Volunteering opportunity

At 6:30 p.m. Thursday ­— as in tonight — Jack and Ann Salyer invite you to stop by NorthEast Christian Church and join their friends, fellow church members and strangers as they help students in need.
“You don’t have to bring anything,” Jack Salyer said. “Just yourself.
“It will be a night of fun, ­fellowship, food and surprises, and work.”
In other words, wear comfortable shoes and clothing, and bring your best altruistic attitudes.
This is the church’s third ­annual Power Pack Nite, at which volunteers stuff 2,000 backpacks with school supplies and hygiene products for children in ­Appalachian schools in Kentucky and ­Tennessee.
NorthEast has partnered with ­Mission of Hope, a faith-based charity in Knoxville that focuses its attention and donations on families in the ­financially challenged Appalachian Mountain region. Volunteers in ­Knoxville planned to fill 8,000 backpacks earlier this week, in addition to the 2,000 being filled in Lexington.
In Kentucky, the backpacks will be going to children in Bell, Breathitt, Clay, Harlan, Knott, Knox, Laurel, Leslie, Letcher, Owsley, Perry and Whitley counties.
Salyer said NorthEast has adopted Owsley County Elementary School, and about 600 of the backpacks will remain in Lexington so volunteers can deliver them personally to Owsley County.
Busy tonight and can’t make it?
Catherine Warner, youth and children coordinator at LexLinc, said she needs volunteers to fill backpacks for the upcoming Ready, Set, Go! Lexington Neighborhood Backpack Rallies. Volunteers are needed at Transylvania ­University’s William T. Young Campus Center on Tuesday, beginning at 9 a.m., and Wednesday to help load vans that will take backpacks to distribution centers.
Those backpacks will be given out from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Aug. 9 at 16 neighborhood sites in Lexington. Call Warner, (859) 381-1302, Ext. 228, for more information.
This is crunch time for putting school supplies in the hands of the children who need them.
Schools open Aug. 13 in Fayette County and Aug. 7 in Owsley County.
Salyer’s volunteers will go to Boone­ville Aug. 11, where officials there have scheduled an assembly at the elementary school for the backpack giveaway.
Mission of Hope will provide the school supplies to NorthEast, where Salyer and his wife will coordinate the assembly-line filling system, he said.
In addition to school supplies, the backpacks will contain hygiene products like toothpaste and toothbrushes and a spiritual bookmark urging students to have a good year.

Salyer said about 175 people pitched in last year, and he’s had a couple of phone calls from members of a church in Versailles who plan to attend. Last year, folks from Georgetown drove over to give a hand.
I’ve asked my prayer group, which meets on Thursday evenings, to head over to NorthEast and do what we can.
And that’s what Salyer would like. He wants people from throughout the ­community — businesses, churches, civic groups — to give an hour or two to make a young child’s school year start out right.
If you have the time, meet us there.
If not, see Warner at Transylvania on Tuesday or Wednesday.
It’s not often we can do something so easy to make all involved feel better.

if you go
Fill backpacks
What: Power Pack Nite, to fill 2,000 ­backpacks for Appalachian children.
When: 6:30 p.m. July 31.
Where: NorthEast Christian Church, 990 Star Shoot Pkwy.

What: Fill backpacks for Ready, Set, Go! neighborhood backpack rallies.
When: 9 a.m. Aug. 5.
Where: William T. Young Campus Center, Transylvania University.

Everything’s coming up duct tape

Anna Kate McFarland, 17, stood in the middle of a group of women old enough to be her mother, or possibly her grandmother, teaching us how to fold a 2-inch piece of duct tape into a pentagon shape that would, with our patience and her nurturing, become a petal on a rose.
And, by the end of the class, she had succeeded. We each had created a duct tape rose.
No, they weren’t all silver, ­ the only color of duct tape available when our fathers used to secure whatever couldn’t be glued. The tape now comes in a variety of colors. And, yes, they really did look like roses.
Making duct tape roses is definitely an activity that will keep idle crafters’ fingers busy — whether those crafters are senior citizens or 4-H alumni.
See, Anna Kate, daughter of Martha McFarland, director of the Bell House Senior Citizens Center in downtown Lexington, said she learned the craft at a 4-H Teen Council Camp and began making some for her mother.
Martha McFarland gathered ­stemless flower heads in a bowl on her desk, and the display soon earned the admiration of those who saw them.
Somewhere along the line from its invention during World War II until now, duct tape has evolved into not only the first resort of the non-handyman, but also a crafting tool much like a stamp, stencil or paintbrush.
Contests exist for the best prom dress and tuxedo creations, with the winners earning college scholarships. There are also how-to’s on the Internet for making wallets, purses, vests, belts, visors and bracelets.
Those of us who sat around the tables in the Bell House were not advanced enough for those projects. However, Martha McFarland said Anna Kate had made an eyeglass holder while she waited for our class to start. Apparently, Anna Kate also covers take-out boxes for Chinese food with fabric and covers the handle with beads to make a small purse.
I point out her skill level to shield her from any blame for the rose I created.
Anna Kate showed us how to fold over one corner of the 2-inch piece of tape, so that an L-shaped outer edge of stickiness remained exposed. Then we were to roll the piece so that a point, or the middle of the rose, was formed.

Step one

Step two

The next piece was folded the same way, but the ­opposite side was folded down, leaving only a bottom line of stickiness exposed. The upper portion looked like a tent top.

That piece was added to the center petal.

Step three

From then on, each petal was folded the same way, with each row of petals formed from a smaller and smaller piece of tape.
“Make sure your points are all at the same height,” Anna Kate warned, well after I had gone wrong and buried the center deep within the outer additions.
Fortunately, pulling apart my yellow rose and starting again was no problem.
Once the flower head is complete, the same method is used to make the leaves, in green tape, which embrace the rose. A longer piece of tightly rolled tape is then attached for the stem.
Or, copy Mary Lou Campbell, who hosts ­crafting classes once a month at the Bell House and at the Senior Citizens Center, 1530 ­Nicholasville Road. She ­attached her rose to the top of a store-bought wire stem.
I need to be able to do something with whatever I create, so I asked how a duct tape rose can be used.
Suggestions included adorning a wreath, as a grave-site spray, or as a gift to a hospital patient for whom live flowers are ­forbidden.
That gave me more reason to concentrate.

Step four

Campbell watched Anna Kate carefully so she can teach the technique again at a later class.
She teaches seniors how to make Christmas ­decorations out of ­cinnamon- and applesauce-flavored dough that is rolled into balls and strung.
Louise Arnold, whose rose needed little nurturing, is a veteran of several of ­Campbell’s classes, including the ornaments. “They smell so good,” she said.
Campbell has helped ­classes make book rests, baskets made of covered cording, pumpkin ­decorations from painted dryer vents, necklaces made from cloth and marbles, a pin made from aluminum cans, and glass blocks that contain a colorful string of tiny lights.
August classes, which meet at 12:30 p.m. on the second Monday of the month at the Senior Center and at 1 p.m. on the second Thursday at the Bell House, will feature fabric-covered accent boxes.
There is a nominal fee for supplies, but costs are held as close to $5 as possible.
The classes are aimed at those 50 and older.
Call the Bell House, (859) 233-0986, or the Senior Center, (859) 278-6072, for more information.
Judy Owens, who was attending her first craft class, said she came because she had nothing else to do.
So, if you find yourself with some free time this ­summer, give them a call.

Photos by Lexington Herald-Leader photographer David Stephenson

Hate is not a good reason to kill

I simply do not understand it.

You are angry with liberals, with folks who want to protect the rights of people, so you take a rifle into a church which unashamedly holds those beliefs, and you open fire on innocent people, killing two and wounding four others, two critically.

That’s what Jim D. Adkisson, 58, allegedly did Sunday morning, July 27, when he entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. Fortunately, church members subdued him before more people could be injured or killed. He is now in jail and awaiting his journey through the justice system.

Jim D. Adkisson

According to police, Adkisson, an unemployed truck driver, was on the verge of losing his food stamps. One friend, interviewed by the Knoxville News Sentinel, said Adkisson hates “blacks, gays and anyone different from him.”

How blacks, gays or anyone who isn’t a white, unemployed truck driver becomes a targets for a terrorist attack is beyond me. What about those characteristics warrants the death sentence?

A police investigator said Adkisson stated that he believed “all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror ” and various other things with the help of the media.

I don’t like liver. Can’t stand it. I think nutritionists, grandmothers and old family traditions of eating liver led to the ruination of my youth. I feel the same way about okra. Yuck!

Should I be going around demanding all liver and okra should be banned? Should I take a rifle to the nearest grocer and start shooting shoppers?

There was a young girl who called me names and hit me whenever she could during my elementary school days. I truly believe I hated her. But my mother warned me not to sink to her level. When you hate, she said, you hurt yourself far more than you hurt others.

I think Adkisson obviously has a few mental and emotional problems, but that could just be the liberal in me coming out. Reports said his wife attended that church years before, however, authorities don’t believe her former membership had any connection with the crime he allegedly committed.

Adkisson was a loner. He could bounce ideas, dislikes and concerns only one way, making him the most brilliant person in the room. That simply does not work.

Hate untamed, or isolated will combust. That’s why talking to friends or even to our enemies is a far better route to take. It kept me from beating up my nemesis in elementary school.

Hate is simply not a good enough reason to kill.

I’ll Let Helen Be the Standard Bearer

British actress Helen Mirren is another of my idols.
The winner of the Best Actress Oscar for her portray of Queen Elizabeth, Mirren was captured by photographers relaxing on the beach with her husband near their home in Italy. What they snapped pictures of was a 62-year-old woman in a bikini. I think they got more than what they expected.

The photographer said he did not doctor them one bit. Mirren is just that fit. Of course, as one woman commented, Mirren has never borne children.
The photographs were taken in Puglia, on the southern tip of Italy, where Mirren and her American film-director husband Taylor Hackford, 63, own a 500-year-old castle.
Thanks, Helen, for proving we women can look good at 62.
I’ll just live vicariously through you.

Legacy in a Major Key

If Lutisha Coleman-Morton had her way, more young musicians would learn to read music, especially those in black churches.
And if her family and friends have their way, those young people will get help along that road via a music scholarship at Kentucky State University.
“When you talk about the black church musician, in the olden days that meant you played all styles,” said Everett McCorvey, the director of the University of Kentucky’s opera program. “Unfortunately, in the black church that is a dying art form.”
The Lutisha Coleman-Morton Music Scholarship will award $1,000 to a deserving music student annually for up to five years at KSU, said Lawrence Coleman, Coleman-Morton’s son. “Right now it is only $1,000, but ultimately we’d like to offer a full music scholarship, paying for everything for up to five years for music students.”
The scholarship will also honor his mother’s legacy and her love of music, he said.
KSU was the school of choice for Coleman-Morton once she learned about two years ago that the scholarship was being planned.
She attended on scholarship and eventually graduated from KSU before and after getting married and having six children.
But her love of music had begun many years before that.
When she was five years old, Coleman-Morton began taking piano lessons. Her mother could play by ear, “but she wanted me to read music,” she said.
An eager learner, Coleman-Morton would go through two books in a year, which was a strain on the meager household budget and on the teacher. “She would tell my mother to put the book away so I wouldn’t go through it,” she said.
By the time she was 9 years old, she was playing the order of service and accompanying the senior choir at her church, Quinn Chapel AME, when the pianist left to have a baby.
“She came back the next Sunday,” Coleman-Morton said, “and when they asked me to play a solo, she wouldn’t get up. I had to play from one end of the bench.”
In high school, she accompanied the Dunbar High School Glee Club under the direction of Charles Quillings, and played the bell lyre in the school band.
She graduated at age 16 in 1950 and earned a “working” scholarship to KSU, meaning she accompanied the concert choir and the dance groups. “All my mama had to scrape up, and they had a hard time doing that, was $7 a month,” she said. “It might have been for meals.”
At the end of her sophomore year, she got married and quickly gave birth to five sons.
She returned to KSU on scholarship in 1960 and immediately was asked to accompany the choir again. She graduated in 1962, despite giving birth to her daughter the year before in November.
The family then moved to Cincinnati. Coleman-Morton later learned that they had moved because her husband wanted to avoid paying rent.
About four years later, the family moved back to Lexington. Not long after that, she and her husband divorced.
“Before my father left — my dad was a nurse — we had a decent life,” Lawrence Coleman said. “When Dad left, we were forced into the projects. I have watched my mother struggle in life, single parent of six children. Through all that and through things since then, she has stayed steady as a rock. She was determined she would not, and we would not, go down in flames.”
Coleman-Morton worked at Eastern State Hospital as assistant music therapist and assistant recreation director for a couple of years before landing a job at Leestown Junior High School teaching general music and chorus.
She later taught at Julia R. Ewan, Cardinal Valley and Breckinridge elementary schools before teaching at Tates Creek Elementary for 14 years. She retired from there in 1993.
During that time, she was also director of music at her church, Quinn Chapel.
“When we came to Lexington in our early days, we visited over at Quinn Chapel AME, where she was a pianist,” McCorvey said.
“Most people make decisions based on the minister, or a particular program in the church. We joined based on Ms. Lutisha Coleman because the joy she had playing the piano was infectious. It was like she was playing to you. And she made that service go. It was just amazing.
“We were able to get a grand piano for the church,” he said. “One of the reasons we got it was so we could hear Miss Lutisha play. There was nothing sweeter in the world.”
Devoting her life to music made for a different kind of upbringing for her children.
“It was a hectic and exciting life because we were always going,” said Mary Bowen, Coleman-Morton’s daughter. “There was church, traveling, conferences, accompanying someone, Diner’s Playhouse, and professional performances. We were always going, always busy.”
Coleman-Morton made sure all her children took piano lessons, but none were as captured by it as their mother.
“None of us play,” Coleman said. “It’s not like she didn’t try. And I played under Quillings, during his last year at Dunbar. He walked me over to the chorus and he said, ‘You come from good stock, but you don’t belong in the band.’”
She did have some success, however. She was the third-grade teacher who encouraged composer Shawn Okpebholo to enter his first contest, which he won.
“She had a true love for her students and the people she worked with,” Bowen said. “Music was an avenue for her to make a difference in their lives.”
The difference she’d like to make now is to encourage more students to read music, not just play it by ear.
“She is focusing on a very specific need,” said Marion Rogers, the minister of music at Main Street Baptist Church.
“I think her plan is excellent. The old-school teachers dared you to add a note that wasn’t there.”
That’s not a put-down for those who play by ear, he said. That is a special gift. But it limits them to certain types of music.
“I salute her for wanting to keep a balanced diet in our churches,” he said. “We should have musicians who read and who don’t read.”
Four years ago, Coleman-Morton, 74, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cell that is incurable but treatable. That has not slowed her much, if at all, and her love of music has helped a lot.
“It’s just been a part of my life all my life,” she said. “It is therapeutic. It is soothing and a calming outlet.”
On Aug. 1, Coleman-Morton’s 75th birthday, she will be the star of a gala planned at the Embassy Suites Hotel, 1801 Newtown Pike in Lexington, to raise money for the scholarship and to honor her contributions to several music events in this region over the years. Tickets are $50 and dinner starts at 7 p.m.
For more information about the scholarship gala, call (859) 299-6997, (859) 552-5140, or, evenings call (859) 254-2874.

Lutisha Coleman-Morton
Music Scholarship
To apply: e-mail LCMMusicScholarship@yahoo.com.
To donate to the scholarship fund, send checks to:
KSU Foundation, Hume Hall, Suite 102,
400 East Main Street, Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
ATTN: Lutisha Coleman-Morton Music Scholarship

I Can Still Hula Hoop!

I remember skillfully hula-hooping on various parts of my body in my youth. I could do two around my waist and one around each arm.
Of course there is a distinct possibility that my memory has blurred with the expansion of my waistline and the passage of time.
But I do know I could hula hoop and hula hoop well. That’s why I bought one a couple of years ago and abandoned it two days later when I couldn’t get the thing to twirl anywhere near my midsection.
When my boss strongly ­suggested I attend a hula-hoop class and write about my ­experience, I knew whatever dignity I have been clinging to would fall as quickly as that hoop. Please note, however, there are no photos of me with this column. I was able to keep a smidgen of my dignity intact.
Paying college tuition, you see, forces me to wear humiliation like a cloak so the checking account can stay in the black.
Wednesday, with a friend, I drove down South Broadway to Chair Avenue and followed some women carrying an array of hula hoops into Mecca Live Studio & Gallery.
Sonya Blaydes stood in the middle of a circle of women, whose memories suffered as did mine, and began to teach us how to hula.
She suggested beginners grab the heavier hoops, some of which she had made out of irrigation tubing and some that appeared store-bought and filled with water.
The heavier ones, she said, work better for the more mature and less flexible hoopers.
I would have taken offense had her words not been true.
But even though the hula hoop stayed up a second longer than the one I had at home, the maneuver could not be deemed a success by any measure.
If bending down and picking up the hoop was going to be the only exercise of the evening, I was prepared to call it quits.
Blaydes, who loves hula-­hooping so much that she will hoop for two hours in the evening just to learn three new tricks, wasn’t ready to give up.
She went behind a curtain and brought out a hoop I truly think an elephant could walk through. She handed it to me.

College tuition, I said to myself. College tuition.
I stepped into the hoop, gave it a twirl and it stayed up!
I was beside myself.
For another two or three minutes, the hoop continued to whirl around, and I began to think I still had it.
Blaydes said the larger hoop brought the distance proportion between body and hoop to where it was when I was a skinny kid. As I ­became more skilled, she said, I could decrease the hoop size.
Hula-hooping truly was fun again. The other learners thought so, too.
Marilyn Rodgers, who works in substance abuse ­prevention during the day, was a showoff, however. It was her first time in the class, and she was already using a regular hoop.
“I love to dance, and I stay pretty active,” she said. “This is fun.”
Cindy Paulding, who is legally blind and was ­attending her second class, said Blaydes takes time to place Paulding’s hands and to give individual instruction that Paulding can emulate. ­Paulding’s eyesight doesn’t allow her to follow along in other fitness settings, she said.
“It is so nice to come and get group exercise in a group setting,” Paulding said.
Diane Fleet, a first-timer, agreed. Fleet, who works in domestic violence prevention, said she thinks it would be good for her clients. “It’s a way to hang out with people and have fun,” she said.
Sarah Dorroh Sweeney had hula hoops at her ­wedding reception recently.
“I don’t know how to do any tricks,” she said, keeping a regular size hoop going the entire time we talked.
Showoff.
Fortunately, there was one woman I could relate to.
Rona Roberts was on her third visit in four weeks and was eyeing my elephant hoop. She said she usually uses that one.
“I might be her ­remedial child,” Roberts said of Blaydes. “I was never ­successful with this as a child, but Sonya promises we can all learn.”
Roberts said she missed the second week of class but returned for the third. “I didn’t do anything in ­between,” she said, “but when I came back I could do it!”
Blaydes, a dental hygienist with Dr. Catherine Fowler by day, was involved in belly dancing for more than 13 years before branching out into an exercise called poi, a form of juggling in which a ball attached to a rope is held in each hand and twirled in circular motions around the body. Blaydes usually sets hers on fire.
I don’t care what my boss says. I won’t be learning
that.

If you go
Hula hoop class
When: 6 to 7 p.m. Wednesdays.
Where: Mecca Live Studio & Gallery, 451 Chair Ave., Suite B.
Cost: $10 per class; 5 classes for $45 or 10 for $75 with purchase of card good for three months.
Information: (859) 254-9790, www.meccadance.com.

Jesse Jackson needs to find a nice porch

Jesse Jackson is far too savvy to say nasty things while miked. He’s done that too many times before and had similar actions sink his attempt to be a powerful presidential candidate.
Last week, Jackson took umbrage at Barack Obama’s stance against disappearing fathers, despite the fact several other prominent black men have done the same in the past, including comedian Bill Cosby, who shares similar parenting difficulties with Jackson.
Despite that, Jackson should have known Fox News, where the incident occurred, and other news channels would use his impolite and disparaging words against him as they should have.
But far better than the news channels giving Jackson his comeuppance were the cutting words that flowed quite easily from the mouth of his namesake, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Illinois.
The younger Jackson, on hearing his father’s unedited words said, “I am deeply outraged and disappointed in Reverend Jackson’s reckless statements about Senator Barack Obama.”
The younger Jackson, co-chairman of the Obama campaign, continued, saying, “Rev. Jackson is my dad and I will always love him… So, I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric.”
Jackson, Jr., also said, “Rev. Jackson’s divisive and demeaning comments… contradict his inspiring and courageous career.”
I have to agree with Junior.
I have no problem with Jackson disagreeing with Obama. There are no politicians I agree with totally, regardless of their color or culture. To his credit, though, Jackson took a lot of lumps and bruises in the past which have enabled Obama to have a viable campaign for the presidency today.
But to voice disagreement in the crude manner Jackson Sr., did is uncalled for and beneath him.
I thought he would find a rocking chair after news surfaced he had fathered a child with another woman outside his marriage.
Maybe it would be a good idea for his son to take him shopping for that rocker now.

Students Need Your Help

It’s that time again. Time for back-to-school shopping.
This will be the first year in nearly two decades that I don’t have to shop for school supplies, but I found myself checking out prices nonetheless and picking up a few things the last time I visited a local discount store.
And it’s OK. I don’t have to seek out a support group or be rehabilitated.
Folks like me, almost-empty-nesters, can buy school supplies and give them to one of the many groups collecting for needy children this year. Or we can simply send $10 to LexLinc to help defray the cost of one of 6,000 backpacks filled with school supplies for elementary school ­students.
Catherine Warner, youth and children coordinator at LexLinc, said there is a ­serious crunch this year because a major backer pulled out, choosing to put its money in an event with a higher profile.
Couple that disappointment with higher gas and food prices, causing an increase in the number of families that need help, and you have a perfect place for folks like me to get our fix.
LexLinc, a partnership between people and government services that seeks to serve struggling neighborhoods and families, took over the back-to-school push in 2006 and redirected the dispersals to various neighborhoods instead of one central location.
In 2006, nine neighborhoods participated, and 4,000 filled backpacks were given to elementary school students.
In 2007, 13 neighborhoods came on board and 7,000 children benefitted.
This year, 6,000 elementary school kids will get filled backpacks at 16 sites. The ­backpacks will contain 30 items, including ­folders, ­spiral notebooks, glue, ­scissors, pens and pencils, paper, erasers, a ruler, a pencil sharpener, index cards and crayons.
Some of the sites will give out supplies for older students as well, but not all of them.
Those sites have to raise the money or gather the ­supplies on their own.
In many cases, churches have come to the rescue.
In the Woodhill ­neighborhood, members of ­Crossroads Christian Church are gathering supplies from the community, businesses and their congregation for the older students.
Natalie Corso, ­Crossroads’ outreach ­minister, said there will be inflatables for the ­children, food, snow cones and other fun events before the supplies are handed out.
Each elementary-age child who ­registers at a site will get a backpack filled with school supplies.
“We just have a heart for the Woodhill community,” Corso said. “Positive and exciting things are happening there. People sometimes have a bad feeling about it when you bring up Woodhill, and people there want to turn that around.”
In the Winburn neighborhood, Cathy Sutphen said Russell Cave Church of Christ has donated items for a “fun field day” at the church and bingo for parents before ­supplies are handed out.
She, too, is looking for donations for older ­students, and she plans to ask area ­businesses and the ­neighborhood association to pitch in.
“Without the churches, it wouldn’t be going off very well,” she said.
So there are at least two ways to help.
For each elementary-age child you want to help, send $10 to LexLinc, 436 ­Georgetown Street, ­Lexington, Ky. 40508. For the older students, call ­LexLinc’s Warner. She can tell you where to take your donations. Her number is (859) 381-1302, Ext. 228.

Get Your School Supplies Here:

Fayette County Public Schools begin the 2008-09 school year on Wednesday, Aug. 13. Backpacks filled with school supplies will be distributed by LexLinc from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 9. Children may register that ­morning at 16 neighborhood sites. They are:

■ Carver Center, 522 Patterson St.
■ Castlewood Park, 201 Castlewood Dr.
■ Christ Centered Church, 2275 Eastland Pkwy.
■ Coolivan Park, 550 W. Sixth St.
■ Douglass Park, 726 Georgetown St.
■ Duncan Park, 530 N. Limestone
■ First Baptist Church Bracktown, 3016 Bracktown Rd.
■ Green Acres Park, 1560 LaSalle Rd.
■ Lou Johnson Park, 190 Prall St.
■ Marlboro Park, 561 Benton Rd.
■ Spiegle Heights Park, 424 Speigle St.
■ Solutions Centre, 1165 Centre Pkwy.
■ The Rock/La Roca United Methodist Church, 1015 N. Limestone
■ Russell Cave Church of Christ, 1841
McCullough Dr.
■ Valley Park, 2077 Cambridge Dr.
■ Woodhill Park, 457 Larkwood Dr.

Nelson Mandela: A Terrorist no longer

Dignitaries from several countries and entertainment stars from all genres gathered in London on June 27 to wish former South African President Nelson Mandela a happy 90th birthday.
He was honored for the statesman he is and was given millions of dollars toward his fight against the spread of HIV and AIDS in his country.
The big bash was held in England because that country loves him. Had it been thrown in the United States, there would have been a lot more paperwork and ­bureaucracy to wade through.
See, until Wednesday, six days ago, Mandela was on our terrorist list. He couldn’t get a visa to visit this country without special ­dispensation from our ­Secretary of State.
Can you believe that?
Mandela and several ­others were placed on the list during the Nixon administration because of ­Mandela’s leadership in, support of and association with the African National Congress.
The ANC was organized to fight apartheid, South Africa’s system of legalized racial segregation.
Never mind that Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his fight against apartheid, an oppressive system of government that the United States tacitly supported.
Never mind that his work upon his release earned him a share of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
Never mind that he was the first black president of South Africa from 1994-1999.
He still had to ask, hat in hand, for permission to visit the United States.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the situation embarrassing when she discovered it in April. But removing the ANC from the list through State Department procedure would be painfully slow.
Members of Congress took up the standard, hoping to remove Mandela from the list before July 18, his 90th birthday, and before North Korea was removed.
The measure ensures “that there aren’t any extra hoops for either a distinguished individual, like former President Mandela, or other members of the African National Congress to get a U.S. visa,” said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.
President Bush signed the bill Wednesday which gives the State Department and the Homeland Security Department the authority to waive restrictions against ANC members.
From 1948 until 1994, South Africa’s white-ruled National Party enforced apartheid harshly. It called the ANC members terrorists, and they were definitely left of center and they didn’t go away quietly.
The United States went along with that label, despite the assassinations of several ANC members and the life imprisonment of others.
No one can explain why the ANC was listed and the government of South Africa was not.
In 1990, apartheid’s dismantling began. President F.W. de Klerk, with whom Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize, removed the ban against the ANC, allowing Mandela and other members who had been imprisoned or banished to be freed or allowed to return to South Africa.
Members soon gained political power, and the ANC has been the ruling party of South Africa since Mandela’s election to the presidency in 1994.
The world recognized the leadership of the ANC. The world saw the extra effort Mandela made to include everyone in the process.
The world saw a great leader.
But the United States still demanded he and others jump through hoops. ­Mandela last visited the United States in 2005. Why didn’t someone notice the silliness then?
According to one report, last year, Barbara Masekela, South Africa’s ambassador to the United States from 2002 to 2006, was denied a visa to visit her dying cousin.
The waiver finally came, but by then the cousin had died.
Maybe folks in the State Department need to ­recheck that list to find other ­questionable entries.
They have, after all, announced the removal of North Korea from the list, a country that is a far greater threat to America.
Still, a wrong has been righted, thanks to Rice and members of the ­Congressional Black Caucus.
We must be grateful for that, I guess.
But shouldn’t we be ­getting tired of saying “better late than never”?

1968 Olympic protest

I recall sitting in front of the only TV set in the house, watching as Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who had come in first and third in the 200-meter Olympic finals in 1968, stepped on the stand to accept their gold and bronze medals.
The two African Americans were favored to win the race. The surprise initially was that Carlos fell to third.
The social climate wasn’t easy in America at that time. Protests against the Vietnam War and against the lack of Civil Rights for blacks were everywhere. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated, as had Bobby Kennedy. The loud voices for equality were silenced.
I was a senior in high school, looking forward to finding my way to a campus where I could join demonstrations and add my voice to those crying out for freedom. College campuses and big cities were where the protests were, and I wanted to be a part of all that.
It never once occurred to me that a protest could also happen during the Olympics. That just wasn’t done. The Olympic Games were about athleticism, not politics or social justice.
So when Smith and Carlos bowed their heads during the playing of the national anthem, and raised their gloved fists in a silent protest that was louder than any other I had ever witnessed, I think I forgot to breathe.
I know my father did. I can’t remember if my mother was in the room or not. My father and I shared a love of sports that she couldn’t identify with. But if she were in the room, she, too, was silent.
No one breathed.
Those young men were asking for swift and harsh retribution for their actions. They were shaming America by standing on a podium just south of her border in Mexico. That’s how most in the media interpreted those raised fists, any way, as if the discrimination against and lack of equality for blacks weren’t already embarrassment enough.
I don’t remember my father saying anything, but he watched and listened intently. Having seen black people bitten by dogs, power-washed by fire hoses, and dug out of shallow, hurriedly-dug graves on the national news, my father’s intensity was telling. This was new and very, very dangerous.
Smith and Carlos are still alive and well, telling stories that vary widely about whose idea it was and who let whom win that race. It says something that 40 years later those two old men are bickering about such things instead of complaining about their fate. They survived a protest they both still deem necessary and right.
There is a documentary, “Fists of Freedom,” showing on HBO at 7 p.m. on July 9 about the era and the courage it took to raise those fists. It first aired in 1999.
We who lived that history will see the raised fists this time around through the sharper perspective that distance always gives us. Our children, however, might wonder what all the fuss is about. We need to watch it with them and not allow fear to silence us this time.
What a difference 40 years has made.