Blackbird fly

For lack of something of my own to say, the following goes a long way into what I am thinking these days.

from The Jon S. Randal Peace Page 

He was visiting America. It is said that he was sitting, resting, when he heard a woman screaming. He looked up to see a black woman being surrounded by the police. The police had her handcuffed, and were beating her. He thought the woman had committed a terrible crime. He found out "the crime" she committed was to sit in a section reserved for whites.

Paul McCartney was shocked. There was no segregation in England. But, here in America, the land of freedom, this is how blacks were being treated. McCartney and the Beatles went back home to England, but he would remember what he saw, how he felt, the unfairness of it all.

He also remembered watching television and following the news in America, the race riots and what was happening in Little Rock, Arkansas, what was going on in the Civil Rights movement. He saw the picture of 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford attempt to attend classes at Little Rock Central High School as an angry mob followed her, yelling, "Drag her over this tree! Let's take care of that n**ger!'" and “Lynch her! Lynch her!” “No n**ger b*tch is going to get in our school!”

McCartney couldn't believe this was happening in America. He thought of these women being mistreated, simply because of the color of her skin. He sat down and started writing.

Last year at a concert, he would meet two of the women who inspired him to write one of his most memorable songs, Thelma Mothershed Wair and Elizabeth Eckford, members of the Little Rock Nine (pictured here).

McCartney would tell the audience he was inspired by the courage of these women: "Way back in the Sixties, there was a lot of trouble going on over civil rights, particularly in Little Rock. We would notice this on the news back in England, so it's a really important place for us, because to me, this is where civil rights started. We would see what was going on and sympathize with the people going through those troubles, and it made me want to write a song that, if it ever got back to the people going through those troubles, it might just help them a little bit, and that's this next one."

He explained that when he started writing the song, he had in mind a black woman, but in England, "girls" were referred to as "birds." And, so the song started:

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting
for this moment to arise."

McCartney added that he and the Beatles cared passionately about the Civil Rights movement, "so this was really a song from me to a black woman, experiencing these problems in the States: ‘Let me encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith, there is hope.’ "

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting
for this moment to be free."

~ Paul McCartney, born June 18, 1942

My own note: I don't know if it was before or after the song, but at some time it became a condition for anyone signing a contract to produce a Beatles concert had to agree there would be no segregated seating.

Influence, a double-edged sword

This came up as a conversation on facebook today. A peek into the past. Seems like half the influences in life are the ones you have to overcome rather than ones that help you along.

Originally published by The Adult Side of Tumbler

Tim Jones In both my junior and senior years I was told I could not join the creative writing class.

Jan Williams Simone Don't you wish you could go back in time and bring one of your books to class? Or articles? Or your blog? Or your newspaper work? Etc.

Tim Jones As far as I know I am the only one from that class who has had anything published, except for one fellow who may have published some music.

Lara Simone Bhasin The American public school system is not a monolith. It is quite diverse and will function better if it is allowed to stay that way, rather than being overly controlled by the federal government.

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Jan Williams Simone I agree but this is about BAD TEACHERS. Not sure what the solution is...

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Lara Simone Bhasin Okay well I was responding to the last line of the post

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Tim Jones My complaint is more with guidance counselors. I showed something I had written to the teacher of that creative writing class and he said I should be in there. No one ever did anything about it, though.

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Jan Williams Simone You saw what I wrote about my brother after he skipped a grade? That was a problem with the teacher. The only solution I can think of is for parents to intervene on their kids' behalf.

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Tim Jones The problem there was bigger than one writing class and neither I nor my parents realized what was wrong until almost graduation. I had changed schools between freshman and sophomore years and never got very high grades. As a result I was put into a put into a program one level short of vocational. Late in my senior year when the national test scores started coming in, the guidance counselor called me into his office and essentially blamed me for not telling him I was intelligent.

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Jan Williams Simone :(

Tim Jones Part of the problem in the 50s was when the Russians put up Sputnik it scared the hell out of people and all the emphasis was put on science and math for a few years.

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Jan Williams Simone Just because science and math were being emphasized doesn't explain why YOU could not be in creative writing. Seems like pure incompetence to me.

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Tim Jones Overall the humanities were discouraged

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Jan Williams Simone That reversed when I was in high school. In fact, I was in my high school's first humanities class, which was for only a select group of us, chosen by the teaching team (English and social studies).

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Tim Jones That was the era of the only student revolution in American history and you had them scared lol.

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Jan Williams Simone Ha

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Jan Williams Simone The previous class fought for it but they didn't get to participate. Other people always did the fighting for me, LOL. Including my brother....

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Tim Jones I can only hope his experience with me taught that guidance counselor a lesson and took more time with other kids who came along.

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Jan Williams Simone That is a sad story.

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Tim Jones Well, you can't let the past rule your life and I am sure I'm not the only one who faced discouragement for seeking an artistic life. I was able to overcome it for the most part.

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Jan Williams Simone Tim Jones , definitely.

This whole exchange may seem a little self-serving, like oh poor me, but I guess all experience leads you where you eventually arrive or at least pass through. I can't blame my lack of production on this for sure, except in this sense. This kind of negative influence from several directions, including the school, my family and almost everyone else in my life, was discouraging enough that I did not commit to writing until several years after moving from school out into the world, losing what for many writers are the most productive years, if not for actual publications, for learning the craft and, too, experiencing what you want to write about. I finally got to the experiencing and eventually writing but I always thought I came to it late. So it goes.

More about the writing life
The writing life 2

Fall whale survey

Charities, where does your money do the most good?

This photo was posted by GlobalGiving, which received a four-star rating
from Charity Navigator.

     Every time we suffer a major disaster in this country, social media is clogged almost immediately with appeals for money.
     Many are bogus, using the disaster to cheat people out of money and some others are so inefficient you wouldn't want them handling your contribution. Some of the biggest are criticized for paying large salaries to executives.
     So how are we, who have little time to research, able to sort them out and find a place to send our money where it will do the most good?
     Well, I have a friend who works for an organization that raises money for charities and recently she took offense at a facebook post that unfairly criticized many charities with outdated and sometimes just wrong information about some of the most well-known charities.
    This time around Red Cross seems to take more criticism than usual. For instance, the post on facebook says Red Cross CEO makes an annual salary of $651,957 plus expenses and one post rated its efficiency at 39 percent, meaning 61 percent of donations went to salaries and administrative costs. However responsible raters say Red Cross is around 92 percent efficient and the CEO salary is around $100,000 less than the reported number which was also 10 years old. That is just one example.
   One fallacy in the whole argument according to my friend is, "the part of an insidious notion that working for a nonprofit should be its own reward and that employees of all levels, not just senior executives, should not be remunerated fairly, despite the skills, hard work and challenging conditions that they work to address. But nonprofit employees have rent and mortgages, student loans, car insurance etc. If we want qualified people they need to be able to live and their employees need to get somewhere near competitive salary levels to attract and retain staff."
   That being said, this post is not about arguing the various aspects of charity operations. More is is supposed to provide some information to help people sort out the charities and make responsible choices about where we give our money.
    In comments to the post two sources for reliable information came up,
The first came from the fact-checking site Snopes which provided updated information about the organizations mentioned in the original post. Charitable compensation is the title of the Snopes article. Find it at http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/charities.asp

The second is Charity Navigator which keeps tabs on more than 8,900 charities worldwide. That seems to be the go-to source for major news outlets. Specific to Hurricane Harvey the link is https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=5239&from=homepage
On that page charities seeking funds for aid in that emergency are rated and confirmed so for anyone wishing to make a donation that would be a good place to start.

Pro Publica offers tips for effective giving