Author: Ernie McCray

I wrote in the guest book of her obituary:

Pearlie Mae. What can I say.
On my family tree.
A cousin but like a big sister to me.
Part of my history.
Here when I arrived.
Could always count on her love.
In my heart she will always reside.

She was a prominent member on our branch of the Windham/Windom family tree. Our grandmother’s Lillie (hers) and Alma (mine) were sisters. It’s hard believing that she’s now resting in peace with those two extraordinary women.

Her obituary states how selfless and loyal she was to family and friends and confidantes and I sure got a sense of that early on in life.

There’s a character
from old Minstrel Shows
who went by the name of Jim Crow,
white man in
black face
depicting what he considered to be,
a Negro,
all singy and dancey and grinny,
don’t you know,
but over time
in my mind
I configured the soul
of the rogue playing Jim Crow
as the mastermind
of all the crimes
against my gentes
I’ve seen in a lifetime,
a symbol of all our woes,
morphing into
“The Man”
I’ve come to know:
….

Oh, Governor Brewer, I look at a photo of you flashing such a sunny smile and I can’t help but think of a song Maya Angelou sings: “When it looked like the sun wouldn’t shine anymore, God Put a rainbow in the clouds.”

With that smile of yours you could surely put a rainbow in a people’s clouds but you’ve chosen instead, to literally, through a hateful bill called SB1070, turn your hounds on them. Your law gives “the law” the right to stop a range of brown folks, Mexican Americans, Chicanos, Mexicanos – on “reasonable suspicion.”

Whoa! “Reasonable suspicion” is a chilling term for some of us. I’m one of the most law abiding people I know and I have been “reasonably suspicious” on a number of occasions. Like I was suspected of being a thief one time based on a “burglar tool” (a screwdriver) being in my car. A house had been robbed in the “vicinity,” an area, in these kinds of situations, equal in size to the continental United States.

There’s this book ban
in Arizona
which is supposedly
in the USA
where book banning
isn’t supposed to take place
but they went on and did it anyway.
And it happened “quicker than
you can say,
Jack Robinson,”
an idiom from a long ago day.

(Note from Ernie: This was written in memory of Diana Gail Shipley, a dear friend and educator who was an inspiration to many people throughout San Diego. She lost a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer on January 5, 2012. I submit it here so that readers could just get an inkling of what a remarkable human being she was.)

When Diana arrived in heaven,
I can imagine the Almighty looking at her going:
“Diana.
Hm, hm, hm.
My Sister, my Sister, my Sister.
I know how you battled what ailed you
so I forgive you for arriving CP time
but I just want to tell you
that I’m so glad to greet you
because you were just what I had in mind
when I came up with this whole idea of Humankind.”
I mean wasn’t someone like Diana what a Creator must have wished for among His creations, someone:

Oh, Mighty Sonoran,
I fight back tears
for what they’ve
done to God’s Brown Children,
Sonorans for hundreds of years,
for how they’ve
banned their studies,
lied about their heroes,
stolen books filled with their histories
like purse snatchers
abusing passers-by
on dangerous urban streets
while they cried in their classroom seats.

Hey, there’s people
out there stressin’
going”What’s up with all this ‘Occupy?'”
Well, I tell you one thing
and this ain’t no lie.
Occupy
as a concept,
ain’t something
that just dropped from the sky.
Unh. Unh.
Not even a close try….

Sitting reflecting
on my lifetime.
And, man, I’ve ridden
the currents
of many kinds
of times:
times when I’ve danced in the street
like when Mandela was set free
as though he was ever really imprisoned,
if you hear me;
times when I didn’t want to open my eyes,
knowing the ugliness that was in front of me;
times when life was just a flatout mystery,
like George W. Bush
twice winning a presidency
in the land of the freakin’ free,
do you hear me?;
times when they played my song,
“Ernie, Ernie, he’s our man
if he can’t do it nobody can!”

Saving Ethnic Studies is my latest enterprise because my home state, Arizona, just can’t shed itself of Jim Crow kind of thinking, going back to long before I was born and all through my growing up in Tucson in the 40’s and 50’s. Then the 60’s came along and the state had to sing a different song. But Jim Crowness doesn’t go away easily.

Someone came up with the idea of honoring Martin Luther King and His Dream with a holiday and Arizonans screamed “No way!” Yet it happened and I thought that signaled that my beloved state had begun to see the way.

But along came SB1070, a law that basically gives cops of every stripe and kind the authority to profile Latinos. And before I could go “What?” Ethnic Studies, via HB2281, were banned in the Grand Canyon State.

Though I know not
what a prayer really is
and so many
“How to live”
theories and
philosophies
lean towards Show Biz –
I never-the-less
bask in the multitudes
of petitions to a higher power
and self help psychology
that my family has realized
since my daughter
began her struggle
to remain alive….

To all you well wishers out there, know that I love each one of you dearly and deeply appreciate your prayers and your soothing words and your hugs and two kisses. Oh, you ease so much of the pain that our family is going through hoping that our Debbie will pull through.

Okay, so I know you’re thinking “Yeah, we cool, but how are YOU doing?” Well, you mean, other than not knowing whether I’m coming or going?

Actually, I’m okay, under the circumstances, one might say, but in all this I find myself wondering “Am I crazy?” Then I think I must be because I can’t rid myself of a most compelling urge to just let loose like Daffy Duck, casting my sanity to the four winds, the pain is so stunning.

My dearest Debbie: this is so scary, your cardiac arrest. Seeing you on Thanksgiving Day connected to all those tubes and machines buzzing and beeping and ringing, with their blue and green and yellow lines zigzagging across a bank of screens, dancing and flashing “vital sign” statistics like storm troopers – I thought I would die, baby. That was so surreal, so not you.

I cry to the universe, stunned, with a simple question on my tongue, like a character in the old time movies: “What’s the big idea?” I mean, really, what genre of karma is this that has you in such a dark valley between life and death? And I can’t help but recall when you got here.