Out of my grassheart Rises the bobwhite

"I am earth, earth 

Out of my grassheart Rises the bobwhite. 

Out of my nameless weeds His foolish worship." 

from Thomas Merton's Book of Hours, among the meditations for Dawn on Thursdays.

Finding George Annie Hardin

This is Rhody Keith, my great great great grandmother on my mother's mother's side.  More about her later. Researching my family lines through the women is presenting challenges.

The first challenge is simply finding out who was who in my family - on both sides - and what they did and where they lived. My people were laborers and farmers, many farming someone else's land. Many were illiterate and poor.Often too poor to have portraits taken or living in remote parts of the frontier where amenities like that photography and gravestones were scarce. Nearly all of these people seemed to move from place to place, a common happenstance in the 19th century. Someone could start life in North or South Carolina and end it in Texas and showing up in the census for a variety of places, and having their numerous children listed as being born in different towns and states.  The second challenge is specific to women's history. Women didn't join the military. Women didn't vote or hold office - for example, I have a couple male ancestors who were appointed the postmaster for their little communities. The women often died in childbirth and left children but little else to remember them.

I began wanting to find out what I could through the internet about my mother's mother's line. I had the basic story that had been told to us.  My grandmother's mother, George Annie, had married a Huggins by whom she had four or five children.  My grandmother, Clara Irene, and her younger sister, Mary Lillian, were the only two I really knew or could recall from the stories.  George Annie was evidently a saint.  She divorced Ervin Huggins when my grandmother was 10 years old.  He was declared insane and, I was told, died in a mental institution. She left my grandmother with family while she tried to make a living.  She came for my grandmother when she married Mr. Jordan, with whom she had one more child, Winnie.  We have a portrait of the three of them.  I learned that George Annie was a cook in a boarding house. She was such a great cook that working single men would come to the boarding house just to take the meals she prepared.  When my grandmother Clara started school, the teacher tried to break her from using her left hand - a common practice at that time.  The next day, George Annie came to school and gave the teacher heck, and my grandmother's lefthandedness was never a problem again. (My mother, I, and another sister are all left handed.)

These are great stories, and may be more than most people have of their key ancestors.  But, in a few hours research online I learned more.  If I had been told, I had not heard or retained...my great grandmother George Annie Hardin Huggins Jordan* was an orphan. Her mother died giving birth to her.  That alone blows me away and somehow enhances the aura surrounding George Annie.  There is more however, her mother, Annie Foster, was the second wife of George Washington Hardin.  George Washington Hardin's first wife, Margaret Brown, died as well in childbirth, leaving him with five children.  Not too long after that, he marries a 16 year old Annie.

The tragedy doesn't stop there. George Washington Hardin himself dies two years later.  So I ask myself, who raised George Annie?  It didn't appear that her half-siblings did - the oldest was herself barely 17 years old and the younger ones were still children.  I found a note, which I need to corroborate, that George Annie was raised by "a cousin Cora Ann Hardin Harris Roach," suggesting another great story and person to uncover.

If you do even the most casual geneological reserach online, you will find that you can go down paths that you didn't have on your list.  I went down one that was fascinating.  In trying to find out about Annie Foster, I found out about her husband's ancestry, which I guess is mine.  George Washington Hardin was one of many middle children of Asher Garner Hardin (great name!) and Rhoda (or Rhody) Keith.  Rhody Keith herself was one of many - born in 1819 in Alabama to John Birden (or Borden) Keith and Polly Ann Crane. I found myself fascinated by Rhody Keith. In part because I found this photo of her and her long elegant neck.  She holds herself so proudly. I've had mixed feelings about my own long neck.  This time it links me to someone in a grainy old photograph. By the way, Rhody Keith's grandfather, Nichodemus Keith immigrated from Ireland in the 1700s.


*(Jordan is pronounced Jer-den)   

My Life as a Poor Little Rich Girl

Huguette Clark as a teenager.

I have devoted way too much time over the past couple days reading about the mysterious Madame Huguette M. Clark.  Huguette Clark May 24 2011 Obituary in the New York Times

I am not sure, yet, why I am so fascinated. MSNBC has an extensive archive of stories about her - from her father's climb to become one of the richest men in the nation, her life as an eccentric heiress and recluse, her paintings, her convicted sex offender accountant, and the jewelry collection now up for auction.

According to a 2012 New York Times article on her three(!) apartments on Fifth Avenue, “It was like going back in time 100 years,” one potential buyer said. “There was oak paneling and original wood floors, and in the kitchen there were appliances from 1915. It was a throwback.” There are no published photos of her past the 1930s.  She is frozen in time.

I can daydream about "my" life as a poor little rich girl in the early 1900s, but this is a daydream for my ancestors had a very different life in Oklahoma as pictured here in 1908.

My father's father, Wallace, is standing behind his father

January 1, 2013 -  an update on the Huguette Clark story

Meditation on the Light in Spring

I walked the nearly two miles to Quaker meeting this morning, and returned that way. The sun had come out after raining steadily for a few days. It sure picks up the spirits to revel in the blue sky, the sunshine, the loud glad bird songs, and the bursts of blooms in every direction. I saw metaphors for the Light in nature where I’d not seen it before.

Besides the lengthening of the days, two articles in Western Friend have been inspiring my meditation on the Light. In January/February 2012 issue, the Pacific Yearly Meeting’s delegates to the World Conference of Friends describe why they are going and their hopes for their trips.

How often have we’ve heard the admonishment not to hide our light under a bushel? The article quotes the Gospel according to Matthew, “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house….” Matthew 5:14-16. I don’t think it makes a difference how perfect you are at being a Quaker – your measure of the Light is a continuously evolving thing and it grows with shining.

In the March 2012 issue, Strawberry Creek Friends Meeting (Berkeley, California) shares their conversation on the meaning and significance of that Quaker expression and custom, “to hold in the Light.” The article quotes the explanation in Pacific Yearly Meeting Faith & Practice (2001): “to desire that divine guidance and healing will be present to an individual who is in distress or faces a difficult situation; also, to give prayerful consideration to an idea.”

A member of Strawberry Creek Friends Meeting starts her answer to the question ”What does the expression “holding in the Light” mean to you?” with “to establish a sense of connection between God within and God without.”

After being raised as a Quaker by parents fully involved in their Meetings and then the erratic observance during my 20s, I became a convinced Friend around my 30^th year. It was a revelation to me to understand that not sharing a leading in Meeting for Worship could be a selfish act. The homey image of a lamp placed in a room so that everyone there benefits from its light, the reminder that we look for the expression of the Divine in ourselves as we do in others, suggests to me that as Jesus taught us about God’s call to man, we teach as well. We teach in many ways, big and grand as well as small and mundane. Nor, can we know what who will be touched or will be our teacher.

One of the members of the delegation to the World Conference describes the Quaker tradition she was raised in and how her experiences as an adult have exposed her to other Quaker traditions. So, one of her desires for her time in Kenya with Friends from all over the world is learn more, “It is fascinating to me that we all have the same roots and yet have ended up in different place.”

By holding ourselves in the Light we are led to greater openness. We find that acceptance of others easier. The Light can only illuminate, shine a bright lamp on, our oneness with each other. If there is that of God in everyone, then it follows that God or the Light shines in me. I speak to that of God in me. If being opened to the truth is good, can’t it be even better when we find ways, conscious or unconscious, prepared or spontaneous, to share this measure of our Light.

Cut Guns Budget To Fund More Treatment for Mental Health & Addiction

Would we allow hospital emergency rooms to refuse care to someone suffering their upteenth cardiac episode? Would we insist that a diabetic serve time in jail if their lack of self-care resulted in a car accident? What if the cost of treatment and incarceration resulted in their losing everything so that they ended up on the streets? We wouldn't allow that to happen. Yet, we do this every day to the alcoholic, the drug addict, and the individual with other mental illnesses.

"The level of Americans' prejudice and discrimination toward people with serious mental illness or substance abuse problems didn't change over 10 years, a new study has found." Here's a link to the entire article, http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/643146.html.

That's the nearly 10 years I've been away from the alcohol, tobacco and other drug policy arena. A couple weeks ago, circumstances came together to show me just how true the study's findings are. I thought surely intelligent, educated people would generally understand by now that alcoholism and drug addiction are brain dysfunctions - they barely understand that it's an inheritable disease.

It's this prejudice and discrimination that keeps people from getting the help and support they need to recover and rejoin society, to live healthy lives. It contributes to the dark shame and secrecy that binds families to the suffering and drama. It's keeps us in ignorance about an inheritable disease - if cancer runs in your family don't you learn more about it and take steps to maintain your help?

So, when I received this email today from Friends Committee on National Legislation - that's a Quaker lobbying organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. - its advocacy work "connects historic Quaker testimonies on peace, equality, simplicity, and truth with peace and social justice issues which the United States government is or should be addressing." They are urging us to make sure our congresspeople have signed onto a letter to the Deficit Commission urging them to include cuts to the military budget when figuring out how to reduce the budget deficit.

To find out more, follow this link - http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=4020&issue_id=18

Well, I say cut! cut! cut! away at the military's overstuffed budget. More money should go to prevention and treatment (and raising public knowledge about) of these awful diseases.

We need to help people learn to live, not learning them to die!

I can't tell you if God exists

I don't know how to answer the question, does God exist?, but I do know this...

God is a loaded term - my shorthand for a transcendent force for good, that exists in every living thing, in our planet and through the cosmos.

There is that of God in every child, woman, and man.

I have been wondering if my experience of God, inner experience of this transcendence, Light, can be communicated to others. My God is all shapes and beings and none. I heard others tell of a God who acts with benevolence to some and with vengence to others - mine does not act in that way. God works from within and through each of us, and thus acting together the experience and power of this God exceeds the experience and power of one person.

I do know God is Love, because when I experience or observe acts of kindness and love in others and myself, they seem holy to me. Meanwhile I don't have that holy experience when I experience or observe others (or myself) behaving cruelly, selfishly, hatefully. So I don't believe in a God who supports retribution, oppression, and the domination of others.

Recently, I read this excerpt from the writings of an early Quaker, Isaac Penington, and it articulated how I experience the moving of the Light, of that transcendent force with-In and with-Out:

“What is the nature of the seed of God, or the seed of the kingdom?...4. It is of a seasoning, leavening, sanctifying nature. It is like salt, it is like leaven. It seasons and leavens with life. It seasons and leavens with righteousness. It seasons and leavens with the image of God. So soon as ever it springs in the heart, it begins to leaven it; and if it be not snubbed, or grieved, or hurt, or quenched (for it is of a most sensible, tender nature), it will go on leavening more and more wit he the nature of truth, into the likeness of the God of truth (Mark ix. 50; Luke xiii. 21; Col. iv.6)” From the writings of an early Quaker, Isaac Penington (1617-1679).

I may not experience any more mercy or good fortune in this life, but in deepening my relationship with God, my experience of bad and good fortune or sorrow and joy is leavened as the yeast working in bread dough lifts it up, gives it resilience, fosters its inner strength, and makes it tasty!

Do You Have to be a Hero to do Your Human Duty?

http://preview.tinyurl.com/ybro9jb

Miep Gies died at 100 years. "I don't want to be considered a hero," she said in a 1997 online chat with schoolchildren."Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."

As we approach the birthday and celebration of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr, I think how he has been co-oped into convincing us that we need a Messiah in order for change and right action to take place. For one, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a real radical - more radical than the "celebrity" that we're given every third Monday in January. And, secondly, the progress that the civil rights movement made is attributable to a lot of ordinary and unknown people like Miep Gies. Martin Luther King, Jr. was just one of them.

Doing our human duty, whether it is marching in support of immigrants, speaking up for those in prison, giving a panhandler a kind word, or witnessing for policies that respect the dignity of each person...one wouldn't think courage would be necessary in order to do that.