In 1989, my "In Celebration of America" first appeared in a now-defunct newspaper. It was reprinted in my first book, ©1996, and has been repeated again several times over.

On February 6, 1991, at the request of the Phoenix Board of Rabbis, I presented the "America the Beautiful" portion of this piece added to the end of a prayer I wrote and delivered to an audience of 500. The prayer has since appeared in publications across the nation. I have never accepted remuneration for either  "In Celebration of America" or the prayer.

In honor of Independence Day 2009, I am sharing it again here.

If you choose to share this with others, kindly respect and retain my copyright with this piece.

In Celebration of America, 1989

©1989 Michelle Young

Morning breaks the black blanket of night around five a.m. on July 4 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

A wide expanse of the plains allows you to savor its beauty bathed in the rising sun's reflection. Magical in [their] effect, those early morning hours raise the curtain [on] a stage set for planned festivities.

Here, on one of the nation's most densely populated Indian reservations, the Oglala Sioux mark Independence Day with powwows of ceremonial dancing, great food, fireworks, and traditional beaded buckskins.

Yet the reservation holds historical and painful memories of Wound Knee where over 200 Indians were massacred in 1890, and of that village's seizure in 1973 by the same number of Sioux, a protest that resulted in over 300 arrests and the deaths of two FBI agents.

As much as we might not care to admit it, all historical moments create great nations in the same way as they do great families. The vivid traditions and culture of our original native Americans strengthen the Great Indian Nation and the Union itself with a richer heritage.

But this great nation thrives on much more than the uniting of settlers and native Americans.

Today America, the melting pot, blooms with tradition and culture from every corner of the world.

Our Lady of Liberty in New York Harbor continues to provide a ray of hope for refuge to all who are oppressed and persecuted.

Still, there are those in this nation who, like past exploiters of liberty, feel threatened by differences in people.  Terrified [by] an unknown future world where all might live in harmony, these are the insecure exploiters of the nation who fear--just as small children fear nighttime and dark rooms. In their organization into parasitic groups like the KKK and skinheads, these individual cowards feed on each other's insecurities and, like a cancer, attempt to pervade the body of the nation.

They don't seem to understand that true superiority is born out of humility and love.

We've survived other cancers: the semi-slavery and slavery of indentured service, the sweat shops, McCarthyism in the 50s. The cancer of prejudice, too, can be beat.

Our great nation, replete with heritage, is an exquisite tapestry woven with threads of red, ebony, brown, cream, and ivory.

This is America.

Remove one thread, and the beauty is destroyed, the tapestry becomes worthless. Use the same color and the same texture throughout, and the tapestry--again--is worthless.

We celebrate another double birthday this year [1989] in this, the 200th anniversary of the first Presidential inauguration.

As we marvel at fireworks exploding in the night skies, say a prayer for those who can't celebrate with us this year--the Russian Jews still trapped in a nation that neither wants nor is willing to relinquish them, the students in a nation that neither wants nor is willing to relinquish them, the students in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and all others who long for the freedom we live.

And while you say that prayer, add a special thanks that you are an American.

My name is Maria, Suzette, Natasha, Lien, Michiko, Miguel, Pierre, Mikhail, Ly, Shinya...

       Oh beautiful for spacious skies...

I am brown, white, black, yellow, red or a mixture of some or all of them...

     for amber waves of grain...

I'm Christian or Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or one of the many other religions in the world...

     for purple mountains' majesties...

I live in Phoenix or New York, Atlanta or Seattle, Kansas City or Honolulu...

     above the fruited plain...

I speak Spanish, French, Russian, Vietnamese, Japanese, English...

     America.

I'm a doctor, a janitor, a teacher, a factory worker, a housekeeper, a computer engineer. If I don't work, I go to school...

     America.

If I don't work, someone refuses to hire me because of the color of my skin, the slant of my eyes, my accent, or my still unrefined use of the English language.

     God shed His grace on thee...

I serve in the United States Armed Forces...

     And crown thy good...

I pay taxes...

     With brotherhood...

I am an American...

     From sea to shining sea. 

The following is a discussion in January 2009 between myself and a reader/member from India on astrological forums I own. The reader's comments are noted in italics: 

The other day I was going through an astrology forum and i saw an interesting thread, at the same time bit frightening too. The guy was talking about transits and its effects and the changes it would bring to world in the coming decade. He was talking about deepening of economic crisis, aggravating tensions etc. etc.. He was also talking about restructuring and similar things from 2009 -2017.

Actually, it should be frightening. Hopefully, not terribly so. I've been urging people to take steps to tighten their belts and to build a savings. Some have hoped I was being melodramatic, I know, and some have even tried to convince me that maybe "this" or "that" means it's not so bad.

I don't believe in jerking people's chains or in forewarning where there is no need. While I admit to occasionally cautioning to make people more observant, when I get fairly firm in my warnings, I'm quite explicit.

I have a few questions to Michelle,
1. Have we seen the worst with regards to financial crisis, or is it just the tip of an ice berg.

2. The guy talked about big scams and similar sort of things coming to daylight. Since his posting we have seen the Satyam fiasco... Are we going to see more of such(satyam , madoff) incidents?

From all indications I have seen, yes, it's just the tip of the iceberg. I wish I could say otherwise, but I've been forewarning about this for the last three years, since 23 April 2006, in fact. (My first posts on the subject were on that date and they were still in the community till mid-September 2007, when that **** had deleted the archives. I reposted that particular thread, however, on 20 September 2007. I had hoped people would wake up when I started sending up those red flags, and it seemed as if people preferred to ignore what I was saying, as if they could close their eyes or bury their heads in the sand like ostriches in hopes that the danger would vanish again. Sadly, life just doesn't work like that.

3. He was talking about cleansing of corruption and better morals for people in power from 2009-2017. Michelle do you see anything of that sort?

I'd love to know who this person was because we seem to be on the same page. The only difference in our analyses appears to be the length of the changes we now see occurring. The cleansing of corruptions and the need for better morals for people in power began several years before now, with the indictments of Catholic priests accused of pedophilia. I cautioned that this kind of "purging" was going to begin to flow from the Catholic Church around the end of 2008 (a kind of merging, blending, overlapping, if you will, because it wouldn't be an overnight end to this purging when this took place) into the world's corporations and their structures.

From that perspective then, I suppose I was not surprised to read some of the news that has been coming over the last several weeks. But please don't be fooled into thinking it began this year. It didn't. As I wrote in the Pluto in Sagittarius and Capricorn thread in April 2006 and then reposted in September 2007, "By early 2007, as Pluto reaches the last few degrees of Sagittarius and moves at last into Capricorn at the end of January 2008 (it will retrograde back and forth during most of 2008 before at last making the push forward into Capricorn at the very end of November 2008), I think we'll begin to see changes in the way international corporations are doing business. Corporate affairs will probably be the focus of Pluto in Capricorn, and I would imagine it will be something we will see on a very public level.

"Corporations, I'm guessing, will be called on to answer charges of glaring inequities between their public and behind closed doors images, and I'm anticipating that those corporate images will be forced to change dramatically. If recent history's shocking news with such corporate mismanagement as Enron and other shady maneuvers displayed by companies like Haliburton are any indication, I think we'll see even more heads rolling in the global corporate megapolises.

"I think it's likely that dirty corporate dealings will become more and more front page news as we move into Pluto's transit of Capricorn, especially as Pluto makes the transition into Capricorn, shifting back and forth between Sagittarius and Capricorn for those few years."

So this has been coming for a few years already, not just this month, and yes, I do think it will continue for some time to come and probably drone on long enough that it will become old news by 2017. By 2017, Pluto will only have reached the middle degrees of Capricorn, a huge pill to swallow for those who are accustomed to living in the lap of luxury and haven't taken time to pay the piper as it will--by piling income into secure savings (not stocks, savings), by building one's "fortress" for security for those rainy days we talk about in life, and by making sure that the bills that can be paid are paid and not re-created or added to.
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It's not too late to do so now. It's kind of like what I've been telling my youngest son who adores skateboarding and would love to become a professional, well-established, well-known skateboarder: Back it up with something to fall back on if you don't succeed; don't count on this being everything to you. Have a backup plan in case it doesn't work out.
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I grant that the news isn't pretty:
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Satyam Lay off: Satyam job Cut: Fires 4500 employees
http://invest-n-trade.blogspot.com/2008/09/satyam-lay-off-satyam-job-cut-fires.html
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Satyam Busted for fraud: Raju resigns and admits incorrect balance sheet
http://invest-n-trade.blogspot.com/2009/01/satyam-busted-for-fraud-raju-resigns.html
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Wall Street's Latest Downfall: Madoff Charged with Fraud
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1866154,00.html
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According to Time magazine, the fall of Lehman Brothers was considered the most pivotal and controversial financial decisions of 2008.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1864602,00.html
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Then we saw AIG's "credit default swaps" set "the stage for a $100 billion bailout by the U.S. government and [became] the poster child of the meltdown."
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1864602_1864604,00.html

And then, of course, came the nightmares of the American automotive industry, something Time didn't see as the most prudent thing to do--at least if we're to believe their description of automotive companies being treated "as if they manufacture smallpox."
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1864602_1864605,00.html
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Citigroup's money supermarket came next and sent 75000 people to the unemployment lines as they made other decisions to scramble to save what little was left:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1864602_1864606,00.html
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That was followed by the US-backed mortgage family, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1864602_1864607,00.html
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Securities came next, kind of doing a retro back to #1 here with Lehman Brothers and Citigroup (#4):
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1864602_1864608,00.html
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The credit rating agencies' evaluations of these companies, of course, began to crumble, and their own credibility was not in question:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1864602_1864609,00.html
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Next, need I say more than the buzzword, "hedge funds?"
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1864602_1864610,00.html
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Then the shattering discovery that the US Federal Chairman Alan Greenspan Time said was "nearly branded the God of Money" had to admit he was not infallible:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1864602_1864611,00.html
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And finally, Iceland's freefall wipeout of its wealth:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/top10/article/0,30583,1855948_1864602_1864612,00.html
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All of these took place in 2008, so we can't say it should have come as a surprise by the time some of the other corporate nightmares began to show up. Even the Madoff scandal happened in mid-December 2008.

In Time's blog, Swampland, columnist Michael Scherer wrote in "Sign of the Times" on 12 December (DOJ, Department of Justice):
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http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/12/12/sign-of-the-times/?iid=sphere-inline-sidebar
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"Bernard Madoff, the former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market who now runs a private investment firm, was arrested today. This is from the DOJ press release:
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"On Dec. 10, 2008, Madoff informed the Senior Employees, in substance, that his investment advisory business was a fraud. Madoff stated that he was "finished," that he had "absolutely nothing," that "it's all just one big lie," and that it was "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme. Madoff stated that the business was insolvent, and that it had been for years. Madoff also stated that he estimated the losses from this fraud to be at least approximately $50 billion. Madoff further informed the Senior Employees that, in approximately one week, he planned to surrender to authorities, but before he did that, he had approximately $200-300 million left, and he planned to use that money to make payments to certain selected employees, family and friends. Madoff, 70, currently resides in New York City."
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And then he added: "$50,000,000,000. As Barack Obama has said, "The economy is going to get worse before it gets better.'"
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I believe I quoted Obama with something along the same lines.

4. What do you see in general for world in next decade?

Well, Tinesh, I would love to promise you and everyone else here a rose garden with no thorns. Unfortunately, that's not a reality, and I don't need a Harvard degree to back that up. We're looking at Pluto moving ever so slowly through Capricorn until partway through January 2024. By then, we'll have grown as accustomed to the march of the CEOs and their employees out the door, and we'll be looking for more innovative and creative methods of rebuilding the world economy to depend on less of a few people holding humongous sums of our money while the rest of us are struggling. We won't be as inclined to focus on what "they" (those CEOs) are telling us or to believe that people like Madoff can offer us secure futures by investing in get rich quick schemes that could have us tottering on the edge of bankruptcy.

I wish I could say that one country over another is safe from these kinds of financial horrors, but I'd be lying, and that's all too evident as we even look at stories like I happened to spot today about slave labor in Brazil. It tends to fall in line with what we know of those superhuge corporations that think more of the "greenback" dollar and less about humanity and the human element in our lives. As long as these corporations are sending children to child labor sites to work for a few cents a day instead of enabling them to attend school to better their lives, these things will continue to be the order of the day.

This may seem more like an editorial or a crucifixion of what's happened in the financial woes of late, but it's not intended as such. I'm trying to stress the importance of what I've been saying for the last three years: YES, we need to hold these people at the heads of their corporations accountable because they have been playing Russian roulette with our futures! YES, they need to get their shabby morals and closed-door corruption in check. YES, we need to get angry about these things as we see them arising and stop being so trusting in thinking everything will be okay. That's like being diagnosed with cancer and thinking you don't need to do anything because you won't die if you don't get it cured. Hello? We need some reality checks here, and it will take at least the next ten years, and I'd feel a lot safer in giving a huge dose of reality in saying nooooo, take another look because we're going to need all of these years through 2024 to get it right, if then.

Power is like a dog that eyes a huge fresh cut of meat within reach when the cook is out of the room. The accompanying greed blinds us to the inevitable. Stay alert--and in the room with the dog and that cut of meat!

I'll speak in terms of American dollars here but you can do the same percentages to come up with the same answers in your own currencies:

Even if you only make a dollar, strive to put aside 5%, 10%, 15%. See where you can cut a bit to save wisely: for example, do you really need that Starbucks coffee, or can you have one at home, or even buy a 1/2 kilogram to make at home? Do you really need a kazillion minutes on your cell phone or can you cut by 20% and still enjoy it? The additional money you're saving can go into that "save it for a rainy day" fund. You need it. It's a long long time till 2024. There are two ways of looking at this for that matter: You can think you're on a financial diet and "omg, I'm starving!" or you can think you're smartly putting it aside so you won't have to worry about it if and when times get rough.

I still have some doubts :
If 2009 is going to get worse than 2008 end, then i think this financial crisis will bring new challenges world over. Those challenges may not be in the economic world. I think the biggest loosers in this recession and turmoil has been the common man. How long can he take it? How long will he remain a mute spectator? I think at some point he, the common man is going stand up ans say 'enough'. There could be uprisings and rebellions against governments for failing to protect them, failing to bail them out. Do you see anything of that sort Michelle?

Along with financial crisis there are other things that we are forgetting, Global warming, Rising tensions between nations, terrorism etc. etc.. Will belt tightening alone take us through? I don't think many people have seriously thought about this.

I'm inclined to agree with you, Tinesh, although even the wealthy in these times begin to have second views at what they have. During the crash that began what was called The Great Depression of 1929, many many many of the wealthy who lost countless sums of money plunged to their deaths from New York City's skyscrapers rather than "suffer" the indignity of life suddenly in the "poor lane."

I think the perspectives are based on our current financial situation. Those who are fairly well off may think it's not bad and will overcome the misfortune quickly. (I'll explain the dangers of this in a minute...let me play catch up with you first. )

As for the common man, you've asked, "How long can he take it? How long will he remain a mute spectator? I think at some point he, the common man is going stand up ans say 'enough'. There could be uprisings and rebellions against governments for failing to protect them, failing to bail them out. Do you see anything of that sort Michelle?"

If we compare this current situation with how life was going during that depression in 1929, I'm inclined to say we're going to see the common man, as you call him/her, more up for the challenge than the wealthy one. After all, the "common" man already has done well at modifying his/her lifestyle, focusing on how to work with a tight budget, and making the "penny" stretch further than the "dollar" the wealthy will try to stretch.

Rising tensions between nations has been around since humans moved from one region/small section of land as they knew it to another by crossing a river or a mountain. I don't see this as being any more significant than the years we've seen throughout human history so far. Global warming has been a matter of concern for at least twenty years now, so that too won't necessarily be a marked difference. We consider the issue of terrorism, and tell me, please, at what point do we define terrorism versus the Cossacks riding through the Russian villages during the pogroms through the late 1800s? At what point do we define terrorism versus the run of the Nazis throughout Europe during WWII, or the run of the Japanese during what became known as the Pacific Holocaust of WWII? We can name many many dictators and conquerers and consider their reigns terror, and I'm sure among them would be the decades that came to be known as the Vietnam Crisis and encompassed several nations.

My point is that we can't be so dramatic as to assume or expect this to be the case.

Pluto was discovered by a 24-yo astronomer in 1930. A few years more than a decade later, we saw the birth of the nuclear age. But we had wars before that, right? Mars is considered a hand-to-hand combat kind of aggressor, reflective of the battles prior to the nuclear age. If there is one clear indicator of nuclear power, we simply can't overlook the birth of the Atomic Bomb in 1945.

The things you're talking about here, Tinesh, are not among those things I'm looking at. Pluto is more slow in its rise. If we look at the impact of these kinds of energies, we need to focus on things like recognizing that you can't hang on to everything in the midst of a financial crisis, that you might do well to pare down those things you no longer need and pass them on to those who might be able to use them better. (Here in the States, people frequently do this by donating to thrift shops or by having garage sales.)

According to Time magazine, the Wall Street stock market began to crash on 29 October 1929 so quickly that the voices yelling, "Sell! Sell" drowned out the opening bell. By 3 pm, some 16 million shares had been cashed in, and the market had collapsed. On the evening of 18 February 1930, at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Pluto was discovered.

I've considered even the two charts for those time periods to see about any correlations. Pluto now, of course, is in Capricorn. Back then, it was halfway through Cancer (it moves on an elliptic, so the speed varies through the years...the entire transit through the zodiac takes 248 years, so you can see the changes). I made a comparison between the charts to see about Saturn since I noticed Saturn during the crash was conjunct what we now consider the Galatic Center. I do not believe, however (but I'd have to do more research here to confirm it) that Saturn would have been conjunct the Galatic Center back then. I suppose it could have been, but even there, it seems fairly unlikely.

Saturn on the day Pluto was discovered was already into Capricorn, well past where Pluto is today. It had traveled in those four months at least 12° as compared to Pluto's having traveled less than 2° in that period and had gone into apparent retrograde in that time. That seems to be the only correlation other than the Sun being in Scorpio when the market crash occurred and the Moon being in Scorpio when Pluto was discovered.

My point here is I just don't see the correlation that would lead me to believe there'd be any relationship to what you're looking at as uprisings. Do I think it's possible in some countries? Sure! Especially when I consider what seems like gross inequities in the workplace in your own country as compared to the States, but not all countries, and not enough to create mass chaos that might be conducive to war.

I'm more inclined to believe in the good nature of humankind to reach out to each other, to be good to each other, and helpful to each other, and no, I don't believe this is a Pollyanna attitude. During the Great Blackout of 1965 on the East coast of the USA, for example, while people expected crime to rise that night of 9 November, it didn't. In fact, the crime rate dropped, and random acts of kindness were fairly common that night.

I believe that while we're tightening our belts, Tinesh, we're going to demand accountability on the parts of employers and corporations who take advantage of their employees, and perhaps that will lead to unions being formed in nations where they aren't present yet, perhaps it will lead to demands for more equality in the workplace or better checks and balances to ensure that CEOs are behaving appropriately--and are not being overpaid at the cost of others who are forced to be even more frugal. I think you'll see less lobster dinners being served to those high up executives and perhaps more salads and chicken and so on being served.

I will tell you that I saw a headline today that spoke of China starting its own depression now. I'm not surprised, but I think China may serve as something of a model for the rest of us. China's history of overcoming many famines can teach us wisely. Gourmet magazine has posted its cooking trends of 2009 and has said they see the buzzwords in the kitchen focused on South American, Korean and Indian cuisines.

I have faith that we will be up for this challenge. It won't be a matter of fighting against what is happening, but rather to bend as we need to--and to demand that accountability as needs to be done. And when you consider corporations, do include national governments too. In a sense, they too are corporations and inequities there will also need to be addressed. I, for one, despite the tightened belts, welcome Pluto's arrival in Capricorn.

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 Whew, Shane, I read your post all the way through and thought, Am I reading the opening of Pandora's box, or what? You've read my article "Multiculturalism and Me," so you know the majority of my roots. And you know my children's roots.

Published  in Multicultural Education magazine, summer 2003 issue

©2003 Michelle Young

Multiculturalism and Me

In many school districts across the United States of America, the new academic year ushers in football season.  Football is still a big sport in the Susquehanna Valley region of upstate New York where I live with my sons.  Johnson City, Vestal, Endicott, Endwell and many other towns and villages comprise a great part of Broome County, of which Binghamton is the largest city.   

By the third week of school, each stroke of autumn’s palette has transformed the area’s surrounding summer green hills into brilliant, multihued splendor.  Crowds fill the stadiums on Friday night and Saturday afternoon, and the games begin.  For every ratatat-tat of the snare drums and the look-at-me demands of the trumpets in the marching bands that play at these games, the crowds themselves will compete to be heard, their cheering voices rising to exuberant shrieks with each touchdown. 

Like many caught up in the thrill of this fast-paced sport, my sons have played informal games of football as well as attending school-organized events.  The first game of the 2002-2003 season beckoned to my 14-year-old son Jamie and two of his friends, a 15-year-old with Puerto Rican roots and a 16-year-old with African American origins.  Complex cultural threads—predominantly Russian Jewish, Italian Catholic and Cantonese Buddhist—weave the fabric of Jamie’s heritage. 

The three boys rode their bikes to Vestal on that Friday evening, paid their entrance fee and entered the stadium to a pre-game fireworks display.  They hadn’t even found a place to sit before policemen and school officials approached and took them aside.  Accusing the three of robbing two boys at gunpoint for a dollar, police then frisked each under the staring eyes of the crowd in the packed bleachers.  Although the boys had no guns and made no attempts to resist being detained, they were then ordered out of the stadium and were refused a refund.  Outside, the police told the boys if they returned to the game, they’d be arrested.

I was struck by Jamie’s awe, despite the turn of events, at the packed stands and fireworks.  He’d never seen such things at a football game before.  He was quiet and disappointed.  When I asked him how many people of color they had seen there that night, he said one was on the football team, none were in the stands. 

Jamie, at the age of nine, came to me one day and asked me what color he was.  I told him he might challenge the definitions of racial classifications because he was obviously yellow and white polka dot.  He laughed and accepted my explanation.  For him, seeing color as a means of assessing people hasn’t ever been important.  It wasn’t that he claimed not to see people-to-people variations, but rather that he had learned to see beauty in all people, just as I had in my own childhood.

When I was about seven, I was given a book, Children of Many Lands, which enabled me to peek into the lives of real children around the globe.  Children of Many Lands opened the windows of the world for me, offering treasures and experiences that facilitated the development of my global perceptions.  Yet only three of the stories-—about Holland, Lapland, and China--have remained in my memory.  Perhaps these three stayed with me because they were the most distinctly separated from my world on Pine Street, where all cultures united in a little neighborhood of nations.   

My world was a multitude of colors, textures and depths, like paintings.  From my child-sized vantage point—on the handlebars of my brother’s bike as we headed for Grandma’s antique shop or to the Masonic Temple, where Jerry was a member of the stage production crew for upcoming local operatic or summer stock performances—I thought others saw, heard and smelled the world like I did. 

The sunlight transformed cut glass displays in Grandma’s shop into dazzling prisms, a visual symphony of equal majesty to the angelic tones rising from the piano keys under the expert touch of my mother’s fingertips.  Live opera from the Met blared from an old radio on Saturday afternoons, spicing to the daily fare of Mom’s practicing the classics and new music for Friday night services at the temple, whether we were at home or in Daddy’s shoe repair shop.  Smells—the clean freshness of soles and heels being sanded; the intoxicating incense of Tabu, my mother’s favorite perfume; the marriage of garlic, herbs and Roma tomatoes in a good sauce, or the equally hearty aroma of Jewish cuisine—offered comforting familiarity and the foundations of this world I called home.  

But just as much as my maternal grandmother’s kosher kitchen, my paternal family’s daily Italian fare and the people who had immigrated to America to live on our street lent to these childlike views of life, my world also embodied a broader scope through art.  At our temple, the sitting room’s gold-framed, painted ceiling reminded me of photos I’d seen of the Sistine Chapel in Life Magazine and other publications.  The muted tones and cherubic faces of the Sistine were not unlike the paintings of masters whose works I’d seen in my mother’s old books or even on the walls of my grandparents’ home.  I remember questioning the wisdom of critics in these magazines who, in stories accompanying photographic displays, could simultaneously call Picasso and Grandma Moses great artists.  I didn’t think Picasso, in his having painted faces with eyes where the mouths should have been, had a clue about how people looked, and Grandma Moses’ houses didn’t look much better than my own small fingers could’ve done. 

In school, I sensed that my first-hand global perceptions didn’t include anything close to that homogenization my first and second grade teachers called “the melting pot.”  I saw no difference in my world.  I was always allowed to visit people’s homes and taste the foods in their kitchens.  The rabbis never said much about our Christmas tree, and no one who visited us questioned our menorah at Chanukah.  In August, my brothers and I would attend the annual festivities at the Italian church.  Holidays on our street were appreciated.  Eastern Europeans shared pirogies with non-Eastern Europeans, and there were no complaints about that!  We didn’t question why one family lived differently than another. 

Zenita did my hair.  She spoke with an accent far different than my Italian grandfather, Vincenzo--Grandpa Jimmy as he was called—-had spoken.  I could understand what Zenita said.  I couldn’t understand what my Grandpa Jimmy said.  He spoke mostly in Italian, and I wasn’t allowed to say the majority of words I’d already learned in Faetan, the dialect our family spoke.  The aroma in my aunts’ and uncles’ kitchens and even in our own kitchen at home, was familiar and made me hungry as I waited to see whether tonight’s fare would include scungilli and pasta or a more simple meal of spaghetti, meatballs, and sausage.  Uncle Pete’s garden fresh plum tomatoes often went in the sauce, and although the others in the family loved the grapes gracing the vines on the side of the house, those I could have done without.  They had seeds.

We continued to live on Pine Street for three years after my father died, and then we moved in with my maternal grandparents when I was seven.  Grandma Feinbloom’s kitchen teased me with equally delicious foods although they were less familiar to me.  I knew matzo balls, and no one could roast a chicken like Grandma.  For that matter, I wasn’t sure there was anyone quite like my Grandma Feinbloom.  Despite her diminutive size, she had the strength of an Amazon, and that impressed me.  Grandma could do things my Italian aunts and uncles couldn’t do--or at least I hadn’t seen them do these things.  Grandma made preserves and stored them in the cellar between the cobwebs on the old dusty shelves.  Grandma could also kill a chicken with her bare hands with the same alacrity that she could use to determine which leaves would be tastiest in her dandelion salad.  I didn’t like being told I couldn’t have milk at dinner on the side of the meat, or that, here in Grandma’s world, I wasn’t allowed to eat a nice bowl of pasta é fagioli or a stick of pepperoni in her home.  It would be years before I developed a taste for cold borscht with a dollop of sour cream floating in it.   

At ten, I discovered being Jewish carried a price, and that not everyone would like me because I was a Jew.  Like most Jewish children, I had heard stories about the Holocaust in Germany, but Germany was a faraway place that didn’t seem to impose on my world as I knew it.  Those stories overwhelmed me and were simultaneously part of my knowledge yet not part of my comprehension.  My Jewish roots were Russian, but this distinction didn’t enter into the equation because I hadn’t learned yet that my grandparents had come to this country to escape the pogroms.  But being stoned by a boy in a wheelchair drove the point home with more force than any of those stories might have done.  I was hated for being a Jew.  The act confused me.  I’d done nothing wrong.  To me, my having been born a Jew was no different than my having also been born Italian. 

Around the same time, I became aware that acts of discrimination came in all forms—-from verbal to physical, veiled to blatant.  My cognizance of these inequities grew with each passing year, yet the gnawing, endless ache also grew, developing into a searing pain that could neither be dulled nor numbed.  But for every act that violated my existence as a Jew, cruel and senseless acts of hatred were also violating others. 

At 16, I lived with the Oglala Sioux in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and I learned again that I, as a Jew, was not alone.  That lesson reminded me of a song I learned in summer camp at the YWCA some years before, “No Man is an Island.”  But I had more lessons to learn, thanks to an opportunity our local newspaper gave me—a weekly assignment to write about my life on the reservation.  I learned that the formal education I was receiving in the United States of America was not the same as my Sioux peers, or even my peers in New York City, were getting.  I learned that my hardships were not necessarily equal to those of any other person, and that racism in the United States is not singular to a particular community or state.  I learned that the government’s perceptions of group needs for improved lifestyles might not be measured by the same standards as those of any particular group of people.

I came back home from the reservation, hoping to make a difference in the lives of the people I met in Pine Ridge and perhaps in the lives of others I’d meet along the way.  Those I’d met already had enriched my childhood global perspectives, and out of those perspectives, my most basic beliefs had evolved:  that every person—regardless of any perceived segregating distinctions individuals or society place on any other individual or group—possesses gifts that can enrich the world and her peoples, and that each of our life experiences have the potential to be interwoven, to create a rich fabric through which we can enhance our own lives and those of others.  I envisioned a world in which people of all origins could share and celebrate the wealth of humanity through daily explorations of each other’s cultures, in school and out. 

As my life continued to unfold, I discovered the greatest education we can receive lies in the classroom of life itself.  The more I learned about other cultures, the more I wanted to learn and share.  I can’t imagine not sharing such perspectives!  Yet while the singularity of each individual I have met along the way and my own became a point of delight between others and me, this seed of potential joy became a source of trouble at times. 

I became a mother, and that soul-deep ache from my childhood still ate at me.  I realized that my children were attending schools in hostile environments with majority and non-majority demographics.  I can’t say schools in one state were any different from this observation point.  The basic issues were the same, although the degrees of antagonism, the vehicles for displaying hostilities, and the methods of dealing with these issues varied from state to state and school to school.  The problems seemed to smolder in Arizona, rising like lava from the bowels of the earth, spilling over all in its way.  In upstate New York, few problems received any public attention and often died with just one telephone call and at least one frustrated parent.  In both states, most multicultural issues were resolved with Band Aid™ treatment of tourniquet wounds. 

And so here I am again, back to what appear to be the same multicultural issues I recognized in my pre-teen and teen years.  Where I stood in racially and ethnically conflicted moments in time in my own childhood and youth, my sons stand there now, including a son who simply wanted to attend a football game and was denied.  A few days after that game, I called the superintendent of Vestal schools, hoping to resolve the situation in a positive way.  His secretary and I had a pleasant chat during which we discussed what had happened, and she took my number for the superintendent to call me back.  That call never came.  It shouldn’t have surprised me that nothing had changed here since my return to the area.  This time, I’m the parent with one telephone call, unanswered questions and no post-investigation response to my request for an apology to my son and his friends.

On November 1, 1992, I wrote the first words of Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: Meeting the Challenge of Our Multicultural America & Beyond,  believing that this book might make more people aware of our common human bonds.  For me, it was my personal response to those unreturned phone calls and that lava smoldering and rising inside me.  It was and still is my plea for us to share stories of our own experiences, to allow our unity to show through these experiences and feelings, and to recognize the interactive harm a lack of unity can cause.  If we are aware of our common bonds, we need not fear the differences.  Then, and only then, can we truly celebrate each other. 

In 1999, on a British radio station that airs on the Internet, I heard a wonderful Irish group, Boyzone, which unfortunately is no longer together.  One song especially tugged at my heartstrings, “A Different Beat.” 

The words begin, “Let’s not forget this place; Let’s not neglect our race; Let unity become life for everyone.”

No matter what hue we are, we begin with the same race.  Our humanity.