire and preserve an inner strength and vulnerability. Her photos are a window to the inner grace of her subjects, presenting the dignity of their real selves as they face the camera for all to see.
I think two of her best examples of image and composition are of a Mississippi women who was a field hand, working as a sharecropper in the Delta, that Lange photographed in 1937. This unnamed women has five images in the Library of Congress archives of Lange's photographs. I was absolutely astounded when I found them. Together they tell a story heard but rarely seen. Photos of Negro sharecroppers , often idyllic and stereotyped, many times expressed the values of outside views of the people and their work. Lange sought out the inner character of the persons photographed. But Lange also took herself out of the way. She knew how to look for the dignity and real vulnerability within everyone; she knew each person was a hero with a 1,000 faces, and she went beyond preconceptions to capture that moment in which the person emerged unique. She reveled in what she had not seen before. She abandoned formula or familiarity, sparked by the emerging difference that offered a look unseen before. She knew when she had this elusive quality: her photos are one with this transcendent moment.
Traveling Highway 1, 1938
The Mississippi woman she photographs offers two extraordinary instances of Lange's gifts.
First is a picture of the woman sitting alone on her porch in a wooden ladder back chair. The woman, a farm worker and sharecropper, “chops” cotton; she uses a long handled hoe to weed and turn the soil in cotton fields. She is skille in "hoe culture." She was born, by her own words, “two years before the surrender,” (the end of the Civil War in 1865). Photograph in 1937, she is likely 84 years old. Like other people Lange photographed, she is unnamed and no located is noted.
The wooden slated or cane-backed ladder chair in which she sits was the most common piece of furniture on rural porches. In the South, and in many rural locales, porches served as outdoor living rooms. From the porch, the sun cast its colors of pink and rose, leaves fell, dust rolled into the wind, wind played across the skin, and the changing light and its display of textures and signaled the swift, silent passage of time.
Master Work: A Portrait of an 84 year old Mississippi Woman
Lange's photograph elevates the chair. Its straight back rail is at an offset angle to the vertical boards rising like timbers, towering above the sitting 84 year old woman. The chair is a throne more than a place of rest. It is a fixture exalted by its function. Its special role is to be a gathering place. Sitting here, the elder woman offers silent, contemplative thanks for the immeasurable gifts of life given by an immeasurable God whose hand and will wrote the sky and colors and trees and fields seen by her living eye, restored her peace after troubles and calmed her fears, and gave her the health and strength she feels within. Look carefully at her face: her eyes are looking within; this wonder is almost too much to contemplate. Her hand supports the weight of this glorious knowledge, this lived experience.
Each day the woman sits in this chair knowing that God calls to her. Her face is etched with a light filled with bright love. She is seeing something that belongs only to her. Dust, hard work, and weariness can not diminish this place she has entered. In fact, the journey to this place is a praise song deep in the soul. This elder woman has worked and earned a living turning the ground with a long handled hoe. Her real earning shows in the promise of her face, her hand touching her cheek to affirm that this presence that stirs within her is as real as the ground she works. Yet Lange's composition makes this photo work: she photographs the woman from the side, allowing the viewer to look in. She subtly uses wood, the chair and the long, vertical house boards (rising out of view of the photo) to call to mind the altar chair in a church. Her composition frames and presents this woman's story.
The second shot is deceptive and its features easy to miss. It looks like the stereotypes often associated with this era, but close inspection offers a profound difference. This women, by her own words, born “two years before the surrender,” in 1863; in 1937, she is 84 years old!
At 84, she poses as a life-long, proud farm worker, a skilled laborer, knowing both how to tend a crop from planting to harvest, but also knowing, from long experience, how to preserve her body from the wear of sun and hand labor. Back and neck muscles and worn-out arthritic bones have often put others out to pasture, but she proudly is going on. Smiling, looking straight into the camera, her face expresses her easy confidence, a fierce pride, a lifelong way-making. This second portrait is taken at work rest.
Master Work: Portrait at Work Rest of an 84 unnamed Mississippi Woman,A Sharecropper skilled in "hoe culture," "born two years before the surrender."
The details of her long success are in the details of her stance. Her thin frame is at an angle to the hoe. The angle offsets the pulling action of chopping by torquing the pull. As she chops the ground and pulls the hoe to turn the soil, her body twists from her lower back, hips, and thighs. In fact, by the portrait, her action works exactly like a modern rotary tiller, whose curves blades lift and spin the soil—in exactly the same way she does with with the pose of her body!
Her head is elevated, raised from the neck. Keeping her neck up and her head raised staves off the painful onslaught of arthritic that field workers who bent their necks and dropped their heads suffer from.
But the signature adaption she has made is easy to miss. Look carefully at her right hand. Her palm is turned out. Her thumb is below her fingers. Pulling out prevents the muscles and tendons from becoming sore and uses the shoulder and back to pull the load as her lower back swings around, using her legs and thighs to complete the action.
This portrait is a brilliant photograph. It is an anthropological study of advanced farm worker's techniques. (I can find no other photograph of workers before or after the civil war photographed in a similar pose, showing similar techniques.)
I am glad to share both photographs with you. Enjoy this remarkable story, connecting the American experience, told by two woman, one whose life touched the 1861 war, experienced freedom as an infant, and hoed the cotton fields of the rural Mississippi Delta; the other, a polio survior, a society photographer who lived in large cities; both collaborating on a July day in 1937, before and behind a camera set up in the Delta to make these lasting images.
Sharecropper's Home, 10 Miles from Jackson, 1937
All photographs by Dorothea Lange from the Library of Congress (available with no known restrictions).
Thanks for reading! Southern Perlo is posted by Walter Rhett from Kudu Coffee (African coffees and good conversation!), in Charleston, SC. In a Southern voice, it gathers stories to share with local communities, and was recently featured on the Lou Dobbs radio show. (A Perlo is rice enriched by local bounty, carefully crafted to enhance its pleasure and value; enjoyed by all.) You may create a permalink to Southern Perlo by clicking the permalink button. And please, stir the Perlo--below, add your comments! And thank you, Monica!
Two photographs taken in Mississippi in 1937 by one of America's photography masters lay in the Library of Congress archives for half a century. Today, I am proud to present these two photographs. I am excited about the remarkable story these two pictures tell.
Dorothea Lange, a woman trained as a portrait photographer in New York and who apprenticed with prominent society photographers, was the photographer for these two environmental portraits. Born Dorothea Nutzhorn in 1895, as a child she changed her name to her mother's maiden name after her father left and her parents were divorced. Two of her five photos of a Mississippi woman are overlooked master works.
A Sharecropper's Family that moved to Mississippi, 1937
Dorothea Lange took the long road to Mississippi. She traveled west to San Francisco in 1918, and opened a successful portrait studio, married a painter and gave birth to two boys. In 1935, she divorced. She married a economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and as the Great Depression drew near, she begin to make photographic images that documented the impact of the economy on daily lives of her subjects. Her photographs of human character find people on the edge of survival, working in poverty, standing in meal lines, alone, with their family, or in groups. Their faces are a deep study of the impact of these conditions.
A Sharecropper from Issaquena County, MS
In 1936, Dorothea Lange was hired by the federal government's Farm Security Administration's Office of War Information to travel across the South documenting a rural America. When she got to Mississippi, she photographed the sharecroppers and agriculture of the Delta. Her eye connected the relationships of work to living through the simple mechanism of image and composition. She raised these two photographic techniques to an art which at its best, is still surpassed.
Negro Children, Mississippi Delta, 1936
As a photographer, she waited on each story to appear in the faces before her lens. For Dorothea Lange, sharing was a natural action, and she valued what was within. She was not interested in matching her images to variations of external social ideals. She waited until her subjects' faces got past the apparent doom, relaxed from the usual cliches ,and finally opened a window to her and her camera that offered an inner glimpse into the expressions and emotions held dear in their inner heart. Working with spare back drops of natural settings, a porch or a field, her photos are careful documents of the hardships and hopes that lived and collided within her subjects. Her images somehow acquire and preserve an inner strength and vulnerability. Her photos are a window to the inner grace of her subjects, presenting the dignity of their real selves as they face the camera for all to see.
I think two of her best examples of image and composition are of a Mississippi women who was a field hand, working as a sharecropper in the Delta, that Lange photographed in 1937. This unnamed women has five images in the Library of Congress archives of Lange's photographs. I was absolutely astounded when I found them. Together they tell a story heard but rarely seen. Photos of Negro sharecroppers , often idyllic and stereotyped, many times expressed the values of outside views of the people and their work. Lange sought out the inner character of the persons photographed. But Lange also took herself out of the way. She knew how to look for the dignity and real vulnerability within everyone; she knew each person was a hero with a 1,000 faces, and she went beyond preconceptions to capture that moment in which the person emerged unique. She reveled in what she had not seen before. She abandoned formula or familiarity, sparked by the emerging difference that offered a look unseen before. She knew when she had this elusive quality: her photos are one with this transcendent moment.
Traveling Highway 1, 1938
The Mississippi woman she photographs offers two extraordinary instances of Lange's gifts.
First is a picture of the woman sitting alone on her porch in a wooden ladder back chair. The woman, a farm worker and sharecropper, “chops” cotton; she uses a long handled hoe to weed and turn the soil in cotton fields. She is skille in "hoe culture." She was born, by her own words, “two years before the surrender,” (the end of the Civil War in 1865). Photograph in 1937, she is likely 84 years old. Like other people Lange photographed, she is unnamed and no located is noted.
The wooden slated or cane-backed ladder chair in which she sits was the most common piece of furniture on rural porches. In the South, and in many rural locales, porches served as outdoor living rooms. From the porch, the sun cast its colors of pink and rose, leaves fell, dust rolled into the wind, wind played across the skin, and the changing light and its display of textures and signaled the swift, silent passage of time.
Master Work: A Portrait of an 84 year old Mississippi Woman
Lange's photograph elevates the chair. Its straight back rail is at an offset angle to the vertical boards rising like timbers, towering above the sitting 84 year old woman. The chair is a throne more than a place of rest. It is a fixture exalted by its function. Its special role is to be a gathering place. Sitting here, the elder woman offers silent, contemplative thanks for the immeasurable gifts of life given by an immeasurable God whose hand and will wrote the sky and colors and trees and fields seen by her living eye, restored her peace after troubles and calmed her fears, and gave her the health and strength she feels within. Look carefully at her face: her eyes are looking within; this wonder is almost too much to contemplate. Her hand supports the weight of this glorious knowledge, this lived experience.
Each day the woman sits in this chair knowing that God calls to her. Her face is etched with a light filled with bright love. She is seeing something that belongs only to her. Dust, hard work, and weariness can not diminish this place she has entered. In fact, the journey to this place is a praise song deep in the soul. This elder woman has worked and earned a living turning the ground with a long handled hoe. Her real earning shows in the promise of her face, her hand touching her cheek to affirm that this presence that stirs within her is as real as the ground she works. Yet Lange's composition makes this photo work: she photographs the woman from the side, allowing the viewer to look in. She subtly uses wood, the chair and the long, vertical house boards (rising out of view of the photo) to call to mind the altar chair in a church. Her composition frames and presents this woman's story.
The second shot is deceptive and its features easy to miss. It looks like the stereotypes often associated with this era, but close inspection offers a profound difference. This women, by her own words, born “two years before the surrender,” in 1863; in 1937, she is 84 years old!
At 84, she poses as a life-long, proud farm worker, a skilled laborer, knowing both how to tend a crop from planting to harvest, but also knowing, from long experience, how to preserve her body from the wear of sun and hand labor. Back and neck muscles and worn-out arthritic bones have often put others out to pasture, but she proudly is going on. Smiling, looking straight into the camera, her face expresses her easy confidence, a fierce pride, a lifelong way-making. This second portrait is taken at work rest.
Master Work: Portrait at Work Rest of an 84 unnamed Mississippi Woman,A Sharecropper skilled in "hoe culture," "born two years before the surrender."
The details of her long success are in the details of her stance. Her thin frame is at an angle to the hoe. The angle offsets the pulling action of chopping by torquing the pull. As she chops the ground and pulls the hoe to turn the soil, her body twists from her lower back, hips, and thighs. In fact, by the portrait, her action works exactly like a modern rotary tiller, whose curves blades lift and spin the soil—in exactly the same way she does with with the pose of her body!
Her head is elevated, raised from the neck. Keeping her neck up and her head raised staves off the painful onslaught of arthritic that field workers who bent their necks and dropped their heads suffer from.
But the signature adaption she has made is easy to miss. Look carefully at her right hand. Her palm is turned out. Her thumb is below her fingers. Pulling out prevents the muscles and tendons from becoming sore and uses the shoulder and back to pull the load as her lower back swings around, using her legs and thighs to complete the action.
This portrait is a brilliant photograph. It is an anthropological study of advanced farm worker's techniques. (I can find no other photograph of workers before or after the civil war photographed in a similar pose, showing similar techniques.)
I am glad to share both photographs with you. Enjoy this remarkable story, connecting the American experience, told by two woman, one whose life touched the 1861 war, experienced freedom as an infant, and hoed the cotton fields of the rural Mississippi Delta; the other, a polio survior, a society photographer who lived in large cities; both collaborating on a July day in 1937, before and behind a camera set up in the Delta to make these lasting images.
Sharecropper's Home, 10 Miles from Jackson, 1937
All photographs by Dorothea Lange from the Library of Congress (available with no known restrictions).
Thanks for reading! Southern Perlo is posted by Walter Rhett from Kudu Coffee (African coffees and good conversation!), in Charleston, SC. In a Southern voice, it gathers stories to share with local communities, and was recently featured on the Lou Dobbs radio show. (A Perlo is rice enriched by local bounty, carefully crafted to enhance its pleasure and value; enjoyed by all.) You may create a permalink to Southern Perlo by clicking the permalink button. And please, stir the Perlo--below, add your comments! And thank you, Monica!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Notes for the History Teller: For the Passing of John Hope Franklin
John Hope Franklin, standing in front of
the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke
I never met John Hope Franklin. But I came to know his warm, affable, slow-moving baritone voice that rippled with life as I read his books and essays, watched his C-SPAN appearances and interviews, or listened to others describe his ideas and his unassuming personality that welcomed and literally touched millions. As a student, I marveled in his devotion and level-headed approach to history. Yesterday, by e-mails forwarded along the web, I found out that John Hope Franklin was dead.
John Hope Franklin grew orchids. He wrote books. He lectured. He taught at many colleges. He was the first African-American to be President of the American Historical Association, one of the first African-American department heads, appointed Chair of the History Department at Brooklyn College. By his own account, as a student at Fisk, he entered the library after hours to have additional time to study and write.
Foremost, John Hope Franklin was a scholar, a man whose quiet research and swift pen found a way to create a history that opened a door for a generation of activists and helped change the way the world viewed the African-American lived experience. His work, without fire or rhetoric, challenged the myths that blocked equality and opportunity. He opened doors undisputably by the quiet gathered force of his scholarship.
His book, From Slavery to Freedom, was an encyclopedia of facts about the African presence in America. His book gave slaves names; it assigned merits, described achievements; his book turned what was once a dark era into a source of proud hope. There in the pages that chronicled America's darkest moments was light and purpose, sweat and systemic thought, laughter and relief, love and faith, children to be rocked and taught, a world to be built.
By his quiet hand, I discovered slaves didn't settle or quit; they resisted even when they appeared to give in, they gathered their wits and step by step marked a path that lead to freedom, and that path had a hundred different directions and dimensions and acts.
John Hope Franklin seemed to know them all. At a time when other historians were arguing that cultural memory and higher order thinking was absent from slave life, that these human features had been broken by the Middle Passage and the “breaking” of the enslaved, John Hope Franklin offered quiet incontrovertable evidence to the contrary. He replaced historical myths with historical realities, one by one. One stone at a time.
John Hope Franklin, his father an Oklahoma lawyer and his mother an elementary school teacher, knew and was friends with the great names of many eras, from W.E.B. DuBois to Martin Luther King, Jr.; from Ralph Bunche to Nelson Mandela. He was named for John Hope, a legendary Atlanta educator and President of the institution known today as Morehouse College.
His achievement is made more remarkable by his pioneering role. When he began chronicling history, the benchmarks and standards were missing and the territory was uncharted. There was no consensus and little debate about the how the history he studied should be researched, written, interpreted, or weighed. As he wrote and taught, he set the bar in place. In his time, John Hope Franklin was guided only by his inner heart, assessing and weighing truth all alone, spinning history from the character of his own soul. Yet for him this never seemed to be a burden and he never seemed alone as he inspired his students in his classroom and beyond, to be guided by the light of inquiry that rose above ideology or blame or shame. He taught by example that history was a force for change and healing, and at its best, brought people together on common ground.
Never a tv pundit or a sound bite fanatic, this quiet man had a lot to say.
And every day, John Hope Franklin informs my work, influences my choices, directs my thinking, and shares my joy of success when I find a new historical discovery whose interpretation is shaped by his quiet passion for using history to restore common sense and to tell the story of those who took mother wit to be a source of courage and faith, and applied its strength to block despair and suffering by the force of a timeless will.
Today, John Hope Franklin is a part of that timeless will, telling the stories of a dimension of time and human experience we call history. His speciality was the American story. His concentration was the South and the African-American experience. Because of his quiet dignity, his peerless eye, his steady voice that arranged human hardships and triumphs in their proper places, his history telling is a part of a million voices and hearts, found in scholars works and children books, in the oral tradition of the porch and the e-mail, bound to the fabric of the country he celebrated and honored by a craft that was earnest and honest and pared down to make plain the complex, inner workings of a system and a region covered in tales that hid the more humane truth his work revealed. From scattered seeds, he grew a compelling harvest guided always by his own heart to set a standard that changed the course of American life. We all owe him much. But God has granted him, no doubt, his greatest wish.
At 94, John Hope Franklin has entered history.
John Hope Franklin, 1915 - 2009
"Water the Whole Surface:" The Mission for Safe Water (Part 1)
(Southern Perlo note: This is two part special feature, a documentary photo essay to be posted on consecutive Saturdays. This Perlo series explores how a community and a Christian non-profit support the most vital element for life, one we take for granted--water. Part One introduces Charleston's Walk for Water, adds elements of water's history. Part Two looks at the terrific technology developed by Water Missions International being used in 27 countries to bring safe water to communities across the world. Enjoy the series' stories and photos.)
After paying a quick ten dollars to a smiling volunteer at the Water Missions International registration table and signing a waiver, I join eight hundred other walkers on a bright, windy Saturday morning, determined to carry a white plastic pail filled with a couple of gallons of water for more than a mile and a half. The broad Ashley River to my right and Charleston's Atlantic harbor ahead, the pail in my hand prompts me to think about water and its place in its human life. Water from the lakes, out of drinking water, streams, and skies of the world is in my blood, flowing through my veins, and all of life is under its influence.
Water was at the source of Charleston's beginnings when the city was founded in 1670. Three small English ships battled the sea, arrived to explore the harbor behind me, and dropped anchor in the river on my left, laying plans for the settlement which is now this city. Yet one founding ship ran and its early settlers nearly died.
Walking along the Cooper River, toward Charleston's harbor
The morning's walk is a promise to remember that water flows through every aspect of human lives: our bodies are more than two thirds water, safe water and its supply is an absolute condition for life, “dirty” water is death, and millions of children, men, and women still make long, daily trek to wells and rivers for water to drink, to cook, to bathe.
The Walk for Water is a unique event, organized by the Charleston non-profit, Water Missions International. The walk was inspired by millions who walk to transport water every day. Water Mission's Charleston walk is a part of a world-wide annual celebration of World Water Day, sponsored by the United Nations, taking place in 27 nations.
A quick review of ancient public works affirms water's importance. The Nile's water levels were measured and recorded for more than 5,000 years. The Chinese developed a massive public works system over 2,000 years ago of gravity-fed underground tunnels in the northwest desert and turned one of the earth's hottest and most barren places into a prosperous green oasis. Even Machu Picchu, set on a 8,000 foot high ridge in the Andes mountains, had a carefully engineered water system. A Persian water specialist published a book in the 10th century in which the technical understanding of water and its engineering principles was 7 centuries ahead of Western Europe's.
The chief source the ancient world's mechanical power and energy was the water wheel. Water wheels ran ancient foundries, sawmills, and stamp mills. The water wheel also rapidly advanced food processing and distribution. In the 10th century, water wheels set up in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers powered mills that yielded ten tons of flour a day!
A few blocks from the walk's start, I past a 19th century rice pond, built as a reservoir for a water-powered rice mill that once stood on the Ashley River bank. Water powered rice mills along the South Carolina coast date from the 1790s. Using tidal flows and water impoundments which release water through gates similar to those used to flood and empty the rice fields, enslaved mechanics milled a hundred barrels of rice, over 30 tons of rice daily.
My pail filled with water weighs 15 pounds. Its two gallons would be used for drinking, cooking, and bathing. It would require several trips to provide water for a small family.
Water has been a principal source of power, prosperity, and enhanced fertility for the land, but water, itself neutral and beneficial, abundant and inexpensive, can be channeled to ferry conflict.
From Boston to Charleston to Brazil, ocean crossings transported 12 million slaves over four centuries, including 300,000 from the holes of ships onto the docks of the harbor ahead me.
In Angola, the country many think is the source of the South Carolina lowcounry “Gullah” culture (Angola = 'gola = “gullah”), the captured and soon-to-be-enslaved were paraded through beach chapels to be baptized, splashed with Holy Water, slung from the priest's aspergillum (sprinkler).
During the journey from Africa to America called the Middle passage, half the dead cast into the sea, their bones picked clean by trailing sharks, died for lack of a single cup of water a day. The blank eyed stares, clinched jaws, lethargy, conditions widely described in captain's journals, are all signs of fatal dehydration.
A eight hundred strong, with buckets sloshing, and children straining from the weight of carrying two, many people I interview have deep reasons for walking. They share their stories as they act by their steps to create a three and a half mile pilgrimage to a tap to fill a bucket or two and return, laden with water.
Bearing flags from 20 countries w/installed WMI Living Water treatment systems
Two members of a girl scout troop from The Church of the Nativity, a Catholic parish west of downtown, on James Island, are walking with adult leaders. The troop donated ten percent of its cookie sales to the walk's sponsor and organizer, Water Missions International. The Scout leaders say their participation is community service; the girls will not earn merit badges. They are all first time participants. What has impressed them? The leaders are amazed at all the flags gathered from the countries where Water Missions International has placed systems, providing communities, schools, hospitals and crisis areas with a supply of safe water. The signs with facts about water stand out, too, the adults say.
We pass a sign held by a volunteer that silently informs us: 4,500 children die a day from the lack of safe water.
For the troop leaders the walk is more than symbolic. Carrying the empty buckets, to be returned, filled, is “experiential learning.” By its design, this walk opens the heart, and offers a “We are the World” moment that buoys the spirits of walkers who honor by their steps the strength and persistence of those who lift and tote water for the final mile to villages and homes. Rather an appeal based on need, this march celebrates and literally lifts up the inner strength of the millions of water bearers. Our steps allow us to find within ourselves a new level of resolve. The walk for water breaks down our moral incoherence and taps into a well of inner virtue. Our steps insist on mercy, declare justice, and are rooted in love. Under the bright morning sun, this walk proclaims a happy day.
Water Mission International Volunteers
Water made Charleston a very busy and rich city. And water's rhythms are embedded in the city's grow and history: its present is writ with the good times and hardships that have splashed along its shore.
Charleston's eras and big ideals have overlapped and often collided. More often through, these ideals channeled around each other. A prosperous globe village that scripted both grace and guile, the city has allowed differing ideals to find common passage.
Water Missions International takes the high road of this common ground. Stacy Hall, an engineer and solar specialist who consults with WMI says he is impressed “by how serious the organization's commitment is to suppling safe water. It's hard to describe how focused [WMI] is on providing safe water.”
Stacy and I talk while waiting on the a Charleston fire trunk to arrive to hose rust colored, contaminated water into the pool.
Water, necessary for all life, is so important it was one of the Greeks primal elements. For the same reason, water's flexible, domestic, nurturing character and change of moods was memorialized as a primary personality trait in the astrological signs.
Walkers for Water
Water Missions International (WMI) provides what was once clean, free, and abundant to global communities where water is now dirty, scare, or controlled. Their work is often the difference between life and death. In February 2009, WMI provided water to 20,000 displaced Sri Lankans. By the second day on the ground, WMI had produced 33,285 gallons of safe water.
The walk expresses support for safe water to be available everywhere, but it is also a positive protest. The walk is a second line about the 25,000 people who die daily from water that is impure and infected with parasites and bacteria. Over a billion people have no access to safe water, and every 15 seconds, a child under five dies from a condition connected to unsafe water.
Early in the walk I meet a single middle-aged black man walking in the crowd, carrying his bucket, wearing a Water Missions International ball cap. I ask him about his advocacy for safe water. It turns out, he works for the local water company. He helps maintain the system, “fixing breaks, making repairs,” replacing worn out parts. After Hurricane Katrina, the company sent workers to Mississippi to help with repairs and to be general volunteers. “We went for a week at a time.” That experience, “standing in yards where the water flooded entire houses,” made him aware of the people at the end of the system: he was a witness to their needs for safe water. He felt the real fears of residents facing the crisis of losing their water supply. That memory caused him to join the group to walk on his day off.
Thanks for reading! Southern Perlo is posted by Walter Rhett from Kudu Coffee (African coffees and good conversation!), in Charleston, SC. In a Southern voice, it gathers stories for local communities, and was recently featured on the Lou Dobbs radio show. (A Perlo is rice enriched by local bounty, carefully crafted to enhance its pleasure and value; enjoyed by all.) You may create a permalink to Southern Perlo by clicking the permalink button. And please, stir the Perlo--below, add your comments!
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Zeer Pots use Green Technology to Reduce African Hunger
It's Saturday, the day back East for American classics from the early days of jazz and rhythm and blues. WGBO.FM out of Newark, NJ has a great web link with superb sound and radio hosts who really know the music. Little Milton is the featured blues artist this morning, but the joy is in the bass lines, rhythm guitar licks, and kicking fills that are a lost art today, not to mention the sweet, soulful saxophone solos by masters of its language. The jumping jive and kinetic swing returns the body to a time when feet were fast and light. If you have a favorite “old school” web link for music, please let me know.
It's also time for school science fairs, and here's a green experiment that is easy, fun, and safe, and should score winning points at school and home. It's call the Zeer pot. The Zeer pot is a simple clay refrigerator. Invented in 1995, by a Nigerian science teacher, Mohammed Bah Abba, the pot cools food and drinks and doesn't depend on electricity. The Zeer pot is portable, and only requires on clean sand, a small amount of water, and two terracotta pots (without drain holes), one larger than the other so the smaller one can sit inside the larger one.
The Zeer pot is now in wide use throughout Africa. In countries from Nigeria to the Sudan, it has helped prevent hunger and starvation, especially among children and the elderly. The life of tomatoes kept in a Zeer pot go from 2 days to 20 days!
To make a Zeer pot, place a layer of sand in the bottom of the larger pot. The layer should bring the rim of the smaller pot up the same level as the larger pot. Make sure the smaller rim is not higher; it may be lower. Now carefully add sand (use a funnel, row up a newspaper, fold cardboard, etc.) to fill in the space between the pots (1 – 2 inches ideally).
Next, place the Zeer pot in the shade, in a well ventilated area. Carefully add water to the fill sand, until the water “pools” on the top (indicating the sand is filled with water).
Place food and drink--apples, oranges, bottled drinks, etc.--inside the smaller terracotta pot to cool the foodstuffsand preserve freshness..
For a science experiment, place thermometers inside the pot and outside in the ambient air. Register the temperature readings each hour, and chart the differences to determine the effectiveness of the the Zeer pot as a green cooling device. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the Zeer pot.
The pot works on the principles of evaporation. The porous walls of the inner pot absorbs water from the sand. This transfer allows the water to evaporate from the inner walls, providing a cooling effect. Try the experiment at different humidity levels (easily found on the web at weather sites). Lower levels of humility should work better. Also cover the pot with a wet tea towel or a piece of cotton fabric. Does that improve the cooling effect? Try to measure the effects on windy days. The faster evaporation, caused by the wind, will heighten the cooling effect.
And after science, you have a neat green cooler for backyard snacks and drinks!
(all photos, fair use, education)
Thanks for reading! Southern Perlo is posted from Kudu Coffee (African coffees and good conversation!), in Charleston, SC. In a Southern voice, it gathers stories and views for local communities, and was recently featured on the Lou Dobbs radio show. (Perlo is rice enriched by local bounty to enhance its pleasure and value, carefully crafted; stirred by experience, enjoyed by all.)
“From the Front Porches of Charleston: The Election of Barack Obama,” is the first e-book about Obama in Charleston, and it's free! Charleston writer Walter Rhett writes about the election through parallels of Charleston's history. Rhett edited over 100 photo pages. Download freeat:www.lulu.com/content/5282127 .
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