Tribute to Holling Clancy Holling
I grew up with marine-oriented books by Holling Clancy Holling, especially his Paddle to the Sea, a wonderful, prize-winning (Caldecott, I believe) book about a small canoe carved by an Indian boy which makes a journey from Lake Superior all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. The wealth of knowledge, especially about culture, history, and geography, it imparts has enriched my life. I read it to my children and just read it to my grand-children and it's as wonderful today as it was both times before.
Publisher: Sandpiper-Houghton Mifflin Books, ISBN: 0-395-29203-4, List Price: $8.95 - an incredible bargain!
Actually, any book by Holling is a gem, witness Pagoo, Sea Bird, etc.
Also strong in the third generation are "The Matchlock Gun", "The Tale of the Whitefoot Mouse", and Willaim Pêne duBois's "The Great Geppy".
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See also my LANGUAGE and FUN (so-called) pages.
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COLOR
(as in skin - melanin and such)
It doesn't wash off or fade out, not that I'd ever want anyone of color to feel that it ought or wish that it might. I vaguely remember bursting into tears ca. 1940 or so when, as a tot, I asked a very dark gentleman riding in an elevator with my mother and me why his skin was so dark; he responded by gravely informing me that he was colored. My outburst was to the effect that he was almost entirely brown and I was the one who was colored, all pink and yellow and blue!
Then there was my "conversion" experience, ca. 1968, which has stayed with me ever since as one of the most powerful moments in my life. We had a very early civil rights meeting at church, about "black empowerment" and such. Talking with a tall, slim black reporter from Long Island's NEWSDAY (he may well have been the, or one of the, first black reporters on that august daily), I questioned the need to change from negro to black, I volunteered that they were the same word, merely in English instead of Spanish. Les Payne, NEWSDAY columnist/editorialist (of color) allowed (at a Juneteenth celebration on 04 Jun 9
that he may have been the late Bob deLeon. Whoever, what he replied is burned (seared) in my memory, and I still can quote him almost verbatim,
"It's a courtesy. If I ask you as a courtesy to me to call me 'black',
won't you do that for me?"
WOW! - I'll never forget the power and dignity of that reply!
However, I have trouble (not that it's my place to carp) with "African-American". To my feeble intellect, it's a direct slap in the face to all those Americans of Melanesian descent whose ancestors were captured, enslaved, and forcibly brought to our Pacific (what a misnomer!) shores by the dreaded Blackbirders, not to mention all the Caucasian peoples of the western Indian sub-continent whose skin is the darkest on earth, so dark as to appear purple. The same might also be said of the descendants of Nilotic tribes, also pure Caucasians with jet black skin, but at least they ARE "African".
Do you know the great Inuit (Eskimo) creation myth (who am I to call it myth?)? It seems the Great Spirit decided to create humans and made a clay likeness and baked it in the oven. He'd had no experience and it came out underdone, all pale, so he threw it away (that's us white folk). Next, he tried again and over- corrected; the resulting burned model was also thrown away (one guess who that was). The next iteration was too light, again, sort of sallow yellowish - out (Asians, of course)!. The Great Spirit was no dummy, so the fourth version was almost right but a wee bit overdone, sort of reddish; it, too, was scrapped, but not thrown so far (the "Indians", who are no more Native Americans than the Inuit). Finally, the Great Spirit got the hang of it and created a beautiful person with creamy, golden skin and was satisfied that he'd achieved perfection (no fair, you guessed who).
that he may have been the late Bob deLeon. Whoever, what he replied is burned (seared) in my memory, and I still can quote him almost verbatim, 
