Souvenir

Ten-minute freewrite from today, based on a prompt by the inestimable Jena Schwartz.

I bought one and stole the other, and not in that order.

Eyes, they are called. Oculi. Thick wooden rounds incised and painted with a star and crescent moon. Affixed to the bows of the wooden fishing boats, dhows, so common off the coast of East Africa. Looking out and across the sea to ward off evil spirits and danger.

I was in Lamu, a town on Lamu island, in Lamu archipelago, in the Indian Ocean just off the coast of Kenya. My boyfriend? Lover? Amorous pen pal? I still don't know if ever we figured our terminology out. It didn't really matter, although it seemed to, then.

Anyway, he, a Peace Corps volunteer, and I, the pal to his pen, had flown east on a tiny puddle jumper for a few days off the mainland in a mysterious, enchanting place.

I was falling in love/lust/wanderlust romance with the tan, pony-tailed man who'd brought me here, who fed me fresh fish curry, and held my hand as we walked throughout Lamu town with its erratic electricity supply and dark corners and the joo-eece (juice) stand near our inn. 

But I'd flat-out given my heart to the creaky boats that listed dramatically when the tide went out and stood back to attention when it rolled lazily back in. The dhows. And that is how I found myself scouring blinding white beaches for their skeletons one August afternoon in 2001.

I told him I wanted an eye to remember our trip. Like so many men who, when faced with a "problem" work like hell to "fix" it, he did. We finally found my treasure, hanging from a tetanus-promising nail coming loose from the dhow's sun-bleached, time-worn hull.

But whose was it? Not mine, certainly. But could it be? We wrestled with this quandary for what was probably not long enough. Romance won, the promise of memory won. He pried it loose and placed in on my palm. Possessively, my slender fingers curled around it. Mine.

In town later, I bought another. To "cancel" out my theft? To make amends? Have a matched set?

Neither love nor lust made it, but the memories did. And so did my eyes. They hang on my library wall now, tokens of adventure in what seems a lifetime ago, under a framed photograph of a working dhow, floating upright in an azure sea.

A weekend away on Maryland's Eastern Shore

Ah me, three nights and four days away with just T was just what we needed. And the perfect birthday present for him, to boot! I am so grateful to my in-laws for keeping the boys and letting us escape to the Eastern Shore.

We took off late last Friday morning, aiming for St. Michael's, MD. Lunchtime found us near Annapolis, and hunger and a quick Yelp search directed us to Giolitti, an authentic, delicious Italian delicatessen over which I went bananas. Italian radio streamed in the background, and my tonno Italiano sandwich was so good that I not only stopped talking while eating but also, fast forward, made Tom bring me by for another on our way home yesterday. 

sicilian-style tuna, balsamic, provolone, lettuce, and perfect bread

T had a muffaletta on our first pass, and a meatball sub on our second. We also discovered Poppies chocolate-coconut macaroons, an import from Belgium that are like high-brow Girl Scout cookies (the Samoas, aka Caramel D'lights). We ate one box on Friday and now have another in our pantry, as well as some fab pastas, and one ball each of mozzarella di bufala and burrata and a large bag of speck, all imported from Italy, in the fridge. Winning! 

Happy guy who, at the time this was snapped, was still 38. We found this a fitting memorial. Today he's 39. 

If ever you are near Annapolis, haul ass to Giolitti! The only disappointment was their tiramisu which had some sort of flavored cream that neither T nor I liked at all. Like, I refused to take a second bite. Blech. The cannoli, on the other hand, utilized the freshest, crispiest, yummiest shell I've enjoyed in ages. While I am a purist and do not like chocolate in my cream filling, it didn't distract too terribly from this delicacy!

Once checked in to the Inn at Perry Cabin (a very lovely, comfortable, friendly place; we highly recommend if you get a good rate, as did we; too pricey on the regular, in our opinion, unless that matters not, in which case, go forth and enjoy.), we walked the main drag of St. Michael's, putzing and 'sploring (our old-as-we-are nickname for how we like to explore new places) and remembering what it's like to be nothing more than a couple. 

It is so important to take this time for each other, to reconnect in unrushed, unscheduled ways. We played backgammon atop our bed, spontaneously attended the Cava cocktail event being hosted in the library (and met a young couple that happens to know one of our friends who was a groomsman in our wedding; SUCH a small world), went out to eat, napped, watched a movie, read, and got massages.  

a hearty breakfast of quinoa, warm veggies, micro greens, balsamic drizzle, and a fried egg; at the Bartlett Pear Inn

It didn't matter that it drizzled and chilled Saturday as we 'splored the nearby (and charming) town of Easton, for we both fit under one umbrella and could pop into cozy bookstores and galleries and antique shops whenever a storefront caught our eye. 

We could simply roll as if peacefully and purposefully atop a wave, and it was heavenly. 

(The writer critic in me notices that there are three adverbs in the above sentence and not a few in this piece, is exceedingLY vexed about them, but is going ahead anyway.)

steamers and grilled bread; at t at the General Store

Even after fifteen years together, T had no idea that I love scarabs until we came across an ages-old soapstone one in a pop-up antiques market whose name now escapes me. You can't know how perfectly smooth and weighted that little treasure was. I wish I'd bought it. Over brunch, I read to T about scarab symbology and meaning. Funny and delightful to learn new things about someone you've known and been with for so long.

Yesterday, we headed home, stopping a couple times just because we felt like it and for a quick second pass through Giolitti, and then the boys tumbled in, and Nutmeg stretched and purred, and yay for gumbo in the freezer.

I'll head east to the Shore anytime!

Places to stay:
Inn at Perry Cabin, St. Michael's
Bartlett Pear Inn, Easton

Places to eat:
Giolitti Delicatessen, Annapolis
Bartlett Pear Inn, Easton (love the ambiance and food! Tom had a lamb burger that he said was superb)
Stars, Inn at Perry Cabin, St. Michael's (I had a stellar breakfast of Anson Mills grits with rhubarb and raspberry compotes and honey; off the chart good; T had a very solid eggs Benedict on cheddar biscuits)
t at the General Store, Easton (love the atmosphere, food was all presented in artistic but unfussy fashion but ranged from excellent-those steamers-to just OK; I would go back though!)
Ava's Pizzeria, St. Michael's (pizza was better than average but not outstanding, casual/jovial atmo)
Rise Up coffee, St. Michael's and Easton (a job well done)

When history repeats

I spent yesterday at the new National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Months ago, when the museum opened, my mother-in-law, Claire, got two tickets, and although I'm sorry my father-in-law wasn't able to join her, I feel awfully lucky I got to take his place.

It is an incredible place in many ways. The sheer number of artifacts housed there is astounding. Even if you simply looked at everything and ignored all placards, you'd need days to get through. But you would never want to do that because the enormous amount of written information enriches and gives context to those treasures. As do the interactive displays and videos. And the museum shop which has a deep, library-like book selection that I felt I only scratched the surface of.

Claire and I spent a good two hours, maybe more, on just the bottom three floors which starts a couple hundred years prior to the Atlantic slave trade. The museum does a phenomenal job of educating visitors about when slavery shifted from being something that affected people of many colors and faiths and was often a temporary status to a thoroughly racialized commodity exchange of black bodies to white hands. The concept of whiteness developed and in a depraved effort to continue profiting and gaining power off the backs of black slaves, white slave owners and sympathetic members of the government enacted increasingly repressive laws banning education, religious practice, the ability to move from place to place and so on. The rights to safety, privacy, personhood were completely stripped away. 

In 1705, the Chesapeake region made it legal to dismember any unruly slave and passed a law stating that "all negro, mulatto, and Indian slaves are considered real estate."

In 1730, Humphrey Morice, Governor of the Bank of England, said, "Negroes...are a perishable Commodity, when you have an opportunity, dispose of them for gold." 

Evidence of slavery's vast dehumanization efforts is, of course, prolific in the museum, and being surrounded by quotes and slave-for-sale signs and pictures of children being ripped from their mothers' arms and men branded and hung is deeply upsetting and moving, which is at it should be. The museum felt almost holy to me in some ways. I say that not from a religious perspective but from a spiritual one of profound sorrow and sadness and humility.

In many ways, the hardest things for me to handle were the sentiments and efforts to dehumanize and criminalize that were current hundreds of years ago and still feel awfully present today. We continue, in too many ways, to perpetrate entirely-too-similar ills on Black Americans now as we once did.

It is unconscionable and deeply shameful.

In 1864, Spottswood Rice said, "Whether freeman or slaves the colored race in this country have always looked to the United States as the Promised Land of Universal freedom." He must have been so hopeful then, just after the Emancipation Proclamation (EP) had passed. And yet, Reconstruction brought with it the Southern "black codes" and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and ferocious backlash after ferocious backlash.

In 1876, Frederick Douglass said, "You say you have emancipated us. You have and I thank you for it. But what is your emancipation? Bue when You turned us loose, you gave us no acres. You turned us loose to the sky, to the storm, to the whirlwind, and, worst, of all you turned us loose to the wrath of our infuriated masters."

As you know, it wasn't until 1965, a hundred years AFTER Lincoln's EP that Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act giving Black Americans the right to vote. Their attempts to register and act on that right were often threatened and repressed and made impossible. And in 2013, the Supreme Court (the majority view expressed and written by Chief Justice Roberts) voted to strip huge parts of that Voting Rights Act because "our country has changed." But has it?

Three years later, "our country" in some ways* voted in an unfit bigot with zero political experience and lawsuits of fraud and sexual assault hanging over him because they wanted to "take our country back to its former greatness." 

You can't not see how all this fits together. How we are not remotely post-racial. How in fact we are still a racist place that believes the myth of racial inequality created by white Europeans and Americans centuries ago. Race is a social construct and as it was once used to oppress some for the benefit of others, it way too often still is.

Sure, it's often couched differently, it might simmer rather than boil. Trump and the whitelash he inspired are eerily reminiscent of the rise of Jim Crow and the KKK following emancipation. Racism isn't the only reason Trump "won," but it's a big factor. 

When I hear Trump talk of forcing Muslims to register, and then I go to the NMAAHC and see Freedom Papers for which free Blacks had to register every two years and carry at all times, I shake in a seriously uncomfortable way.

When I heard Trump supporters scream about Civil War were Hillary to have been elected and scream about locking her up so that they could "take their country back" and then I read Douglass' words of having been turned loose to face the wrath of infuriated masters," I shake some more. 

When I read that more than 50% of every 100 slaves taken from Africa died before "being placed" and then I look at the outrageously imbalanced numbers of Black Americans now incarcerated, I continue to tremble.

We all should. It is time to rise the fuck up and own our history, America. It is time to figure out how to stamp out the insidious scourge of racism that bedevils and weakens us. Racism is not the only issue facing America. But it is a big one. We need to be and do better. NOW.

*I say "in some ways" because Trump lost the popular vote by a landslide, by nearly 2.7 million votes at last count.