A Thousand Questions

 I'm thinking this morning of Town Creek. It begins in Pennsylvania near the tiny town of Rainsburg and flows from north to south 36 miles to Oldtown, Maryland, where it flows into the Potomac River. The Potomac can be easily forded at Oldtown. It's not very deep there.

If you were a slave fleeing the South before the Civil War, you could follow a stream like Town Creek up into Pennsylvania. In the absence of maps, it was a way to move north, and most of it can be waded, which helps cover tracks. You would also have a clean water source.

My ancestors lived along Town Creek, just over the Mason Dixon line in Pennsylvania. In one instance, documented in The Chaneysville Incident, by David Bradley, they discovered a group of 13 runaway slaves who had committed mass suicide on their property, rather than be taken back to Virginia. Those suicide victims are buried in the Imes family graveyard along Town Creek, in plots marked just with the local shale.

If the escaping slaves committed suicide, it follows that they must have known they had been discovered and were going to be captured. This means that my family must have had to stand up to bounty hunters. Dead bodies were as valuable in the South as live ones, because of the terror they would inspire.

My great-grandmother was an Imes, a direct descendant of the patriarch who would have had to make decisions in the days of the Underground Railroad. I was three when my great-grandmother died, and although I met her I have no memories of her. Second-hand I learned that she was hard to live with. She suffered from intense anxiety and projected the worse outcome for every small thing. My uncle told me that her favorite expression was "Hit's a carshun." Translated, it means "uh oh."

It's not a leap to imagine that the Imes family had a streak of anxiety in the days of the Underground Railroad. They were less than three miles from the Mason Dixon. Helping runaways of any kind must have been a fraught exercise for them.

Today I am imagining the conversations that must have occurred in that farmhouse along Town Creek. What's right? What's wrong? What can we do? How will we be held responsible? How will this impact our family? Do we really want to involve ourselves in this?

For people who (perhaps) projected the worst outcome, this must have been excruciating.

This is not to minimize the 10,000 times worse situation of runaway slaves. I'm only speculating on how my particular family might have reacted to the situation they found themselves in, situated on a stream that flowed from north to south, ending across a wadable river from Virginia.

I want to overhear those conversations in that farmhouse. I want to ask Aaron Imes a thousand questions. I want his courage in the face of atrocity. How did you do it, family?

I'm saying this because something has changed in America, and something has changed in my neighborhood as well.

In America, we have slid back into a dark era. Many people have lost autonomy over their very own bodies.

And in my neighborhood, three blocks from my house, this:

EXHIBIT A: RIPA Center

My friends, this morning I want to step back in time. First I want to go see the Imes family and ask them a thousand questions. Then I want to go to see Anne Johnson, circa 2008 and tell her that her cocky, cheeky, snarky belittling of the Christian Right completely minimized the damage they could do -- not just in matters of women's reproductive freedom, but in a larger and more sinister plan to control lives, ALL lives, on behalf of the wealthiest elites.

I feel like Town Creek has come to my doorway in Haterfield, New Jersey. Do I have the courage to be an Imes, anxiety be damned?

Gods help me. Gods help us all.

My Admiration for Kneeling Athletes is Boundless

On Sunday, Mr. J and I went to see the Baltimore Orioles. We are both huge Orioles fans.

EXHIBIT A: TWO WHITE PEOPLE AT THE BASEBALL PARK

I did something at that game that I have never done before, ever.

I refused to stand for the national anthem.

I've been working with minority teenagers since 2005. I've been teaching them full time since 2009. Let me tell you this, right up front: I cannot stand in their shoes. The gods know I wouldn't want to.

This country is a land mine for people of color, for young Hispanic kids and Dreamers. They're very observant, and smart, and they can see the truth -- how everything is arrayed against them from the day they're born. Don't tell me about affirmative action. It's more mythical than Zeus. Even when minority kids work twice as hard as their Caucasian peers, they are starting out (many of them) with all kinds of subtle and not-so-subtle strikes against them. The strikes follow them right into adulthood. If they live to be adults.

This is where our nation's athletes step in.

EXHIBIT B: THE GREATEST

You want to see courage? Check this out. It's a wonder he lived to pulverize people in the ring.

I'll bet you already knew that Muhammad Ali was stripped not only of his boxing title, but was barred from the ring for three years at the very prime of his career. It's not like he had a trust fund or anything, either. He lived off the kindness of friends, even his opponents for three damn years.

When other people have to worry about their families and their paycheck-to-paycheck salaries, professional athletes can make strong statements about what the world is really like for people like them.

EXHIBIT C: NO FLAGS BURNT, NO PUPPIES HARMED

This is, to me, one of the most compelling photographs of the 20th century. These are American athletes who won running medals in the 1968 Olympics, and they are listening to the national anthem. Is this the frivolous gesture of someone trying to be glib or cute? BAMP! No. Is this a despicable desecration of the greatness of America? BAMP! No. This is a dignified protest of racism. May all the deities of all the pantheons salute these brave men. Because they needed to be brave. They got savage treatment after this incident.

EXHIBIT C: NO SWASTIKA, NO FLAG BURNING, NO FOUL LANGUAGE

So they played the national anthem, and these guys knelt. They were making a statement about police brutality. They are visible members of a minority population in this country.

To me, there is nothing disrespectful to our soldiers, living or dead, in this gesture. (Has anyone asked African American veterans how they feel about this? BAMP! No.) There is no desecration of the flag. There is -- mark my words -- no foul language and no violence urged upon anyone.

I didn't hear these athletes call any policemen sons-of-bitches and demand that they be fired. Did you?

EXHIBIT D: THE REAL UNPATRIOTIC DISGRACE, AND A STAIN ON THE HUMAN RACE TO BOOT

So this guy goes to Atlanta, gathers together some 10,000 of his fellow racists, and dares to call these gracious and principled athletes sons of bitches. How dare he? A man who wouldn't even rent apartments to minorities! Now he is manufacturing prejudice and hate. Whoa, finally successful at manufacturing something.

Everywhere I look on the Internet, I see white people in outrage at the disrespect inherent in kneeling for the national anthem. Readers, I don't know about you, but swearing from a podium and calling for honest, hard-working minority men to be fired is far more disrespectful than kneeling during a song.

One last piece to this rant. We at "The Gods Are Bored" are all about bad form. If our NFL players flipped the bird at the flag, or mooned it, or trampled it or burnt it during the course of a game, I would call that disrespect. But since when is kneeling so damn disrespectful?

EXHIBIT E: SUCH DISRESPECT!

I guess it's a-okay when they do it like this.

The moral of this sermon is simple: Far from being disrespectful, athletes who kneel during the national anthem are exercising their constitutional rights to free expression. They feel keenly the plight of their less fortunate brothers and sisters and want to make a statement about it. Gods bless America that they can't be locked up, tortured, and killed for this behavior! (Even if the Ghoul in Chief wants it done.)

Until the menace Donald Trump leaves office, I will not stand for the national anthem. Nor will I say the pledge of allegiance beyond the first sentence. This is not one nation. Liberty and justice? Ask Colin Kaepernick about justice. It's too late to ask Muhammad Ali.

If I hear the "Star Spangled Banner," I'm going to take a knee and pray to the bored gods to save our land, now, before it's too late.