Who Dat?

by Dennis Green

Robert Johnson, honored by Eric Clapton in Crossroads, practiced Mississippi Voodoo, and dedicated his soul to the Voodoo Loa, or saint, Papa Legba, Guardian of the Crossroads in Mississippi Voodoo beliefs. These beliefs are very similar to New Orleans, or Louisiana Voodoo, which in turn derives from and differs somewhat from Haitian Voodoo. All are a combination of French Catholic and West African beliefs.

I live in a “House of Voodoo,” without even thinking about it, until just the other day. About 15 years ago, I met a Voodoo Priestess on the site of the old Slave Market in New Orleans, “Pristine,” a great-great-granddaughter of the High Voodoo Priestess and Queen, Marie Laveau. I spoke with her at some length about Voodoo, and bought a small JuJu charm from her, one that she had made herself, an ivory skull and silver ornamented necklace amulet designed to ward off evil spirits.

A few years later, while writing a novel called Losing My Amnesia, about a California tourist turned into a Zombie in New Orleans, I took a correspondence course from Pristine in Voodoo, (“Vodou” in the original French), and her distant cousin, Estimé, who lives in Port-au-Prince. And then I got a giant cobra tattooed on my belly. Even then I was pursuing shamanistic practices.

In the meantime, Diane and I collected four large Haitian metal sculptures — unique hammered steel tableaus made from 50-gallon oil drums — that portray Haitian Voodoo Loa. Erzulie is the goddess of love, help, goodwill, health, beauty and fortune — and “The Word.” She is the consort of Papa Legba, the prime male Loa, that guardian of the crossroads. In our metal sculptures, she is shown in one as a winged deity, being worshipped by two children, and in two others as a long-haired mermaid swimming through the sea.

The fourth sculpture depicts Mami Wata riding a bike and holding an umbrella in a very funny pose, while up from the ground and even the handlebars of the bike reach hands appealing to her love and humor. Such whimsy is more common in Voodoo — in which there is no devil, no marriage and no baptism — than in any of the other major world religions. All four sculptures exert very heavy mojo on our domicile.

One day, my pal George/Harvey wore a T-shirt reading “Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo,” and I admired it. Two days later, he was on my doorstep, giving me the shirt, freshly laundered!

And then, a few years ago, without really making the connection, I came into the possession of a large collection of West African masks, as well as a royal cane/scepter. They all represent spirits of the Dohomey tribe, whose beliefs combined with French Catholicism in Haiti to produce Vodou, as Nigerian Yoruban beliefs resulted in Santeria, a Cuban offshoot.

Papa Legba, Obatala, Yemaya, Oya, Oshun, Chango and Ogun. These are the seven Loa, or Saints, in New Orleans Voodoo. JuJu are the various pieces of jewelry worn as amulets or charms to ward off evil spirits, promote healing, and attract prosperity — such items as a ”Dreamcatcher,” or a “Gator Tooth Necklace,” or a “Gator Claw Key Ring” or a “Voodoo Fetish Box.” Wild Gator Heads sell for $70 at Voodoo Authentica of New Orleans, which also sells online.

Gris-Gris refers to the many potions and herbal bundles blessed by Voodoo practitioners and believed to provide good luck, abundant blessings, cleansing of the spirit and purification. The potion oils begin with 100% jojoba oil base and give good mojo, i.e., Magick. At Voodoo Authentica, they are handmade and blessed by the shop owner, Brandi.

Voodoo dolls are used — not to put a hex on other people as some mistakenly believe— but as focusing tools. One writes down a wish on a small slip of paper and pins it to the doll, and then meditates on the doll as a tool for focusing one’s intention and desire. Many of these dolls have been used for hundreds of years. My favorite is the “Magick Wish Doll” for healing.

Haitian Voodoo is closer to the West African beliefs of the Dohomey tribe. Agassu, Damballah, Erzulie, Ghede, Baron Samedi, Jean Petro, Cousin Zaca, Ogoun, Rada, Simbi, Ti-Jean, Li Grand Zombi and Mami Wata are just a few of their chief Loa. In Voodoo gatherings and ceremonies, many of these Loa have been known to possess, or “mount” the believers, who then behave in manners customary and unique to that particular spirit.

I use my Voodoo techniques sparingly, (“Go Saints! Who Dat?”), and in fact had implemented them quite unconsciously until just recently, when the thought of going back on dialysis put me in a tailspin. Vodou brought me back to my senses.

©2010 Dennis Green

In Your Dreams!

by Dennis Green

“Tired of livin’/but feared of dyin’/that Ole Man River/he just keeps rollin’ along!” Yep, that’ s the same river that rolls past Siddhartha, the same river my Granpa Fred DuVall played on the banks of as a kid growing up in Hannibal, Missouri. Anyone who’s ever lived on or anywhere near the banks of a river knows what I mean, what it does to your sense of time and self.

Not just any large body of water will do. Oceanside living isn’t the same. There’s something relentless about those waves coming in, coming in, still coming in, always coming in — but they’re not as forgiving as a river. All lakes are placid. But Jesus spoke on the bank of the Jordan River many times for a reason.

Humboldt County, where I grew up, is part of the “Six Rivers National Forest,” so named for the six rivers that empty into the ocean nearby — the Trinity, the Smith, the Klamath, the Mad, the Eel and the Van Duzen, (which, like the Elk River, is a tributary of the Eel.) At one time or another, I went trout fishing in most of them, but lived for a time near the banks of the Mad.

Much farther, 20 miles or more upstream, that’s where the “Mad” River gets its name, for up by Cable Bridge and Mount Chaparral, it is not merely angry, but furious. By the time it flows past Blue Lake, where I lived for two years, and went trout fishing with my Dad for many years, it has slowed to a wide, fairly shallow and lazy old man.

So what is it about “Ole Man River” that captures our imagination so? Many such waterways, in fact, are so venerated — the Yallou in China, the Ganges in India, the Nile in Egypt, the Amazon in Brazil — as sacred, living beings. The waters of the Jordan River were used as holy water by John the Baptist, cleansing believers of their sins.

We sense somehow that the River is the source of all our life, not merely for our drinking water and our crops, but its essence so essential to the life force itself. The Source of our fertility, vitality and prosperity. From its headwaters — which may never be in some instances even discovered and explored — springs life eternal.

And this creature, this Spirit, will outlive us. It just keeps rolling along, in benign indifference to our sorrows, our suffering, our loves and losses and joys. “Get a little drunk and you land in jail!”

One summer, I worked briefly in a small stud sawmill in Midway, between Arcata and Blue Lake, on the Mad River, as a “trashpicker,” the lowest, most menial job in the mill. I stood at the junction of two conveyor belts, one bringing raw slabs of lumber off the gang saws, and the other taking good boards down to the planer for finishing. It was my job to toss out all the bad lumber, the split pieces, the strips of bark, the knotted or broken chunks of wood, onto a third conveyor leading to the big burner standing outside the mill.

It was grueling work, and the better I got at it, the longer the day lasted. I remember in my dreams at night seeing a river of lumber flowing across my bed, across my chest, an endless river of wood. And then my girlfriend Chris began visiting my little room, which was in a converted garage behind my parents’ house.

She soothed my aching muscles, and we would put on an album by Sinatra or Johnny Mathis and make love. I told her about my river of lumber dreams, and she said she’d give me something else to remember, “…in your dreams!” And she did.

So…that Old Man River may be made of water, or of wood, and may drive us to distraction, but we never know when we’ll come upon some little island of pleasure in our deliverance downstream. Even Hemingway, so wracked by pain and illness toward the end, found his own little islands in the stream.

©2010 Dennis Green

Rightfully Unemployed

by Dennis Green

Eight million Americans are out of work, another two million jobs never showed up to create growth in the first place. But Wall Street is doing fine, so long as the headlines aren’t filled with news about reform of the banking and financial industry. So what’s going on?

Perhaps those folks who are now unemployed were working at jobs that weren’t really necessary or productive. Perhaps those jobs-jobs-jobs were just part of the economic bubble, like the dot-com bust companies that didn’t survive that earlier big POP!

Companies downsize because they can. They can economize by eliminating certain positions that either duplicate services or accomplish things that are outmoded. If sales, exports, profits fall, they look for fat to trim off the bone.

In the early ‘80s, I was working as “Manager of Promotions & Market Research” at Miller Freeman Publishing. I negotiated a cordial and beneficial departure from the firm, in part because they were hurting, losing money from currency exchange rates and from a frankly bloated payroll, including my generous paycheck.

I managed five other people, and when the dust settled, three of us were gone. The three remaining didn’t do the work of five, but probably did the work of three and a half of us, without, of course, my genius and ironic sense of humor.

The people who stayed employed during the Recession of the Eighties worked much harder, and during the Eighties and Nineties, even the Oughts, productivity in America rose impressively. For the most part, wages and benefits remained stagnant, and most corporations made out quite well.

Two parallel economies developed — a real economy that made things, and a hollow economy that made money, supposedly to finance that real economy, but gradually only for its own sake. Such a world cannot be sustained.

At Miller Freeman, I made things. Ads and subscription renewal letters and brochures. I created concepts and copy, worked with artists who created layout and design, and with printers who made the final products possible. When I left, I took two thing with me — my ability to make things and my savvy about office politics.

And with them, I made a new life for myself. I found that many small and mid-sized companies couldn’t afford to keep someone like me on staff fulltime. But they could afford to contract with me for $15,000 or $50,000 worth of my time and energy. With even a handful of such clients, I made out quite well.

Likewise, I found that very often, for sensitive marketing and advertising projects, they needed an outsider to do the work, someone who was not captive of internal office politics and the same old perspectives. Someone who could offer a fresh look at the brand, at the customer, at the market for their services or goods. So I made a valuable contribution as an independent consultant and sub-contractor.

How many of today’s unemployed have the initiative or skills to do that, I have no idea. But I suspect that most of them know, in their heart of hearts, that their job loss is not an injustice. And that their next employment may well also be fragile and undeserved.

©2010 Dennis Green

Do Tell

by Dennis Green

John McCain is homophobic. In spite of testimony by Admiral Mullens and other high military officials that “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” is a failed policy that imposes a lack of integrity on U.S. troops, McCain sticks to his guns, or to his notions, his perfect pictures.

But homophobia isn’t a rational fear at all, so why expect a failed candidate like McCain to wise up now? Never mind that all of our allies — including Australia, Canada and Great Britain — have dropped their bans. Hot shot Top Guns like McCain must know better.

So we’re dealing with the usual congressional (yawn!) dysfunctions. “Don’t bother me with the facts, I’ve already made up my mind!” Borrowed from the War on Some Drugs, now “Just Say No!” is the GOP mantra.

Meanwhile, among the heterosexual men and women serving in the U.S. armed forces, the incidence of rape, pregnancy, fraternization, dysfunction, abuse and sexually-transmitted disease increases. Sexual disruption? Welcome to the real world.

People with multiple personalities, post traumatic stress disorder, severe depression, ADD, OCD, and a host of other psychological disorders serve in the military every day of the week. And if they seek help, have trouble getting it.

So, just perhaps, singling out homosexuality as grounds for dismissal is lunacy, and an irrational form of discrimination at its worst. And that would make Senator John McCain a monster we might have actually elected President.

What is homophobia all about? Well, some folks claim it’s the very notion of the sexual acts themselves — anal sex, oral sex, etc. — but when you stop and think about it, as the comedienne Sarah Silverman does, the things straight people do to each other, “It’s all pretty GROSS!” So maybe that’s not the real rub, as it were…

In a recent dust-up here in Alameda over a curriculum to teach tolerance and lessen bullying of gay, lesbian and transgender kids, or the children of same sex couples, the charge and lawsuit was led by the religious right, including a Muslim fundamentalist and the infamous Central Baptist Church. One woman claimed in a letter to the editor that Jesus himself condemned homosexuality.

But I wrote the paper that she needs to brush up on her Bible history, because Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. He did say in one of his sermons, however, “Judge not, lest ye be judged accordingly.” So much for an appeal to scripture.

I’ve had among my friends gay people since high school, once had a gay roommate who became so close we went to movies together. I have two gay, married brothers-in-law at the moment, and enjoyed attending their wedding one summer at San Francisco City Hall. So I’m aware how normal they are, and how merely human as well.

I also “run a lot of female energy,” but have no uncertainties about my preferences. Beyond the sexual, my preference is that people would be more open-minded, more tolerant of our differences, Even in our advanced years, too, we can be lusty, not musty. And perhaps the more we enjoy life, the more willing we are to let others do the same.

Do tell…the bigots…Baby, you can just go to Hell!

©2010 Dennis Green

Perfect Pictures

by Dennis Green

When I studied and practiced yoga techniques for the first time, some 30 years ago now, I learned a very important lesson about how we see the world. We can see it straight up, just as it is, or we can see it through one or more of many different filters.

We can see it as we would like it to be, or as others have told us to see it. Our vision may even become so cluttered with “Perfect Pictures” that we no longer see it at all, not as an external, independent reality, but only as a series of idealized, stylized prototypes. Stereotypes. Or, if we are really cynical, even negative stereotypes. Perfectly Awful.

(Now, I’m bracing myself, for when I wrote in this space about “reading auras,” my old pal Georgie/Harvey wrote back, “I just read their mood rings. Saves time.” So I’m ready for him…)

That first yoga teacher, Donovan, saved “Perfect Pictures” for last, because it is the most difficult lesson of all. But he prepared the way with those earlier, easier workouts. First, he taught us how to feel, locate, identify the presence in our bodies of negative energy, which we humans store as pain or tension or stress.

Many of the aches and pains we take for granted, that we assume are the natural result of everyday wear and tear, and unavoidable, can actually be lessened, eliminated, or even prevented, with a few simple relaxation techniques, positions and stretches. Once you identify a muscle or nerve that is holding on to that negative energy, you can simply unlock its grip and let the stuff go. And there are various ways to do that.

But ultimately, you learn that you can avoid acquiring most of that tension, pain and stress in the first place. Some of it is planted there by other people, deliberately, to take control of us, or simply rack us up, and we can protect ourselves against that. But most of it we impose upon ourselves, with our expectations and our disappointments and our preferences — when they don’t agree with reality.

And when our heads are stuffed with Perfect Pictures of the ‘way it s’posed to be’ our reactions are bound to be negative, painful, distressed. If, for example, I have Perfect Pictures of the way human beings are supposed to respond to the sufferings of others, and I hear Pat Robertson come across with something less than perfect, I’m going to be, as another friend put it, “shoved out of my comfort zone.”

Likewise, if I’m so cynical that I expect everyone to disrespect the Haitians, and many millions of people show compassion instead, I’m going to feel great discomfort. If my mind, however, is empty of all such notions, one way or the other, my curiosity is satisfied, but I’m not particularly distressed. I don’t pass judgment on the Haitians, or Robertson, or those who help out.

Without those Perfect Pictures, I see the world as it is, and store a lot less negative energy in my body in the form of tension, aches and stress. A very similar principle is also summed up in Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer,” used by Alcoholics Anonymous, to break the grip of addictions:

“God grant me the serenity/to accept the things I cannot change;/courage to change the things I can;/and wisdom to know the difference.” Amen to that…even if you don’t believe in God.

©2010 Dennis Green

Call Me 'Papa Doc'!

by Dennis Green

So I’m reading, on Wikipedia and elsewhere, about the history of Haiti, and America’s rather shameful role in that history. How we observed the sanctions imposed on the breakaway island nation by France, how we shipped, from 1824 to 1826, some 6,000 freed black African slaves to live there, how we invaded, occupied and subjugated Haiti from 1915 to 1934. How a U.S. Under-Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, signed the orders to impose a new constitution there in 1917. And years later, as President, how he finally signed the “Friendly Nations” treaty, giving Haiti its full independence.

I also read about how the U.S. re-imposed a form of slavery on Haitians in a massive road building program, creating 470 miles of new roads by 1918, using a system called corvée, forcing Haitians to donate their labor “in lieu of paying a road tax.”

And then I came across the name for the first time — Françoise Duvalier — as a young, idealistic humanitarian rescuing Haitians from the disease of yaws, which caused blindness. The man who, many years later, would morph into “Papa Doc,” a ruthless strongman and dictator backed by U.S. interests, who, with his Vodou-inspired Tonton Macoutes, killed an estimated 30,000 Haitians who attempted to oppose him. There is something else familiar about the name, but I just gloss over it.

And then, that night, I dream that I am Papa Doc. And I am being driven in a long black limousine across town, and I tell my people, the gathering throngs, “Call me ‘Papa Doc.’” It is one of those dreams so vivid it has to be real. And when I wake, at midnight, with a start, I say, “Of course! He was my cousin!”

My grandfather, Frederick Francis DuVall, traced his lineage back to aristocratic families living in the north of France, who came to America through Arcadia, became Cajuns and also settled, many of them, in Haiti. “Francis” is an Anglicization of “Françoise.” The lineage is undeniable. The land owners, and slave holders in Haiti were, at the time of the French Revolution, aristocrats from the north of France.

DuVall and Duvalier are one.

Now, in my lifetime, besides my Uncle Bob’s three children — Robin, Kermit and April — I have met two other distant cousins I could trace through the DuVall side of the family. One was my old pal Jim Ledbetter, whose mother informed us that, learning about my ancestry and the DuValls in Missouri, that we were distant cousins. And Jim and I thereafter called each other “Cuz.”

The other was a young man of French Algerian descent I met one night at a sushi bar in Alameda. Somehow, the DuVall name came up and he showed me his U.S. Coastguard I.D., which read his name as “Henri DuVall.” He told me even more about the small, exclusive line of the French family that had its roots in Normandy. And that his father had migrated to Algeria from there.

And now I’ve identified another, Françoise Duvalier. Strange fruit on the family tree of life. A humanitarian turned dictator. A strongman.

There’s hope for me yet. Call me Papa Doc! Papa’s in the HOUSE!

©2010 Dennis Green

Obama's Overcompensation

by Dennis Green

Barrack Hussein Obama was elected President of the U.S. primarily because he was not perceived as an “experienced” old political hack. He defeated Hillary and McCain precisely because both of them were seen as yesterday’s leftovers, either recycled from previous administrations or past campaigns. We wanted “Change You Can Believe In” and by that we meant, definitely not the usual suspects.

After eight years of Bush, we desperately wanted real change.

But the first thing Obama did was appoint Rahm Emmanuel his Chief of Staff, an old Chicago political hack who had served as Bill Clinton’s advisor way back in the ‘90s. Then he appointed Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State, kept Bush’s Secretary of Defense, and kept Bernanke and other financial wizards on his team who had overseen if not facilitated the economic collapse of 2008.

He kept Petreus on as General overseeing both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and promoted General Stanley McChrystal to oversee the Afghan campaign, a man who had led a team of assassins in earlier U.S. military efforts, and who lied about Pat Tillman’s killing by friendly fire. No wonder they just got us deeper into the quagmire.

So what’s going on?

My sense is that Obama, feeling so inexperienced, and having been taken to task for his lack of experience by both Hillary and McCain, did what is so human — he overcompensated. He surrounded himself with all the usual suspects and tired old, worn-out hacks. I’m surprised he didn’t find a role for John McCain in his cabinet too. And for all we know, maybe he did.

But in doing all that, he betrayed exactly what we elected him for, his freshness, his virginity, his relatively unspoiled nature. Yes, he was from Harvard, and from Chicago, but he wasn’t yet tainted by D.C. And in that regard he was the sort of candidate that Jimmy Carter was, and Ronald Reagan, and even Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — the outsider.

All four of those men had served as governors of their respective states before coming to the White House, but had not served a decade or more in Congress, let alone, like Hillary, lived and worked in that domicile before. After Nixon, after Carter’s disappointing failures, after Bush One and after Clinton, we had turned to the H.R.O.’s — the “Highly Regarded Outsiders.”

My friend and mentor of many years, Herb Stansbury, a marketing genius and also a “business cartoonist,” (his “Smart Chart” appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle for many years…), once drew a cartoon for me I still have framed on my office wall. It reads, “Green, you’re not an Insider…but you are a Highly Regarded Outsider.” And that was precisely why he made me his sidekick, his spy in so many meetings we attended together.

I was not, like him and his associates, a member of the Bohemian Club, La Taverna, the Claremont Club, the Golden Bears, so when he needed an outsider perspective, he could count on me. And that’s how we thought we would be able to count on Obama. But he didn’t, apparently, trust his own instincts, even though they got him as far as they have.

So now we’ve got the usual gridlock, the usual stalemates, politics as usual. And we shouldn’t really be surprised. We don’t elect a president, we elect a team. And Obama’s team has given him some very bad advice. And let us all badly down.

©2010 Dennis Green