A Grain of Sand: Recent Episodes
Charles McGuigan
The title comes from "Auguries of Innocence", a poem by William Blake, which begins: "To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour" Stories about people, places, events, using the human voice, music, narrations, and ambient sound. Each episode is just under a half hour. And every story--each grain of sand--resonates with a universal theme. Or that's my hope.
America has a long, long, long history of embracing immigrants one day, generally because it needed them for economic reasons, a variation of slave labor, then rejecting them the next day because of racism, xenophobia, bigotry, white supremacy, greed, and a hundred other hideous reasons. At Jamestown, where the America that we know really got its start, forced immigration began just twelve years after the colony thrust its roots into the spongy Tidewater soil. That’s when the slave ships began arriving with their holds packed with human beings who were to begin the nightmare of permanent captivity, rape, brutality, torture, murder. No hope for escape, no chance for freedom. By the end of the colonial period, one in every five Americans was of African descent, fully twenty percent of the population was black. And the overwhelming majority of them were slaves. A Civil War would be fought that would result in their emancipation, at least on paper, and a hundred years after that, a Civil Rights movement would be waged. But today, four hundred years after those first Africans arrived here, black Americans simply don’t enjoy the same treatment as white Americans. Up in merry old New England, those colonies, back in the 1600s, welcomed their fellow Englishmen, unless, of course, they happened to be Quakers. This was the country’s first real example of religious intolerance, which has lasted in one form or other up till this day, when you consider the current president’s attempted ban on Muslims. Back in the day, when Quakers slipped into the Puritan-rich waters of the Massachusetts Bay Colony they were whipped, imprisoned, banished, or forced to climb up the long ladder and drop down the short rope. Summarily hanged for their beliefs, a very Christian thing to do, according to the Puritans. A hundred years later, in the mid-1700s, English Parliament passed an odious bill called the Plantation Act, which became the blueprint for every subsequent U.S. Naturalization Act that ever became law. The Plantation Act required all immigrants to pledge allegiance to the Christian faith, meaning Protestantism, before becoming naturalized citizens. Roman Catholics were not considered Christians, were referred to, in that law, as Papists. Shortly after the birth of the Republic, the Alien Naturalization Act went into effect. This was one of the craziest laws ever written. Citizenship was offered to “free white persons” only, thereby excluding indentured servants, slaves, and, get this, women. This law claimed to limit naturalization to people of 'good moral character'—like white slave owners. In the early years of twentieth century, when eugenics was all the rage, the Immigration Act of 1917, barred “idiots, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons, alcoholics, and all persons mentally or physically defective” from becoming US citizens. Which today would mean that the president, his staff and cabinet, along with all members of both houses of Congress, would not be able to become US citizens. Over the course of our history there have been hundreds of immigration laws that were simply, and in many cases, arbitrarily, discriminatory. They were enacted, but later repealed, or overturned by the courts. One of the oddest ones, which was extant until 1924, refused citizenship to the only real native Americans—namely Native American Indians. As absurd as it sounds, it’s absolutely true. Indigenous people were not considered native, a complete and utter pretzel twist of logic. For some reason, one particular group of foreigners were treated with particular harshness. They were banned from obtaining citizenship, and those who had already achieve that status, lost it, even if their families had been here for several generations. This group of immigrants were brought in as a sort of slave labor force to do the work no one else wanted to do—to build an intercontinental railroad, and to work in true sweat shops—namely laundries.
A Nation of Immigrants is what we are, always have been, and always will be, as long as we remain the United States of America. Bans on immigrants are nothing new in our history; but each time our doors were shut, they were quickly pried open again. These bans were wrong-headed, inspired by fear-mongering and outright hatred—two qualities that are as un-American as fascism. Our country derives all its strength from our shared diversity, the rich bath of our gene pool. We have never been homogenous, not even in colonial days. We are truly a nation of immigrants.
It may not have been “the shot heard round the world,” but it was an excruciatingly long and violent video seen and heard by billions of people across the Earth. Every single one of them heard the pleas of a Black man who was killed in the most violent of manners by a white man who was supposed to protect and serve him. That, while three other police officers stood by and did nothing to stop the brutality, which they could have done any time during those eternal nine minutes before George Floyd gave up the ghost. Everything is now changed for good and all; there is no going back. George Floyd’s murder shone a retina-scorching light on racial inequities that have dominated our nation since even before its birth. Those who refuse to see them were already blind.
The sadistic murder of George Floyd has propelled the entire country forward toward a more perfect Union, and the racist, Confederate monuments along one of Richmond, Virginia’s most prestigious avenues are finally coming down, having spent well over a century intimidating African Americans.
The following morning I hook up with Barry and his co-worker, Alexandra Wilke, an ornithological conservationist, at a dock in Oyster. We climb aboard a 19-foot Carolina skiff with its trademark rectangular hull that looks like an amphibious landing craft and as we creep, wakeless, up the harbor, Barry points out a number of structures and parcels of land around us.
“The funny looking boat with the high cabin and the crane on it belongs to the contractor that we use to build our oyster reefs,” he says. “Across the road there is a riparian forest restoration project. Hundreds of acres for migratory songbird habitat. This other piece of property is the Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center. There are tanks that we use for curing our eel grass seeds.”
When we make the open water of Mock Horn Bay, Alex takes us to Ship Shoal Island, Wreck Island, Little Cobb Island and the southern point of Cobb Island. All the while she shows us islands that are rookeries for oystercatchers (one of her specialties), great black-backed gulls, gull-billed terns, brown pelicans and so on. We walk gingerly among nests etched in the sand. She tells me how the piping plover (a protected species) population has increased from 100 to 200 birds due in part to a program that removed raccoons and red foxes from the islands.
I meet Barry Truit at the dock early in the morning. The sky is cloudless, blue, the yolk of the sun creeping up the horizon, and the air sauna-humid and brick oven-hot. In less than twenty minutes we are within a mile of Hogg Island when Barry cuts the outboards and we drift and toward a thick outcropping of spartina grass. “This is Egging Marsh and it got its name because this is where the old heads used to come to collect gull eggs in the old days,” says Barry. “We had a real high tide about a week and a half ago and it flooded everything. This was a colony of nesting laughing gulls but it’s all been wiped out. It’s an example of sea level rise. There’s no denying it. These marshes are all eroding on their edges all the way around the so they’re all getting smaller.”
This episode is a draft and can’t yet be heard by anyone but you.
This is the fastest moving real estate on the entire East Coast (these islands move about four feet ever year, and always have), and behind the sandy shores of these Virginia Barrier Islands is the purest ocean water along the Atlantic Coast. These seaside bays are host to the most successful eel grass restoration in the world, and many of the fisheries that were on the brink of collapse twenty years ago have returned with vigor. Man and nature reside in peaceful coexistence here mainly because of the diligent work of the Nature Conservancy, which saved the islands from development. And a man named Barry Tuitt, who recently retired.
“Everything can change just like that.” But there is no snap of fingers. This is the preamble to a story Jane’s retold a hundred times in person or on social media. The beginning of the story is always jarring, but it’s the end that leaves people speechless.
Gloria Rhoden was born in Jamaica 65 years ago. She was raised by her mother and aunt, and as she grew up she realized she wasn't growing like her siblings and cousins. Gloria, who is 29 inches tall, performed as a singer, first specializing in Reggae and later in Gospel. Most of her adult life she has worked on the carnival circuit at state fairs and midways throughout the South and Midwest. It's rough work, long hours, little pay and Gloria's take on beauty rings with truth.