The Crab Chronicles

The BEST Thanksgiving and the WORST Thanksgiving

When I was a kid we had two kinds of Thanksgivings, the ones with the extended family and the ones with just the four of us. Over the years we would sometimes get together with my mom's two brothers and their families for Thanksgiving, but not every year. 

Left, about 1968 or '69, with my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. I am in front wearing blue pants and a red jacket.

The holidays with the extended family were always fun, because my mom and both aunts and my grandmother were all wonderful cooks. Nobody has ever equaled my mom's homemade dressing, as I explained in an article for The Cook's Cook a couple of years ago, Enjoy Elva's Cornbread Dressing. I was unaware there was anything other than cornbread dressing until I was almost grown. One year when it was just the four of us, Mom made a small pan of oyster dressing in addition to the standard one. It was delicious, but not something she did every year. In addition to the dressing, the Hasty Thanksgivings also included the standards: turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, pies.

The BEST Thanksgiving was in 1970, when the family gathered at Amicalola Falls in North Georgia, and rented a cabin in the mountains. I slept on the floor in the main room with my cousins, in a sleeping bag, but I didn't mind. I got to play with my cousin Linda, and my brother played with Bill, her twin. We were all happy to be together. The food was marvelous, too, of course.

One of the highlights was my uncle Don showing all of us a cassette tape recorder. In 1970 that was hi tech, exciting stuff! He worked in the corporate office of GE and always got to use the latest techno wizardry. He recorded all of us kids, and some grownups, talking about the weekend. Years later, he and my aunt found that tape and had copies made and sent a copy to each family. I still have it. It's one of my most prized possessions. A few years ago I played the tape on an old boombox and I recorded a snippet of my grandmother's voice and it's stored now on my desktop, where I can listen to it any time. I love hearing her voice again.

Linda recently sent me a copy of some of the home movies her dad made that weekend and I got such a kick out of seeing those. I had forgotten that I was a Hot Mess. I am constantly turning cartwheels and jumping around and pretending to be a ballerina. I had forgotten I was such a lively kid.

My grandmother was a prankster, all her life, and I never really knew that until that weekend. The second night, she announced she was going to bed early, then snuck out of the cabin and went to her car and put on some old clothes and a wig and hat, and then came and knocked on the door, cigarette dangling, and asked my cousin Robert for a light. (She wasn't a smoker, in reality.) Always polite, he said "I'm sorry I don't have one, but maybe my dad can help." My uncle Bobby appeared, took one look, and knew it was Memaw. He kept bending down to see her face, and she kept dropping her head down because she didn't want him to see it was her, which was pretty hilarious (we all agreed later) because Bobby was 6'3 and Memaw was 4'11! I stood back and watched it all, fascinated. Years later, long after Memaw had died, Mom told me of some of her escapades as a young girl and even as a young mother, including dressing up as a vagrant for Halloween, with a friend, and playing practical jokes on all the neighbors.

The summer before that had been particularly awful for our little family. My mother had been in the hospital, very ill with blood clots in her legs, Daddy had to have emergency hemorrhoid surgery, my brother had been horribly bullied at school, and I had been sick with pneumonia for 3 weeks. Thanksgiving with the family was a welcome change.

The Thanksgiving in the mountains was the last time all of us would be together with my Memaw and Papa Hasty. We didn't know it then, but in January of 1971 our family would move to Knoxville, Tennessee, and be about 4 hours' drive from my grandparents, and my uncle Bobby and his family. About 18 months later my grandfather would die, as a complication of surgery on his hip.

In the coming years there would only be a couple of get-togethers of all the Hastys, as the distances were too great, then of course all of my generation grew up and scattered across several states.

So that was the best Thanksgiving.

The worst Thanksgiving was actually comical, in hindsight.

My brother married a lady who I won't name here but she was very strange. I think she was Bipolar, or something. She was always making crazy plans that she insisted would come to pass but they never did. After my father died, around 1997 or 1998, my brother and sister in law came to my mother's house in Augusta for Thanksgiving. They had no children, but two dogs, who came with them, all in one car. Mom and I were there, working on the big meal to be shared that night. We were all in the kitchen, talking. Sis said that on Christmas she and my brother would be in Colorado, either in a hotel or camping. That struck me as odd because my brother hates camping, and Colorado is a long way from South Carolina.

After my sister in law made her bizarre announcement, I looked at my mother, and she looked stricken. Mom always wanted her children home on Christmas -- the only time she was really insistent on that.

I said "Have you all made reservations? Booked flights?" I suspected it was just another wild idea. Oh no, she said, but it was going to happen. I said "Well couldn't you just wait until the day after Christmas maybe? or before Christmas, so y'all could be with us on Christmas Day??"

"But we want to go to Colorado for Christmas!" she insisted. I looked at my brother's face, and he looked super annoyed, like this crazy plan was news to him.

"I'm not saying don't go, I'm just saying be flexible with the dates," I said.

I wasn't yelling. I wasn't visibly angry, just annoyed. I knew my mother was on the verge of tears, anticipating two holidays being ruined by my sister in law -- a new record, for her.

Instead of engaging in a discussion, sister just screamed at me "You are SUCH a BITCH! We're leaving!" and she grabbed her two dogs, and her car keys, and hustled out the back door. I had never seen her move that fast. My brother looked horrified.  "I'm sorry, Mom. I would stay but I'd have no way to get back to Columbia," he apologized. He had to literally run out the door, as his wife was already backing down the driveway. He told us later he had to yell at her to get her to stop so he could get in!

So that year it was just me and Mom, and Mom was very upset. I think we ended up just eating canned soup or sandwiches.

Fortunately, a couple of years later my brother divorced the Crazy Lady.

The one really good thing to result from that awful Thanksgiving? I never saw my sister in law again. Haven't see her since, and that was about 25 years ago. I hope I never see her again. My brother divorced her but they stayed friends. They still occasionally meet for lunch. She actually had the nerve to tell him she wanted to be friends with Mom again, about 15 years ago. Brother mentioned it when visiting us. Mom said NO WAY. She had welcomed my sister in law to the family and treated her like her own child, but when Elva was done with someone, she was DONE. She never forgot, did forgive eventually, but was quite capable of cutting someone entirely out of her life when they didn't act right.

I think sis was/is mentally ill, and my brother eventually came to agree with me. I did exact a little revenge though, as only a writer can. In one of my books there is a character that is a total screwup, an obnoxious young woman who acts like a ho, and I gave her my sister in law's name.

To all y'all out there, I hope your Thanksgiving is lovely, and you are with family and/or friends. It will just be me and my son, and that's fine. We will just eat a lot [pork roast, as we aren't wild about turkey] and watch movies all day.

Check out my new novel Dancing in the Wreckage, on Amazon

For Evil to Flourish

I flinch when I turn on the news now. I flinch and I feel myself grimacing as I watch people in Israel, and Gaza, and sometimes I get big tears in my eyes. Like others around the world, I am mesmerized by what I'm seeing on the television.

It seems like something out of a horror movie, incomprehensible.

"For evil to flourish it only requires good men to do nothing." - Simon Wiesenthal

Only once in my life have I ever witnessed someone seriously hurt by other human beings and it shocked me, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.

I made two trips to Kazakhstan to adopt my son in 2007. On the first trip I went to the orphanage every day for several weeks and visited Michael and got to know him, then there was the adoption hearing on April 3, then a wait of several more weeks before everything was legally finalized. I flew home during that time, so I could work and save my leave time for when Michael got home. When I returned in early May 2007, I took a flight to Frankfurt, then another flight to Astana.

I got off the plane in Astana and had to go to the customs line and show my passport so I could get into the country. I was standing at the end of the line and I heard a noise behind me and turned around. A very large Russian man was being led over to the customs area in handcuffs. Clearly, he was a prisoner. The small Asian men who were guarding him looked like elves escorting a gorilla. When the Russian man saw a way to run out of the airport -- we were near the doors -- he bolted, but he didn't get but a few feet away before the small Kazakh guards tackled him to the ground.

For several minutes, the guards savagely beat the big man, hitting and kicking him as he screamed HELP ME HELP ME, in Russian. I had studied Russian and learned those words. I stood there frozen in horror, unable to not look. Finally, the big man fell silent. The guards finally pulled away, and I saw a huge pool of blood spilling out from the Russian man's head. A stretcher was brought in and he was carried away. The pool of blood remained.

There is a vast difference between watching a movie -- or even a documentary -- and seeing someone beaten, and watching it in real life.

I had never seen something so terrible, and it shook me up very much. I don't know what the big Russian man had done, what crime he had committed, but I know how I felt watching that beating. I felt terrified, and horrified, and I have never forgotten what I saw. I will never forget what I witnessed.

I cannot watch very violent movies, even though I know the violence is not real. I flinch. I grimace. I usually pull out my phone and stare at the screen.

I tell this story because I feel utterly helpless regarding the situation in Israel and Gaza, and that worries me.

I don't ever want to feel nothing, in the face of human suffering. If we are insensitive to horror then we lose our humanity.

I am descended from mostly British and Irish ancestors [88%, according to 23andMe] and many of my ancient ancestors were the barbarians who brought down the Roman empire.

My Scottish ancestors [there were many] were/are fierce fighters.

I descend also from a Civil War sharpshooter. I am the granddaughter of a professional soldier and the sister of an Army major.

I am not a violent person but to protect my family, particularly my children, I would call upon the spirits of my fighting ancestors and ask them to help me protect those I love. I am talking about an extreme, and unlikely situation, though. I hope and pray I will never have to defend myself or my family.

What I cannot understand is WHY. We live in an amazing age of technology unsurpassed in human history, so why are we still savagely killing each other?

I condemn anyone who would kill another human being not for self-defense or protection of family, but simply for land, or a political ideology.

The older I get the more I believe that the power and energy of human love is the most powerful energy in the world. We have to somehow harness that power to defeat hate. Hate is the ultimate Evil, the direct opposite of Love.

If we focus love and healing energies to places like the Middle East and Ukraine, where Evil is winning, I think we can change things. What else can those of us who are old and/or powerless physically actually do?

I have started to pray constantly for Love to win. I leave the "how" of that up to God.

 

Employment Law and Fairness

I rarely ever write about my life as a paralegal here because this is my personal space and I tend to keep my personal and professional lives separate. I knew when I started this blog that if I wrote about my paralegal jobs or cases I've worked on it would be the end of my legal career and I didn't want that. My legal career pays the bills. My writing gigs are mostly just for fun.

Plus, attorney/client privilege is a real thing. Clients should not have to worry about someone in their lawyer's office writing about them publicly, so I don't.

So this blog isn't about cases I've worked on, or attorneys I've worked for, or clients of the law firms where I've worked.

It's about fairness.

I started a new job last week working for a wonderful plaintiff's employment law firm here in Atlanta, Beal Sutherland Berlin & Brown. As I've been reading through cases and researching issues I've been reminded so many times of why employment law is my favorite area of law, and why I like it so much.

It started with my mother.

I was blessed to have a mother who was an incredible storyteller and my best friend.

Mom was born in 1933. She was a young woman in the 1950's when women were told basically that they could have a career OR a husband and children but not both. My mother was brilliant and she should not have had to make that choice. She was told so many things in her life that were blatantly unfair, and when she told me about them years later I was angry and indignant, on her behalf.

Mom started working as a sales clerk at the old Sears store in Ponce de Leon when she was 16 years old. She had to wear high heels all day and she was on her feet for her entire shift, not allowed to sit down. Years later she had a lot of circulation problems in her legs and we figured it started then. After working there for years and with a spotless performance record, she knew the store intimately. She applied for the management training program when she was almost finished with college and was told "You won't ever be admitted because you're a woman. We only train men to be managers because they have to support a family."

She thought she might like to go to law school. She made excellent grades in college and excelled at public speaking. Her uncle, a lawyer in Macon, said "There's no reason for you to go to law school. You'll just get married and quit."

Another dream was to be a professional singer and she had a wonderful voice. She sang professionally, all over Atlanta, and for the USO. When she married my dad in 1957 that ended. He didn't want her to even sing at church, because rehearsals took her away from him and later her children. Like most men of that time, Dad expected his house clean, his children behaved, and dinner on the table every night. [To be fair, though, he was a very hands-on father and they were a real team when it came to parenting.]

When she and Dad had been married a few years, she was teaching school and when she got pregnant with my brother the school forced her to quit. No visibly pregnant woman was allowed to teach in South Carolina in 1959. She was so upset she told me she cried for a week because it was the middle of the school year and she missed the children so much.

So hearing about all those experiences made me aware of the fact that women of my mother's generation often didn't get treated fairly in the workplace, or in society in general.Fortunately, things have gotten better in recent years.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the first major piece of legislation to try and make the workplace more fair for everyone. If you really want to understand it, you can go here, to the EEOC website, but the part that most interests me is this:

It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer -

(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or

(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Mom contributed a lot to my awareness of the injustices women faced in her day -- and still face now, in some instances -- but my father also helped me to understand that employment fairness is critical. He ran the trust department of a large bank for 35 year. He championed a young black man to be the manager of one of the bank's branches in the mid 1970's when appointing a person of color to a managerial job was unheard of. Dad knew he would do a great job and he went to bat for him. Dad also hired a young woman to work in his department who was black, and until then I don't think there had ever been any non-white people in the trust department. Dad didn't judge people based on race.

When it came to race, my family was unusual. I actually wrote about that here. Unlike many southern families, you never heard the N word in my house when I was growing up. My parents made it clear we were never to use that word or we would be spanked, and I have never used it. Just in my lifetime, so many things have changed. Unlike so many people in past generations, I adopted mixed-race children. I have dear friends who are black. My children have both dated African Americans, with my blessing. My gay friends and family members can now live openly and marry their partners. Most churches in Atlanta welcome people from the LGBTQ community. The South today is not the South of generations past, thanks be to God.

Women still face employment discrimination, though, and non-white people still face employment discrimination. A recent poll found that 91% of those surveyed had faced workplace discrimination. People over 40 often face age discrimination; I have dealt with that. My son has lost out on jobs because he is an amputee. Workplace retaliation happens every day -- for example an employee files an EEOC complaint and then is quickly terminated for no good reason. Whistleblowers often lose their jobs. People who are overweight or not white still don't get hired.Women who have children don't get the same opportunities for advancement. And so on.

I hope and pray one day we will have a better world, but until that happens I feel like I fight on the side of the angels.This new job is more than just a job. What I do matters. I work for brilliant, kind, wonderful attorneys who genuinely want to help their clients. I love that.

If you've experienced discrimination -- because you're a woman, a person of color, over 40, disabled, gay or trans, or for any reason -- call an attorney in your city. You might have a case. You will never know until you explore your options.If you are in Atlanta, call Beal Sutherland Berlin & Brown. You will get a fair assessment of your case. You might even get to know me as a paralegal.

#atlantaemploymentattorneys, #atlantadiscriminationcases, #understandingyourrights, #ineedtofileaneeoccomplaint, #suinganemployer

Understanding the Struggles of the Past

Most of my cousins think that my interest in genealogy is downright peculiar. I go nuts over old family photos. I loved to hear my mother and daddy and grandmother and aunts and uncles tell stories about the time before I was born, about what life was like in the early part of the twentieth century, particularly.

I saw a photo a few minutes ago of a young girl cooking on a wood stove. It sparked a memory, of trying my hand at cooking on a wood stove. My father bought a woodburning stove for our lake house and put it on the back porch. That way he could sit out there when the weather was cold. One winter we lost electricity and I tried cooking on that stove. It was horrible. I had no idea how to regulate the heat, and I burned myself. Mom tried to show me how to figure out where the hot areas were and move the pots around accordingly, but it was scary and I never got the hang of it. That brief period of time changed me forever, although I didn't know it then. It gave me a fascination for the past. Cooking is pretty easy nowadays. Imagine having to cook on a stove where you had to stir up the fire to cook your food!

In her memoir, Singing to the Cows, my mother talked about doing without plumbing and electricity during World War II:

"During most of the WW2 years, we lived on a farm --- so many of our memories stem from there, for lots of reasons. Our house, new I guess, lacked running water, gas, and electricity. There was a wartime shortage of pipes, wire etc. One had to get on a list and wait. There was a bathroom, but no running water etc. At first, we had to haul water from a well and heat it on top of the wood range. I still have burn scars on my arms from that stove. Our best source of heat was the dining room fireplace so that was mostly where we lived. Dad placed 3 or 4 big oil lamps in the middle of our dining room table. We ate there, did homework, and read the newspaper there."

When my grandparents were young and living in Philadelphia, they saw a lovely dining room table in a department store but they couldn't afford it, even though my grandfather was a major league baseball pitcher. In the off season, Papa made his own version of that table, and they used it for the next 50 years, and then my uncle and aunt used it. It's still in the family.

I digressed.

The moments in my life that have taught me the most indelible lessons about the struggles of my ancestors were sometimes literally just moments.

I remember being in a history museum as a middle schooler and there was a dress there that was over a hundred years old. It was for a grown woman but I wouldn't have been able to fit into it. The waist was TINY. Women were expected to wear corsets to fit into those dresses, and sometimes rich women would have ribs removed, to make their waists smaller. I can still see that dress, in my mind's eye.

When I was in first grade I went on a field trip with my class to somewhere way out in the country. I don't recall the purpose of the trip, to be honest. However, at one point we were off the bus and standing beside a field full of ripe cotton, ready for picking. We were supposed to stay in the group but I snuck around and examined a stalk of cotton and tried pulling the fluffy white cotton boll out of the pincer-like grip of the plant, and it was very difficult, even with my tiny nimble fingers. Years later I remembered it when I saw the movie Places in the Heart, about everyone on a farm pitching in to get the cotton picked. Backbreaking labor. My ancestors, most of whom were small farmers, had a tough time of it.

[left, my great-grandfather Hasty's syrup mill in Cherokee County around the turn of the century.

My power steering went out on my car once when I was in my twenties and it scared the pee out of me. I could barely get the car steered over to the side of the road. How on earth did Mom learn to drive on one of those old cars?!

[Right, my mom and the car she learned to drive in]

I remember my immense frustration at trying to learn to sew because my grandmother died before she could teach me. I tried to learn. I took a sewing class at the mall, at a fabric store. I was awful at sewing. I couldn't imagine having to sew my own clothes as a necessity! Yikes.

I watched my mother one afternoon making homemade jelly. It took all day long and she was frustrated and sweating. At the end of the day she had 2 small mason jars of grape jelly. She looked at me in disgust and said "Well I won't ever try THAT again! Smuckers is just fine."

[She always at toast with her breakfast and it always had jelly on it, BTW!]

When I was in 5th grade I came down with scarlet fever. It was going around the middle school. I stayed home for a week and felt crappy, but I survived. A hundred years before, when there were no modern medicines, and I might not have survived. I remember being a bit scared, because I read a lot and back in the day scarlet fever was often deadly.

These are just a few of the moments that have given me a fascination for the past.

Ten Movies to Teach History

My son and I recently had a lively discussion about history. I kept seeing these videos of twenty-somethings being interviewed on the street and asked really basic history facts like What country did American break away from? and the answers he got were utterly wrong. So disturbing to see young people who couldn't answer the most basic history questions. I was so lucky to grow up with parents who thought it was really important to learn history.

The good news is that streaming services offer so many easy ways to see movies that can really help spark a discussion about the history depicted in the film. Most young people nowadays want their History presented in an entertaining fashion, not as dry lessons from a textbook. So I put together a few suggestions of movies to watch to understand American history. All of these movies should be jumping-off places for more detailed discussions of the events depicted and the actual History.

 

Cinderella Man

This 2005 movie stars Russell Crowe and Renee Zellwegger and it's an excellent depiction of life during the Great Depression. Plot: During the Great Depression, ex-boxer James J. Braddock (Russell Crowe) works as a day laborer until his former manager Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti) offers him a one-time slot against a rising young contender. After he wins a shocking upset, Braddock goes back into the ring full time, against the wishes of his frightened wife, Mae (Renée Zellweger). Dubbed "The Cinderella Man" for his rags-to-riches story, Braddock sets his sights on the defending champion, the fearsome Max Baer (Craig Bierko).

 

In Love and War

This 1996 movie stars Sandra Bullock and Chris O'Donnell and it's set in Italy during World War I. The cinematography is gorgeous and the acting of Sandra Bullock is uncharacteristically understated and subtle. You may also want to discuss the writing career of Ernest Hemingway, one of the giants of modern literature. Plot: This film is largely based on Hemingway's real-life experiences in the First World War as a young ambulance-driver in Italy. He was wounded and sent to a military hospital, where he shared a room with Villard (who later wrote the book the movie is based on) and they were nursed by Agnes von Kurowsky. Hemingway and Kurowsky fell strongly in love, but somehow the relationship didn't work out. 

 

Tolkien

Anyone who knows the Lord of the Rings Books knows their creator was a genius and JRR Tolkien led a remarkable life. It was largely shaped by his experience of losing several close friends during World War I. Full disclosure: I didn't like this movie the first time I saw it but in subsequent viewings I realize the genius of it. Plot: Tolkien explores the formative years of the orphaned author as he finds friendship, love and artistic inspiration among a group of fellow outcasts at school. This takes him into the outbreak of World War I, which threatens to tear the "fellowship" apart. All of these experiences would inspire Tolkien to write his famous Middle-Earth novels.

 

1776

I first saw this movie as a child and I loved the music. Your typical twenty-something may hate the music, but chances are they will remember what the movie is trying to teach us about how the founding fathers shaped the birth of our country. Plot: In the days leading up to July 4, 1776, Continental Congressmen John Adams and Benjamin Franklin coerce Thomas Jefferson into writing the Declaration of Independence as a delaying tactic as they try to persuade the American colonies to support a resolution on independence. As George Washington sends depressing messages describing one military disaster after another, the businessmen, landowners and slave holders in Congress all stand in the way of the Declaration, and a single "nay" vote will forever end the question of independence. Large portions of spoken and sung dialog are taken directly from the letters and memoirs of the actual participants.

 

Iron Jawed Angels

This 2004 TV movie is a powerful depiction of what women went through in order to gain the right to vote. I know a lot about feminist history but this film was a revelation to me. Young women have no idea what their grandmothers and great grandmothers went through. Plot: Alice Paul and the women of the 1917 Women's Suffrage movement fight for future generations right to vote and run for office. Sacrificing their health, marriages and the limited amount of freedom they had, women were imprisoned and force fed after picketing and hunger-striking against war-time president, Woodrow Wilson; but survived to see the results of their efforts.

 

Hidden Figures

I loved this 2016 movie about the brilliant women who were crucial in the space program of the 1950's and 60's. Plot: As the United States raced against Russia to put a man in space, NASA found untapped talent in a group of African-American female mathematicians that served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in U.S. history. Based on the unbelievably true life stories of three of these women, known as "human computers", we follow these women as they quickly rose the ranks of NASA alongside many of history's greatest minds specifically tasked with calculating the momentous launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, and guaranteeing his safe return. Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Gobels Johnson crossed all gender, race, and professional lines while their brilliance and desire to dream big, beyond anything ever accomplished before by the human race, firmly cemented them in U.S. history as true American heroes.

 

Loving

I bet most millennials don't know that in the not-so-distant past it was illegal for people of different races to marry, in many states. This film is such a beautiful and powerful depiction of the landmark court case that changed that, and every young person should see it, IMHO. Plot: Richard Loving, a white construction worker in Caroline County, Virginia, falls in love with a local black woman and family friend, Mildred Jeter. Upon Mildred discovering that she is pregnant, they decide to marry, but knowing that interracial marriage violates Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws, they drive to Washington, D.C. to get married in 1958. Richard makes plans to build a house for Mildred less than a mile from her family home.

 

Pearl Harbor

I was lucky because my parents actually remembered Pearl Harbor and we talked many times about how that event changed their lives and the lives of most Americans who lived in 1941. Plot: Pearl Harbor is a classic tale of romance set during a war that complicates everything. It all starts when childhood friends Rafe and Danny become Army Air Corps pilots and meet Evelyn, a Navy nurse. Rafe falls head over heels and he and Evelyn and Rafe hook up. Then Rafe volunteers to go fight in Britain, and Evelyn and Danny get transferred to Pearl Harbor. While Rafe is off fighting, suddenly one morning comes the air raid we now know as "Pearl Harbor." 

 

Harriett

This is SUCH a powerful film and I've watched it many times now. It should have won a million Oscars, especially for Cynthia Erivo, who magically embodied her character. Plot: Based on the thrilling and inspirational life of an iconic American freedom fighter, Harriet tells the extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery and transformation into one of America's greatest heroes. Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and changed the course of history.

 

The Imitation Game

This is the last movie I saw in the theater before life got super hectic and I just quit going to the movies. Very powerful and heartbreaking story about the genius Alan Turing. Plot: It is based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing. The film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain's top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II.

#teachinghistorywithmovies, #learningthroughmovies, #lessonsonfilm

Help Kids to Love History

You know why so many kids hate History? It's dry, boring facts. There are no compelling visuals, and kids today want great visuals and videos. You can't touch it, unlike science. Kids don't see the relevance of History to life today.

I was a lucky kid because my father loved History and we visited museums and battlefields and he explained everything to me and my brother in a way that was vivid and compelling. When you're walking on the ground where soldiers fought listening to an account of the battle by someone who spoke as though he were there, it makes History really come alive.

Dad's gone now but there are other options.

You know a great way to get kids fascinated by History? Take them to the cemetery. Oakland Cemetery. Kids really learn better when they are standing in the virtual shoes of people who made history, and there are lots of those folks in Oakland.

"Discover the history, the period gardens, and the art and architecture that give Oakland its distinctive character. Oakland is an outdoor museum of Atlanta’s history with over 70,000 stories to tell; stories filled with both stunning victories and heart-wrenching tragedies." [from the website]

Oakland Cemetery first started burying people in 1854, and today it's a public park, free to visit. You can show kids where Civil War soldiers are buried, and walk a short distance and show them the graves of Atlanta's first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, or golf legend Bobby Jones. There are elaborate mausoleums constructed by the wealthy and prominent, and tiny stone markers over the graves of those with no money or fame. 

Kids can actually touch graves, headstones, and the many varieties of exotic plants. This page offers information for those looking to do a school tour. This page offers suggestions on different types of lessons for kids.

History is not the only subject you can teach while walking around Oakland.

Here are some fun facts you may not know about Oakland:

• It's a public park so admission is free
• Oakland is a Victorian garden cemetery and your child who loves plants and gardening will delight in the huge variety of plant life, including a huge variety of flowers, trees and shrubs. "Oakland’s tree canopy includes over 1600 trees and hundreds of species. Some are saplings, while others are close to 200 years old." [Source]
• Architecture aficionados will learn all about the unique offerings at Oakland: "People have sought to honor the memory of departed loved ones since ancient times, but the 19th century ushered in a new era of funerary art. Innovative building materials came available and styles changed to reflect the popular architecture of the day, such as Egyptian and Gothic Revival. New money meant bigger and bolder memorials to reflect the social status and power of prominent families." [Source]
• Most kids nowadays know the meaning of the word "diversity." Oakland Cemetery in downtown Atlanta has graves of people from all races and religions.
• If you want to visit during one of the many fun events, you can create a lasting memory for your child. Oakland hosts many fun events during the year, such as the Tunes from the Tombs, Run Like Hell, and Capturing the Spirit Halloween tours

"It might seem strange, at first, to hang out in a cemetery, but recreation in cemeteries is nothing new. In fact, picturesque cemeteries like Oakland were designed as public spaces, and in the second half of the 19th century, city dwellers visited them when they needed to get away from the hustle and bustle. They were popular spots for picnics, walks, and more." [Source]

 

My friend David Moore was head of Historic Oakland Foundation until recently, and now he is the Director Emeritus. A few years ago I was privileged to get a personal tour of Oakland, riding in a golf cart with David. He was such a fun tour guide, and knew so many great facts and anecdotes.

If you want to visit Oakland you can take a guided tour, either with a volunteer or listening to a recording. The tours are free if you're a member of Historic Oakland.

If you think of cemeteries as sad and boring, I invite you to re-think that idea. Oakland is a place bustling with life.

 

My friend David Moore is raising funds to improve Oakland, as he explains:

"The Living History Campaign is our first ever capital campaign and we are trying to raise 12 million to build a visitors center outside the gates for us and the community to use for large gatherings, symposiums, etc. - a real facility we've never had before. We're also rehabbing the Bell Tower Building and a huge undertaking of restoring the east side of the cemetery. We hope these projects will increase revenue, increase visitors, etc. and folks can come learn about the past, and more." - David Moore

You can learn more HERE.

 

 

 

 

Looking for a great summer read? Check out my newest novel, Return to Marietta! LINK

Return to Marietta (My New Novel)

Most of us in my generation grew up with grandparents who were little old ladies and men. White-haired and slow-moving, they were hopelessly old-fashioned and epitomized the word “elderly.” We spoke to them respectfully. We had to “mind our manners” around them. They didn’t drink, smoke, or cuss. They had full authority over us whether Mom and Dad were around or not.

Nowadays, I have friends in their 60’s who are grandparents but cut from a completely different mold. I know grandmas, mimis, pop-pops, etc. who take the grandchildren on hikes and bike rides. They say 70 is the new 50, or some such folderol.

My grandparents were cut from the old-school model, born at the end of the 19^th century, to Victorian parents who had lived through Reconstruction. My grandparents didn’t smoke or drink or cuss. They went to church every Sunday. I knew I would be held to a higher standard of good behavior around them and that was okay.

I called my mother’s parents Memaw and Pepaw or Papa, and I spent a lot of time around them as a child. I adored them, and they adored me, and made me feel very loved and secure. I had literally no idea about the hard times they endured in their first ten years of marriage.

My latest novel, Return to Marietta, was inspired by my grandparents’ lives, and it’s available on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, or hardback. You can order it here. It was inspired by the lives of my grandparents. My grandfather Bob Hasty pitched for the Philadelphia Athletics from  1919-1924.

Sometime around 1990 (the year my grandmother died, after 14 years in a nursing home, incapacitated by a massive stroke in 1976) I asked my mother why my grandfather had stopped playing baseball. She told me shortly after he married Memaw, he and several other men were accused of being part of a KKK mob that beat up a woman. Although he was innocent and that was proven in court, Connie Mack benched him for an entire season [1924] and then sold his contract to a minor league team in Oregon, and effectively blackballed him from playing major league baseball. I was shocked. Anyone who knew my grandfather would have known he was a very upright, decent man. He didn’t smoke, drink, or curse, and he taught Sunday School for years. He was the most gentle soul in the world. People would often assume since he was so big [6’4, 220] that he was a brute, but nothing was further from the truth.

I was very blessed to have had a mother who had an astonishingly vivid and accurate memory. Over the next twenty years we spent hours talking about her childhood and about what happened between 1923 and 1933. My grandmother was raised in a wealthy family, and she was anticipating an easy life, married to a handsome and famous baseball player, a celebrity. When he was arrested six months after they married, she must have realized that her privileged life was not going to happen. She loved him and she stuck by him, though. When Mom told me the story of what had happened I was struck by how strong she was, and how hard she fought to keep her family together.

After the trial, Papa spent years in the minor leagues, first out west – where there were no major league baseball teams in the 1920’s – and then in Birmingham with the Barons and in Atlanta with the Crackers. He went to New Jersey in 1933 and the minor league team he was supposed to play on and manage went under due to the Depression. He didn't return home. He stopped writing my grandmother. My grandmother somehow learned where he was, packed up her car and her two little boys [my 4- and 6-year-old uncles] and set off driving to New York while very pregnant with my mom. She told Mom about it years later. I can only surmise that Papa was very depressed at that time. Nonetheless, he returned home with her and started working for companies that wanted him to manage and play on their company baseball teams.

I cannot imagine packing up two small boys and driving, while nearly 8 months pregnant, to New York City. There were no interstates. There was no GPS. There were no McDonald’s and nice hotels every 20 miles. The car was likely unheated. Cars often got flat tires. It was the darkest part of the Great Depression so there were undoubtedly families on the road, homeless and broke. My grandmother was 4’10 and always had to sit on cushions to see over the steering wheel and drive.

She was a crack shot, however, and she always carried food on trips.

I had to fictionalize their story because my research failed to turn up exactly WHY my grandfather was accused of a crime in 1923. My book is filled with details I learned from my mother about my grandparents during that 1923-33 time period. They were young people, in love, trying to raise a family. As I wrote, they became Lillian and Will, not Memaw and Papa. That’s okay. That’s as it should be.

It's a rare honor to be able to learn so much about one's grandparents and to appreciate the many hardships and sacrifices they made before they became the little old Memaws and Papas we knew.

My book honors them in spirit, even though it's fiction.

My book is not simply a love story or a sports story or Bookclub Fiction. It could easily fall under all those categories, but it’s much more than that, too. It’s a story about faith, courage, and family. It’s my attempt to honor two people I loved very much. I hope you will read it and enjoy it.

left, my grandmother Wilma Butler, in her youth. Middle, her and Papa [Bob Hasty] when they were "courting." Above right, Memaw and four of her grandchildren in 1974. We all adored her. She was cute and funny - a real character.

 

5 Ways to Get Kids Interested in History

I have a relative who runs a history page on Facebook and just this morning he gently chided me about commenting on a post about a former sheriff of Cobb County, in office a hundred years ago. There was nothing wrong with the original post except I thought that it would be fun to add an interesting anecdote.

This is what I commented: "I don't know if he was the sheriff, but my mom told me a funny story about a sheriff (from many years ago) who went home one day at lunch and discovered his wife in bed with another man. The sheriff pulled his gun and made them get up and march all around the square buck nekkid, while the sheriff followed behind with his loaded pistol pointed at their backsides."

Generally speaking, infidelity and public humiliation aren't necessarily funny, but then again, being marched naked around town because you were party to that infidelity is sort of funny to someone like me who has a somewhat dark sense of humor.

History is a subject most kids hate, and we need to figure out how to make it more interesting.

When I was in school I had a history teacher who really just supervised the class and gave us tests. She would hand out worksheets with lists of things -- like if we were studying the Civil War the list might say "Gettysburg / Antietam / Frederick Douglass" etc. Then we had to read the chapter, find the terms, and write down WHO WHAT and WHY IMPORTANT for each term. She rarely lectured. She let the book teach us everything. Nobody liked her. I didn't like her and I didn't like her class. I think I made an A in there, though.

In hindsight, I realize that I learned a lot that year because she forced me to read about History and actually THINK about events and people. The "why important?" aspect of each term was the one that forced me to read and re-read.

My dad loved History. I've written before about how he was able to talk about it with me and my brother and make it come alive. He would have made a wonderful teacher of History.

History is filled with interesting facts and funny stories. We need to sprinkle these in with the more boring facts so that children will remember what they are supposed to be learning.

One of my high school teachers told me Benjamin Franklin had something like 18 illegitimate children. I found that fascinating. Historians now say that number is probably incorrect, but whatever. It gave me a lot more fascination with reading about Franklin. Just now I googled that and came up with an interesting page from the University of Delaware that has a lot of fascinating facts about Franklin. It fails to mention that Franklin thought our national bird should be the turkey but that has been stuck in my head for many years.

I wrote my sophomore research paper in high school about female spies during the civil war. It forced me to read a lot about the Civil War.

 

If you have a child who isn't interested in History, here are some suggestions:

1) Seek out movies for kids that can teach them some history. Lots of parenting websites have suggestions.

2) Find pages of weird history facts and go over them with your child. Example: During the Great Depression, people made clothes out of food sacks. People used flour bags, potato sacks, and anything made out of burlap. Because of this trend, food distributors started to make their sacks more colorful to help people remain a little bit fashionable. My grandmother made little dresses for my mom out of flour sacks. If you can connect the information to the child in some way, it helps.

3) Take your child to a historic site and talk to them about why it's important. Just south of Atlanta we have the Ocmulgee Mounds National Park, for instance.They are far more likely to recall basic facts about the indigenous people who lived in the mounds as they are climbing all over them.

4) Give your child a list of historical figures and tell them to research and make a list of 5 interesting facts, then talk about the person. Reward them with a scoop of ice cream or something small.

5) Encourage your child to talk to older friends and/or relatives, and ask them three questions like

What was life like when you were growing up?

What historical events have you lived through that you can tell me about?

How has the world changed during your lifetime?

Most older people enjoy talking to kids, and if it's their grandchild they really want to pass along facts about themselves and what they've learned.

Below left, my grandfather and some of his friends during WWI. Below right, the car dealership owned by my great-grandfather.

Sharing Family Lore

I spent a good bit of time this week putting together a Powerpoint about my father's parents and their descendants. I enjoyed doing it. I have a ton of old photos on my computer, and I know a lot of stories. Powerpoints are a great way to share stories and photos. Once they become really large Google converts them to a link, which makes sharing much easier.

What prompted me to do it was that I shared the handkerchief story with one of my first cousins and she had never heard the story.

That got me to thinking.

My parents told me lots of anecdotes and stories about Dad's parents because they died before I was born, and Mom and Dad wanted me to know about them. I loved hearing about them. To me, they were the grandparents in the paintings. My uncle Lewis Thompson did oil portraits of both of them, using photos, in the late 1950's. Those portraits hung in the living room of our home, for years. It was a revelation to me to realize that my cousins, the children of my father's two brothers, were not told all the stories that I was told. I got to thinking, how will future generations hold on to these stories?

I enjoy creating Powerpoints, so I spent hours putting together a Powerpoint about Thompson and Cordelia, and their three sons, and the subsequent generations.

A hundred years from now I hope one of the descendants of Thompson and Cordelia [pictured at left] will have access to this Powerpoint and be interested in learning about their ancestors who lived in the late 19th and 20th centuries. We are so blessed to have the ability to put together these Powerpoints and save them.

Right, a wonderful photo showing my parents and Dad's two brothers and their families. My parents are at the far left. Mom was pregnant with my older brother. Of the four small children pictured, they are all now in their 60's and only two of them have children, but that's fine. The children and grandchildren are hopefully the ones who will preserve the family photos and lore.

I also did Powerpoints about each of my parents, and about my maternal grandparents.

If I had a Powerpoint -- or even just a photo album -- about my ancestors I would treasure it. I know so little about the generations beyond my grandparents.

Do you have family photos and/or stories to share? Consider doing a Powerpoint. Someday, your descendants will thank you.

Revising History to Reflect Wishful Thinking

I remember watching a news story several years ago about the musical Hamilton and feeling really uncomfortable with how it was cast. Black actors portraying aristocrats that socialized with Alexander Hamilton? It just didn't happen.

I am not alone in my feelings on this. As this article points out,

"The performance drew plenty of skeptics. Then-Daily Show host Jon Stewart, in a segment that has aged like asbestos, roundly mocked Miranda and the other poets of color featured in the event, snarking, “You’ve been dissed, disrespected, disenfranchised, but ’dis? Is kind of ridiculous.”

Hamilton went on to break box-office records but it attracted a lot of criticism, too.

Here's a little reminder: In that day and time (the late 18th century) most African Americans were either enslaved. If they were free, they typically worked at very modest jobs like maids or perhaps tradespeople like blacksmiths or seamstresses or farm workers. There was no black aristocracy, except perhaps in New Orleans.

The sort of revisionist history seen in Hamilton or the newer Netflix series Hollywood is really inaccurate and it bothers me on a lot of levels.

Now, I am the child of two parents who liked history and read a lot of history. My father was an avid and voracious reader and a 5 lb. tome about the life of Winston Churchill or George S. Patton was a gift he would delve into immediately after opening.

I was taught to revere history at an early age.

While in the car, we always pulled over to read those historic markers by the side of the road. Dad always took us to Civil War battlefields and any sort of naval vessel the public could tour. We watched movies set in historical time periods. I loved to read biographies of famous women like Eleanor Roosevelt and Clara Barton.

Now that I am a writer, I am diligent about doing my research and trying to portray accurately what life was like in the recent past or the distant past. I did a lot of research for my novel Heart of My Own Heart.

Hamilton and Hollywood are trying to cast more actors of color in key roles and level the playing field in terms of job opportunities. I understand that motivation and I applaud the idea, just not the execution of it. The system has long been biased and it needed to change. I just don't think the way history is being rewritten is a good thing.

Imagine you are a child (not knowing much about American History) and you see Hamilton. It appears as though he had peers who were African American. They seemed to sing hip hop. You will come away thinking that the portrayals in Hamilton are accurate. Perhaps you watch the series Bridgerton, which also has black actors portraying members of the British nobility in the 18th century -- and it's completely inaccurate. How does that feel later on when you learn in school that Hamilton and Bridgerton ignored actual history, and most of your ancestors were likely slaves or laborers or farmers?

Hollywood is an interesting series but it portrays a lot of somewhat graphic sex and no child should be watching it, but if they are, they are getting a similarly inaccurate vision of Hollywood in the late 1940's, early 1950's. It was almost impossible for even very talented non-white actors and actresses to get good roles and the recognition they deserved. That's really unfortunate but it is how things were back then. For instance, Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for her role in Gone With the Wind but couldn't sit in the auditorium with her peers, due to racism.

In Hollywood, the series, a movie is made that features a black actress, written by a black screenwriter, and it breaks box office records and wins a slew of awards. That's a nice fantasy, but it's doubtful that would have been the outcome even if a studio had dared to try that. Also, it's a slap in the face to people who lived through those segregated, racist times.

Here's a disturbing thought. The implication is that if a studio had just cast a beautiful black actress in a lead role and taken a chance, all would have been well. There's no way of knowing that. It's easy to look back and say of industry executives back then You weren't brave enough to buck convention and just go for it -- but hindsight is 20/20. We shouldn't judge people living during a time it's hard for us to fathom. Black people who went against the mainstream were often beaten or lynched. White people who tried to change the status quo were also often targets of the KKK. That's a terrible truth but it's the truth. It didn't happen only in the south, either.

You could make the argument that all of history is inaccurate. It's always written by the winners. History must be portrayed as accurately as possible, however, in my opinion.

I feel strongly that entertainments should not portray history the way we would have liked for it to be. Future generations shouldn't be confused by a well-meaning but highly inaccurate depiction of historical facts and events. We owe it to subsequent generations to show how it really WAS, the good and the bad. To do anything else is dishonorable and just wrong, in my opinion.

One final thought...

Sydney Poitier actually broke the color barrier in the early 1950's, the first person of color starring in movies popular with all audiences. We should study his life and learn and be inspired by it.