I'm having a garage sale this weekend. I'm a bit preoccupied, keeping, tossing, labeling 'I don't need this', 'maybe that,' and remembering the day when all my belongings fit into one tattered yellow suitcase, as I flew to the east coast, escaping vanilla, conservative, navy-base San Diego.
I'd gotten a BA in Literature at UC San Diego because it was far from home, within dad's ability to pay, and I didn't have enough courage to be a college drop-out.
I'd aspired to drop out and be an original me, a writer of truth and adventure.
Even back then I wrote daily (since age 16), including during a 9 month world solo adventure at age 20, when I traveled the world with $3000 grandma left me. I figured that was a much better education than cloistered from the real world stuck in a phony ivory tower where people regurgitate the "masters" without necessarily using original thought.
Youth hostels, rail passes, and when I ran out of money, a job as a hostess on a tourist yacht on the Red Sea became my life.
I got paid and had free lodging on the boat in exchange for fixing lunches and snorkeling with German, Israeli, French, and Spanish guests. Singing around the guitar with friends, and dancing most evenings.
One day, Vogue models from Paris came to the marina for a photo shoot. And the photographers wanted to shoot me in a bikini. I was too shy but later wondered had someone's conservative voice not been echoing in my head... if I'd been more playful... if I took more chances...
But my traditional father's voice echoed in my head.
And in time, I'd have a master's degree. (in writing)
Anyway, my uncle called yesterday and suggested that my blog is "framed", as he put it, similarly to the theme of a web site he discovered called
Americans Who Tell The Truth is the brainchild of Robert Shetterly, a painter who channeled his frustration with what he felt to be ineffectual, arrogant government to paint beautiful portraits of individuals who made a difference by speaking their truth despite their message being unpopular, and otherwise downplayed, or kept secret, by the powers that be.
Shetterly's traveling exhibit, which you can rent too, pays tribute to over 100 American truth-tellers throughout history.
Rachel Carson, Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez, Emma Goldman...
According to Shetterly,
"One lesson that can be learned from all of these Americans is that the greatness of our country frequently depends not on the letter of the law, but the insistence of a single person that we adhere to the spirit of the law."
If you're an educator and want to bring his paintings and message to a place near you, contact Bob Sargent: sargent@americanswhotellthetruth.org and check out what history teachers are bringing into their curriculum thanks to Shetterly's fine work. You can also buy his award-winning book published by Dutton.
And thanks to my uncle (photo in Muir woods) for reminding me that telling the unpopular truth is important despite being uncomfortable. It's heart-warming to be reminded, too, especially after a relative told me I'm wasting time writing this blog, and wasting time pointing out the clean/dirty air truths that I find, and wasting energy looking for a new home. In fact, this relative suggested if I have asthma, I should just stay in L.A. and deal with choking on smog like millions of other sufferers.
Garage sale.
