A Stormy Night

by Mary Reiman

It was a stormy night. That sounds like the first line of a suspense novel, doesn't it? It is not.

The synonyms for stormy: blustery, wild, tempestuous, turbulent, rough, choppy.

Ten years ago.

The evening of May 30, 2011, during a night of wind and rain, the Lincoln Public Schools District Office (LPSDO) burned to the ground. The following days felt wild and tempestuous for those of us who worked in that building.

When we left work that Friday night before Memorial Day, we never imagined we would not return the following Tuesday. Who would have thought we should have looked around our workspaces to see what was there that would soon need to be replaced? Who would have thought to carry out personal photographs or special irreplaceable items given to them during their career? Who would have thought...

There wasn't time to grieve. It was more important in that moment in time to think. The task was to quickly remember what needed to be replaced. We created pages and pages of documentation from each of our Library Media Services staff detailing what items were on their desks that they used daily. This wasn't about losing old videotapes or DVDs or magazines. We processed the books for our school libraries. Those schools would not get those books in August. How could we take the time to worry about ourselves when we needed to be worried about them. 

For a few moments, the questions were simply: Where do we go? What can we do without our "stuff"? When would we see our colleagues from other departments again?  Where are they?

I remember walking into our temporary facility with only a yellow notepad and pen in hand. We didn't need paper clips or staplers or notebooks. We had nothing to clip or staple or organize. It was surreal. 

In 2011, digital resources/technology were offering new ways of sharing information. For us, the task included considering what not to replace. In the midst of being stunned, we needed to be visionary and see this as an opportunity to shift our thinking about how best to serve our teachers and students. So that's what we did and I am forever grateful for the dedication of the library staff for coming together to brainstorm the possibilities, get out of their comfort zone and be willing to learn new ways of doing business. 

There are so many memories I have probably blocked out. Perhaps the high points and the low points have been blocked and I remember moments from the middle. I do remember the importance of continuing to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward. We couldn't stop, we couldn't stand still, we couldn't let the wind swept fiery forces win. 

I thought it would be easy to write about this now, ten years later. I was wrong. 

It is fascinating to me that it seems there was no time for anger. Now I find that it comes back to me in waves. I don't want to be angry anymore, but I am. Angry about splitting the staff into 4 separate buildings for several years. Angry that I couldn't quickly solve a problem by walking around the corner to another office, asking my question, getting a quick answer. Some of the other departments were miles away. I missed my colleagues. I missed our spontaneous conversations that led to some of our best ideas. Angry that my favorite souvenirs/mementos of my career became ashes.  Angry for the disruption in our mission of supporting our school librarians.  

The new LPDSO we moved into after two years in temporary spaces is lovely. No doubt about that. But it still seems like an immense price to pay for the comfort of new furniture and equipment. 

People talk about life changing experiences. May 30, 2011 changed me forever. I left a piece of myself in that building on a stormy night ten years ago. Perhaps others did too. Interestingly enough, we seldom talk about it.

'Your children are not your children'

By JoAnne Young 

 

Reading a book recently, I came across a page in which one of the characters quoted a line from "The Prophet." I had been feeling rather indifferent about the book and its somewhat unlikeable characters. This reference by the author, however, caught my attention, and I finished the book with more enthusiasm.

And then I went digging through my shelves to find my decades old copy of “The Prophet,” one I have had since college. A book whose words sat with me in my youth and walked with me as a touchstone guide as I passed through work, love, marriage, children, time.

 

Gibran was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and artist who published “The Prophet” in 1923. But his words, to me and many others, both the common and the famous – John Lennon, for one – were timeless. 

 

In my late teens and early 20s, Gibran’s words spoke to me and other young people, suggesting interesting ways to think about love, marriage, children, work, laws, freedom, talking, self-knowledge. 

 

Through my years of helping raise three children, his words came to me so many times: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life longing for itself. They come through you but not from you.” 

 

They don’t belong to you. You can love them, but you can’t make them think like you (although gosh, we’d like to, wouldn’t we?). You can’t make them eat their peas just because you know vegetables are good for them. You can’t automatically install those lessons or that wisdom you learned the hard way. They have to learn the lessons they need in their own way. 

 

You can give their bodies a home, but not their souls. 

 

“For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

 

“You may strive to be like them,” he wrote. “But seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”  

 

In the early years of reading these words, I thought about them from the viewpoint of the child, how different was my thinking from that of my parents. But as life progressed, I shifted to reading them as a parent. In both, Gibran’s words rang true. 

 

His words on marriage also lingered in my head. 

 

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness,” he said, “and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.”

 

Let love be a moving sea between your shores. 

 

And so our lives have been filled with love, with children and now grandchildren (whose young souls also dwell in their own universe) and with our work. 

 

Gibran wrote on the lifelong tasks of work. I had one job or another from the time I was 15. Through high school and college I worked in the service industry: restaurants and retail. Then my work moved to communications, writing and reporting. 

 

Writing, it turned out, was true labor, as much as any physical task. It gave shape to my brain, as much as any exercise would give to the body. I felt lucky to get up every morning and look forward to the day ahead, the variety it would bring, the communion and conversation with smart and irreverent coworkers and those I would encounter in the act of gathering information. 

 

Working allows you to keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth, Gibran wrote. For me, that meant the good, sometimes the great, of it. The politics of it. Also the unpleasant, even the grim. 

 

Gibran planted this thought that continued to resurface in my work: “Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’”

 

Working, he said, puts a person in step with life’s procession, no matter what that labor involves, he said. 

 

“When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. … when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born.”

 

Life is darkness, Gibran wrote, except when there is urge. And urge is blind except when there is knowledge. And knowledge is vain, except when there is work. And work is empty, except when there is love. 

 

That love is in big jobs but also the many smaller ones. Paid or unpaid. 

 

“The wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass.”

 

I get it why people are eager to retire, and even retire early. I did so later than most but have no regrets for waiting for the right time. My work taught me about life and how to function in it like no school could. It enlightened me, gave me reason to believe I had relevance. Showed me as much how to be as how not to be. 

 

The love of work has been not only about vocation, but also about children and marriage and friendship … “to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,” as Gibran directs, “and to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.”

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Life After Masks....

by Marilyn Moore

This basket of masks has been near our front door for the last year, ready to grab one as I left the house, or put one on if someone came to the door.  There's another such stash in the car.  It's a mishmash of masks...some were made by family and friends (thank you Darla and Mary, some were cool purchases, and some were distributed by non-profits (the ones from the Food Bank and Audubon fit especially well).  I have the Husker Red plaid, one that borders on glitzy (not my usual style, but fun on occasion), the ubiquitous Humana green, lots of stripes and solid colors, and my most common choice, the disposable ones worn by health care providers that are now, finally, available most everywhere.  I have watched in awe as some people wore a mask like an accessory, color coordinated with their shirt or jacket.  I never achieved that, never even attempted. 

And now, I wonder about the future of my basket of masks.  Two days ago, the CDC announced that people who were fully vaccinated were able to safely go without masks most any place, outdoors and indoors.  There are exceptions, of course, including health care settings and public transportation, along with crowded indoor settings, but for the most part, it's safe to be in public without a mask.  The vaccines are working exactly as predicted from the pilots and the field studies, and those who are fully vaccinated are protected against the disease.  In the studies that prompted the CDC announcement this week, it has been determined that anyone who has a breakthrough infection even if they have been vaccinated carries such a small viral load of the virus that they will not infect others.  So...it's true...vaccines work, and because of that, those who are vaccinated do not need to wear masks.

This announcement made headline news, really big headline news.  It was the topic of the evening cable news shows.  It was the headline of the online and in print newspapers.  Cheers all around - an affirmation of science, a loosening of restrictions, another step on the way back to normal, whatever "normal" might look like.  And, inevitably, questions...because nothing is every quite a clear-cut as it might first seem.  That would be life....

I wonder how long it will take to feel "safe" to enter a public space without a mask; for some of us, wearing a mask is one of the few things we could do to feel like we were protecting others and ourselves.  Does it feel risky to give up that protection, even knowing we're vaccinated and that the vaccination works?

I wondered if people in Lincoln would immediately stop wearing masks, even though our local mask mandate is still in effect.  My visit to our neighborhood grocery store this morning indicates we're still mask wearers, or rule followers, with not a bare face visible.

What about households, or families, where some are vaccinated and some are not, because of age or lack of access or a health condition that makes a vaccine unwise?  Do parents mask anyway to protect their children?  Do children mask to protect their parents?  And what about work places, and schools?  (Really glad I'm not in charge of figuring out those protocols, and my gratitude and admiration to those who will....)

In some groups, and in some settings, discreet, or. not so discreet, inquiries were made about vaccination status.  For some people, being comfortable in a group was dependent upon knowing whether or not others were vaccinated.  Now, does the absence of a mask indicate a person has been fully vaccinated, or does it mean a person hasn't been vaccinated but has also decided to no longer wear a mask?  And, if you're the person who has been vaccinated, does another person's vaccination status matter?  After all, the science says you're protected...and you can go without a mask.  But, do you really believe it?

Will not wearing a mask because you're fully vaccinated, which no one will know unless you tell them, become as political and divisive as masks have become?  What happens if there's a resurgence in some communities, or a major breakout due to a new variance?  Will we believe it if we're told we need to resume wearing masks again?  We ill we do it? 

Mostly, I wonder how we'll navigate the next stage of knowing, and not knowing.  Will we be thrilled to see so many people without masks, or will we be suspicious?  Will we mostly trust one another, or will we dredge up every example we've ever seen, and some have seen plenty, that gives us reasons to not trust that everyone will make the best and safe decision?  

And, as we resume more in person gatherings, will we remember how to do that?  Will we remember social life and social skills and how to engage in informal conversation before the meeting or a dinner party or a concert?  Life in Zoom world is pretty two-dimensional; will I remember how to live and interact in three dimensions?

My good friend Norma say that from her experience it takes about two weeks to learn a new habit.  We've been wearing masks for the better part of a year, so that habit is deeply engrained.  Will I just stop wearing a mask, or will I ease into it?  Wear one in the grocery store, but not at the small group study where I know everyone is vaccinated?  We lived through many months of not having to make a decision; the rule was, "Wear the mask."  Now, there are decisions to be made, factors to be weighed, variables to be considered.  Yet another stage of growing up...it never stops.

The entire pandemic has been a reminder that there is much that we don't know, and during this time we've had the amazing opportunity to watch science in action.  As more was learned, advice changed, based on what was learned.  This is the next step; new advice based on the latest studies.  Is it the final word?  Most likely, not.  But this is a good word, a good place to be right now.  And perhaps it's evidence that at some time Covid 19 will become like polio and small pox, diseases that have been essentially vanquished by vaccinations.  In praise of scientists, again, and a hope for grace to one another as we venture through this next phase of life in a pandemic. 

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Weathering the stormy music of motherhood

By Mary Kay Roth

I’m perched atop my front porch on this gusty Saturday evening during a pretty fierce thunderstorm, listening to the peal of wind chimes that line the front eaves of my house.  Most of these chimes are gifts from my children from past decades of Mother's Days. At some point, long ago, Josh and Anna expressed frustration in finding gifts for me on two consecutive weeks each spring since my birthday also happens in May. We landed on a solution: Wind chimes every Mother’s Day.

The resulting collection is an eclectic mix of fragile seashells and sturdy metal – thunking wood and tinkling porcelain beads – solar lights, sea glass, bells, even silverware. Sometimes they barely jingle in the breeze. Other times they shimmy recklessly. And occasionally, like during tonight’s furious gales, they might lose a piece or two.   

No matter, when the Nebraska winds blow, the chimes come together in a cacophonous symphony of noise that makes me smile, knowing that motherhood has been the background music for most of my life.

Of course, each spring the annual advertisements for Mother’s Day inevitably feature lilting lullabies underscored with pictures of chubby-cheeked cherubs and darling toddlers. Please understand, there’s nothing wrong with those angelic images.

But in all my years I’ve never seen ads celebrating moms who have survived decades of non-fantasy motherhood: Moms weary from sleepless nights when kids miss curfew, go missing, run away. Moms whose stomachs twist into knots when an adolescent screams in anger, rolls their eyes with sass, slams the door in exasperation. Moms who dissolve into sad, worried their children will self-destruct. Moms with stacks of books at their bedside, books filled with useless advice on how to handle impossible years.  

Granted, those images wouldn’t sell many flowers. But the truth is, motherhood is a tough gig, less roses and Hallmark movies and more bumps, bruises, hard-knock lessons and plain old stubborn tenacity.

Wonderful friends gave me a special art piece, years ago, with these well-worn words:  “I thought I would show the world to my children, but instead they have shown it to me.” 

Today, in my 60s, I’m less starry-eyed and more clear-eyed in looking back on the seasons and storms of motherhood – accepting the lessons I’ve learned, the heartache I’ve survived, the unexpected joy I’ve lived. The roller coaster of being a mom has taken me on the scariest rides of my life and the best rides of my life.

This weekend our family came together to honor my daughter, Anna, for earning her master’s degree in nursing. And though I loved celebrating her first steps as a toddler, there was far deeper delight when she walked across the stage to get that diploma.

It was a serene moment in the whirling storm we call Anna, a wild child who smashed into wall after wall and never seemed to learn. A child who, after barely squeaking through high school, “chose” to stop attending three different colleges. A child who took me to dark places and who, though I never stopped loving, occasionally didn’t always like.

Those wind chimes blew hard and rough for a while. I have no explanation for how we survived. In the midst of of the hardest times, one wise woman told me, “This too shall pass,” words I considered completely lame – until time did indeed pass, there was a seismic shift in the sands of parenthood and the days of simply hoping to retain some level of sanity – were gone. 

Just like that, the calm after the storm, no more temper tantrums and teen hormones. Instead, first jobs, health insurance benefits, that first glimmer of passion for a meaningful life. And graduation ceremonies this week, when the child who occasionally broke my heart – filled it back up again.

“Some of your chimes have seen better days,” my daughter observed as she arrived for her graduation party on Friday.  "Yep," I said, hugging her closely. 

And those are my favorites. The ones missing a piece or two yet still making music.  The survivors, sometimes dangling by a thread, yet clanging all the same.

So, this Sunday, I raise a toast to all the mothers. The ones with bouncing babies and dewy-eyed toddlers. The ones wondering if the interminable and difficult years of adolescence will ever end.  But most especially to the ones who have weathered the storm and emerged with a deeper more resilient maternal love made of texture and grit. 

If we’re lucky, we have raised authentic, compassionate children who love well, who care for others in a way that makes us proud. Who land on our doorstep at holidays with bonus family members. Who roast turkeys, wash the dishes, laugh with abandon.

If we’re lucky, we have raised children who teach us to be better people – who teach us to take unexpected detours as mothers and still find our way – who teach us it is possible to dance, even when the rains howl.

If we’re lucky, we have raised children who will offer us a new set of chimes this year, adding to the glorious off-key, not always harmonious, but still amazing music of motherhood.

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RELIEF

 by Mary Reiman

Some of you will remember the Rolaids commercial from the 1970s:  How do you spell relief?  Rolaids were tablets to relieve stomach pain. Isn't it interesting when one phrase conjures up such memories.  And even more amazing when you suddenly hear a word over and over and over to describe a variety of feelings for a variety of different reasons. Many of us would say life has given us quite a bit of stomach pain in the past year. I should have checked to see if they still sell Rolaids. 

Relief. Two syllables that have become one of the most often used and powerful words of the month. Describing the depth and breadth of our feelings. A simple word for complex times.  

March 25th, 8:40 a.m. was the moment I received the second vaccine. Relief. It carried a powerful message to my brain that a weight, an inordinately heavy weight, had been lifted. And the word just wouldn't leave my head. It soared and swirled just as the magnificent eagle I saw later that week as I was driving to Iowa. I believe eagle sightings are good omens. I believe certain words are also. This two syllable word kept returning to my consciousness and I knew it had to be addressed before it would let me move on.

March 28th, 2:00 p.m. I walked into the Milford Care Center and hugged my mom for the first time since March 1st, 2020. They were now allowing 30 minute visits each day. Joy. Gratitude. Relief. Joy that she still remembers me. I believe this because she waved as she rounded the corner and I'm just sure she was smiling behind that mask. Overwhelming gratitude. Gratitude that I held in just long enough to get back into my car 30 minutes later where I dropped my head onto my steering wheel and sobbed. Relief. A truly indescribable feeling in my heart and soul that Sunday afternoon. 

April 13th, 10:00 a.m. Relief to be back at the Care Center now sitting beside mom in her room, yes in her room, holding her hand and watching her sleep. As I left the room an hour later, I turned back to say the same phrase I say every time I end a conversation with her, 'I love you.'  Sometimes this past year when I called her on the phone, she just hung up. But that day, that special day, she opened her eyes and replied, 'I love you too.' 

April 20th, 4:15 p.m. The breaking news report. The verdict. A collective sigh of relief. There is no way I can articulate it more clearly or succinctly than the many journalists who have described and shared the thoughts and feelings of so many. Justice. 

It's not about the size of the word or the number of syllables. It's about the visual depth of the meaning. Yes, this month has been filled with emotion and thankfulness, gratitude and joy. That's how I spell relief.

A favor in the rearview

Photo credit: Associated Press 

By JoAnne Young

I’m thinking a lot this week, as many of us are, about the deaths of unarmed Black men and women, killed by police who are sworn to serve and protect. 

 

The death of one in particular, Daunte Demetrius Wright, the latest to be highly publicized, brings me back 10 years to a forward thinking senator in the Nebraska Legislature: Sen. Tanya Cook of District 13 in south central Omaha. 

 

In 2011, Cook introduced and succeeded in passing a bill that would alter existing Nebraska law that allowed police to stop and detain a motorist for having an air freshener, rosary, tassel or other object hanging from a rearview mirror. 

 

In Nebraska, it’s no longer a misdemeanor crime, but now a traffic violation that can bring a fine and a point assessed on your driver’s license. And it’s a secondary rather than a primary offense, meaning police can ticket you for the violation but it can’t be the primary reason they stopped you. 

 

And it doesn’t create a criminal record. 

 

In the case of Duante Wright, police in a community that borders Minneapolis pulled him over, and shortly thereafter shot and killed him. It all started with a traffic violation. The death penalty, as it were, for a traffic violation. 

 

Police say officers stopped him because his plates had expired. But he told his mother, who was on the phone with him, that he was stopped because he had air fresheners dangling from his rear-view mirror. Police say the air fresheners were noticed only after he was stopped. 

 

Even the possibility that air fresheners could have started a succession of events that led to Wright’s death has added to the outrage. Protesters have hung air fresheners on a temporary chain link security fence outside the Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, Police Department.

 

In a majority of states, including Minnesota and Nebraska, anything that can obstruct the view of a driver is illegal. Many people believe such a law enables racial profiling. 

 

So Tanya Cook decided three sessions into her first term to try to make changes in Nebraska that could at least reduce the chances of those kinds of stops here. She had become aware of the law during debate a year before on a bill that made texting while driving a secondary offense. 

 

A majority of states have an “obstruction of view” law of some kind, some more vague than others. They are included in a set of low-level offenses, “such as tinted windows or broken tail lights, that civil rights advocates complain have become common pretexts for traffic stops that too often selectively target people of color,” according to the New York Times. 

 

The Times also reported the mayor of Brooklyn Center said police should not be pulling people over because of an expired registration during the coronavirus pandemic.

 

During a hearing and debate on Cook’s bill 10 years ago, she said charging a person with a misdemeanor crime for hanging an air freshener was grossly disproportionate to the act, that law enforcement should not be able to stop and detain a person for such a vague and uncertain offense. 

 

Several years before that, an Omaha Police safety auditor had reported those types of stops were done disproportionately to minority drivers as a pretext to stop and question them, called by some a motor vehicle “stop and frisk.” 

 

The Omaha Police Department opposed Cook’s bill in part, saying reclassifying it as a secondary offense would defeat the purpose of the law, which was safe operation of a vehicle to prevent an accident. 

 

I talked this week to Cook, who term limited out of the Legislature in January 2018 and is now the National Black Caucus of State Legislators policy lead and a member of the Metropolitan Utilities District Board of Directors. She said some made fun of her “fuzzy dice bill.” 

 

“Which was fine,” she said, “because I didn’t want people to realize what I really was attempting to do, or the audience I was concerned about. … It got through because it was early, (and) their … ignorance is so pervasive that it could just go through ‘ha, ha, ha, fuzzy dice bill, she’s looking for something to get across the finish line.”

 

It passed easily on a 46-0 vote. 

 

It’s too easy to say this shows how important it is to have people of color in the Legislature and other policy making areas government, which was my first inclination as I sat down to write this.

 

That puts too much responsibility on them to not only represent their district and what’s important and interesting to them, but also to watch what every other bill and committee and interest group may be doing, Cook explained.

 

“That’s unfair. I’ve done it. I don’t want to do it anymore,” she said. “But it also lets white people off the hook … and then you’re exhausted from not only getting your own bills across the finish line but trying to make sure nothing slips through that has a disproportionate (effect).”

 

It’s everybody’s job, and not just that of the one or two Black representatives, to use their energy, and whatever political capital they have, to prioritize, navigate, communicate, she said.

 

People in the Legislature, who are by a wide majority white, just lose their minds about property taxes, she said. If they would get as excited about life and death issues for other Nebraskans, “that’s the rubric I’m looking for.” 

 

They would be doing us all a favor. 

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The Power of Name

by Marilyn Moore 

 Every teacher knows the power of being able to call a student by name. Teachers pore over class lists the days before the first day of school, becoming familiar with names, looking for names they might recognize from some other context, noting those names with which they may need help in pronunciation. They are preparing for that first day, when the challenge of attaching a name to a face begins, and then the deeper challenge of connecting name to face to voice to the unique qualities of the student. It starts with name, and at the point the teacher can greet the student by name, the relationship begins…. Knowing each student’s name, every student’s name, makes everything work better. Discussion is better, organizing is better, motivating is better, class culture is better, feedback is better…and it all starts with a name. 

It’s true for adults, too. Just as five-year-olds and thirteen-year-olds want to be known by their name, so do people beginning a new job, a new book group, a new team, a new neighborhood. Astute employers, managers, leaders, and members of a community know the importance of name, and they get to know people by name, and they have all kinds of brain tricks to remember names. In some way, we know that to be known by our name is to be known beyond label of age, or gender, or occupation. 

Names are part of custom, culture, and tradition. In the majority culture in this country, we generally have a family name, which is placed last, and a given name, or two or three given names, placed first. That is not true world wide, and one of the wonderful puzzles of traveling to other countries, or in welcoming children from immigrant and refugee families, is figuring out how names are ordered…which part of the name is the family name, and is the family name from the mother’s or father’s side of the family. And for everyone, is there a story in the name…a family tradition, a family friend, the popular name of the time, a compromise that had to be made between parents who just couldn’t land on a name that both adored, or some other story? Is the given name the preferred name, or is there a nickname? If the given name can be shortened, Elizabeth to Betsy, Edward to Ed, is it? Does the person prefer it? 

There are times in life when a person’s name is especially important. Graduates and their families want to hear their name called as they cross the stage to receive a diploma. In Christian christening and baptism ceremonies, a name is given and blessed. Jewish babies receive their Hebrew name in a naming ceremony. In some Native American cultures, a name given at birth may change as the child or adult grows into a new name. Vows and oaths include the name; we own our name when we make a promise. And at death, the name is said, with fondness, with sorrow, with an intent to hold onto the spirit of the person by remembering, and saying, their name. 

This was especially evident in the response to last week’s 5 Women Mayhem blog by Mary Kay Roth, in which she wrote about her brother Doug, who died by suicide. Hundreds of people read that blog, and dozens responded with “His name is…” saying the name of the person in their lives who also died by suicide and who was not forgotten, who must be named. Each year at the memorial service for those who died in the terrorist attacks on September 11, the names of the victims are read. Each year on All Saints Sunday, the names of the persons in our church who have died the previous year are said aloud. The names of the victims of the Vietnam war are etched in marble at the Viet Nam War Memorial in Washington D.C.; it is an achingly somber and spiritual place, more than 58,000 names to be found, and touched, and remembered. 

There have been times, too many times, when names have been deliberately and cruelly dishonored. Native American children, forcibly sent to white boarding schools, were required to stop using the name given to them at birth and instead be called by a more “American-sounding” name. Immigrants from eastern European countries in the late 1800’s routinely received papers as they arrived in the US with their names “Americanized.” Enslaved persons were stripped of their names, and their children’s names were changed at the whim of an owner or overseer. Jewish people sent to concentration camps were known by number, not by name. And the names of children, separated from their parents at the southern border of the US, were not kept in a system that could reunite them with their parents. In each of these circumstances, and in many others around the world and across millennia, the loss of name is accompanied by, or caused by, loss of identity and loss of dignity. 

It has become customary, and what a god-awful statement it is that such a custom must even need to exist, that the names of victims of mass shootings, or police violence, are noted in news reports. The names are spoken aloud, the names are remembered, and the names recall the lives taken in violence. It is as if we acknowledge that as a society we are unable to prevent death by mass violence, but we attempt to give honor by naming the name. And to a grieving parent, or spouse, or child, it is hoped there is some solace and comfort in hearing their loved one’s name…. 

At all ages and stages of life, at life’s high points of celebration and at moments of great tragedy and sadness, we are reminded to “Say their name,” because we know that calling someone by name begins, and sustains, a relationship, an identity, a recognition of the inherent value of the person who bears that name.

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