Crossing the Delaware

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" I'm Anne Johnson, and this is my safe space. Come on in. Weep with me, or have a cup of tea. Extra credit if you admire the upholstery on my settee.

My three readers know that I grew up in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania, out where you can throw a stone right across Maryland and into West Virginia. I spent a lot of time along the Potomac, and what a beautiful river it is. At this very moment it is much cleaner than it was when I was a kid, and much wildlife has returned to its shores.

Rivers are funny things. They can sometimes be forded on foot (I'm thinking of the upper Potomac) and yet they so often serve as boundaries. They separate states and nations. In our culture, they also separate mindsets.

In September I went home to Appalachia and took a long walk along the Potomac. I was on the Maryland side, which is a national park. But I couldn't help looking across to West Virginia, literally a stone's throw. I could see little vacation cottages and even hear snippets of conversation over the still water. I thought, for the 10,000th time, how wonderful it would be to retire to West Virginia and buy a little cottage along the Potomac.

Then I got in my car, and I was almost forced off the road, quite intentionally, by a monster truck carrying two males and flapping a Confederate flag. They flipped me the bird as they roared around me at a no-passing part of the road. My sin? Pretty sure it was the New Jersey tags on my car.

Look at this pretty stretch of river! It's not the Potomac. It's the Delaware. This is the Delaware Water Gap, and I beheld it for the first time last weekend. Yes, I live 100 miles from the Delaware Water Gap and have never been there. Boy, have I seen the error of my ways!

The Delaware River separates Pennsylvania from New Jersey. I've traversed it hundreds of times, riding the train between my home and Philadelphia. Never gave it a second thought, really.

It deserves a second thought.

Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I am intensely glad to live on the eastern bank of the Delaware River.

Gone, with the swoosh of a rebel flag from an over-sized pickup truck, is any last vestige of nostalgia I might have had for the homeland I have cherished all these years. Gone, with this presidential election, is any expectation that I could live among the generations of mountain people who have succeeded my grandparents and parents. I'm not painting with a broad brush in any glib way. This is painful to me. How can you do anything but mourn when a state that was created because of its anti-slavery population turns blood-red?

Well, one way is to embrace a whole new river. Like George Washington, I have crossed the Delaware triumphantly, and it turns out to be a swell waterway.

More about water in future posts. There will be future posts. Lots of them. Written and published on the eastern bank of the wet and wonderful Delaware River.

Black History Month

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored" in the final days of Black History Month!



I was once at a Daughters of the American Revolution event, and I heard one blue-haired lady grouse to another: "Do you remember when February used to be American History Month? This 'Black History Month' stuff is just terrible."



Okay, so now the Marian Anderson thing is getting old. Yeah, the D.A.R. wouldn't let her sing in their auditorium in DC, but that was, oh, 70 years ago. Dissing Black History Month is so much more cutting edge.



I've been getting some good-natured ragging in my English class because Black History Month is almost over, and the whole time (give or take a few snow days and holidays), we've been doing a step-by-step research report on insects. When the students don't feel like finding reasons to hate houseflies, they say, "Hey, isn't it Black History Month?"



Yes indeed, and these students have probably been writing reports on Marian Anderson every February since they were in first grade.



That's no excuse, though. I promise, bright and early this coming Monday morning, we're going to read African American poetry. It's high time.



Today is Saturday, though. And I'm just back from the movies. I like to go to movies alone. Do you? Some people say that's weird.



The movie I just saw is called Amazing Grace. It's a British production. I went to see it because it got three stars from the local critic, and it's a period movie. (I love period movies, because even if they're boring the gooey gowns are worth the price of admission.)



Amazing Grace is not boring. AND, even though it's about the slave trade, it's rated PG.



(I once had to turn off an HBO special about the African slave trade because of the graphic descriptions of torture. My loyal readers know me to be so squeamish I rarely attend movies rated R for violence.)



Anyway, the movie is about this righteous dude named William Wilberforce. Accent on the righteous. Wilberforce was moved by his religious faith to devote his life and health to abolishing Britain's ties to the African slave trade.



That faith, of course, was in the Big Old God, the busy one who is never bored.



Sometimes we here at "The Gods Are Bored" get pretty snarky about B.O.G. (For one thing, his book needs a serious edit.) Then we tend to forget that a great deal of good has come from people of faith in this particular deity. Wilberforce appealed to the clergy and the religious people in his nation, and they listened.



This, of course, was not the last time a man invoked B.O.G. in petition for redress of grievances for people of the African diaspora.



So, I think awesome Chonganda gave me an afternoon free of parental and spousal responsibilities so I could go and see a movie that reminds me not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Faith in a deity can bring out the worst in people, but it can also bring out the best in them too.



If you're a Darwinian evolutionist like me, you understand that we are all African if we dig deep enough around the roots of the good ol' family tree. So, on Our History Month, let's try to treat everyone with respect and justice, and keep all furniture free from pesky, hard-to-clean stains.



FROM ANNE
THE MERLIN OF BERKELEY SPRINGS