What are parents to do to beat the heat—especially this summer as temperatures rise and cash is low?  Here’s a thought inspired by a young friend.

Andy was a hard-to-please child.  Andy also refused read.  Everyone said so.  His teachers downgraded him for it.  His parents, frustrated, punished him for it.  His sister teased him about it.  Andy even admitted it.

So, what to do when my favorite thank-you gift has long been a well-selected book?

In Andy’s case, I decided to make an exception because I reeeally wanted my eleven-year-old friend to know how much I appreciated his helping me with the lawn and babysitting the cats; all the while refusing payment.  Andy was a great kid.

Wading through the cavernous aisles of Toys ‘R Us, I settled on buying him a game; one with plenty of “action.”  For “action,” read war, violence, pirates, and all manner of mayhem—just the kind of thing I’d hate and an eleven-year-old boy would love.

The game I chose was a monster of a thing with twenty-nine million pieces—warring parties, galleon, mini-warriors in full-dress medieval regalia, cannon, fodder, all awaiting assembly and positioning on the high concept high seas of the gameboard.  His eyes widening as he unwrapped the package, Andy looked at me like I’d awarded him a trophy.

The next morning I got a call from his mother.  Guess what? Determined to set up his game, Andy had stayed up all night and, in flashlight under the blankets mode, read the entire 64-page, sparsely-diagrammed, single-spaced manual;  Huh?

Beaming, Andy had come down to breakfast and challenged his dad to man his battle-station after school that day. And he wasn’t even yawning!

Lesson #1: Motivation is everything.  Andy read just fine.  He just didn’t want to read stuff others thought “good for him” and he thought boring.

Lesson #2: A spoonful of sugar really does make the medicine go down. For Andy, the “medicine” was reading the manual to get to the “sugar”―the game.  For me, the “medicine” was buying an action/adventure game to get to the “sugar” of pleasing Andy.

Lesson #3: The things we take for granted often prove the greatest adventures for our children―especially some of the things we do for a living.  Andy hadn’t verbalized it before then, but in his gravitating so strongly to the game, he was actually emulating his dad.  His father was a general contractor.  But, general contracting was a job he did away from home, not something he did with Andy.

From Andy’s enthusiasm with the game, his parents found that they could stimulate his reading habits by focusing on his interests, not just his assignments.

Children have just as much right as adults to be eclectic and inconsistent in their tastes; just as much right to veg-out on occasion, too. Like adults, they don’t always want to be programmed to do “what’s best” for them.

They don’t always want to be “educated.”  They don’t always want to be entertained either.  Sometimes they want to just be.  And, sometimes they need the inducement of a 29-million piece war game to rev their engines up to read an aesthetically unattractive and otherwise boring book!

From his response to the game, it was clear that a child like Andy would be excited about visiting not just a museum, but a maritime museum: Mystic Seaport, New York’s South Street seaport, or the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum.

If a trip couldn’t be arranged, Andy would have been just as happy to visit a construction site or, even better, given his age, a demolition site.

Lesson #4: Like the ray of light that was Andy’s Dad in his son’s eyes, as parents, we can value ourselves and the benefit of our life experience for our children.

We have all been trained to celebrate success in business, politics, entertainment, and sports. But success is achieved at every level in every field. We marvel at our cities, prizing the architect and the industrialist. But it is the stone mason and the carpenter who realize the dream. It is the watchman and the maintenance worker who protect the promise. It is the mother and father who encourage us all.

We all have skills we can use to encourage a natural love of inquiry and adventure.  It’s not where you’re going; it’s what you’re going for.

Those are nice simplistic sound-bites.  The truth, as always, is far more complicated – especially when seen from the borrower’s point-of-view.

Truth-telling about one’s financial challenges is not something “middle-class” “white collar” “professionals” do in our society.  It’s embarrassing; and who needs another label or platitude when they’re fighting for survival?

Reality reached my desk in the form of an open letter entitled “Dreams Deferred” from a friend willing to give candid voice to her facts-of-financial life even before the Wall Street meltdown.

With an advanced degree in creative writing, a host of prestigious fellowships, Ethel Morgan Smith is of a rare courageous breed.

“I am an African American woman and Associate Professor of English at a state university with more than twenty some-thousand students,” she writes.

“I was awarded tenure with promotion in 2000. I earn $58,000 a year. From 2001-04 we (faculty members) received no raises. I teach graduate and undergraduates students, three courses in the fall semester and two during the spring. I love teaching. At its best, there’s no greater passion.

“I’ve always wanted to teach is because I had great teachers who changed my life by introducing me to the world of books, a gift that I’ve passed on to my son, and all of the students I encounter. My teachers cared about me, and were invested in every aspect of my life. I, like so many others, have dreamed of extending that same kind of gift, but with the system that governs student loans, more and more of these dreams will have to be deferred.”

Smith embarked upon her dream as the recipient of a graduate fellowship in creative writing.  And, talk about family values! This single parent entered graduate school the same semester her son entered college.

To supplement her income, she substitute taught for $40 a day and took a $7,000 student loan. “I felt thankful to have access,” she writes.  But, the dream soon turned nightmare.

Note that her salary, as a professional with a bachelor’s degree, was only $40 a day in the public school system. Upon completion of her advanced degree and promotion to a tenure position, her salary increased to $58,000; still terribly low.  It’s a reality she has had to accept.

It’s what our society does to its teachers – and with states and cities in desperate tax straits, the situation could get worse.  But, her issue isn’t teaching; it’s the lesson she’s learned about paying the piper of an unregulated financial system.

To date, she reports having paid more than $21,000 on a $7,000 loan with a still-outstanding balance of $3,000 to be paid off by 2013.

Here’s her story:

For the years 1990–1993, she paid the Virginia Department of Education’s student loan fund $120 monthly; $4,320 in sum.  By 1993, when she took her job in West Virginia, the loan had been sold “at least twice.”

Each time the loan was sold, the new owner would re-start her balance at the original $7,000 and increase her monthly payment.  Hoping to remedy the situation, she called and wrote letters; all to no avail.

Two years later, with false reporting to the credit bureaus, her salary was being garnisheed.  She had difficulty securing a house and, in “a most degrading experience,” was required to have a co-signer for a loan from her own faculty credit union.

At no time, she insists, did she default or not make payments on the loan.  There was never a time I did not make payments on the loan.  When she was finally able to talk to a live person, she was told that this newest lender knew nothing of the loan’s past history; the fact was that they now owned the loan and she owed to money.

Twenty years since the process began with a $7,000 student loan for which she is still paying, she has had no remedy and been offered little hope.

“This financial nightmare tumbled down and choked the life out of me,” writes Smith.  “This is not just wrong, but inhuman.”  Sadly, she’s not alone, as mortgagees in similar circumstances can well attest.

To meet Smith on better terms – as professor and noted author – visit:  www.EthelMorganSmith.com.

When I was a child, parents would poke holes in the lid of a mayonnaise jar and send my friends and me off to catch lightning bugs, watch them spark and flare, then set them free.

These days we’ve come to appreciate nature’s creatures on their own terms.  But you can still plan a nighttime adventure with a little natural wonder. Instead of catching fireflies in a jar, you can catch a wonderful exhibit about these amazing little insects online at the Boston Museum of Science’s Firefly Watch.

With these creatures disappearing from our landscape, you can register your budding young entomologist on the website and set him or her to the task of helping scientists discover what’s happening to the lightning bug.  If there are lightning bugs to be found in your area, your child can set up a study site, provide the museum with a description, log notes on an observation sheet and share Firefly Watch data on the website.

For this “Citizen Science Project,” the Museum of Science has teamed with researchers from Tufts University and Fitchburg State College.  If you’re in the Boston area, you can visit the museum and meet the team.  If you’re not, a trip to your local natural history museum is a perfect day’s outing   If your child has information to share, you can call ahead to speak with someone in the Education Department who may be able to provide feedback on his or her findings.

Every parent knows the drill.  A week goes by, then it’s “I’m bored!”  “It’s raining and there’s nothing to do.”  Ahoy, say I.  Time for adventure!

Whether whitewater rafting the Colorado, rough-riding it to  Grandma and Grandpa’s, or armchair traveling by book and information super highway, TRAVEL GEAR: The BackPax Parents’ Survival Guide to 5 Essential Pieces and 50 Fun Staycations for Adventurous Young Minds is for you.  

It’s not where you go; it’s how you get there.  The right gear can make high adventure a part of every child’s life; adventure as a state of mind where children:

* dare to dream

* learn the art of risk-taking

* build self-confidence

* enjoy discovery and self-discovery.

That’s what this book is about.  At BackPax, we’ve been celebrating children and adventure since 1986.

Now, for the first time, we’re sharing with you the thinking that goes into the creation of our book, audio, and game “Adventures in Learning.” Here is the “travel gear” that gets our BackPax readers and listeners where they need to go.  Here are ideas to help you nurture a child who’s going places.™ Our “travel gear” is  guaranteed to thrill your child’s imagination (and your own).  Want to spark a love of adventure, power the mind, and infuse the spirit with a zest for exploration?  These time-tested ideas are interesting, exciting, practical, affordable, and fun.

As parents, we all know how important that is.  As a mother, the need to entertain and engage my twin daughters sparked many an adventure and inspired me to create BackPax, as concept and company.

With my babies now ladies, our BackPax family has grown too.  For our young trailblazers the world over, our BackPax crew has made pilgrimage to nature’s mysteries, retraced weathered routes of the Underground Railroad, and “lent hand” with the fishermen of Tobago.  We’ve crisscrossed North America; journeyed from Canada to the Caribbean and Maine to Mexico―taking side-trips abroad―in search of great stories to tell.

But, BackPax isn’t just about travel for adventure’s sake.  The concept sprang from a much deeper root.

My twin daughters, Ayo and Dara, were less than a year old when we moved from New York City to Amherst, Massachusetts and found, after months of trial and loads of error, the world’s best babysitters and big brothers in my stepson Raoul and his best friend Loren Oakes. With Loren in Amherst as an ABC House scholar and resident, our house became a home-away-from-home for this talented student and member of the Mohawk nation.

(Since 1963, the ABC program has been placing academically-gifted but economically-disadvantaged students of color in top schools nationwide; giving them, and society, A Better Chance to maximize their talents. Among ABC’s most prominent alumni is Deval L. Patrick, Governor of Massachusetts and ABC scholar/graduate of Milton Academy, class of ’74.)

So close were Raoul, Loren, Ayo, and Dara, that it was not unusual to come home to find an octopus asleep in our bed and the television blaring.  With four pairs of legs extended from one tightly cuddled body mass, it was hard to tell where one child ended and the others began.

One day the girls, not yet three, spied Loren coming into the house and instead of the giggling and running to smother him in kisses and hugs that was their usual patter; they saw him, shrieked and fled in terror.  Through months of tortured silences we protected each child; trying not to think the unthinkable―that Loren had harmed the girls in any way.  Finally the girls found the words to tell us what was wrong.  “He’s Indian, Mommy,” they said, still traumatized. “Indians are bad.”

Now, every parent knows what we have, intentionally or inadvertently, let slip into our children’s lives.  But, their father and I could honestly say that we had never mixed anything as toxic as this into our girls’ informational diet.  And, what the girls did not as yet know was that they, too, were “Indian;” their father (and they) being of Cherokee descent.

Pulling back the curtains to find what had so contaminated their baby lives, our search for clues revealed the culprit: everyday life.  While babysitting, the boys had regularly watched the “Cowboy and Indian” shows then daily fare on American TV―a serious irony given Loren’s heritage.  Then there were the girls’ nursery school story hours that had begun a new “authentic folk lore unit.”  Attending a PTA meeting, I listened, shocked, as the teachers touted the addition of “authentic Indian folk tales” to the curriculum.

Hardly “authentic,” from a Native American point of view, the stories were riddled with such stereotypical terrors as tomahawks and scalpings.   In traditional fashion, the tales portrayed European colonists as “pilgrims,” “Puritans,” “settlers”; and the indigenous peoples defending their homelands as “savages,” “redskins,” and “renegades.”  Little wonder that when the girls made the connection to Loren being “Indian,” the rest was history. . . .

Something had to be done, but what?  Their father and I spoke to the girls.  We spoke to their teachers.  We turned off the “Cowboy and Indian” shows and explained to the boys why such programs weren’t good viewing for them either.  We invited Loren and his family to our home.  We searched for truly authentic Native American stories to read to the girls. Coming up empty, we hobbled along with high intentions but meager resources; doing our best to help the girls appreciate a range of cultures.

A few years later, with my skills as a broadcast producer and NPR correspondent, I was given the opportunity to create a radio series with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.  The story of Loren and the girls came back to me. “When I Think of the Sun I See Myself” was the result: a radio series that encouraged children to see the grandeur of the world in themselves and their talents as gifts for the greater good.

True to the story, my plan was to tape our first show with the Mohawk Nation, but we couldn’t coordinate the schedules.  Determined, nonetheless, to begin at the beginning―with Native American cultures― and remain true to the spirit of the quest, we instead taped our first show on location with the Tonowanda Senecas in upstate New York.  Visiting real people in real places, we recorded the stories of their lives in their own proud words.  As if bonding young pen pals, we taped Tonowanda children singing a welcome song for the children they’d be “meeting” on tape.

Wandering into the Mark Twain Home and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, I came upon a quote and found my mission:

There is the Sea of Galilee and this Dead Sea —neither of them twenty miles long or thirteen wide.  And yet when I was in Sunday-school I thought they were sixty thousand miles in diameter.  Travel and experience mar… the most treasured traditions of our [child]hood…  Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.  Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad (1869)

BackPax was born.  Our mission: to engage children in history and culture via travel and adventure; to expand children’s sights and horizons; to set their spirits soaring.   BackPax, the name means a lot.  For adventure, think of a backpack.   For a commitment to respect our children’s minds and potential, think pax, the Latin word for peace.

“Have you heard of the little rocks that walked away?” With that teaser to BackPax’ Cajun Country audiojourney we’d take a magic carpet ride, adventuring through Louisiana history and lore.  “You see,” I’d explain, “the Bayous are full of tiny turtles which cluster and surprise at every turn—much like people.”

In Missouri, I met a woman whose family hosted Twain on his last visit to his Hannibal hometown. Recalling a scene from his childhood, the author told her about a parade he’d seen as a boy.  It was Independence Day and the marchers were all veterans—Revolutionary War veterans from 1776!  In two conversations linking three lives—his, hers, and mine—we’d crossed the entire modern history of the United States in a most unexpected way.

Researching the Underground Railroad, my daughters and I spent a day with Harriet Tubman’s great-grandniece.  She pointed to herself in a photo at the funeral of the great “Moses.” With the girls eager and wide-eyed, she told them how she used to play with her historic forebear; sitting on her lap and tickling her cheek.  Shaking her hand, my girls felt the touch of a slave—one of history’s greatest heroes. Having gained unique insight, they understood that slavery wasn’t so long ago after all and that it does still, indeed, touch our lives to this very day.

In studio producing Cajun Country, I took an emergency call.  The captain—the husky-voiced man heard on the tape— who had sailed me into the Gulf of Mexico; taught me how to knot; shown me how to make gumbo and coffee, spoon-thick, shipboard; had gone up to repair rigging in a storm, fallen, and drowned.

I remembered how he, a White man, had said he couldn’t believe that I, a Black woman, had come all the way from Connecticut to talk to Cajun people.  That was something, he said, really something. His gracious welcome was something pretty special, too.

From these experiences, I have seen how urgent it is to savor and to preserve our best of times.  From the comments of our young BackPax trailblazers, their parents and teachers, has come proof of the value of travel and adventure in their lives;  what it means to children, and to us all, when adventurous young minds are free to roam.  That’s why we’re publishing this book.  Let our Travel Gear help you retrace some of our adventures and create others of your own.  Start with your “Parent’s Anything-But-Bored Survival Kit” with its 5 Essentials. Then pick and pack as you like from our Guide to 50 Fun Staycations.

And, welcome to the wonderful world of BackPax.

Alabama U.S. Space Camp, Huntsville

Alaska Nature’s own continuing spectacle: the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights)

Arizona Great Meteor Crater, Flagstaff

Arkansas University of Arkansas Planetarium, Little Rock

California Exploratorium (Palace of Arts & Sciences), San Francisco

Colorado Hovenweep National Monu­ment, Mesa Verde/Chaco Canyon, N.M.

Connecticut Museum of Art, Science & Industry, Bridgeport

Delaware Mt. Cuba Observatory/ Delaware Astronomical Society, Wilmington

District of Columbia Air & Space Museum/Museum of History & Technology (Smithsonian)

Florida Kennedy Space Center (NASA), Orlando

Georgia Museum of Arts & Sciences/ Mark Smith Observatory, Macon

Hawaii Mauna Kea Observatory, Honolulu

Idaho Ricks College Planetarium, Rexburg

Illinois Adler Planetarium, Chicago

Indiana Indiana State University Observatory, Terre Haute

Iowa Science Center of Iowa, Des Moines

Kansas Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center, Hutchinson

Kentucky Museum of Natural History & Science/Rauch Planetarium, Louisville

Louisiana Lafayette Natura! History Museum & Planetarium, Lafayette

Maine University of Maine Observatory & Planetarium, Orono

Maryland Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt

Massachusetts Maria Mitchell Birth­place, Library & Observatory, Nantucket

Michigan Greenfield Village (incl. Wright Brothers workshop), Dearborn

Minnesota Science Museum & Planetarium, Minneapolis/St. Paul

Mississippi Russell C. Davis Planetarium/Ronald E. McNair Space Theater, Jackson

Missouri Kansas City Museum & Planetarium, Kansas City

Montana Museum of the Rockies, Montana State University, Bozeman

Nebraska ].M. McDonald Planetarium, Hastings

Nevada Fleischmann Atmospherium & Planetarium, Reno

New Hampshire Shattuck Observatory, Hanover

New Jersey Newark Museum Planetarium, Newark

New Mexico International Space Hall of Fame, Alamagordo

New York American Museum of Natura! History/Hayden Planetarium, “Cleopatra’s Needle” Ancient Egyptian Obelisk, New York City

North Carolina Children’s Nature Museum & Planetarium, Charlotte

North Dakota Valley City State College Planetarium, Charlotte

Ohio Mueller Planetarium & Obser­vatory/Museum of Natura! History, Cleveland

Oklahoma Kirkpatrick Center Museum Complex/Air Space Museum, Oklahoma City

Oregon Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, Portland

Pennsylvania Buhl Planetarium & Institute of Popular Science, Pittsburgh

Puerto Rico Museum of Art & Science for Children, San Juan

Rhode Island Roger Williams Park Museum Planetarium, Providence

South Carolina Gibbs Planetarium, Columbia

South Dakota South Dakota School of Mines & Technology/Museum of Geology, Rapid City

Tennessee Memphis Pink Palace Museum, Memphis

Texas Johnson Space Center (NASA), Houston

Utah Hansen Planetarium, Salt Lake City

Vermont Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium, St. Johnsbury

Virginia Langley Research Center (NASA), Hampton

Washington Museum of Flight, Seattle West Virginia Sunrise Children’s Museum, Charleston

Wisconsin Aviation Center & Air Museum, Oshkosh

Wyoming . University of Wyoming . Planetarium/Infrared Observatory, Laramie

Now that you have made it to this day, it is to you, as successful people and achievers, that this open letter is addressed. Amidst the congratulations due, let’s talk about the PRICE of your success, the DEBT owed for it, and a SENSIBLE  REPAYMENT  PLAN.

First, the price: take time to thank the teachers, family, friends and especially the parents who have helped you on your way.  Be gentle with them when they give you that look that goes back eighteen or more years and speaks of how much you’ve grown. They’re remembering their own graduations; their first steps toward adulthood, and they can’t imagine that the time from then to now has gone so fast.

Today you are graduating seniors.  In a few weeks, you will be freshmen again (back in school; new to work).  Such is the cycle of life.  It has taken four long years to get from freshman to senior only to become a freshman again.  Such is the test of progress, of time, of perspective.

Indeed, in this time of war; a time when wounded Earth is hemorrhaging her life blood, oil; drowning in floods; shaking with unprecedented quakes, this is no time for denial.

Too heavy a price is being paid by too many to bury truth under cover of words like “conservative” careless of what one would conserve; or “progressive” unmindful of what one would progress to.  This is a time for justice, fairness, and the difference between right and wrong; not just for a privileged some, but for all.

Invited to deliver a graduation address in Greenwich years ago, I asked the graduating class to complete a survey.  Among the questions: if you could be an animal or a musical instrument what would you be?

Unplanned, unprogrammed, left to their own devices, their answers came in complete balance.  Among them – male, female, African, Asian, European, and Indigenous – a full spectrum of animals graced their land, sea, and sky.  A full complement of musical instruments tuned their harmony.

Isn’t it amazing how nature gravitates toward balance?  Not really.  Or, as my grandmother would have said, “It’s life. In this world, all things are one!”

Knowing the price paid and the debt owed; now to the repayment plan.  Class of 2010:

I charge you to remember that we are all invited guests to the planet.  It is ours to share and no one’s to keep.  You have the ability and the responsibility to honor your world.

I charge you to resist magnanimity.  Forget the pretense of “brotherhood.”  True brothers and sisters fight and make up, put up and shut up, hate each other, love each other, and find security in the shared home in which they all equally belong.

I charge you to help the homeless, heal the hopeless, and, as you move into positions of leadership and power: do the right thing.  Hire fairly.  Treat people respectfully.  Pay a decent living wage.  Profit from your work and your wealth, but prize a sense of enough.

I charge you to love yourselves; especially now that you are the ones most in control of yourselves.

I charge you to expect the best and do your best to make it happen.

I charge you to make mistakes and learn by correcting them.

I charge you to savor your youth.  It is precious and it is brief.

And, finally, in the words of that great philosopher amphibian, Kermit D. Frog, “It’s not easy being green.”

“But green is the color of spring.”

the color of youth

“Green can be big and friendly like”

like your spirit and your heart

“Green can be big as a mountain”

like the challenges you will have to overcome

“Or tall as a tree”

from seedlings and acorns, those who love you have watched you grow

“When green is all there is to be”

when everyone comes at you with all their questions, fears, and pressures

“It can make you wonder why, but why wonder why wonder.”

You are green, you’ll do just fine.

You are beautiful and we know it’s what you really ought to be.

Class of 2010, in the wondrous fulfillment of your being GREEN is the potential and the power to be all you are in harmony.  Go now.  Be green.  Be great.  Congratulations!

source: BackPax, Cajun Country

On Sunday mornings, Grandma could take their three girls to church for their spiritual uplift. Come afternoon, it was his turn to evoke their socio-political awakening—lessons in political and personal liberation.

With newspapers for their magic carpet ride, he would pilot his three babies across the globe. There were tales of great Black civilizations that would some day rise again. He knew stories of the pyramids and places with names “the European colonizers” had dared try to erase.

“Ethiopia, though land of the fathers,” he would sing. Soon, he foretold, Ethiopia, Africans, would re-stake their rightful claims. So went the ritual of Sunday afternoons.

Well into her grandmotherhood, my mother would credit these Sundays with the love she and her sisters retained for reading, interpreting, the power of a good argument, and for unshelled peanuts; Grandpa’s preferred travel snack.

“Get your education,” was the message he imparted on walks home from school. Three thermos bottles in one hand, three little hands in his other, they’d wind their way down Seventh Avenue—the better to avoid breaking bottles and family ties. Each would finish college; two earning graduate degrees.

Born in Statia (St. Eustatius), a Dutch West Indian colony, Grandpa had been bound into 1890s neo-slavery and kept from attending school. Sailing to the United States in 1918, he burned with a passion for the freedom to read and to learn. Among his greatest personal achievements was attending night school and his Sundays reading aloud to his daughters.

Only as grown women with children of their own did my mother and her siblings realize how progressive Grandpa had been with their Sunday ritual of peanuts and the papers. From his homework, he’d devised lessons that would last them a lifetime.

Reading a passage out loud, he would tell them, “Now this is what they say, but what the politicians really mean is this.” Extracting a thought, he’d prompt, “Now you have to learn to read between the lines.” This to little girls then aged six, five, and three.

In 1960, my father died and my mother and I were alone. Grandpa took his time hi-tech. To this day, I best see people I hear on the phone—a credit, I think, to my Sundays with Grandpa. Sunday night at 9:00 was our time together; time to devise questions, absorb his answers, and hold fast to the feeling for another week.

With our time as precious as peanuts in the Depression, my Sundays with Grandpa began with the Ed Sullivan Show. It wasn’t that he would call as early as 8:00; it was that readying myself for hour extend the time we would have together. Like turning the clock forward for daylight savings time, the time spent awaiting his call added an extra hour of sunshine.

Louis Armstrong would exit the Sullivan stage, trumpet and handkerchief in hand. Acrobats would mount each other’s shoulders in a lattice of legs. Peg Leg Bates, the one-legged dancer, would make his last pirouette, grimacing or smiling. I was too freaked out to know which. And then it was time.

Moving into range of the kitchen phone on cue at 8:59, I’d await its ring. Grandpa was always right on time and I could not bear to miss the call because it was Grandpa who had told me that my skin was not dark and dusky, but a deep rich brown. It was Grandpa who told me that I was dark because I was “pure” – pure African.

Someday, he promised, I would leave America and know what a wonderful thing dark was to be. (In 1971, months after his death, I left for six weeks; long enough to discover—once again —that Grandpa was right.)

All these things he told me on those Sunday nights of the early 1960s when loosely-leashed dogs and sheriffs’ deputies unhinged would rage at dark-skinned youngsters like me in televised scenes iconically black-and-white.

Whatever his magic potion, Grandpa saved me when I needed it most. Growing up in the sweat and toil of the Caribbean, he must have been a scientist as a boy. From that lab came his greatest invention, formula for a family’s survival.

Happy fond memories. Happy Father’s Day to us all.

This is an example of a WordPress post, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many posts as you like in order to share with your readers what exactly is on your mind. This is an example of a WordPress post, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many posts as you like in order to share with your readers what exactly is on your mind. This is an example of a WordPress post, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many posts as you like in order to share with your readers what exactly is on your mind. This is an example of a WordPress post, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many posts as you like in order to share with your readers what exactly is on your mind. This is an example of a WordPress post, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many posts as you like in order to share with your readers what exactly is on your mind. This is an example of a WordPress post, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many posts as you like in order to share with your readers what exactly is on your mind.