It's apt that today is named after Guy Fawkes who saw only one way to defeat the government of the day. It takes me back so vividly to early August 1957. I had just turned 22 when I set out on my first summer holiday from employment at Canadian Westinghouse. Many friends, mainly Irish from the engineering school of University College Dublin, who had emigrated en masse because there were no jobs in their own country, had chosen to spend the time in canoes and tents in Algonquin National Park. But Dave Robinson, a laid-back public school boy from Oxford who played trombone like Jimmy Edwards, had the idea that we would drive someone else's car across the USA and Joe Killian a particularly tall and dour Irishman asked to come with us. Dave had written to an organisation called the Detroit Drive Away, a body shopping organisation which supplied individuals willing to deliver cars to all parts of the USA, and volunteered our precious two weeks annual holiday for a trip to the West coast. Three days into our summer holiday we were still waiting for a car, virtually certain we had blown it. Then the offer, take a brand new Pink Cadillac to Indianapolis, like the one just delivered to Elvis Presley. We set off with only a few months driving experience between us. At the first street corner I slammed on the brakes and we all ended up on the windscreen from our front bench seat, our first experience of power brakes. (I've a difficult task for Anthony Hughes, Photoshop Guru, to unravel my only record of the event, a double exposure of me at the wheel of that Cadillac.)
Part of the saga meant we would make our own way from Indianapolis to Memphis where we would pick up a second car to drive Route 66 to Fresno, near San Fransisco.
Dave and Joe opted to travel to Memphis by train, but I, maverick already, decided to hitch hike and agreed to meet them in two days time at Memphis railway station. The first day remains etched in my mind like no other. I had a number of lifts that day, the first I remember was so normal, a farmer proud of his British stock was on his way to a day at the races and took me right to the gates of Ellis Park.
Then the real experiences began. A man with a death wish, who had just broken up with his girl friend, stopped. His penchants were for speed, overtaking, and particularly for going blind over the top of the endless undulating hills on the wrong side of the road. Thankfully he was stopped by the police before we went head first into another vehicle. We were taken to a small town, where the local judge was dragged in to sit in judgement. He let me go and I went in search of lunch. I remember being amazed by the incredibly slow slow drawl of the southerners, the ugliness of the one-hick town, and the incredible warmth of all the people I met. Probably I was the first foreigner in town that century! It always helps when travelling to be in a vulnerable minority
But the real impact was in the afternoon. I was picked up by a succession of poor white people heading south, one of whom had lost his job in Chicago and was going back to his shack in the Kentucky Hills where he intended to bed in for winter with his wife, ten kids and the chickens - this was August remember! Hard work was not his forte, contrast the 'work hard, play hard' mentality which had been drilled into me for life, during graduate training in Canada. In 1961, back to the UK, I was appalled by the lazy 'I'm all right Jack - I'm in the lifeboat ' mentality inherent in the English workforce of the day. No wonder we were then economically a failing country.
I had about three lifts that afternoon and each driver displayed the same appalling race hatred of the 'niggers'. They were supporters of the Klu Klux Klan, of lynchings, of hangings, their battle cry was 'Nigger don't let the sun come down on you in this town'. The meaning was starkly explained, if you do we will string you up on a tree on the outskirts of town. It gave a whole new depth of understanding to Billy Holiday's heart felt song 'Strange Fruits' - hanging from the trees. Beneath it all was the fear of violation of their women folk by a negro.
The last lift took me into Nashville for the night. He told me, and I still believe him, that there wasn't another coloured man in the south who would have picked me up. But he had seen the world and was on leave from his posting in Japan as an officer with the US Air Force. Brown rather than Black, intelligent, cultured, informative, liberal in his attitude to race. As he drove into Nashville he told me he didn't know the central white sector because Negroes were not welcome there (the blacks in their ghetto and the whites lived in absolute segregation). Nevertheless he went in and dropped me outside a hotel, and bid me farewell. That was the day I met my Obama, streets ahead of anyone else I met that trip.
There is no stronger reason for hitch hiking, than the experiences that are derived from local people you would otherwise never have met, insights you would never have made.
Next day we three met up at he Memphis railway station as planned and picked up the car we were to drive to the West Coast. Not this time a new Cadillac, but a run down Plymouth which had to be taken back to its rightful owner. Non the less Dave first then Brian coaxed it above 100 mph on those straight deserted prairie roads. Just as I made the ton for the first time in my life I glanced in my mirror to realise we were being overtaken by a police car, but he sped past with more urgent matters to attend to than someone doing twice the speed limit.
Encapsulated in our tin of car, quite unlike the intimate contact of hitch-hiking, we were thus out of touch with the vivid differences of culture in the south lands. We stopped in a little town, found a hotel, a few beers, a dinner and retired to bed. A couple of weeks later Little Rock burst onto the world stage. To think we had seen it as a boring sleepy town where nothing ever happened.
On September 2nd 1957 State Governor Faubus ordered the Arkansas Guard to prevent black students from entering the high school. Eventually President Eisenhower sent 1,000 paratroopers and 10,000 National Guardsmen to enforce a ruling made some years earlier by The Supreme Court of America in 1954, the school was finally desegregated and the civil rights movement was born.
Of all the books we have read as a group over the past five years non registered as strongly with me as Harper Lee's, 1960 novel 'To Kill a Mocking Bird'. It depicted so well the south I saw that day, that improbable mixture of warmth of the whites and their racial hatred of the 'niggers'.
I was moved when, on tonight's TV Jesse Jackson, one of the few survivors of that struggle, was seen with tears streaming down his face, though I later learned it may have been in part a feeling of envy, and in part guilt at having opposed Obama for not being a true representative of the negro people. It was a very hard and very emotional struggle which cost Martin Luther King his life. So very many black people were experiencing today something they had never imagined possible - and not just in the USA but in Kenya and across the world - nor did I ever think to see it in my lifetime.
10 November 2008 GROUP COSTS
I am told that occasionally people are surprised by the need to contribute towards group expenses. The £12 annual fee for joining the Swansea U3A covers the Wednesday lectures, subscription to the national organisation, and subsidises some of the joint activities like the Quiz and the Pantomime and the start up and equipment costs of new groups. But all groups are expected to be be self financing thereafter, and in particular this means that the groups which meet in public halls have to finance the cost of hire, which is typically £10 to £15 per session. A charge of £1 per session or slightly more is therefore to be expected.
In earlier days when the U3A was much smaller it was common for groups to meet by rotation in member's homes. However, whilst this is still quite suitable at times, with a membership of 600 most groups need to be larger and thus have to be located in church halls or alternatives such as Hazel Court. Hiring Halls in the right locations also helps with bus access from any part of Swansea.
I have added Cecily's map of the streets around Hazel Court and my own research into bus access to the previous posting since its original release last week.
CHESS GROUP
The very first new group off the ground this session. Maxy Maxwell the convener, full of enthusiasm purchased eight M&S chess sets from his own pocket to get the group started. Nine people turned up and all thoroughly enjoyed the experience in the spacious well lit Craft Room at Hazel Court. We need a few more members to ensure sufficient continuity in the months ahead, but are already planning to meet on the First and Third Monday mornings of the month. The second meeting is thus booked for Monday 17 November with the session starting from 10am. Hire of rooms from Hazel Court is from 9 till 12.30, or even 13.00 (or alternatively AFTERNOON FROM from 1.30 till 5pm). Maxy's enthusiasm extends to teaching chess to beginners. Most of us were playing for the first time for decades and I must say Joan and I enjoyed it and found it very relaxing. I don't very often get emails from my wife but she was anxious for me to understand that she is going to beat me next time. To which my response is that I won't again miss the opportunity to take the queen that had put me in check, a move which would have spelt curtains for her! Cunning movers these knights!
READING GROUP 4
The last new group on the stocks got off to a flying start yesterday with 13 enthusiastic members, all of whom took to Hazel Court as a venue and stayed for coffee, after a two hour planning session, and some liked it so much they already have plans to stay for lunch next time. Cecily was full of enthusiasm, provided everyone with name stickers and got plenty of suggestions for this months books. Like her earlier group they decided to choose by vote two books per month, with the understanding that some will read both, others just one, with no penalty for reading neither.
That group will meet the Second Monday morning of each month at 10.30, thus the next two dates will be 8 December 2008 and 12 January 2009, which incidentally dovetails well with the plans for the Chess Group. It seems certain to be successful and thus bookings have been made for the whole session including July but with a break for April. The books for discussion on 8 December 2008 are 'A Fine Balance' by Rohinton Mistry, and 'The Clothes They Wore on their Backs, by Linda Grant, a Booker prize winner.
MODERN JIVE
This looks like being the surprise new group of the year, the one I thought might be too young in outlook for the U3A. It helps that Gerwyn Thomas is a very enthusiastic leader, as well as a good teacher of dance. We met for the first time last Wednesday morning around 10.30 in the Monkey Cafe, Castle Street, in the centre of Swansea at the back of what was David Evans. They have a proper dance floor upstairs, though I'm told the whole place throbs, upstairs and down, to Salsa on Tuesdays nights.
With the help of a couple of experienced jivers from a previous class, Gerwyn soon had us moving. A few of the taller women volunteered as surrogate men and took the lead, but this group has far greater proportion of men than most U3A groups. I am continually finding more members who want to join and so this too already looks a success from the start. Gerwyn was getting the partners to rotate every few minutes, an excellent idea both to get people to mix but also because it is essential to learn the basics, of this often free form dance, in a universal style. Joan and I learned to jive together way back in university days but I have always found it difficult to find the same rapport with other partners.
All you have to do is turn up and try.
MOTO, Members On Their Own
After a slow start the numbers signing are starting to accelerate. There are significant numbers who are facing life on their own after partners have died or left. Help with building a new life with new companions is what drives Gerwyn and this group. In fact this rather than jive was the group he really wanted to run. I feed him the names as people sign on and he makes email or telephone contact as appropriate. Their first get together was at lunch time last Wednesday after the jive group had finished in the same Monkey Cafe location.
FRENCH CONVERSATION
Fifteen were present at the first meeting of a new group last Thursday at 10am in Hazel Court. It explored the aims of the members for the sessions ahead, in English to ensure clarity of discussion, and in the second half people introduced themselves in French. It seemed to me that there was a good similarity in the standards of spoken French across the group. Thanks are due to Steve Johnson for leading the group but also to ex French Teacher Beryl Edney who by questioning and prompting was able to draw out conversations. There are several people known to be interested who could not make that first meeting so it seems the group will have sufficient support. On this basis I have reserved the room for every Thursday morning until Easter with a break over Christmas/New Year.
ARMCHAIR TRAVEL
Almost thirty people attended the first meeting of this established group in the Sketty Parklands Evangelical Church (very close to Hazel Court) to hear Brian Davies, the group's convener, describe a cruise right around the smaller islands of the Caribbean to celebrate his seventieth birthday. He had prepared a DVD of the trip with musical backing, though in many ways the thought provoking spoken introduction was the best part of the presentation. Not only were the gorgeous Caribbean beaches on display but a fantastic range of flowers. He and his wife enjoyed the experience so much that they have already booked to repeat the trip next spring.
POLITICS and CITIZENSHIP
Apologies to the group of around fifteen for dashing in late this afternoon, as always, and taking the convener Margaret Hammond unawares. Gabrielle Suff was about to start introducing the chosen topic "Assisted Suicide?". I decided to visit this group on this occasion because the subject presented so many tricky dilemmas that had a special interest for me.
Gabrielle introduced the subject particularly in relation to the two recent cases, one in which a wife with Multiple Sclerosis wanted a court ruling that her husband would not be prosecuted if he took her to a 'suicide' clinic in Switzerland, after she had lost the ability to travel alone, and another in which the parents of a 23 year old professional Rugby player who had broken his neck had done just that at his request. There were over 100 cases where assisted suicide had been procured outside the UK without legal intervention when such a course would have been clearly illegal within the UK and even considered as murder.
Once thrown out to the floor the discussion broadened to thoughts not just of suicide but of adherence to a person's wish not to be resuscitated from a critical illness. But as I pointed out increasingly peoples last years would be spent with dementia, given continual advances in medicine for other easier conditions, without memory without thought. To me as an atheist such a life is worthless and I would not wish my life to be preserved in such a condition. In direct contrast my mother because of her strong religious belief that 'Life was God's to give and Take Away' would have wanted to continue to the very end. Surely the wishes of the person, which everyone accepted were different, are paramount, and surely few of us would follow suicide or wish to pre-empt death without consideration of others.
For me the real dilemma for lawmakers is to guard against death imposed or withheld by others against our clearly expressed wishes, whether their motives are selfish or evil.
The importance of discussing such matters in advance with close family and friends is clearly a lesson to those, like me, who have so far baulked at the need to broach such subjects.
Next month Larry Owen will lead the discussion on 'Accountability'.
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