Photo by my colleague Rosalyn Park, taken during our trip to Sierra Leone in 2004
Nelson Mandela read Chinua Achebe when he was in prison and reportedly described him as a writer “in whose company the prison walls fell down.” I read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in college, three decades after it was written, required reading on a syllabus that only included one African author. I read his other books later, as well as some of his essays. The obituaries describe him as an African Literary Titan and a “towering man of letters”. True words, but he was more than that. Much has and will be written about Chinua Achebe as the writer that wrested writing about Africa – that vast and varied Africa, as if one writer could ever represent it – back from the West.
There is one poem by Chinua Achebe that has stayed with me for many years, not because it captures the global themes of colonialism or tradition v. Western values, but because it captures so perfectly the small moments of heartbreak and love that I myself have seen in the refugee camps I have visited in Sierra Leone and Ghana. That Chinua Achebe could capture the small moments of human connection along with the global themes was a mark of his genius. Upon reading the news of Chinua Achebe’s passing today, I read A Mother In A Refugee Camp again. I share it now, my own way of saying thank you, “like putting flowers on a tiny grave”.
A Mother In A Refugee Camp
No Madonna and Child could touch
Her tenderness for a son
She soon would have to forget. . . .
The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored steps
Behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there
Had long ceased to care, but not this one:
She held a ghost-smile between her teeth,
And in her eyes the memory
Of a mother’s pride. . . . She had bathed him
And rubbed him down with bare palms.
She took from their bundle of possessions
A broken comb and combed
The rust-colored hair left on his skull
And then—humming in her eyes—began carefully to part it.
In their former life this was perhaps
A little daily act of no consequence
Before his breakfast and school; now she did it
Like putting flowers on a tiny grave.
The current Weekly Writing Challenge got me thinking about children in one of the most adult-oriented of all places – the workplace. Yes, I admit that I have brought each of my three children to work with me at various times, usually because of an unlucky confluence of sickness and pressing work deadlines. It certainly isn’t my first choice, but in my experience it has worked out fine for short periods of time. (Unless you count the unfortunate incident when my co-worker Peder accidentally got his finger chomped by my oldest son, who was teething. New baby teeth are razor sharp. Peder claims that he saw stars, just like in the cartoons.)
But whether or not to bring children to work is an issue that many working mothers have grappled with at one time or other. It is, in fact, the issue that has made European Parliament Member Licia Ronzulli so popular with moms like me. The photo above, taken in September 2010, of Ms. Ronzulli at work with her baby has made her a cause célèbre for working mothers around the world.
Although she doesn’t bring her daughter to the European Parliament regularly, there are other photos of Ms. Ronzulli and her daughter Vittoria. During a vote on the Eurozone debt crisis on February 15, 2012, reporters snapped several photos of Vittoria with her mom at the European Parliament.
Now two years old, Vittoria was back in Strausborg – and the European media – just this week. I think that the reasons that these photos resonate so much with moms here in America is that they symbolize so perfectly the work-family balance that all of us working moms struggle with every day. Ms. Ronzulli’s employer, the European Parliament, has rules that allow women to take their baby with them to work. Unfortunately, this is just not an option for most working moms. So we share the photos on Facebook and hope for a day when working mothers have better support.
Support such as adequate parenting leave, for example, is important. But Ms. Ronzulli herself was entitled to a parenting leave, but chose to take only 1 month of it. She makes the point that it is about personal choice. In 2010, she told The Guardian “It’s a very personal choice. A woman should be free to choose to come back after 48 hours. But if she wants to stay at home for six months, or a year, we should create the conditions to make that possible,” she said.
I think that Ms. Ronzulli is right. I think that we should create the conditions to make it possible for a woman to choose the best thing for both her family and her career. Sometimes, that might mean bringing the kids to work with her. (And yes, I think this goes for dads as well.)
I had a bad feeling when Adam Yauch was a no-show for the Beastie Boys‘ induction into the Rock n’ Roll Hall o’ Fame in April. So, while I was not surprised, I was saddened to learn of his death from cancer at the age of 47.
The Beastie Boys were not my favorite band growing up. (That would be The Police.) They had an impact on my generation (X), however, that is worth acknowledging. Only a few years older than me, the Beasties burst onto the national scene when I was still in high school. As girl from the suburbs of a small Southern city, whose first album was REO Speedwagon’s Hi Infidelity and first concert was the J. Geils Band (with Hall & Oates!), I found the Beastie Boys to be something of a breath of fresh air. For me, they symbolized New York and the urban, East Coast, post-racial America that I had yet to experience.
I did see the Beastie Boys once, when they toured with Madonna in 1985 on the Virgin Tour, but that was purely by accident since I was going for Madonna and didn’t even know who was opening. Quite honestly, I couldn’t really tell Beastie Boys apart. They all had dark hair and, what with the VW gold chains and sunglasses and baseball caps and hats and all, they weren’t that distinguishable. They were named either “Mike” or “Adam”, so take your pick. Sure, they had nicknames – “MCA” was Adam Yauch and “Ad-Rock” was Adam Horovitz – but unlike Sting and The Police, it didn’t really matter too much to me who was who in the Beastie Boys.
“Enough of this hip hop! Bring on the Material Girl!” That’s what I mostly remember thinking during their set.
License to Ill came out in 1986. I didn’t own it on cassette or LP but plenty of people at my college must have, because (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party) was de rigueur for dorm room parties. Along with UB40’s Red, Red Wine and Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on aPrayer, it was the soundtrack for my early college social life.I can still close my eyes and flashback through the entire MTV video, complete with the nerds saying, “We’ll invite all our friends and have soda and pie!” and “I hope no bad people come!” The Beasties’ exuberant “KICK IT!” still echoes in my head 25 years later.
Never what you would call a fan, I pretty much lost interest in the Beastie Boys after License to Ill. Frankly, pulling stunts like having girls dancing around in cages at their concerts didn’t help much.
I came back to the Beasties in the mid-1990s. But not really because of their music.
Beastie Boy Adam Yauch (MCA a.k.a. Nathanial Hörnblowér) had become a human rights activist. He started a non-profit called the Milarepa Fund in 1994 to support Tibetan independence from China. Royalties from the Beastie Boys’ 1994 songs Shambala and Bodhisattva Vow (from the Ill Communication album) were dedicated to the Milarepa Fund and the fight for freedom for Tibet. They sponsored an information tent on Tibetan human rights at Lollapalooza and performed concerts to raise money for the cause. In 1996, Yauch organized the Tibetan Freedom Concert. The largest benefit concert in the US since 1985’s Live Aid, it attracted 100,000 people and raise more than $800,000. Additional Tibetan Freedom Concerts were held on four continents in 1999.
It turns out that the Beastie Boys had principles and they were not afraid to use them. Shortly after the bombings at US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Adam Yauch used his time at the microphone at the 1998 MTV Music Awards ceremony to talk about stereotyping Muslims as terrorists. “It’s kind of a rare opportunity that we get to speak to this many people at once,” he said. “So, if you guys will forgive me I just want to speak my mind for a while.” He went on – prophetically, it seems now – to speak about the U.S. government’s military aggression in the Middle East and the growing climate of racism towards Muslims and Arabic people. “The United States has to start respecting people from the Middle East in order to find a solution to the problem that’s been building up over many years.
Another issue that the Beastie Boys took on directly was the rights of women. They’ve been rapping against domestic violence (“Why you got to treat your girl like that?”) at least since Paul’s Boutique. When it was announced that Adam Yauch had died, my friends on Twitter lit up the night with lyrics like “I’m gonna say a little something that’s long overdue/The disrespect of women has got to be through/ To all our mothers and our sisters and our wives and friends/ I want to offer my love and respect to the end” (from Sure Shot). Song For The Man was written after Adam Horovitz observed the overt sexism – and blatant harassment of a woman – by a couple of guys on a train. If more men spoke out like the Beasties, the world would be a better place.
At the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards, when the Beastie Boys won the award for Best Hip Hop Video for Intergalactic, Adam Horovitz spoke about the problem of sexual assaults and rapes at Woodstock 99. He made the pitch for bands and concert venues to provide more security to better protect women.
The Beastie Boys have continued their political activism into the 2000s. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, for example, they organized and headlined the New Yorkers Against Violence Concert in October 2001. The concert proceeds went to the New York Women’s Foundation Disaster Relief Fund and the New York Association for New Americans.
Adam Yauch with his daughter at an Amnesty International Event
I’ve been thinking about the life of Adam Yauch, which ended far too soon, and have come to realize that the Beastie Boys not only helped define the formative experiences of my generation but they are also representative of many of the traits of Generation X. Wikipedia has this to say about us: “When compared with previous generations, Generation X represents a more heterogeneous generation, exhibiting great variety of diversity in such aspects as race, class, religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.” The Beasties, in freely crossing music boundaries between punk and hip hop and alternative, certainly are illustrative of this heterogeneity and diversity.
But I think that another of our generational traits is the ability to change. (I love this quote from Wikipedia: “Change is more the rule for the people of Generation X than the exception.[citation needed]”) The Beastie Boys were no different from many of us who were, in our youth, racist, sexist, and/or homophobic dorks. America was just a less tolerant place when we were growing up in the 70s and 80s. Not that that is an excuse for the many of us who stayed silent and went along with the crowd rather than speaking up for what was right.
Like the Beasties, however, most of us have grown up and figured out that our actions – and our inactions -have consequences. As Adam Yauch once pointed out, “Every one of us affects the world constantly through our actions.” To not take advantage of second chances would be a mistake. Like Adam Yauch and the Beasties, we should take advantage of every opportunity to take action for good.
Most of the Gen Xers I know will, like the Beastie Boys, freely acknowledge our past immaturity, our arrogance and stupidity, and accept it without embarassment. Most of us embrace change as the only way forward, even though it sometimes means also accepting criticism. Adam Horovitz has a great quote that pretty much sums up this point:
“… (Y)ou might say that the Beastie Boy ‘Fight For Your Right to Party’ guy is a hypocrite. Well, maybe; but in this f***ed up world all you can hope for is change, and I’d rather be a hypocrite to you than a zombie forever.”
That’s a pretty good lesson for anyone, regardless of what generation you come from.
The other thing that I think that Adam Yauch and the Beasties symbolize for my generation is the ability to age with nimble good humor and some small modicum of coolness. To acknowledge we are aging, to joke about it, but to still be self-confident enough to hang with the young ‘uns – this I see as a generational shift. (Nothing, by the way, in the definition of Generation X on Wikipedia mentions this particular trait.) Maybe this is just another aspect of our ability to change, but the first minute or so of this video of the Beasties playing POW and Shambala live will give you an idea of what I’m talking about:
I’m sorry that Adam Yauch, a.k.a.MCA, a.k.a. Nathaniel Hornblower, won’t be continuing this Gen X journey with the rest of us. I hope he knows that he left a legacy here on Earth that is bigger than his music. Wherever his soul resides now, I hope that Adam Yauch is still kickin’ it.
Folksinger Lillebjørn Nilsen and a crowd of 40,000 sing Barn av regnbuen (Children of the Rainbow) at the trial of Anders Behring Breivik in Oslo (Source: NRK)
I thought I would write about the Charles Taylor verdict today. The verdict by the Special Court for Sierra Leone marks an historic moment in international justice – the first conviction of a serving head of state for war crimes and crimes against humanity. I thought today would be a day to write about the importance of holding Charles Taylor accountable for the war crimes that he aided and abetted in Sierra Leone, but also about the remaining impunity for the war crimes he was responsible for in Liberia. I’ve been spent time in both Sierra Leone and Liberia, so I’ve seen firsthand the horrific impact that Charles Taylor and his National Patriotic Liberation Front have had on the people in those countries. I’ve followed this trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone – and waited for this verdict – for years.
But I found myself this morning more powerfully impacted by events surrounding another trial, in another country where I have spent time. I speak Norwegian, so have been following the Norwegian media coverage of the trial of Anders Behring Breivik in Norway. Today, that coverage included an allsang with the well-loved Norwegian folksinger Lillebjørn Nilsen. In a chilly spring rain in Oslo, a crowd of more than 40,000 people joined Mr. Nilsen in singing Barn av regnbuen.
This is a song that Mr. Breivik, apparently, detests. He testified recently that this song, with its concept of living together in a multicultural Norway (“sammen vi skal lever“) was brainwashing children into supporting immigrants. Norwegians throughout the country sang it as a form of protest against his hatred.
This is a song that I learned many years ago. It is actually a Pete Seeger song called My Rainbow Race, translated into Norwegian by Lillebjørn Nilsen. My rough translation follows – with apologies for inaccuracies! I use the translated version as there are a lot of aspects that make this song feel particularly Norwegian. The references to nature, for example, and the disdain for “plastic and synthetic food”.
Written in the 1970s, Lillebjørn Nilsen’s song has an obvious anti-war theme. The lyrics of the song, however, seem especially fitting today. “Some steal from the young, who are sent out to fight…” could well apply to Charles Taylor, whose recruitment of child soldiers stole the lives of thousands in West Africa. “Some steal from the many, who will come after us.” Anders Behring Breivik’s acts of violence stole not only the future of dozens of young people, but the innocence of a peaceful nation.
I won’t write about Charles Taylor today. Neither will I write about Anders Behring Breivik. Instead, I will write about the voices raised today throughout our world – in celebration of justice and in a call for peace in the face of hatred. Because today I remembered that Lillebjørn Nilsen -and Pete Seeger – were right. We do need justice for the Charles Taylors and Anders Behring Breiviks of the world, but we also need to share our hope for the rest of us.
Si det til alle barna! Og si det til hver far og mor. Ennå har vi en sjanse til å dele et håp på jord.
Say it to all the children! And tell every father and mother. We still have a chance to share our hope for this world.
Barn av regnbuen
En himmel full av stjerner.
Blått hav så langt du ser.
En jord der blomster gror.
Kan du ønske mer ?
Sammen skal vi leve
hver søster og hver bror.
Små barn av regnbuen
og en frodig jord.
Noen tror det ikke nytter.
Andre kaster tiden bort med prat.
Noen tror at vi kan leve av
plast og syntetisk mat.
Og noen stjeler fra de unge
som blir sendt ut for å sloss
Noen stjeler fra de mange
som kommer etter oss.
Refreng:
Si det til alle barna!
Og si det til hver far og mor.
Ennå har vi en sjanse
til å del e et håp på jord.
Refreng:
Si det til alle barna!
Og si det til hver far og mor.
Ennå har vi en sjanse
til å dele et håp på jord.
Children of the Rainbow
A sky full of stars.
Blue sea as far as you can see.
A land where flowers grow.
Could you want more?
Together we will live
every sister and every brother.
Small children of the rainbow
and a flourishing world.
Some believe there is no point.
Others waste their time with talk.
Some believe that we can live on
plastic and synthetic foods.
And some steal from the young,
who are sent out to fight.
Some steal from the many
who will come after us.
Refrain:
Say it to all the children!
And tell every father and mother.
We still have a chance
to share our hope for this world.
Refrain:
Say it to all the children!
And tell every father and mother.
We still have a chance
to share our hope for this world.
Don’t you know you can’t kill all the unbelievers?
There’s no shortcut to freedom.
CHORUS
Go tell, go tell all—– the little children.
Tell all their mothers and fathers, too —
Now’s our last chance to learn to share
What’s been given to me and you.
CHORUS
For a related post on what I learned from the way Norwegians have dealt with the tragic events of July 22, see https://humanrightswarrior.com/2012/07/19/the-lessons-of-22-july/
“Our house was small, and when you grow up with domestic violence in a confined space you learn to gauge, very precisely, the temperature of situations. I knew exactly when the shouting was done and a hand was about to be raised – I also knew exactly when to insert a small body between the fist and her face, a skill no child should ever have to learn.”
He had me at “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” In my opinion, his Jean-Luc Picard is the only Star Trek captain worthy of helming the USS Enterprise; Picard makes Kirk and the others look like a pack of braggarts, whiners, and wimps. For more than 20 years, my love for Patrick Stewart has burned strong and bright, “the star to every wandering bark”. A talented Shakespearean actor, Sir Patrick nails every role he plays, from Othello to Shylock to the Seattle Opera director with a crush on Frasier. Then there’s his one-man version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I can’t think of another actor who I would want to see play 40+ characters. And let’s not forget the lecherous caricature of himself that he played inExtras. Good gravy, that made my heart beat faster!
My love for Patrick Stewart is sexless, as chaste and pure as that of the heroine in a Victorian novel. I feel for him what the young X-Men feel for Professor Charles Xavier – admiration, respect, passionate loyalty. It’s a love, I know, not meant to be tested in real life. Yet I can’t help myself.
I’ve never met Patrick Stewart. I know almost nothing of his personal life beyond the fact that he choses to use his fame to support human rights. He’s been a long time supporter of Amnesty International in his native UK. I’ve written recommendation letters for students applying to the internship program he endowed at Amnesty. (None of them ever got the Patrick Stewart Human Rights Scholarship, so I can’t even claim that two-degrees of separation.)
What really took me ’round the bend on Patrick Stewart was his decision five or six years ago to talk about his own experience with growing up with domestic violence.
“I experienced first-hand violence against my mother from an angry and unhappy man who was not able to control his emotions or his hands. Great harm was done by those events – and of course I mean the physical harm, the physical scars that were left, the blood that was spilled, the wounds that were exposed – but there were also other aspects of violence which have a lasting impact physiologically on family members. It is so destructive and tainting.
It’s taken me a long time to be able to speak about what happened. Then, two years ago, around the time of the launch of the Amnesty International campaign to Stop Violence Against Women all that changed. After consultation with my brothers, we all felt that it was time for me to speak out about what had happened in our childhood, and to show people that domestic violence is protected by other peoples’ silence.”
Domestic violence is a worldwide epidemic. It violates the fundamental human rights of women and often results in serious injury or death. Studies show that between one quarter and one half of all women in the world have been abused by intimate partners. Certainly men experience domestic violence as well, but women are victims of violence in approximately 95% of cases of domestic violence. (For sources and more statistics, see StopVAW.org)
It took the human rights community far too long to recognize domestic violence and other gender-based rights as human rights abuses. Because the violence is committed by private actors rather than the government in the context of family life, domestic violence was long considered to be a “private matter”. Fortunately, the international human rights law has progressed and violence against women is now considered a human rights abuse. The government has a responsiblity to prevent violence against women from taking place and to prosecute or punish the perpetrators of the violence. The UN Committee Against Torture has even clarified that violence against women, including domestic violence, can in certain circumstances be defined as torture under the Convention Against Torture.
Implementation of laws that protect women from domestic violence is, of course, the ongoing problem throughout the world.
It is never easy for survivors of human rights abuses to talk about the violence they experienced. It comes at great personal expense and sometimes that expense is just too great for people to overcome. There has been a lot of outrage recently about Rihanna and Chris Brown. I wish Rihanna would become an advocate against domestic violence – photographed holding an Amnesty International placard – but I can’t judge her or the decisions she makes about her life. It does make me think, though, that it is doubly important for male celebrities like Patrick Stewart to use their fame as a platform to raise awareness about violence against women.
I defy you to watch this video and tell my love of Patrick Stewart is wrong.
What will it take to end domestic violence worldwide? It will take more than Sir Patrick Stewart. As he says in this Amnesty video, it will take sustained government action to ensure that domestic violence is treated as a public health issue rather than a private matter. But Patrick Stewart’s decision to use his celebrity to speak out about the domestic violence experienced in his childhood home puts us one step farther along that road.
“Violence against women diminishes us all. If you fail to raise your hand in protest, then you make yourself part of the problem.”
My oldest son is studying the life of Rosa Parks in his 6th grade history class. “I actually met Ms. Rosa Parks once,” I say. He’s already halfway up the stairs, heading back to the sanctuary of his room. “Did I ever tell you about that?” On the cusp of his teens, he has no interest in being trapped by a pontificating mother. “Yes,” he replies. He pauses, half-turned towards me, left leg on a higher step, poised for flight. I see my opening and I take it.
***
In 1986, my grandfather Orville Prestholdt was recognized with an Ellis Island Medal of Honor for his contributions as a “Norwegian activist”. I was a sophomore in college and I took a Metro North train down to New York to meet my grandparents the night before for the gala event. The honorees were staying at a fancy hotel, one those midtown landmarks that is long on history but short on space in the guestrooms. As I entered the lobby, I walked straight into the sonic boom of Lee Iaccoca (chair of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, honorary medal recipient). If I remember correctly, I next walked straight into the back of Donald Trump (Scottish-German). Fortunately, “The Donald” was engaged in animated conversation with Mr. Iacocca and didn’t notice my faux pas.
Established in 1986 by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, the Ellis Island Medals of Honor “pay tribute to the ancestry groups that comprise America’s unique cultural mosaic”. Walter Cronkite (Dutch), Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (French-Irish), Joe DiMaggio (Italian) – the Ellis Island medalists were a veritable Who’s Who of American immigration. Of course, this was back in the Reagan era when Americans still celebrated the fact that we are a nation of immigrants. The 80 inaugural Ellis Island Award winners had been selected from more than 15,000 nominations following the controversy over the Medals of Liberty. Announced in the spring of 1986, the Medals of Liberty had honored 12 naturalized citizens, including Bob Hope (English), I.M. Pei (Chinese), Irving Berlin (Russian) and Elie Wiesel (Romanian). Numerous ethnic groups had objected that they were not represented among the winners of the Medals of Liberty, however, and had threatened protests during the “Liberty Weekend” (July 4, 1986) award festivities. So the Ellis Island Medals were created more or less as a compromise.
That’s when they went looking for the lesser-knowns with more obscure national origins. People like my grandfather, who had changed his name from Olaf to Orville when he immigrated from Norway in order to “be more American”. My grandfather had charted a successful political career in the Sons of Norway, from lodge president to International Board of Directors. He got his Ellis Island Medal for his “contributions in preserving Norwegian- American culture”. Too late for “Liberty Weekend”, the Ellis Island awards were to be presented on the actual 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in late October of 1986. That date fell on a Monday, but I figured it was worth skipping one day of classes to be a small part of history.
Having finally located my grandparents among the honorees at the reception, we headed to the elevator to go up to their room to drop off my bag and change for dinner. Muhammad Ali (African-American) was in the elevator with some family members; they held the elevator door for us. Mr. Ali tapped me on the shoulder and, when I turned, began performing a magic trick with a polka-dot silk scarf. At the time, I didn’t know that he had Parkinson’s. Or maybe I had heard he had Parkinson’s, but I didn’t really know what that meant. In any event, I watched in horror as the man – who had been such an icon in the 70s when I was a kid – struggled, with trembling hands, to slowly stuff the scarf into a fake plastic thumb. That’s how I found out how they do that disappearing scarf trick. No kidding – Muhammad Ali! The fake plastic thumb was several shades different from the color of his skin and looked dangerously close to falling off his real thumb, but he was focused like a laser on making that scarf disappear. I remembered playing chase at recess on the playground at Magnolia Woods Elementary School. The one who was “it” would yell, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! I am the mighty Muhammed Ali!” As “The Greatest” slowly performed his magic trick for me, I watched the single, crystalline drop of drool that hung suspended from the corner of his mouth. I thought for sure I was going to cry.
My grandfather handled the whole thing much better than I did. Maybe he was just feeling pretty good after a couple of highballs and a chat with Victor Borge (Danish), but he clapped his hands when the scarf finally disappeared and chortled with glee. “Woo-hee-hoo-hoo!!!” He may have danced a little jig in that elevator, too – he was that kind of guy. But I can’t be sure because I had gotten really good at ignoring him when he did that kind of thing in public. At 19, I saw only the weaknesses, the frailties, the embarrassments of my elders in that elevator. Now I see that I missed the courage, the determination, the encouragement, the shared joy in the accomplishment of a difficult task.
That night, as I lay in my narrow rollaway bed listening to my grandparents snore a few feet away from me, I thought about who I might meet the next day. I hoped to see John Denver (German) and Cesar Chavez (Mexican). Maybe also Gregory Peck (English) and Andy Williams (Welsh). Bob Hope was going to be there, too, as his wife Dolores (Irish-Italian) was receiving an award. But the person I most wanted to meet was Ms. Rosa Parks (African-American).
Rosa Parks had been a larger than life figure for me growing up in the post-Jim Crow South. The East Baton Rouge Parish school system underwent court-ordered desegregation when I was in high school, so I had some sense of the courage it must have taken her to do what she did. I thought she was an American hero.
The awards ceremony was to take place on Ellis Island, so in the morning we were all bussed down to Battery Park and the chartered ferry. Most people stayed up on deck for the short ferry ride, cameras at the ready to take photos of the Statue of Liberty. About halfway through the ride, I went inside to look around. And there she was! A tiny, birdlike woman with large glasses sitting alone on a bench by the window. In my mind’s eye, she is wearing a hat, coat and gloves but I can’t be sure I haven’t borrowed that memory from other images. She sat prim and erect, her hands folded on her purse in her lap, looking straight ahead. It is exactly how I always pictured her on the bus. I walked over and asked, “Can I sit here?” She looked up at me and nodded briefly and I sat down. Then my courage failed me. I couldn’t think of what to say next. As we approached the Statue of Liberty, she turned for a better view out the window so, of course, I did, too. “She’s smaller than she looks in pictures,” remarked Rosa Parks to me. Or maybe just to herself, but I smiled and nodded anyway. Then we approached Ellis Island and her family came to collect her. I went back up on deck to look for my grandparents.
***
“Maybe a famous person like Rosa Parks didn’t really want to talk to you. You were a stranger,” my son speculates.
“Maybe,” I say. “But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was just sitting there, trying to think of what to say to her and how I was wasting my one chance to talk to her. It was like I was frozen. I never did say anything else to her, other than ‘Can I sit here’?”
“So what would you have wanted to ask her on the ferry?” my son wonders.
“Well, I guess I would have asked what it was like to ride that bus.”
Twenty-five years later, I realize that Rosa Parks was probably asked some variation of that question nearly every day of her long and beautiful life. She was probably asked it more times than she could count. Asked and answered; you can google it.
“I don’t recall that I felt anything great about it,” Ms. Parks remembered in an interview with the Montgomery Advertiser. “It didn’t feel like a victory, actually. There still had to be a great deal to do.”
This conversation with my son made me realize that I didn’t need to ask her anything that one time I met her. I didn’t waste my one chance to talk to Ms. Rosa Parks. It was enough to be able to sit quietly in her presence for a few minutes. An African-American and a Norwegian-American, sitting side by side on the ferry and gazing together at the Statue of Liberty.
The Human Rights Warrior 
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