Memorial for my friend Greg Green: 
"Greg Green, a long-time Cheat and Yough river guide and a pioneering whitewater photographer, died on June 22nd. He was 76. He was the first African American paddler in the area; very skilled and likeable. Green’s Hole on the Old Cheat
(pre’85flood)was named for him."​https://jeffmacklin.smugmug.com/Whitewater/2022/2022-07-14-Greg-Green-Memorial/ 

The first time I met Greg was in Pennsylvania, as the partner of my long-time friend, Becky Hilton. He had a photography business on the river, taking shots of people as they ran rapids on the New River in West Virginia. I was visiting for the weekend. I'd never been rafting.
"Hey Sue," he said. "Wanna run the river tomorrow?"
"REALLY??!! YES!!!!" I shouted.

The next day I went with Becky and two other women in a raft. Greg put on in his kayak. All were river runners, except me. One woman manned the center-mount oars. Thank God they knew what they were doing because I was clueless. But, I could follow directions.

We were on the river for hours, and it was one of the most spectacular experiences of my life up until then. I fell out of the raft in one gnarly rapid and they had to pull me back on board. We arrived back at Becky and Greg's house in the late afternoon, tired, hungry, smelling like river and sun.

"Greg," I said. "Thank you so much. That was sooo much fun!"
"Good," said Greg. "Wanna go again tomorrow?"
I thought he was kidding me.
"Are you kidding me??"
"Nope." 
"YES I WANNA GO AGAIN!" 
And so we did. That was my introduction to the sport, and to the man. Thank you, Greg Green. 

The Sandia Mountains at the eastern edge of Albuquerque, New Mexico

by Susan Parlato Revels
My first visit "out west" was in the early spring of 1988 on a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada for a conference. I couldn't have cared less for the casinos. Instead, with friends, we rented a car on our downtime and explored the desert. The air was arid and crisp. It was March, before the onset of any significant heat. We rode horses and climbed rocks and walked what seemed a moonscape to my unseasoned eye. Not the wall of trees like my eastern life, where you could not see where the sky met the earth. But instead, endless miles of horizon, rock wilderness and red earth. I understood then why holy men went to the desert to “hear God”. I gathered some of that red dirt to take back to NYC with me, so I could remember this pristine, cleansing expanse. And I prayed, "Lord, bring me to a desert place."
 
I meant, bring me to such a place in my heart, enveloped in silence where my mind could be still. But God brought me to that place in reality, with an added bonus: mountains. Mountains that I live in, for my city is a mile high. Mountains that stand sentinel just to the east of home. Mountains that I can see every day, from anywhere I travel in town. Mountains that are a guidepost at any given moment and give me my bearings, for if I am ever lost, I just need to look up to see where they stand, and I know in which direction I am traveling, and how to get home.
 
When life has threatened to overwhelm, those mountains have been a bolster to my spirit, because just looking at them requires me to “look up”….and then I recall that God is the lifter of my head. They remind me that God is the rock on which I need to lean because he is ever-present, solid and enduring. They remind me that though my problems seem insurmountable to me, God is bigger. And He, will not be moved.
 
Today, the first morning of 2021, I am thankful for the sunrise on these mountains. It brings to mind the God of my past and the roads I traveled to arrive at this place today, led by His secure hand. It reassures me that going forward, God knows the road. As I gladly bid good-bye to 2020, and look ahead to the uncertain future of 2021, the mountains remind me that God is El Roi – The God Who Sees. No matter what struggles I will encounter, as God was in the past, He is already there in my future, waiting for me, and I can move forward, in peace.

Psalm 121
I will lift up my eyes to the mountains--From whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, He who keeps Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep. ....... The LORD shall preserve you from all evil;
He shall preserve your soul. The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore.

"COLE AND BEANA, COME AND PRAY!"

My husband's voice rings out through the house as part of our familiar bedtime routines. My college-age daughter and son drop what they're doing and schlep their way to our bedroom. When they were little, they used to run and jump onto our king-sized bed and snuggle between us in a big people-sandwich enveloped in our arms. Now that they're adult sized, one or the other still finds their way onto the bed. Entering their twenties, they still let us fold them into us and run our fingers through their curls as we each name two items for which we're thankful.  

"I'm thankful I aced my test, and for the rain we had today," says Beana.

"I'm thankful for the Birkenstocks I got and how GOOD they make my feet feel!" says Cole.

"I'm thankful for getting all the bills paid, and still having money left over." said Scott. I'm very thankful for that too!

"I'm thankful for the overcast skies today. I'm thankful that my garden is coming up all over the place!" I say.

And then we pray.

I'm thankful, that in this society inundated by racial tension, colors blend in my home. Able to touch without reservation. Talk without hesitancy of difficult societal issues. And listen, laugh, get angry, speak loudly, safe in the understanding that race is not entwined with those emotions.

Can we ever get to that place in our society? Not color blind. Not negating what is clearly seen on the surface, but getting past it to the depth of engaging relationship anyway?

Long ago in college, I had to address head-on the racist undertones that had prevailed in my childhood home and how they impacted my thinking as a young woman. I had not been raised around Black families and had grown into an adult being uncomfortable with the unfamiliar, with all the expected trappings of biased assumptions towards the Black students I interfaced with. That included being a Resident Assistant in a very diverse dorm on the Buffalo State campus. Lots of kids from downstate near New York City were attending school there.  I started to put myself into positions and places where I as a White person, was in the minority. It was very uncomfortable, but it forced me to think outside the box and to explore my perceptions of people. I recall once, making a mental parallel of viewing myself as a little white rat (pun intended), with my "human" self picking up my "rat" self by the scruff of the neck and lowering me into some complex maze saying, "Now let's watch how you'll handle this." 

Eventually, I got comfortable, with being uncomfortable. 

I think that's a thing for White people....the need to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. 

So, perhaps the discomfort many people are feeling in our society right now serves a functional purpose? Perhaps it forces us to look at ourselves and internally grapple with our unexpressed assumptions.  If that is an outcome for this national struggle, in a tentative sort of way, I'm thankful for that too.

I've been reading Up From Slavery, an autobiography of the life of Booker T. Washington and his journey from slave to student to university founder to sought-after national speaker. 

In the late 1800s, Washington was asked to join a committee to appear before congress to procure government support for the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition. In the planning stages of the exposition, it was "decided that it would be a fitting recognition of the coloured race to erect a large and attractive building which should be devoted wholly to showing the progress of the Negro since freedom.  It was further decided to have the building designed and erected wholly by Negro mechanics.  This plan was carried out. In design, beauty, and general finish the Negro Building was equal to the others on the grounds." 

Washington was asked to head up the project, but he declined in order to better devote time to his work at Tuskegee Institute. Then, after years of struggle and dedication to changing the plight of Black Americans a mere 30 years after the Civil War, Washington was asked to be an opening speaker at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition, at Atlanta, Georgia, on September 18, 1895.  He accepted. The whole speech, one of his most renowned, is worth the read. This one excerpt is a jewel in the crown.

"...... in your effort to work out the great and intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the South.....let this be constantly in mind, that, while from representation in these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory, letters, and art, much good will come, yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law.  This, this, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth." - Booker T. Washington, from The Atlanta Compromise Speech, his address at the opening of The Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition, September 18, 1895. 

One hundred and twenty-two years later, we have yet to see this hope fully realized.  It is a dream no less worthy than that of Martin Luther King Jr. , and a goal still worth striving for, not just for the South, but our nation as a whole.

Mr. Washington, from your mouth, to God's ears.

Recently a friend of mine posted an article from The Washington Post announcing  "This Is How Ignorant You Have To Be To Call Haiti A Shithole" By Jonathan M. Katz.   (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/12/this-is-how-ignorant-you-have-to-be-to-call-haiti-a-shithole/?utm_term=.92d1c2d5a39c) Willing to consider articles from diverse sources in an effort to be informed, I read it, hoping to learn something.

This APPEARS to be an authoritative article full of what seemed to be statements of historical relevance, which also happened to support the ignorance of Trump, his racist rationale, and his lack of knowledge about Haitian history. And then I came to the section about Francois Duvalier - Papa Doc - who the author says was an "American trained physician", a "black nationalist" who opposed "U.S. Imperialism" and "knew how to handle a nearby superpower (the U.S.)". The author also says that the U.S. gave support to Duvalier "when they weren’t trying to sponsor coups against him", until the end of the regime in 1986.  End of story.

This section on Duvalier paints him as being educated, a man of the people, and willing to be the David against the imperialistic U.S. Goliath, which would make him the best case scenario for Haiti. That makes it all good, right? WRONG. I've known enough Haitians (In New York in the 1980s) and read enough on my own to know that the Duvalier regime of almost 30 years was a reign of conflict, power-plays, indulgence, misappropriation of foreign aid and government funds, repression, intimidation, confiscation of peasant land holdings, torture, etc. Francois imbibed in the traditions of VooDoo and mainstreamed it into Haitian politics. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-19920-4_8)  VooDoo is still widely practiced in the country today. The article makes it appear that his dictatorship ended in 1986. Wrong again. Francois died in 1971 from heart disease and diabetes. His son, Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) succeeded him, and carried on in his father's fashion, embezzling government money into his own private coffers. HIS reign ended in 1986, overthrown by a POPULIST uprising, after which he and his wife abandoned Haiti and went into exile in France, along with their stolen riches. (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/world/americas/jean-claude-duvalier-haitis-baby-doc-dies-at-63.html)

The Duvaliers were not saviors of Haiti. Thousands of Haitians were detained, tortured, killed, or fled the country during those years. Yet nothing....NOTHING... of these atrocities was mentioned in this article. The article just makes Francois Duvalier appear as a leader that was good for the country, and should be lauded, never mentioning the reign of Jean-Claude, and getting the dates of their dictatorships wrong. The author actually amalgamates two separate leaders into only one that it mentions...one (the father) whose reign the article says ended in the year that was the actual overthrow of the son.

And then there are the "invasions" the author points to, such as when U.S. troops entered Haiti in 2004.  The author derides the U.S. as being invaders at a time when yet another abusive Haitian tyrant-president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was on the brink of being overthrown by armed rebels. The U.S. put pressure on him to resign in an effort to forego more violence. U.S. President Bush sent in Marines to "restore order". It should be known that Canada and France also agreed to send troops(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/international/americas/haitis-president-forced-out-marines-sent-to-keep.html). So much for an "invasion". 

Did I learn something from this article? To some degree, yes. The erroneous Duvalier "facts" as stated in the article, and the "invasions" never accurately defined, made me question the veracity of the other points the author makes. I did more research of my own to understand the plight of our Haitian neighbors to the south. News articles are meant to enlighten us, make us curious, and give us a desire to become informed.  But the reader having to seek further information on a subject should not have to be carried out in order to fact-check the writer. Katz' story is the kind of mixed bag of fact and shadow that continues to stir the pot of racial strife in America. If one doesn't know any of the history, they'll swallow this article and the authors bias hook, line and sinker. I feel I'd need to research the whole article to know what points are true and what are not. And that is mainstream media misleading and manipulating the public. Let the reader beware! May we read with both eyes open, and learn the history for ourselves.