Black Profiles in Courage, A Legacy of African-American Achievement by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; 1996; William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, NY; 232 pages; 0-688-13097-6; 2/22-2/27

A grave injustice has been done to the people of color in this country. So many of their accomplishments have been minimized or miscredited or stolen by the majority. The majority has also suffered by not knowing the true contributions of people of color to the country. Even though African-Americans have been treated excessively bad they still felt that making a contribution to the US was valuable.

Black Profiles in Courage highlights a group of people who made contributions to the US in oh so many ways. Some of them you may have heard of, like Joseph Cinque, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.  Others like Peter Salem,  Lewis H. Latimer and Bass Reeves you may not have heard of.  Bass Reeves should have been the star of several books and movies.  This man was everything that Wyatt Earp wanted to be and much more.  I have another book about him on hold at the library to learn even more about him.  This is a book that I want to read again, to know even more about the contributions of African Americans to the US.  Can’t wait for another book from Kareem.  RRRR

Where are you now?

Well ever since I got back from my walk this morning I have trying to put a picture in this post but no matter how I try to do it I can’t make it work.  Do you hear that Steve?  The picture is of my parents and Leonard and Ivy Crocker.  What I would like to do every Friday is ask where someone I used to know is and see if anyone knows.  This Friday I am doing something different.  Leonard and Ivy are the only people that I know that have always been in the same place.  Others may be but I don’t know where they are anymore.  Leonard and Ivy live in Long Beach, CA and have lived in the same house ever since I was born, for those of you not good at math, that is over 50 years.  My parents have moved sometimes and I didn’t know where they had moved to, but the Crockers have always been in the same house.  I remember going to their house many times and asking Leonard to pass me a roll and he would always pick it up and toss it to me.  They were the first people I knew who have a water cooler in their house, in the late 60’s.  They had a above ground pool we would swim in.  Their son, Don, is just a few months older than I am, so we used to hang out together when we lived in La Palma, CA.   I remember driving from Portland to Long Beach once with a friend, cause she had never been to Disneyland and camping in her Monte Carlo.  The first real shower and such came when we stopped at Leonard and Ivys’.  They were very welcoming then and I think they would be today.  I liked spending time with them and would like to introduce them to family.  Although the Ruth Ann and the boys met them for a few moments at my sisters’ house a few years.  Thank Leonard and Ivy for always being in the same place.

I was entering todays mileage in my spreadsheet this morning when I remembered a conversation from the early 70’s.  It was after a track meet at the University of Oregons’ Hayward Field and I was hanging out with Steve McChesney.  We approached Frank Shorter, winner of the 1972 Olympic Decathlon, and asked him how far he ran a week.  This was when he was having to work because the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) said you couldn’t get paid for your sport and still compete in the Olympics (kind of like the hypocrisy the NCAA puts out).  He said, “Not as much as I would like, I’m only getting in about 70 miles a week.”  I don’t remember Steves’ reaction, but I am pretty sure that my jaw hit the floor.  Steve was an outstanding member of our track team so he ran a lot and I walked a big paper route and rode my bike everywhere in Eugene, but that was a huge amount of mileage.

Every morning (since Feb 10) I get up and wander over to Portland Christian High School and walk around their track.  Walking around the track multiple times gets your mind to wandering so I thought I would share those wanderings with you.

It’s not hard to understand why oil is so important to this country as I walk up the street to the school.  Most houses have multiple cars in the driveway (on the lawn, in the backyard and on the street).  We have two cars in our driveway.  One is ours and one is our sons truck.  One house nearby had six cars in the driveway and on the front lawn, a house on the corner had 3 in the driveway, 2 on the street and one in the backyard.  Some had multiple trucks and RV’s along with the cars.  Do we really need this many vehicles?  We do alright with one family car, Ruth Ann takes it to work, I take the bus, Dukkie is riding his bike, and David goes to WinCo Foods on his longboard.  We need technology (which I believe has been available for awhile) to lessen our dependence on oil.  We also need to use public transport more, but it needs to get more consistent.

A speech that I would like to hear Barack Obama give when he is elected.

We have started down the road to change, the long and winding road to changing the way things are done.  It will be a hard road, because I am just one man and this change will take all of us who really want change who have worked so hard already to start the change.  I will present to congress my plans but if they don’t want to change, I can’t make them.  You can.  You have to call, write or visit your congressman and tell them you want change, but be specific.  As we present plans to reform health care, call and tell your representative that you want to see this bill passed.  As we challenge the way things are done, many are the voices that will need to be raised.  Special interest have their fingers deep in this town and their voices are the ones that are usually heard.  Now is the time to make your voices heard.  We have started down the road of change, but now we all need to raise our voices so that we can change things.  I believe that yes, we can change things.

Last night after I got done writing Monday Music I checked my email and there was an email from a friend with a link to LarryNorman.com. On that page it said that Larry Norman had passed away Sunday morning.

I believe that if not for Larry Norman there would not be contemporary Christian music. Larry was, if not the first, one of the first to combine rock and roll with lyrics which worshipped and honored God. He still managed to address issues of the day, but did it from a Christian perspective. He got pigeon holed as a Christian artist so not enough people heard him, although he was working on a project with the lead singer from Modest Mouse and Frank Black, who sited Larry as an influence.

I had seen Larry several times during the 70’s at various venues in the San Francisco bay area, was a roadie for a band that opened for him at Easthill Church in Gresham and saw him in concert in 2006 in Salem. That was particularly a treat because my sons, Daniel and David were able to go with me to hear the artist that I had been listening to and talking about all their lives.  Also Daniel got to present Larry with some artwork that he had done of Larry.  It was a multi layered stencil of Larry on an album.

His words and music were some of the first to move me to know how Christianity could be different and relevant to the world around us and us in it. He will be missed here, but man Heaven is rocking now as Larry worships with Jubal and the other musicians that are there. I will not say goodbye to Larry, but see you later.

Larry Norman 4/8/47-2/24/08