Again!

 

Sunday, 1/25/26: Another sunny January day!

We had another sunny day on Sunday. Sunshine again, for the third time this month!

Thursday--sunshine again!

On Thursday’s sunshine (sunny day #4), I locked up my shop just before noon, leaving a sign on the door telling anyone who might wander by that they could find me down on the corner to the south, where I stood with a group I call “the stalwarts.” They were a much larger group back in the summer, before the thermometer took a dive and the larger segment of Northport’s population took off for Arizona, Florida, and other points south, but nine or ten or eleven of them still get out there on Thursdays for half an hour or so, standing where they are most visible to drivers coming down the hill and turning left onto Waukazoo Street, and I decided it was time for me to join them.

 

I was sure I had posterboard somewhere, either at home or in the storage area behind my shop, but it stubbornly refused to reveal itself, so my sign was black felt marker on the raggedy top of a cardboard file box—not as big as it might have been and nowhere near as “professional” in appearance, but I justified the look by assuring myself that no one could mistake me for a “paid demonstrator.” 

 

(Does anyone really believe that there are paid demonstrators against ICE in American villages and towns and even large cities, Minneapolis or any other? I know the people who turn out for these events! They are my friends, my family, my neighbors! But I guess the same people who think it’s okay for right-wingers to carry assault weapons to demonstrations  and even kill people (do your own online search if you don't remember the names) but wrong for an ICE nurse from a VA hospital to carry, holstered not drawn, a gun he had a legal permit to carry—those people will clearly swallow any blatant lie or absurd argument in the world, as long as it comes from the “leaders” they follow blindly.)

 

Winter. Snow. COLD! Although even a sunny day without wind is darn cold when the temperatures are in the single digits, there are important reasons for not huddling indoors full-time, e.g., meaningful gathering of people aiming to protect democracy, e.g., getting a dog out for regular exercise.

Very COLD week!

Is a "warm-up" coming?

Thought-Stopping

A friend of mine who had trouble with anxiety was taught a method of overcoming it called “thought stopping.” When an anxiety-provoking thought or image comes into your mind, you say aloud, “Stop!” and then visualize something calm and beautiful, replacing a negative with a positive image. Some people have good results; however, the method is of very limited or no value for others, particularly anyone with OCD. By attempting to block the thought rather than dealing with it, the thought itself develops resistance to your resistance, studies have shown. Despite occasional temporary relief, you may be strengthening the fear you are trying to avoid by stuffing it into a closet. (See alternatives here.)

The other day another friend sent me a link for another kind of thought stopping, the kind that seeks not to conquer chronic fears but to avoid critical thinking, i.e., to avoid questioning whatever orthodoxy someone has accepted, to silence one's own doubt. The man who posts on Instagram under the name “epistemiccrisis” (great name!) says he was “born into” the MAGA culture and learned ways to avoid questioning the ideology by reaching for handy mind control techniques. Thought stopping, as epistemiccrisis explains it in this ideological world, holds questions and doubt at bay with phrases that short-circuit critical thinking and keep believers comfortable. One such phrase is “Fake news!” The phrases are used as shields to block a person's own intrusive thoughts but can also be used to block information from other sources that could lead to doubt.

One phrase that epistemiccrisis doesn't mention (please excuse me for not spelling it out completely) is “Tr__p Derangement Syndrome,” commonly shortened to TDS. Confronted with any unpleasant fact about the current president, his followers block thoughtful doubts with the catch-phrase, “TDS!” (That is supposed to imply that the person criticizing the president or simply bringing up an unpleasant fact about him is completely unhinged on the subject of the president, not that the president himself is unhinged or deranged, which would make much more sense.) A true-believing follower might follow up the thought-stopping accusation by asking the person who has criticized or brought up the unpleasant fact, “Are you off your meds?” 

You will notice that this method of avoiding critical thinking also has the general effect of shutting down discussion by sideswiping anyone with a different perspective, sending the clear signal that no challenge to the received orthodoxy will be received by the blocked mind.

Recent Reading

Ah, but we still have books! Not only my own interests but semipopular demand has determined me to enlarge my offerings of classic philosophy writings. Notice also Mary Webb’s novel, Precious Bane, for which I am an evangelist. Escape to the quiet world of Shropshire, back when plows were drawn by livestock and the Saturday market was as good as a county fair. Don’t worry, though. There is plenty of conflict and drama in the story; it isn’t all sweetness and light. Simply one of the Western world’s great books, too long overlooked.

The story told in journalist Martin Sixsmith’s work of nonfiction pictured above was partially familiar to me from the film version, “Philomena,” starring Judy Dench and Steve Coogan. While the movie focused on the mother searching for the baby she was forced to give up for adoption, however, the book follows the life of the child from birth to death and also delves deeply into political struggles within Ireland (between Church and government), as well as in the United States, where the adopted Irish child grows to be a successful lawyer working for the RNC on (of all things!) redistricting, so book and film are complementary, and I recommend both. 

This Week Up North

 

Despite single-digit temperatures and subzero wind chills, Leelanau bodies of water are not yet covered with ice. Looking past the mountains of snow that hide most of the Northport Youth Sailing School buildings, you can see the blue water of Grand Traverse Bay. How long will that be the case? How soon will ice boating and ice fishing be possible on Lake Leelanau? Stay tuned. I’ll let you know.

Blue water in Grand Traverse Bay is still visible.

What good does it do to “speak out”?

I’ll cut right to the chase today and save the meandering for another day. On this cold Monday morning I typed “stand with Minnesota” into my Internet search bar and found a site with exactly that name, so here it is. Within the site you will find various other links, so do a little exploring and see where you want to put your two cents—or more, I hope.

 

I STAND WITH 

MINNESOTA.

 

I STAND FOR 

THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.

 

 

A group of stalwart Northporters gathers on the sidewalk every Thursday morning, and on Monday morning, casting about with that agonizing question, “What can I do?” I thought, I can do that. 

 

Former presidents Obama and Clinton have spoken out. (I’m still waiting to hear from President Bush.) They, of course, are famous people, former presidents, historic personages. What possible difference can it possibly make for one “tiny bookseller” (as I was once called) in a tiny Up North village to hold a sign and add her aged voice to the resistance? I was told by one political opponent that my “rants” don’t do any good and was asked how I can possibly expect anything I write or say to change the course of history.

 

Let me turn that question around: How do you expect to turn our national tragedy around by remaining silent? I shouldn’t say “you” there but “anyone.” How does anyone hope to do good by crossing to the other side of the street and looking away? “How many times can a man turn his head/and pretend that he just doesn’t see?”

Protests in the Sixties (1960s, that is) were not always peaceful, and they were not always effective, and there are plenty of Sixties sayings that aren’t worth printing on a t-shirt, but one I stand by today: 

IF YOU’RE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION, YOU’RE PART OF THE PROBLEM. One voice is not one alone when voices join together in a chorus.

 

Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse murdered—shot in the back—by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday (they “scattered” after firing their guns), was the classic good Samaritan. On Nicollet Avenue to observe ICE and film activities to protect his community, he stopped to help a woman pushed to the ground by federal—I want to call them “storm troopers,” but let’s use the more neutral term—“agents.” He wanted to make sure she was all right. Because of that, after his legally permitted firearm was taken from him (he did not have it in his hand), and while he was lying on the ground (already “subdued” by multiple agents), he was executed in cold blood.

 

With whom do you stand? For what do you stand? If not now, when?

Postscript: I strongly recommend this video statement by Adam Kinzinger. Watch and listen to the end. Good arguments, strong background. 

We Are Home Again. But We Were Always Home

We Came Home to Apple Blossoms

It seems much longer than a week since we left the little Arizona ghost town where we spent the winter and, as it turned out, spring. Five days on the road (by the calendar) felt about a month long. In light of what was happening in cities across the country, we abandoned the plan to travel I-80 and instead took old U.S. highways, mostly through farm towns, back to Michigan through New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, and we arrived at our old northern Michigan farmhouse after sunset last Sunday evening. 

Only six days ago? Is that possible? Those six days feel as if they have been a second long month, maybe two months. -- Now my sister tells me today is Friday, not Saturday. It was only five days ago. Even harder to believe....

As we initially prepared to leave Cochise County, Arizona, crossing the country in the time of coronavirus had been our most serious concern, and that never went away. (With restaurants closed, we made the trip on granola bars, trail mix, dried fruits, apples, and string cheese, with a couple treats of chicken from gas stations and one day a bag of fast food cheeseburgers obtained via the drive-through lane.) But we waited until after Memorial Day to leave, with Wednesday the designated departure day after a Tuesday of laundry and packing the car and cleaning up the cabin, and then the murder of George Floyd occurred on the evening of Memorial Day, which was already the strangest and most surreal Memorial Day in living memory, due to coronavirus….

Important demonstrations. Legitimate protests. There were also, in and near some of the crowds of protesters, opportunistic looters and even outsiders who came into Minneapolis or New York or Chicago bent on destruction. There were bursts of violence from more than one source, and while it was sometimes hard to know what was happening, it certainly seemed that the country, already as politically divided as it has been short of the Civil War and already strained by imposed isolation and shuttered businesses in an attempt to prevent the spread of a global pandemic, was now falling apart altogether. No, not falling -- imploding. 

So while the Artist was at the wheel, as busy as I was consulting the road atlas, I was just as often busy on my phone, looking for news or texting with family, especially family in St. Paul and Minneapolis, and when it was my turn to drive he kept trying to find a clear radio station with news. Had we been here before? In 1964? 1967? 1968? 

Then our little car began to run badly. It is still running badly, but it got us home, limping across the prairies and up along the Lake Michigan shore. Just one more thing to worry about.

So, a stressful trip? But friends, we had it easy! Eating gas station chicken in a parking lot somewhere on the Great Plains, we recalled American history and the days when Black Americans had to travel with the Green Book in order to plan their routes to be assured of finding meals and lodging at all. “And there was no food in gas stations back then,” the Artist remarked. As for staying in motels along the way, we are sometimes challenged to find one that will accept our dog (with or without an exorbitant added fee), but we are never turned away. No, we have it easy there, too. 

(In case you’re wondering, motel clerks were usually masked and gloved, but almost no one else was, in motels or at gas stations, once we left New Mexico behind.)

And we are not homeless. We don’t have to live in our car or in a motel. (One motel where we stayed seemed all the home many people there had.) Our mild ordeal was only five days long, and we are home now.

Friends congratulate our safe return -- by e-mail and text and phone, of course, not in person. Because even alongside demonstrations and protests and political commentary and speeches and outbursts there is still coronavirus, and so we must self-quarantine, which means we remain dependent on others to collect our mail and pick up groceries for us. But we have it easy in that respect, too, with more volunteers than necessary offering to help us. And the weather is lovely, perfect for working outdoors, always my solace in times of stress.

Yes, we are tired. Stress, lots of it. Utter exhaustion. But I know we are not the only ones feeling it because it has to do with much more than five days on the road.

While few people were crossing the country by car last week (on larger highways, trucks seemed to outnumber cars by at least an 8:1 ratio, but traffic was still light), all across the land a relentless tidal wave of news and the weight of our country’s entire history bore down on us all. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” 

“I’m tired of the hate,” one Facebook commenter wrote. I believe, from other things she said, that she referred to hate she feels is directed toward the occupant of the White House, not to hate coming from the White House, which is what disturbs me the most. If only we had a calm, encouraging captain at the wheel of state! But we don't, and what we have there is exhausting, too. The current president, when asked difficult questions, calls the press “enemies of the people” and – well, let’s not review all the name-calling and finger-pointing from the White House. Let’s just remember that it is part of the job of the press to ask difficult questions, and it is the job of the president to deal with that, whether he likes the questions or not. 

When you are president – pretend for a moment that you are -- and you are the one in the Oval Office, the buck stops with you. You don’t shift blame by pointing the finger in every other direction. The buck stops with you. That is the job.

But yes, we all get tired! Overwhelmed! And we are tired of feeling angry and defensive and misunderstood or ignored and insulted. Tired of feeling outraged. The never-ending onslaught of news and the cacophony of Facebook posts is sometimes just too much. There is an exhaustion of spirit, discouragement brought on by repeated failures of a country we love. 

Reminder: There’s nothing wrong with turning off the news for 24 hours. Take a break when you feel overwhelmed. No law requires any American to watch and/or listen. And surely, even acknowledging the addictiveness of scrolling through Facebook posts, you have absolutely zero responsibility to follow that on an hourly or even a daily basis. Or at all!

I received a text the other day from one of my sisters that former President Barack Obama was going to be speaking on MSNBC, so because we don’t have television here at home in Michigan (gave it up years ago), I used my phone to make a hotspot and got online and watched and listened, and it did me a world of good! You can watch it on YouTube (or other places, too, if you missed it last night.) President Obama is an encourager, not a blamer or a punisher. He is calm. And he is optimistic! Good heavens! No one can accuse him of being a Pollyanna -- he gives reasons for his optimism, and as I listened I began to smile, and I thought again, yes, we can. We can be better. I really needed his encouraging, inspiring words.

Because here’s something else that occurred to me yesterday. I’d just read an essay from 2016 by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, a black woman, answering a white male friend’s question about what constitutes white privilege. And then I read comments elsewhere (not on that post) from people who are tired of the news and/or fearful and/or certain there is no hope for the country or the world. And two ideas – the question of what constitutes white privilege and the idea of giving up hope – came together in my mind, and I realized that giving up and retreating to one’s own little world is the supreme white privilege. Not everyone can do that. 

Let me be clear. I’m not saying anyone needs to be out on the barricades every day -- or even at all. You don’t have to join a public demonstration. There are countless ways to make a difference.

And who doesn't need a break now and then?

So when you feel the need, turn off the radio or television or whatever device connects you to the news. Take a break. Eat ice cream. Take a walk. Soak in the tub. Whatever helps you relax.

But don’t give up hope, and don’t stop looking for whatever small ways you can find to contribute to fulfilling hope’s promise. Because we cannot afford the luxury of some self-indulgent, extended period of mourning. There is too much that needs to be done.

It is not saintly to be hopeful or to try to make a difference. It’s human – at least, it’s the better nature we need to summon up in ourselves if we are to deserve at all the gift of life on this planet. Because this is our home, this earth. For Americans, this country. Our home. We are many different peoples, with many different ways of looking at the world, but we must share our home if it is to survive.

Book Review: WHEN TRUTH MATTERED

When Truth Mattered: The Kent State Shootings 50 Years Later

by Robert Giles

Traverse City, MI: Mission Point Press, 2020

Paper, 353pp, $18.95

Kent State seems like such an ordinary place … until you try to reckon with its meaning as a battlefield of the Vietnam War. 

…

The students were defenseless. Still, even against the advancing soldiers, they believed they were safe to speak out on their campus. They were exercising three of the basic freedoms protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. 

- Robert Giles, When Truth Mattered

Passages above are taken from the first chapter of Robert Giles’s book. The subject of his book, however, is not about the shootings per se but about the way the Akron Beacon Herald covered the events at the time. Giles was then managing editor, the paper was part of the Knight chain, and Giles had responsibilities all the greater that spring because the executive editor and publisher was out of the country. 

What does it take to get a story “right”? To cover truth from all important and relevant perspectives? As second-in-command thrust into #1 position by his superior’s temporary absence, Giles felt his responsibility for the newsroom keenly. “The proverbial buck,” he writes, “would stop with me.”

Here and now in the year 2020, with cries of “Fake news!” from many different quarters (including our own White House), with foreign and domestic “bots” masquerading as American individuals at the grass roots and fomenting discord among us, the questions posed and answered in this account of one particular news story half a century ago provide perspective to a contemporary national conversation that could not be more vital to our country’s future.

Campus demonstrations were nothing new in 1970. The year 1968 had brought demonstrators and university administrations into conflict across the U.S., with protestors agitating against the draft and against the Vietnam War and demanding more socially relevant courses. Both Students for a Democratic Society and the Black United Students had demonstrated at Kent State in 1968. Fifty-eight students were arrested in 1969, SDS subsequently banned from campus.

Campus demonstrations were not new to the Beacon Journal, either. Because Kent was an Akron suburb and the campus only 12 miles from the BJ offices, the paper had reported campus unrest carefully and in detail in 1968 and 1969. Moreover, the paper’s president and editor, John S. Knight, had been following developments in Vietnam back as far as the French occupation. (Many believed, Giles tells us, that Knight’s 1968 Pulitzer was “a lifetime award for his perceptive and forceful commentary on Vietnam.”) When President Richard Nixon announced on nationwide television that he had sent combat troops into Cambodia, not only was the “smoldering center of protest” at Kent State primed to erupt, but the Beacon Journal was well situated to cover student reaction.

Wednesday, April 29, 1970. Secret infiltration of Cambodia ordered by President Nixon began.

Thursday, April 30. Nixon announced the Cambodia infiltration and rationale to Americans on national television.

Friday, May 1. Students assembled on campus to protest the invasion of Cambodia. Some went on a destructive rampage through downtown Kent.

Saturday, May 2. Kent mayor announced a state of emergency, with curfew from dusk to dawn, and a batallion of National Guard was ordered to the campus. During the night protestors set fire the ROTC building.

Sunday, May 3. Ohio governor James A. Rhodes arrived and took charge of the university, determined to prevent a student rally scheduled for Monday. The governor’s more inflammatory remarks, calling the students “worse than brownshirts” [Nazi storm troopers], appeared only on page 2 of the Sunday paper.

Monday, May 4. It was unclear whether the student rally scheduled for noon would take place. Kent State journalism student and part-time weekend Beacon Journal reporter Jeff Sallot, on campus by 11 a.m. to report on the situation and thinking daylight would keep things calm, expected a peaceful rally. Events proved otherwise.

When Truth Mattered is about journalists putting together a particular story, but for that very reason it must also be a story about the events. Jeff Sallot, with his dual role of student and reporter, and because he was on campus when events unfolded, with an open line to the newsroom 12 miles away, was crucial to the communication of facts to managing editor Bob Giles. Photographer Paul Tople, another student and part-time Beacon Journal staffer, was also where he needed to be. Giles writes of the “potentially combustible tableau” Sallot witnessed with these short, poignant sentences: 

The Guardsmen were clearly outnumbered. The students were entirely outgunned. 

The bloody tragedy unfolded quickly – within a mere 13 seconds, 61 shots were fired, four students killed, and 11 others wounded – but the newsroom had to get the story straight before going to press. Truth, accuracy, facts. Names and numbers. 

United Press International (UPI) first reported two dead Guardsmen. Associated Press (AP) was reporting four dead students. Which was it? Should the Beacon Journal go with UPI or take the word of their own student staffer who had been on the scene, Jeff Sallot, who believed there were four students killed? They went with Jeff. He was there. Other newspapers and radio stations went with the erroneous UPI report and had to correct their stories later. The Beacon Journal was also first to list names of those killed and injured. 

The technology of newspaper work was different 50 years ago, with reporters admonished never to leave the office without a “pocket full of dimes” for pay phones. Only the telephone company had mobile “car phones.” (Thanks to secretary Margaret Brown, secretary in the KSU School of Journalism, Sallot had the only open telephone line out from the campus during the critical time period.) Back in the newsroom, writers banged away daily on typewriters, not computer keyboards, and a serious city newspaper published several editions in a single day, which offered an opportunity to amplify and correct earlier reports but was a far cry from today’s minute-by-minute online publishing. 

Giles calls the daily newspaper of the Sixties a “ponderous” institution, one he and editor Pat Englehart “were pushing … to be nimble enough to do what we wanted it to do,” i.e., to dig out and put together the complete story of what had happened and how and why. Former reporting on the Vietnam War and Kent State University helped, but it was imperative that Beacon Journal reporters ask questions of anyone who could shed light on the tragedy. Questions, questions, and more questions. Interviewing Guardsmen who were on the firing line was of paramount importance. 

Also crucially important, Giles realized, as the story continued to unfold following the shootings, was acknowledgment of team effort in reporting. He cites one time he authorized a single byline, i.e., one name only given credit for a day’s story, and writes candidly that his decision for the single byline was a poor judgment call. He did not repeat his mistake.

Giles devotes an entire chapter to photographic evidence, images that captured the truth moment by moment. We are more skeptical today, aware of how digital images can be manipulated. Fifty years ago exposed film was processed in a darkroom and provided to the newsroom as quickly as possible, and there was no arguing with what the images showed. “The camera did not lie.” But the best images came from student photographers, and one of the best was taken by the photographer to a newspaper other than the Beacon Journal, as a result of the BJ print lab having lost some of his earlier work. Errors can be costly in journalism in more ways than one.

In the weeks following the tragedy, as theories, speculations, brickbats, and calls for investigations circulated throughout the public, the media, and every level of government, the Beacon Journal worked tirelessly to stay on top of it all. Giles tells us that the newspaper staff put together a multidimensional story -- 

…under the pressure of deadline. They did it in the face of powerful opposition from the military, the Nixon administration, the state of Ohio and the university itself, as well as strong currents of negative public opinion. 

Because that is the job of the Fourth Estate: to tell the truth fearlessly, regardless of whose oxen are gored. It is not the job of journalists to serve as mouthpieces for those in power but as gadflies assuring that what is done by the powerful will be exposed to public scrutiny, especially during times of conflict and uncertainty. 

In 1970, as now, the United States was deeply dis-united.

In many ways, the Kent State story was about a nation at war with itself.

And because the country was so divided, there was no quick final resolution to the tragic events at Kent State. Giles tells how the Beacon Journal continued to follow the story for years through various reports, grand juries, and civil suits, as families sought answers and justice for the deaths of their children. In searching for the meaning to his story, the author also outlines lessons to be learned from it.”The Meaning” is an important chapter in the book.

With every cell phone possessor a potential reporter and anyone who can access the Internet able to disseminate an instant opinion, truth can be harder to ascertain today. Giles cites “urgency” – and also impatience – as “the enemy of accuracy and care.” 

But truth will always matter, because it will, in the realest possible way, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, determine whether “[our] nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.”

I recommend this book most highly to all readers. 

Book Review: VIRGIN SOUL (or, "What were the Sixties really like?")

“What were the Sixties really like?” When a younger friend asked me this question, in a moment I suddenly felt many years older, realizing that what was “just yesterday” to me was a historical period to my youthful friend. But how to answer her question? I’ve been thinking about it for years now (haunted by the question still, obviously), as another two decades have slipped past. Here's an overview from Wikipedia to get you started, if you were "born too late" to be one of us, but --

There can be no single answer to what the Sixties were like, because they were different for everyone who lived through them, even if only American experience is considered. How old were you in the Sixties, for starters? A little child, a college student, part of the workforce, or someone “over 30,” one of those the young were told not to trust? Male or female, black or white or yellow or red or brown? Living in San Francisco or Chicago; Selma, Alabama; Aberdeen, South Dakota; or in the wilds of Maine? Rich or poor or in-between?

Student, lawyer, secretary, grocery store cashier, factory line worker, teacher, or Peace Corps volunteer? A draftee in Vietnam, conscientious objector in El Paso, refugee in Toronto, or a protestor at Berkeley? Singing and playing in a rock-and-roll band? Member of the Black Panthers or Students for a Democratic Society, or Young Republicans, or the Country Club?

There were peaceful demonstrations, and there was violence, and there was the undeclared war, and there were drugs, and there was also the continuation of American suburban life, with big weddings and brides in white. Toward the end of the Sixties there was the Pill, but all along there were pregnancies (planned and unplanned), abortions, and young families, some hippies, others mainstream. And for those in their ‘teens and 20s, there was exciting music, poetry everywhere, plenty of available sex and drugs, a lot of lofty ideals, and a minefield of dangerous pitfalls.

That's why I say there is no telling what the decade was “really like,” except in terms of individual lives, but if you weren't there and want a close-up view I just read a new novel that presents a convincing picture through one particular window.

Virgin Soul

by Judy Juanita

NY: Viking, 2013

$26.95

We meet the novel's protagonist, Geniece Hightower, in Oakland, California, in the summer of 1964. Just out of high school, she enrolls in Oakland City College, “City,”

. . . a raggedy, in-the-flatlands, couldn’t-pass-the-earthquake-code, stimulating, politically popping repository of blacks who couldn’t get to college any other way, whites who had flunked out of the University of California, and anybody else shrewd enough to go for free for two years and transfer to Berkeley, prereqs zapped.

Geniece is a journalism major. Right away meets Huey Newton. Right away she loves sitting on the campus lawn, listening to the “black intellectuals and the white boys from the W.E.B. Du Bois Club talk.” Quickly she learns that light-skinned black students (“yellow, high yellow, sandy yellow, mellow yellow, sandy mariney, light brown, peach, or caramel skin; the line stopped there”) had one hangout, darker-skinned blacks like herself another. She lives at the Y (10 p.m. curfew) and works 20 hours a week at the county welfare department in Oakland. She’s launched into life but still has her aunt and uncle’s warning in her head:

“We want you to be a virgin until you graduate from college. If you’re not a virgin, you won’t graduate. Once you have sex, you can’t think about anything else.”

Judy Juanita’s novel is divided into four main sections, one for each of Geniece’s four years of college. Sophomore year she is introduced to Black Muslims and has her hair cut into a natural: “Sleek, short, very African.” She wonders what “being in love” feels like and if she is in love. No longer living at the Y, she allows a boyfriend to hold political education classes in her apartment, and she cleans and cooks for those who attend.

I knew I was becoming militant. I just didn’t know if I wanted to become a militant. Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz, the protesters, the sit-in demonstrators down south were my heroes. I loved them from a distance and on paper. But the militants I met, mostly the guys on the soapbox on Grove Street, were harsh and abrasive and condescending to everyone, not just white people. And they made people do things. . . . I didn’t want that kind of power over people. I just wanted it over myself.

Huey Newton isn’t the only real person readers encounter in the pages of this work of fiction. Bobby Seale is there, and Stokeley Carmichael, too. The war in Vietnam is audible always in the background.

Junior year is a turning point for Geniece, as one black group goes one way and the Black Panther Party (BPP) for Self-Defense another. She enrolls at State and lands a work-study job in Admissions, date-stamping application entries from all over the world.

Lives came out of the words: how little money one’s father made; the off-the-wall place one had traveled to; family crises; serious illness defeated; political activity noted like a badge of honor – “I belong to the W. E. B. Du Bois Club.” They weren’t afraid: “I participated in the freedom rides.” Stuff I never mentioned: “The protest changed my whole life.” State was a destination for radical students: “I’m a child of a union family.” Dissidents. The streets of Berkeley were the pull for people bucking the system. Nonconformists. State was pulling people like me. I was not an in-between. I was a junior facing a cast of thousands wanting to be right where I was, a part of something big, essential, swimming in the big ocean.

In the course of her college career, it is not until her junior year that Geniece sees herself at the center of social change taking place across the country. Before that she felt like “an in-between”; now she is, as people said in the Sixties, “where it’s at.” But she is not yet where she will be at the end of her senior year. . . .

I don’t want to give away too many details of this story, because it’s the details that make the central character’s life a real one and make that time period come alive. Her social and sexual and romantic relationships are important to her development as an adult. Her feelings for journalism wax and wane, but editing the Panthers’ newspaper is an important job she takes very seriously. Also with the BPP, she confronts the question of guns for self-defense, and a volunteer job through the Tutorial Center introduces her to two young, self-sufficient black girls neglected by their battered mother. Education is not limited to the classroom. (It never should be.)

But Geniece Hightower is determined to graduate in four years, so she wisely avoids serious involvement with drugs. While music is part of her life, it also remains, like Vietnam, in the background. Race, class, and gender relationships – politics within and beyond the university – the future she will have as a Black American woman – this young woman maintains ties to her family at the same time she is finding her own way in the world.

Personal, political – political, personal – yes, this was the Sixties. Judy Juanita gives readers a very real look at that exciting and turbulent time through the eyes of her strong, questing protagonist. There are pages when the prose lifts into lyricism, so it should be no surprise that the author’s writing has for years encompassed poetry as well as reporting. This is her first novel. I’m glad she wrote it and hope it won’t be her last.