PANDEMIC 1848

    The recent passing of Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and his 1985 book titled Love in the Time of Cholera, made my thoughts flow to my third great grandfather, who likely died of cholera.
    I think often about Jacques David Desire' (said Desiray), a free black man who lived during the first half of the 19th century in the American Midwest. Jacques lived a remarkable life for a black man of that time, so I have been able to find lots of records and references about him. 
This is the only photo that I have found of a black steamboat pilot, which he was, though this is not him. Jacques was described as always wearing fancy clothes and jewelry.

    Born in 1795 during the successful slave revolution in the French colonial plantations on what is now the Dominican Republic, he immigrated to New Orleans as many of those who left San Domingo (as it was known then) did. It is said that he learned his river skills on keel boats used during the early Fur Trade Era.

    Known on the river as "Black Dave", Jacques became a well-respected steamboat pilot, navigating from the northern reaches of the treacherous and ever changing Missouri river, south to the city of St. Louis, carrying loads of furs to market.

    There are records showing that he purchased multiple properties in St. Louis. After fathering a son in 1829 by a Sioux woman (my 3rd great grandmother), he married two times more, both to "mulatto" women, and fathering a daughter also. On the hand written French Catholic Church marriage log, it shows that Jacques signed his own name, while the others in the parties just signed with an X. It is because of those marriage records that we can see that the signature later on his 1848 Last Will and Testament was that of a very sick man.

    The second great world cholera pandemic lasted from 1832-1849. It is estimated that New York City lost 5,000 souls, New Orleans 3,000, and St. Louis 4,500. Of the travelers making their way west for the Gold Rush, as many as 6,000-12,000 may have perished due to cholera.
Since Jacques was a man of some notoriety, we would expect to find him listed in one of the many black cemeteries of St. Louis, but we cannot. The aforementioned cities had to resort to mass graves during the pandemic, and I think that he may have been placed in one.

    So what was happening in the world during Jacques' final year of 1848?
    The Mexican American war was ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which made the western territories of the U.S. a whole lot bigger.

    At Sutter's Mill in the California foothills, gold was discovered.

    The first ever women's rights conference was held in Seneca Falls, New York.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony

    Zachary Taylor was elected  our 12th president.

painting by James Lambdin

    John Quincy Adams, our 6th president, died.

painting by Asher B. Durand

    France had a second revolution, and many other monarchies of Europe also fell into turmoil.

painting by Henri Philippoteaux

    Irish immigrants were fleeing their homeland due to the Great Potato Famine.

sculpture in Dublin by Rowan Gillespie

    Missouri was extremely harsh to slaves, and unwelcoming to free black people, so I seriously doubt that people of color were allowed inside museums. But I do know that the free black population of St. Louis developed a cultured community within their section of the city.

If they were able to obtain prints of the famous art works of their time, they might have been:

Mars Being Disarmed by Venus, by Jacques Louis David, 1824

The Apotheosis of Homer, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingre, 1827

study of Seascape with Rain Cloud, by John Constable, 1824

The Present, by Thomas Cole, 1838

      It is fascinating to think and wonder about the lives that our own existences were built upon. Finding out about the remarkable journey of Jacques David Desire', and trying to imagine what his world may have been like, has been a surprising history tutorial. Just sitting here at my computer in 2014 California.

RISING ABOVE

    The most celebrated rising in this part of the planet and at this time of year is that of Jesus Christ, depicted here by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), painted in 1611,1612.

    One of the most admired behaviors throughout history is that of rising above one's circumstances, and doing it with dignity rather than with revenge. Here are some of my favorites of the western world.

    Hinmatoowyalahtqit, or popularly known as Chief Joseph (1840-1904), led his Wallowa band of the Nez Perce in 1877 on a 1,170 mile run from the U.S. Army, refusing to give up their Oregon homeland for a forced relocation to Idaho. What was truly remarkable was Chief Joseph's continuing humanitarian attitude even in the aftermath of this horrible treatment of his people. Though the quotations of his philosophies that we often read are edited for Anglo consumption, these thoughts and attitudes from him really did exist.

beadwork portrait by Marcus Amerman of New Mexico

    Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) could have led a comfortable life as a lawyer, but instead fought for the rights of immigrant Indians living in South Africa from 1894-1915. Upon returning to his native India, during the 1930's he famously led India's people out from under British colonial rule. He advocated for peace and human dignity for the rest of his life.

    Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel (b. 1928) initially tried to live a "normal" life after surviving the Holocaust. But after 10 years he began writing about those experiences, and eventually became a world renowned writer, lecturer, and advocate.

    A Catholic Sister of Albanian heritage, Mother Teresa (1910-1997) felt a calling in 1946 that she could not ignore. She began caring for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India, in their times of sickness and dying. The facts that she had no funding and these people were the "untouchables" did not stop her. Eventually her Missionaries of Charity came to serve poor people throughout the world.

by Hanaa Medhat of Egypt

    Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) was born in Arizona into a family of farm workers. After the family was forced to migrate to California to work in the fields, Cesar did a brief stint in the military, then returned to the fields until 1952. He began to advocate for the rights and working conditions of the migrant workers, eventually forming the United Farm Workers Union. Californians had never before been forced to think about the human cost of how their luscious fruits and vegetables got to the table.

illustrated by Robert Rodriguez of California

    A most unlikely hero, actor/comedian Danny Thomas (1912-1991) could have just rested on his laurels as a very successful TV star and producer in the 1960's. Born in Michigan to immigrant Lebanese parents, during his "starving artist" career phase he vowed to someday build a shrine to St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. The eventual result was the world renowned St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which serves seriously ill children no matter what their family's financial situation. The research there has helped significantly advance the survival rates in childhood cancer patients.

    Sometimes rising above comes in a single moment to a common person. One such moment that always brings me to tears was when in January of 1982 a commercial jet crashed into the frozen Potomac River near our nation's capital. People on the shore of the river watched as a survivor of the crash was near drowning in the freezing water. Passerby Lenny Skutnik peeled off his jacket and furiously swam out to the woman as she was going under, all seen on live TV.

    People who have quietly risen above are all around us. By looking at my own mother in her later life, you never would have imagined her childhood in the 1920's and 30's on a poverty stricken Indian reservation in South Dakota. I recently read that during the Great Depression there were reports of people starving to death on that reservation.

    Perseverance beyond war, poverty, prejudice, and evil will always continue. As Spring conquers Winter, we celebrate this.

IF YOU COULD GO BACK

It was back in those times . . .

Early 1970's I was an art student at Cal State Fullerton and was getting fed up with the too busy and too conservative Orange County.

In January of 1974 I packed my VW Beetle to the brim with every belonging that I could fit in, and my best friend did the same with her Gremlin. We made our great escape 500 miles to the north, and became students at Sonoma State College. We found an apartment on West Sierra in Cotati. It seemed such a tiny town with such a funny name!

We were thrilled that we had found a state college that was out in the boonies, and in such a beautiful county. I knew that the art department at SSU was a step down from the serious and professionally oriented art complex at CSUF. SSU's art department at that time was located in one ground floor wing of the science building, as well as down in the basement.

1960's view down into the valley towards the new campus

I believe though, that most colleges probably do offer what any student needs. It really is up to the student to seek out the knowledge and tools that are made available to him or her. I obtained a scholarship from a Sioux tribe that I am a member of, and it was just enough money to enable me to simply study and not have to find a job. So for two years I had the opportunity to totally immerse myself in my art studies.

My friend and I were indeed the picture of "starving students" though. For a couple of months we slept in sleeping bags in our nearly empty apartment. It was not until our parents made mercy runs to see us that we got beds and a TV. Most treasured though was a whole case of Top Ramen that my roommate's parents brought! We had been subsisting on packages of Vegeroni pasta that we bought at Cotati's El Rancho market. We ate it with butter, soy sauce, and peas. It is a miracle that I now eat any pasta or Asian noodles at all.

The SSU art department was pretty laid back. There was an over dependence on life drawing (nude models), and they didn't want to teach any commercial art courses. A few of the professors, like Bill Morehouse, were very encouraging to us though.

Professor Bill Morehouse on the left

Cotati at that time was a fun little enclave. Its recent claim to fame had been a Mazda car commercial featuring Cotati's one police car, which was a little Mazda rotary engine model. Then there was the legendary Inn of the Beginning bar and music venue, the Last Great Hiding Place cafe, and Jerome's Good Dogs.

Inn of the Beginning

at The Last Great Hiding Place

And Cotati had its very own version of Wavy Gravy, in the eccentric Vito Paulekas.

SSU had the nickname at that time of Granola State. It was pretty much accurate. To see nude sunbathers at noontime on the campus lawns was not that unusual. Professors didn't hesitate to throw parties for students at their homes or to "date" students. One time on a nice sunny day we took our life drawing class outdoors by the pond. I remember there was hardly a second glance at the nude model as students walked by.

by Susan MacMillan

Even though the education there was loosely bound, by the time I graduated from SSU my artistic skills were well honed.

by Susan MacMillan

It is fun to think back, but would I like to return to the days of my early twenties? No way. All, and I do mean all, the life experiences of the past 40 years have been well worth the price of becoming a senior citizen who has a world of confidence in what she knows, and gratitude for all she has, something that the young art student had yet to earn.

DRAWING THE LINE

    The recent nationalist struggle of Crimea in the Ukraine made me think about how people relate to each other, or not. Vladimir Putin's argument for takeover of that region was that the majority of people living in Crimea were of Russian heritage and Russian speaking. So does that mean that in a few years Southern California should be returned to Mexico? I don't think that's going to happen.

    The creation of borders throughout the world has long been a very troubled process. In reading a 1992 book, "Why in the World, Adventures in Geography" by George Demko, I became aware of the argument that the world would have had substantially less conflicts if the borders had been established in the first place based on grouping of peoples who had common bonds, such as customs, religions, or living in a certain type of geographical region.

American Plains

Pacific Islands

South American highlands

    Instead, during the colonial eras, land was arbitrarily divided up to the advantages of those in power, and with really no other considerations other than rewarding allies with a chunk of land which would be plundered of resources.

    It is a miracle that the United States, covering the breadth of a continent, still remains intact as one nation. Recent estimates are that around 720,000 human beings perished in the war over secession and slavery.

    Texas on occasion threatens to exit the union, and in sprawling California there is always talk of splitting the state into several smaller regional states. The north and south, the east and western portions of the state have a hard time relating to each other and aren't necessarily happy about having to share resources.
    We think of diversity as a positive thing, but can all these regions and cultures really just "get along", as the late Rodney King pleaded?
    Can the city dwellers

Apartment mural Chinatown

    relate to the desert dwellers?

Ocotillo Gold by Erin Hanson

    Can the mountain dwellers

Lone Pine by Karen Winters

    relate to the seaside culture?

Surfers by Kevin A. Short

    Does life in a challenged community

Oscar Grant by the Trust Your Struggle Collective

    compute with those in a privileged community?

Crab Cooker, Newport Beach by Frank Dalton

    How does life in the woods

    find comparison with that in the suburbs?

Freeway with Evening Shadows by Theresa Fernald

    We share the same West: the Hispanics

Bride and Groom by Ken Twitchell

    the Asians

Downtown San Francisco by Donald Maier

    the Native Americans

San Diego weaver Eva Salazar

    the flatlanders

Sacramento Delta by Wayne Thiebaud

    and the highlanders.

Cloudburst Lake Tahoe by Ed Terpening

    I sometimes wonder if we are expecting too much of human nature when we dream of us all bonding and working together. 
    The world's cultures are still somehow diverse even as technology makes us feel as if the planet is shrinking. In an ideal world each group/culture would respect the differences of the others, but clearly the reality is that power and money are still the destructive motivators of humankind, and no slowing of that course is apparent.