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episode 39

Greetings,

I’m really tired of being used by a corrupt system to keep it generating more corruption. And that is too much of how debt is used in this country.

In this episode, my guest is Marie Megge, a Michigan-based debt counseling expert who is not easy to find because she doesn’t use your money to prop up her company through expensive ad campaigns. But once I did find her as sought help to come out from under insurmountable debt post-divorce, I wanted to offer a way for my audience to find her, too.

Marie and I discuss a range of issues related to the debt industry, but the primary focus here is how you can use her knowledge to help yourself become unstuck from a corrupt system that is all too willing to let you suffer so they can profit.

I do want to give you the heads up that not all of the aspects of the industry that I had wanted to cover made it into this podcast. So, I will do a follow up!

In this episode, Marie and I discuss:

• The moral injury the debt industry hinges upon

• How to ensure you don’t get scammed by debt counseling firms who can be jsut as evil and predatory as the banks!

• How much energy and hope can return to your life when you have help facing an industry designed to make you feel badly about yourself

• How long it takes to restore your credit rating once you’ve entered into debt settlement negotiations

• The process of debt negotiation itself

What I will circle back to is:

• How and why banks assign our credit ratings using secret metrics that allow them to justify whatever interest they want to assign.

• How interest rates often are irrelevant to the lenders’ calculus

• How they remain profitable regardless of whether we ever pay off our credit cards.

Thanks for listening. Please share this episode with as many people as possible.

Peace,

Whitney

And if you’re curious what News from the Ensouled Universe is…

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit documental.substack.com/subscribe

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Episode 38

Greetings,

You would not be wrong to count me among the astrologers who have proclaimed the ingress of Pluto into Aquarius as a time when power will shift to the people.

But what the heck does that mean, and if power isn’t already with the people, where is it then? And how did power get where we aren’t the ones who have it?

In this conversation with Australian astrologer, Cassandra Tyndall, I explore these questions and get Cass’s fresh, frank take on the Plutonic potentials for people to liberate themselves from trauma, from mind control, and from empire.

First things first, according to Cass: we must reckon with the ghosts that are returning, the pain points of colonialism, the secrecy hidden at the top of trickle-down templates. But also, we must admit our inability or unwillingness or both to take personal responsibility.

The problem, says Cass: “People aren’t ready to be challenged, yet.”

To that end, you might be surprised to hear our respective views on the cosmological underpinnings of “cancel culture” and how the next two decades of Pluto in Aquarius might not be as rosy and calm as some astrologers — myself included — have initially proclaimed. This conversation offers a peek at a recalibrated calculus of the steps we must dance if we’re to obtain the freedom we seek.

I am still certain we will get there, “there” being a place where we are liberated from our conditioned responses to see each other as other, and will instead just grow the f*ck up and get on with kindness and innovation, not anger and blame.

More likely, it will take these next 20 years to till and seed the ground for Pluto in Pisces when universality will be the astro-tone.

And we will then be ready to responsibly handle the power we say we want.

The inspiration for this interview comes from a YouTube video Cass released earlier this year, where she challenged the prevailing astrology community to reconsider that Pluto in Aquarius will not be all that we have thought, but will instead force us to confront the tremors of feudalism. It’s something we address in this interview.

This is a longer than usual podcast, and yet there was so much more we could have explored. Thankfully, Cass has agreed to return later this year. I hope you will be as excited as I am to welcome her now and in the near future to deliver her take on the news from the Ensouled Universe.

To learn more about Cassandra’s work: CassandraTyndall.com

Still to come…

T. SUSAN CHANG

Coming soon to the docu-mental podcast is a disscussion with the astoundingly polymathic T. Susan Chang, whose approach to her many disciplines, which range from policymaking to sewing Tarot-themed comforters, to teaching creative writing, to cooking, and more, is derived in part from her Classics training at Harvard University.

Although Susie’s voice might be familiar to many in this audience as a food commentator and cookbook reviewer at NPR, we’ll primarily be discussing her expertise in archetypal mythology as made practical for every day living through her latest book, The Living Tarot.

My hope is that our discussion will give you ideas for how to reframe our quotidien existence, with all its trials as well as triumphs, as an endless psychodrama where we encounter ourselves by way of encountering the Gods.

Use the Substack app for easy navigation of all your favorite content

The Substack app aggregates all your Substack interests in one place. And if you have any questions, you can contact me through this email and I will be happy to help out, too.

Here’s the link to download the app:

Thanks for listening!

Peace,

Whitney

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit documental.substack.com/subscribe

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vol. 5 episode 36

Greetings,

It’s a bit of word jazz on this episode of the docu-mental podcast. I wanted to have Ethel on last year when he was nominated for a Grammy for his spoken word album, Black Men Are Precious, but the time wasn’t right for either of us.

So, instead, we have a little spoken word back and forth of our own, debating whether it’s the Christonationalfascists who are winning, or just whomever is clever enough to turn off the infostream long enough to hear themselves think.

Two particular bars of thought music worth noting in this episode are the reveries on rediscovering our myths vs. reimagining everything all over again; and, whether AI will force us out of our old stories and into being present for the now.

And if you pay attention, you will hear the strains of me confessing my ETs on earth theory, or at least a significant portion of it.

Ethelbert has been prolific of late, publishing about a book of poems a year since the pandemic, the latest being We Eclipse into the Other Side: Twoness Poems, a collaboration with poet and translator, Miho Kinnas.

Previously, Ethel was a two-time Fulbright scholar in Israel, the chair of the Institute for Policy Studies, and for more than 40 years, was the director of the Afro-American Resources Center at Howard University.

Peace,

Whitney

docu-mental: mapping the american states of mind is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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vol. 5 episode 35

Greetings,

What’s the point to life if there is no joy, no beauty, no clean dirt to play in?

Such a line of questioning is the current that runs through this conversation with novelist, podcaster, and all-around muckraker, Greg Olear. It’s Greg’s second visit to the podcast, this time to talk about Sunday Pages, the pause for reflection he offers in between his other work uncovering the “fuckery” of fascists as part of PREVAIL, his home on the Substack platform.

Greg and I laugh a lot as we enter into a deep — and deeply irreverent, yet never irrelevant — conversation about the importance of art and beauty in politics in order to “recharge the spirit”, and why today there is a movement afoot to quash and control the words we use.

It’s an erudite conversation, but not a stuffy academic one. And there are a few salty words, which makes things tasty.

We discuss the rise of fascism in the US, whether it’s been there all along, and whether and how it might continue. We muse about the role of the Roman Empire in spreading Christianity and how that impacts our public policies today, prompting me to posit my theory that we might be “misremembering” the actual nature of the birth of Christ and all that was supposed to mean for humanity, a theory that scandalizes the Jesuit-educated, Catholic-raised Greg (but only for a moment).

Plus, Greg reads a few lines of poetry and shares a funny story about a bar in Hoboken, New Jersey and a little ditty called Jessie’s Girl, and we agree that residents from the Garden State tend toward a certain practicality we’d all do well to aspire to…

Which is why we agree that in a democracy, even fascists should have a voice, regardless of whether it’s dead wrong.

Thanks for listening!

Peace,

Whitney

docu-mental: mapping the american states of mind is a reader-supported publication. Podcasts are free to all, but for access to all content, please consider becoming a patron subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit documental.substack.com/subscribe

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vol. 5 episode 34

Greetings,

It’s great to be back with another season of the docu-mental podcast!

In this episode, I asked Dr. Gwilym Morus-Baird, a professor of Celtic mythology and Medieval literature, and founder of the Celtic Source series of courses, how he views the utility of ancient myth as an effective counter to today’s propaganda.

Think dragons and magical swineherds vs. Tucker Carlson or Don Lemon.

I wanted to know whether myths of old can clue us into what systems of governance our ancestors found effective before empires, including media empires, came in and smashed everything to bits.

Dr. Morus-Baird and I end up talking about direct democracy. We also talk about how pre-empire there were morals and beliefs that did indeed work. We just have been trained to forget them because previous systems, if left intact, will eventually threaten the status quo held in place by the Powers That Be.

The key to power is narrative, according to Dr. Morus-Baird. So, I wanted to know: What narratives in the myths of old still resonate with power we’ve yet to reclaim? How do we get that power back? And, once we do, how do we wield it in order to liberate us from the current dumb s**t we’re force-fed by the corporate media, by our politicians, by our corporations, by anyone who thinks they can get away with disempowering us because we’ve shown them that they can?

It’s a discussion that flies by, so be prepared to listen close and to consider how when you think you’re catching up on the news, you’re just getting indoctrinated.

All power is myth, says Dr. Morus-Baird. And I say, all power is apolitical.

Keep that in mind as we consider how a “love of the land” is far too often turned into jingoism and hatred of others instead of a way to express love and support for the earth and all those who live upon it.

And surprisingly, because they cling to the same top-down paradigm, so-called sustainability proponents themselves only perpetuate an exhaustion of the earth, not a regeneration of it.

Why? Because without myths and language that reflect an inside-out understanding of how we actually come from the land, we won’t ever treat it with respect. As long as our mental constructs hinge on hierarchical, empircal thinking, we will continue to view the land as separate from us.

For example, what are “sacred lands”? Why isn’t all land sacred? The languages that preceded the Romanization of our thoughts with the relentlessly left-brained Latin, told of one world: Nature. There was no super-natural. Everything was natural.

I just love this conversation. It’s fun, smart, and provocative, and kind. We leave behind the angry derision in that “tone” the Department of They, as in the “they say” folks, all seem to speak with these days.

I think you will enjoy it, too. And best of all, you will start to notice the manipulation all around you, if even just a little bit more. And then, you can decide to ignore it, or better still, think beyond it.

The questions are yours for the asking. All you have to lose is nothing. All the Powers That Be have to lose is your attention…and their hold over your mind.

One last thing, don’t forget that on May 15, much of the content in docu-mental will live behind a paywall. This is my job, and you are my investor. What is this effort of helping you test your truths to develop deeper mental roots worth to you? If you are unable to invest financially, please share these posts and podcasts with others and leave comments below. It all adds up! Thank you.

Peace,

Whitney

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit documental.substack.com/subscribe

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vol. 3 issue 27

Greetings,

At long last, the promised interview with Alice “Ace” Sparkly Kat, author of Post-colonial Astrology: Reading the Planets through Capital, Power, and Labor.

It’s an important piece in our examination of the sentiment that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of Capitalism, the end of the hierarchy we have invested in, yet which cannibalizes us all in the end.

I tried to keep the conversation focused on the book’s innovative way of viewing the deleterious impacts of hierarchy, being mindful of not alienating my non-astrology audience.

However, for context, just know that as far as astrology goes, Ace deconstructs what the various planets in our Ptolemaic solar system (the 7 heavenly bodies we can see with our naked eye) have been assigned to represent pre- and post-Roman Empire.

She asks us to consider whether the assignments are actually helpful to us as we develop relationships with the greater forces in our lives, with ourselves, and with one another. If these assigned meanings are not helpful, why not, and what other interpretations make sense to us instead?

This interview is an excellent follow-on to the podcast I did with author Brian Muraresku about his book, The Immortality Key, a New York Times bestseller linking psychedelics to Jesus, but also to the way the Roman Empire quashed access to the Eleusinian mystery ceremonies where psychedelics were featured, and where women priestesses guided initiates to the world beyond, the one that once we are reassured exists, imparts meaning to our lives lived here.

From my perspective, it was at that moment in history that whatever evil there is in the universe that seeks to stamp out the glimmers of human liberation and continual reunion with the Source, found its foot soldiers in the Roman Empire.

They trashed the Republic, stamped out Antiquity’s emerging democracy, orchestrated the hostile take-over of the Eleusinian mysteries, and established hegemony through the Empire’s subsidiary, the Roman Catholic Church, which sold to us the Eucharist as a sanitized version of the mystery that was more like a bait and switch: “Come for the communion, be separated from your true self by the holy hierarchy!”

Yes, the Roman Empire engineered sewers, sanitation, roads and running water, but did so on the backs of slaves and others, all of whom they forbade to partake in the woodland Eleusinian mystery ceremonies that the Eucharist is based in. Thus, the Roman imperialists achieved subjugation by separating the people from themselves, orienting them instead toward the Roman leadership, or as Ace says, “towards capital,” and away from their internal governor, the one that naturally regulates one’s longing for commune with the Greater Source.

In other words, an orientation towards capital/the capitol is unnatural. But we’ve been conditioned to think it is the only state of existence to which we can aspire, if not through the church, then certainly through our system of Capitalism packaged as the only way to ensure democracy.

Is there any wonder, then, why we feel so much anxiety and depression here in the US? We know instinctively we are not living in our natural state, but we don’t know how or why. It’s been so long, across so many generations, that we’ve been conditioned to accept that we can only access higher truths — and liberation — if someone packages these things and distributes them to us first.

And all the while, we’re told we’re free, simply because we are Americans, or that as Christians, we will be “saved” because we are obedient. Obedience is not freedom.

These are the kinds of questions and considerations that make Ace’s book not just culturally relevant, but important. As I say in this interview, to one degree or another, as long as we do not consider the origins of our stories, then we are all living a lie, even if we are not liars.

Race and astrology as forms of ‘magical thinking’

Even if you never give a glancing thought to the stars, it is possible to consider what Ace posits, namely, that just as astrology is a language of symbols and myth-making, so too is race a product of fantabulous mythologizing — a form of “magical thinking” says Ace — using agreed upon symbols to construct stories that ultimately turn into policies, which then become oppressions, because the symbology supports only those empowered by what the symbols are said to represent.

Or, as Ace writes in her book, “Both astrology and race are social constructs and are rooted in the circulations of culture.” Ace’s work suggests that those who insist upon seeing racism as merely an “interpersonal phenomenon, rather than composite matrices of domination that limit access and freedom,” are in essence abnegating their own powers of imagination, instead submitting themselves to the will of “the powers that be” rather than take ownership of their lives.

Which is why I love this book as an American cultural critic first, an astrologer second.

It challenged me to re-consider how we use and relate to symbols as ubiquitous as the Sun, for example, which we equate symbolically with power. The Sun is the source that allows everything to exist. It is also used to justify total surveillance, power over, and extermination of what is “dark”, as in dark-skinned. While I might never have explicitly attributed these meanings to the Sun, I have never thought to challenge how they are implied when we accept them without questioning their etymology.

For example, as Ace points out, royalty throughout history has always equated the Sun with gold. They have also tended to hoard that gold, burying it in the ground. Thus, royalty and gold, as well as the power of the city-state where the gold was buried, have been implied by the Sun.

Following a global gold mining boom in the late 19th century, the mineral was circulated briefly as a currency up until the first half of the 20th before being taken out of circulation and once again buried in the ground in vaults, primarily beneath London and New York, where it remains.

Once again, the implication is that gold is therefore artificially scarce, and so artificially exclusive, all while still being associated with the Sun. The result is that the Sun is considered both life-sustaining, but also exclusive. This helps justify at whatever conscious level it might be to some, why some humans “deserve” access to resources, and some do not. It is also therefore, justification at whatever conscious level, for why some humans “deserve” to live and some do not. Ergo, racism, and in the extreme, genocide.

Original Sin: hierarchy v. white supremacy

One question which came up in our conversation was the notion of Original Sin in the context of which came first, hierarchy or white supremacy.

The logic I follow, derived from the years spent mapping our national conscience through this publication and podcast series, suggests that hierarchy came first as a default mode, and all manner of subjugation hence flows from it, including white supremacy, and thus racism. Is this the correct framework? I don’t know.

Either way, I state unequivocally that for us to believe racism is merely a “personal” perspective and not an institutionally enforced one is to believe a pernicious lie. Racism is real because our policies continue to acquiesce to it. They do so, because our foundational beliefs, represented by the symbols our hierarchy has collectively agreed represent “reality”, command them to.

Regardless of whether white supremacy supersedes hierarchy or if it is the other way around, our reasons for its existence must be interrogated. Indeed, philosopher and professor George Yancy writes that racism is our ontological reality.

That is why patching “fixes” like Affirmative Action, for example, onto our policies without first asking ourselves the underlying rationale for the policies that hold the system in place, is ultimately useless.

Racism’s damage to the collective is real. Tinkering incessantly with our broken system without addressing the precepts it was founded upon is a waste of time when we have no time to waste.

Lies sanctified by society without question, such as that the Sun equates with some of us being worth the time and energy, and others not, also wastes human resources.

To not question our systems of faith-in-action is literally a matter of life or death.

The infinite resource of mind

Regarding the heavenly spheres anew caused me to do some thinking out loud in the interview, and I appreciate Ace’s patience as I considered familiar things as though for the first time, verbalizing both my epiphanies and my misgivings.

This interview with Alice Sparkly Kat once again stresses for readers of docu-mental the notion we’ve been exploring, that we stand to lose far too much power the more we allow others -- the news media, the church, the digital giants, any cult that seeks to brand us -- to aggregate our attention and distract us from knowing and using the power of our own minds and imagination.

How much gatekeeping to the Beyond do we actually need?

The question returns us to how the Roman Catholic Church used the language and the ceremonies of the people Roman emperors wanted to subjugate. It took the same words about liberation and hope for the life beyond, and used them to keep people enslaved.

Reorienting away from capital, from Capitalism, does not mean poverty or whatever dismal and demonic scenario the hierarchical top spooks us with. It simply means we become the gatekeepers to our imagination, the only infinitely renewable resource on earth, and the gateway to what lies beyond this life. It means we re-orient to ourselves.

If there is a lesson here, it is that perhaps it is easier to imagine the end of Capitalism than it is the end of the world. That in fact, to not do so is to ensure the end of the world. That we’ve not imagined such a future for ourselves collectively is a fait accompli of the hierarchy who stands to lose access to our hearts, minds, and lives if we do imagine a future that is not mediated.

That is why toppling the hierarchy begins and ends with our imagination, and why we must guard it as though it is as precious as the Sun.

The liberation of a post-truth world

What these past five years in the US have shown us is that we live in a post-truth world. At first, I saw this as terrifying. But now, I find it liberating.

We can untether ourselves from truths that are lies, but not the consequences of our actions taken as a result of adhering to the lies as truths.

That we have or have not done something will always be the fact of any matter. Saying something didn’t happen when it did is not changing our mythology, it’s lying.

But we can change our shared truths, our national myths, and thus help shape our actions and their consequences, by understanding that cultural precepts like race, like astrological symbols, like political parties, like gender (yes, gender — one’s capacity for sexual reproduction is biological, gender is not), are nothing more than agreed upon stories. That our cultural truths might be “fabricated” or “made up” does not negate their power nor its meaning, since they are attempts to describe what is ineffable – the eternal Real of existence.

Instead, the more we consciously participate in infusing our symbols with meaning, the more meaningful they will be, and to more people.

We are making it all up, but whatever we choose to create, it will matter.

And that is the truth.

Peace,

Whitney

The podcast for this is linked at the top.

The video is here.

Time stamps/chapters of podcast are below.

About that comment on Jung’s racism and sexism in this podcast…

One thing which came up in my conversation with Ace was her take that Carl Jung, considered the father of Depth Psychology and the world’s most “famous astrologer”, was racist and sexist. Many would agree with her, while others might suggest he was simply a product of his cultural moment.

Either way, he certainly made statements about the planets and the unconscious that were categorically binary, and made questionable comments about the nature of the unconscious, even though as Ace’s own investigations show, such statements were not always justified.

I think it is worth having a more thorough discussion about this, since both Jung and Sigmund Freud respectively were, along with William James, progenitors of American psychology and psychiatry. Since this is about mapping the american states of mind, I am looking into who can come on the podcast to address the larger context and considerations of Ace’s statement. More to come…

W

Timestamps for Alice Sparkly Kat and Post-colonial Astrology:

0:00 Intro and discussion about the name Alice Sparkly Kat

5:00 Myth-making depends on who controls the language that frames access to the archetypes

8:18 Race is not real, it is not biological; begins with religion.

12:30 The “traditional” mythology of the Sun

16:45 Why do we consider astrology as “western”?

21:00 The exciting phenomenon of deconstructing astrology while also using it to build community

31:00 Is astrology spiritual or habitual?

39:00 Mental health definitions “are made thought a middle class (male) white lens”

48:00 Colonizing the moon for “real”

52:00 Astrology’s appeal to fascists and neo-liberals

59:00 Resisting the colonization of our minds

1:06:00 The liberation of living a life not “received” but examined

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vol. 3 issue 20

Greetings,

On this episode, I talk with botanist and medical astrologer, Lee Lehman, PhD.

A medical astrologer can’t diagnose, can’t prescribe, and most likely does not have a medical degree, although more modern-day physicians have studied this ancient pillar of traditional Western medicine than you might expect. So, why bother to learn, much less use, this antiquated approach to helping patients?

These are the kinds of questions I put to Dr. Lehman. In that way, this interview is an adjunct to the conversation I had with award-winning author and Guggenheim scholar, Dr. Victoria Sweet, about her successful experiences with what she termed “slow medicine”. Inspired by the Medieval German abbess, Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179 AD; I give the wrong dates in this interview with Dr. Lehman — sorry), and until the hospital where she worked was overrun by consultants, Dr. Sweet practiced a kind of medicine that took its time, viewed people as plants in need of elemental balance, and allowed her patients to heal on their body’s own terms, not the 30 days typically mandated by federal regulations and insurance companies.

(The notion that a person could heal within 30 days traces its roots back to one full moon cycle and the timing of “critical days” when an ailment would either take a turn for the worst or better. In traditional 17th Century Western medicine, the kind Dr. Lehman practices — there are others, such as Jyotish-Ayurvedic, India’s own tradition — tracking the phases of the moon is key to prognosis.)

Time and space are what lie at the heart of medical astrology. It does not purport to treat anything, only frame it within a temporal context. Although using a humoral, elemental perspective can aid a medical astrologer in determining the cause of illness, as Dr. Lehman explains, actual diagnosis and treatment are considered discrete areas of specialization, which is why this field is an adjunct to medical training, not a replacement.

Physicians of old received integrated training, unlike today where considering the human body as a compound mixture of earth, water, fire, and air is today considered medical vulgate, it worked and was an obvious solution to align one’s medical condition with the planets, which also were — and are — considered elemental in their respective natures.

Applying these techniques requires a cyclical, not a linear perspective, in that astrology places every person at their unique crossroads of possibility and promise, infused with purpose. Such a framework is beyond the scope of actuarial science that collects and collapses what is rare and precious, even if paradoxically common, into probability and risk, devoid of any consideration of what the point to it all might be.

Still, as Dr. Lehman points out, plenty of insurance executives might like to know how medical astrology, with its ability to zero in on what is the matter, might save them a few bucks.

To that end, Dr. Lehman and I also discuss how, before medicine turned into healthcare, physicians relied upon their commerce with the stars to determine if they thought cure possible, and would only take on patients they were confident they could help, and accepted payment only after the cure was indeed proven and the patient restored to health.

As of March, I completed Dr. Lehman’s online medical astrology practitioner’s certification program through a school in the UK. I was drawn to the field first from an historical perspective, but then seeing that it was effective in helping clear up medical mysteries by looking at them elementally (sometimes keeping things simple makes what is inherently complex easier to comprehend) and recommending optimal times for surgery, realized its utility for people who get stuck in the doom loop of our modern healthcare system. I began to consider how, for less money and aggravation, it might be possible for people to get some valid information to help themselves and their physician get the heart of the matter faster, not waste time or money on unnecessary tests, and also cut out the middle man of insurance companies for non-acute situations.

In short, I saw it as a compassionate, personalized form of medical empowerment with limited so-called “barriers to access”.

At first, I approached this field with skepticism. What could humoral medicine, with its primitive and often wrong conclusions offer (eg, blood is not manufactured in the liver, as Galenic medicine taught, but is cleansed there, we now know)? Our modern understanding of anatomy, chemistry, germ theory, genetics, hormones, molecular biology, neurology, and every other -ology exponentially outstrips the knowledge of the 17th Century physicians who combined astrological understanding with Galen’s concepts of humoral medicine, drawn from Hippocrates’ own, with a little Aristotelian physics thrown in.

But the scientific method accurately applied – asking questions, testing theories, and having the humility to be wrong and start over – actually helped me see there is efficacy in this way medicine was practiced for centuries before modern technology and other influences dimmed our view of it.

This approach to connecting imbalances to where a person’s animation is sourced, and how it sings in time with the celestial bodies is indelibly humble. Without requiring an allegiance to a particular god, medical astrology acknowledges the presence of the ineffable. It is the well-delineated system that endures, and has proven itself flexible enough to accommodate any of modern medical advances to date.

The efficacy is its poetry. The poetry is its efficacy.

This was certainly not the direction I figured my career as a former healthcare insider would take, but in fact my background as both a hospice volunteer and clinical medicine and healthcare policy reporter paired well with understanding the holistic nature of this system. And, I know from personal experience that this system works. It gave me answers I sought after thousands of dollars and countless hours of aggravation winding my way through the “System” failed me. Once I got the answers I needed, I got better.

And so, I now wonder: Is there a way we can re-introduce this humble approach to health, one predicated on the belief that we are all connected to every living thing, to our modern gee-whiz but life-saving medicine?

Perhaps. Certainly, at a time when the world is in utter crisis of climate-change collapse, and our status-quo driven hierarchies are failing, hastened ironically by the conspiratuality fanatics who seek to claw their way to the top of such poisonous structures, it seems to me we have no time to waste in looking for utility in places the status quo previously has told us to ignore.

This is also why before I brought Dr. Lehman to your attention, I featured the conversation with the Lakota Music Project, to show that such a holistic perspective on the world has great power to heal, not just Indians, but whites and others – all of us.

I took the approach of interviewing Dr. Lehman as though I am myself naive to the subject, although I am not, in order to put myself in the place of most of my audience. I am sure some of you will dismiss this interview as frivolous, or worse. Others will listen and completely miss the point. Others will be bemused. Plenty of you will be intrigued. But it will get you to think, to consider your health and your reliance upon the world at large for its stability. If nothing else, maybe ponder where you, in your light body, stand at the crossroads of time and space, and how it aligns with other bodies.

Here’s the video version:
For a complete list of the audio “chapters” of our discussion, complete with time stamps, see the end of this post.

Thanks so much for reading and for your material support. The strength of docu-mental gives me such joy. It is testament to my not being alone in my questions. I am not alone in my refusal to be discouraged in search of freedom that is truly free, not transactional, not laden with freakshow b**t.

Upcoming in the next two months are such great guests, I can hardly wait for you to hear our conversations. In addition to my line-up in May to discuss the implications of psychedelic use, I’ve also added new authors and thinkers who will challenge you to reconsider the symbology you’ve been relying upon to tell your personal and collective stories…don’t be scared! Be excited! You can choose your own adventure…and be a solid citizen at the same time.

Peace,

Whitney

For more information about Lee Lehman, PhD, and the study of medical astrology: STA School of Traditional Astrology.

Don’t forget to visit our sister publication, Ensouled: the journal of applied and cultural astronomy. The next issue of this monthly online publication comes out May 3. It will address the odd threads quickly knitting together between the Catholic Church, the Department of Defense, and one of GAIA media’s most popular presenter as the world awaits further information about the implications of aliens among us. Thank you to the many docu-mental subscribers who have also added their names to the list of Ensouled supporters.

Here’s the audio chapter list for this podcast:

0:00 Introduction
3:44 What is a medical astrologer?
6:30 What is humoral medicine and why might it still be relevant?
7:30 Evolution of deism to empiricism in Greek medicine
9:40 The material meets the metaphorical in humoral medicine; blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm (sanguine, choleric, melancholy, and phlegmatic)
11:17 How astrology helps anticipate humoral imbalance
13:42 Case study – stopping snoring
15:20 Coordinating the planets to the body through the elements
18:07 The role of divinity
20:23 Why did blood-letting ‘stop working’?
23:34 How politics helped drive astrology from medicine
24:41 The original patient-centered care in Roman times. ‘No cure, no payment.’
31:54 Is there a compelling reason to return to this 17th Century form of medical counsel?
32:33 Is there value in today’s medicine for astrology’s capacity to evaluate the quality of time?
36:41 The personalized v. the averaged (astrological v. actuarial) perspective on treatment
44:30 Who are medical astrologers’ typical clientele? What results count as ‘successful’, what ethical concerns are there?
49:15 Could medical astrology help the healthcare system save money?
52:30 Might there ever be a place in policymaking for this kind of medical insight?

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit documental.substack.com/subscribe

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vol. 2 issue 54

Note: docu-mental’s coverage of The Blacksmith is a joint venture with DC Metro Theater Arts. You can read a slightly different version of this feature and review/preview of Opera Lafayette’s production of The Blacksmith, here. The video interview above and the commentary in this feature is exclusive to docu-mental.

Greetings,

Take any decent road trip through the American West and you’re bound to pass half-a-dozen old opera houses in varying states of disrepair, or repair — if there happens to be a local renaissance underway. That’s because contrary to what you might expect, opera houses were essential for offering respite to the dusty rustiness of life on the frontier, being as they were the venue for itinerant entertainers, politicians, preachers, lecturers, and other speakers with news from back East.

Put another way: outside of the saloon, especially if a settlement lacked a strong enough contingent of righteous folks to see to there being a church erected, the opera house was the Old West’s quintessential all-comers meeting place.

And so it is with Mancos, Colorado, where a downtown rebirth is underway, the centerpiece of it being the opera house built in 1910, when the frontier was still rough. It’s a movement co-led by ranchers and artists, many of them retirees from the rat race, or newcomers fleeing fire-ravaged coastal areas. The collaboration is worth noting since, even if so far, there haven’t been any shoot outs, there has been plenty of hollerin’ over what constitutes correct land use and water rights, pitting oldtimers against the newbies.

Still, the shared vision is that the opera house will become a thriving performing arts and community center, a small business incubator, and all-around place where differences can be put aside and friends and enemies alike can come together, learn from one another, and focus on the future, while not forgetting their past, whether or not is a shared past.

Standing ovation from the socially-distanced audience for a performance of Opera Lafayette’s The Blacksmith, at Reddert Ranch in Mancos, Colo. Photo: Paul Boyer.

Enter into this fray, the Washington-based Opera Lafayette, which earlier this year was set to premiere its Old Westernized version of The Blacksmith (Le Maréchal ferrant), an 18th-century French comic opera composed in the mid-1700s by François-André Danican Philidor with libretto by François-André Quétant. OL stage director and musical arranger Nick Olcott along with OL founding artistic director and violinist, Ryan Brown, set their adaptation of the work in an 1890s American frontier town.

The premiere was intended as the restored opera house’s gala fundraiser opening night back in May, but then ol’ covid came riding into town and busted up the whole shindig. Of course, the show must go on, and so it did, even if a little later than planned.

This past October, with audience members seated on hay bales placed 6 feet apart, the show premiered on the Reddert Ranch just outside Mancos, the working cattle farm that has been in Brown’s family for generations, and where he has spent nearly every summer of his life.

Turns out, Reddert Ranch is also home to an historic blacksmith shop that served as the perfect backdrop for two well-attended, late afternoon performances, both of which were held on behalf of the Mancos Cattlemen’s Association and the Mancos Creative District. Each performance ended just as the sun was setting over the La Plata Mountains, not far from Mesa Verde National Park.

Full cast (L-R) Sarah Shafer as Jeannie, Arnold Livingston Geis as Cody, Dominique Cote as Marcel the Blacksmith, Joshua Conyers as Eustis, Pascale Beaudin as Claudine, Frank Kelley as Slim MacBride. Reddert Ranch outside Mancos, Colorado October 2020. Photo Credit: Paul Boyer.

The Blacksmith is typical 18th-century comedic opera fare: father arranges marriage for his daughter, daughter wants to make her own choice in love, daughter wants man who also happens to be her aunt’s object of affection, a fight breaks out, daughter accidentally “kills” their mutual paramour, chaos and comedy ensue, the dead comes alive, everyone sings about how they will now all live and love happily ever after.

It’s silly, but it’s human. And of course, no one lives happily ever after, they just live their lives, and everybody knows it, too. That’s why comic opera works, and why, once this particular show was re-worked to reflect the local memes and meanings, folks went nuts for it.

But there’s more to it than a good time was had by all. It was performed on the land, and above all else in the West, it is the land that matters.

Opera Lafayette founder and artistic director, Ryan Brown with musician and horsewoman, Lynne Lewis. Photo: Whitney Fishburn.

That’s what makes this interview with Maestro Brown and his friend and fellow rancher and musician, Lynne Lewis (who also plays guitar in the adaptation), so special to me. It’s a talk about music but it’s really about the place that we romanticize as the heart and soul of what America “is”: the Old West. And it’s a place that is finite, and people know that, too. Ain’t no one making any more of it, no matter how many of us want a piece of it.

It’s that scramble for limited resources that turns one group against another in our nation, forcing us to ask who deserves those resources more.

And yet, there is another way, we just don’t want as a nation to admit it: a return to how most indigenous peoples see the land. That is, that we belong to it. It does not belong to us. It is what hosts us, feeds us, provides for us.

This interview, the sixth video in the series docu-mental: healing the american states of mind, takes us back to the first and second videos where we considered how to move forward as a soulful nation, we need to own our sins, which include how we have treated the indigenous of this land, and enslaved black Africans.

It also connects with our third video, where we discussed how the performing arts can help us to create the necessary rituals for us to come together as a nation, but also as micro-communities, where it is easier to find common ground and values that bind, even if they do so in overlapping circles, where we might share a love for our local land, but not share a love of the same political point of view.

In that spirit, in this conversation, through the lens of a Westernized version of a French comic opera, with thoughts from two musicians, yes, but also two ranchers, we get to the heart of what’s been bugging all those other ranchers and newcomers to Mancos: who is entitled to the land and all it has to offer.

It’s important for the integrity of Brown and Olcott’s actual artistic intentions, to state that a discussion about land use wasn’t the point of their adaptation. That was more along the lines of how to succeed at the challenge of whether the use of cowboy vernacular and American folk tunes to “break the fourth wall” that separates the audience from the stage was possible.

Yet, what they have achieved offers the opportunity for anyone who cares to take it, the chance to consider what’s really at stake.

Some in this nation love what land like that in southwestern Colorado, and so many other places, can do for them, and so don’t really love the land itself, but the idea that it can confer power that others then can’t have, hoo-howdy! That’s sexy.

But, if you have been as lucky as I have been to spend a fair amount of time out West, riding, singing, hiking, or just visiting with folks who live on land, it’s impossible not to notice that these people really love the land. They also respect it. They have to! It’s beautiful, but it’s also dangerous. And even if they wouldn’t say it outright, they understand what it means to belong to the land and not the other way around. Howdy boy! That’s sacred.

It might not be in our respective lifetimes that it happens, but I envision there will be a day where, in part because we are moving to an increasingly virtual world, it will become natural to live according to the belief system still inherent to the indigenous nations of this continent, the one that doesn’t have us dominating the land, but living in dominion with it, and we will create economic systems and policies accordingly.

One reason I believe this is because, without the land we die. Enough of us are starting to understand at a basic level that simple, obvious, critical fact. It might take a while before those who want power over instead of partnership with the land die out, lose their grip, or otherwise get out of our way, but I believe it will happen.

And we can live at peace with our national soul again.

Although Brown demurred in an interview to affirm or deny whether his opera had outright helped heal the divide in his mountain town, he did acknowledge the feedback from The Blacksmith attendees was overwhelmingly positive, and described other opera projects he is hatching to more directly address what he called “hot button issues” on the minds of his fellow Mancosians.

“Everyone was all smiles and happy about what they were there for,” says Lewis. “Yeah, there’s a unity there. Not that it’s permanent, but it’s the kind of thing we need.”

Which is why once again, my faith in the power of the performing arts is redoubled.

Anytime opera demonstrates its power to tell stories that show how rifts can be mended, even if it’s with humor and silliness, we have the opportunity to remember what is possible once we put aside our differences: peace and prosperity.

When you listen to this interview, keep an ear open for the cattle lowing in the background…they’re there!

Tickets and other information for Opera Lafayette’s online production of Philidor’s The Blacksmith (Le Marchant ferrant) are available here. A live, one-time event on this Sunday, November 15, 2020, 2:00 p.m. (EST), includes a pre-show discussion with Maestro Ryan Brown, a virtual screening of the show, and a post-performance conversation with the artists.

On-demand access to the show runs from Nov. 16 through Nov. 29, 2020.

Here are the timestamps for this interview:
00:00 Introduction

11:30 By internationalizing opera, we've removed it from its power to speak to local audiences

12: 38 Opera's role in reminding communities what they have in common in times of culture clash

13:00 How opera can help bridge the old time ranching and newcomer crowds in Mancos and elsewhere

15:00 What happens in the communal experience of attending an opera

19:00 How opera gives us a lighthearted way to vet our culture wars and fights over shared resources

20:51 Ryan tells a story of how a Native American Indian shows a middle way to seeing past the problems created by our current cultural views on land ownership

23:30 How our system gets in the way of our mutual values and love of the land and what can we do about it?

30:00 The enduring power of money in the arts and how that impacts the future

32:33 How has our romancing the West helped to ruin it?

39:00 How micro-communities and their forms of entertainment helps foster decency among neighbors and lengthens and deepens the experience.

43:00 What we have lost to the past we can re-discover and merge with current technology to strengthen our communities

If you enjoy docu-mental, please take a moment to consider others whom you think might also like to learn more about the different ways we americans are finding peace and mental stability in these less than stable times and forward to them this or others of your favorite issues of docu-mental.

In the past year, we’ve covered a range of topics to do directly with mental health, as well as our spiritual and soul needs as a nation. Please take a ramble through the archives for podcasts, videos, and essays such as:
Etsy for your mind: the world’s first marketplace for mental health tools

Brain science is showing us what ‘normal’ is. Can it also help us evolve?

The use of art as ritual to help clear our country’s spiritual pollution

Democracy doesn’t evolve us, but it requires evolution

Ending ‘spiritual bypassing’ to build a better nation

Thoughts on complexity, god, messiahs, and the ‘Magnificent Work’

9/11, Coal Country, and what it means to be great

There’s still more to come before the year is out, but looking ahead to 2021, you can expect improved production values and more in-depth interviews, including with avant-garde musicians and composers who are deliberately making a statement about the mental, spiritual, and soul status as americans, as well as from cutting edge researchers and others investigating ways for us to find peace and balance. I’ll be bringing news from the frontiers of science, history, and other fields to you, and also sharing the ways you can access it without intervention from third parties whose primary goal is profit.

And if you’d like to become a patron subscriber, or give a gift subscription, here’s where to find the details:

You’ll get more content — shorter, but also more personal, quirky, and often lighthearted — like this outtake from the interview above that includes Lynne Lewis, rendering her version of The Blacksmith, along with Maestro Brown sharing his thoughts about the challenges and rewards of repurposing opera using American vernacular.

I also like to talk a lot about birds, so if you’re a bird jock, you will enjoy my spring migration updates for Washington, and other thoughts about nature, which for me, is how to heal ourselves. Nature never judges itself. It just is…and that’s some powerful juju to experience first hand, especially since we’re so filled with meanness these days.

Thanks for your time and attention.

Peace,

Whitney

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit documental.substack.com/subscribe

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vol. 2 issue 51

Greetings,

If you’ve been reading docu-mental for a while, you are aware that I don’t see the mondo bizarro criminal behavior of the current occupant of the White House as the cause of our national woes, but as the ultimate manifestation of our damaged collective psyche, the one we have forced for the past half century to carry the burdens of a patriarchal and thus hierarchical system predicated on an ethos of “to the winner goes the spoils”, and everything else as well.

And really, that is why I think cries of “defund the police” are useless. It is “old world”, not “new world”. The old world is angry and us v. them, and protestors and reformers who want to see changes in law enforcement but who do so in the same martial tones they oppose will get nowhere.

The new world is much more collaborative, forced as we have been to learn new ways to work together by the covid-19 crisis and by so many global catastrophes, including climate change-induced migration and dwindling resources.

But the new and old words do have some important things in common, the first being a shared history that must be healed, the one of systematic extermination and resources stolen from this continent’s indigenous peoples, and the enslavement of other human beings, namely black Africans.

The second is a need for some kind of enforceable structure and order. How else to build without a reliable scaffold?

In our current paradigm, LAW AND ORDER is yelled at us by red-faced and bullying federal and executive figureheads, which would be laughable except that the man in the White House is inciting violence in our streets, fomenting hatred between whites and others, and putting our law enforcement in the crosshairs of what many, myself included, fear will be a terrifying and violent election day and beyond.

That’s not funny in the least.

Yet, to me, it seems a last gasp at trying to stay in control when the skywriting just doesn’t seem to vaporize and vanish, the unmistakable message being “Time’s Up!” on hierarchy and iron-fistedness.

As a mother, despite the actual verdict, what I will always view as the cold blooded murder of Trayvon Martin still haunts me in particular, as I know that my son or any mother’s son would have had no reason to suspect that a handful of Skittles dribbled into his mouth as he innocently walked home from the convenience store one night, would be his last thanks to the derangement of a self-styled law and order gun nut; yet watching the lynching of George Floyd changed me forever.

It proved the tipping point for me to embrace publicly my growing personal ethos that I have been documenting here since I began in 2018 by trademarking and copyrighting my materials under docu-mental. My plan had been to document and explore solutions for the national increase in mental health crises, never suspecting that it would turn out I would be chronicling the end of extreme Capitalism.

And yet, as a practical minded, erstwhile Capitol Hill policy reporter who has written primarily about clinical medicine and healthcare economics for much of her career, I believe wholeheartedly it’s time to talk about things that aren’t quantifiable, and to insist that they not be relegated to the side lines as frilly and silly.

It’s not that I ever denounced it, but I was always too cowed to stand tall and say so, even though in my private life, I admitted it was true: this world needs more love, more softness, more feminine energy. Not more women per se, more Goddess.

And it needs the women in power to say so and demonstrate this, too.

There is nothing left but death when something reaches an extreme. Where else is there to go? Our system of Capitalism is at that point. It can take law and order with it as our system decays, leaving us vulnerable in an existential way. Alternatively, we can revive and reshape that masculine ideal buried under the propaganda we’ve heard in this nation for so long that “might makes right” and parlay that into what will work in the coming paradigm of peaceful collaboration: we can let our strong men and women in uniform be the ones who are vulnerable in an empowering way. We can humanize them.

And make no mistake, the new paradigm is coming; in fact, it’s here. How on earth will it be possible to crush and dominate in the old ways when this new virtual world’s power hierarchy is based on having access to others’ privacy and data, not their land and other resources? That is the new warfront, and it does not take shooting people or having the right skin tone to triumph; anyone can hide behind a digital screen, and anyone can steal your numerical soul and turn you into a digital slave. Yet, because the Information Age is free flowing, the hierarchy is easier to infiltrate.

Yet the need for familiar structures remains as we navigate the new ways of being. To me, that is an obvious call for our communities to focus on how to empower their respective law enforcement organizations to be flexible, breathable, ready to change as necessary.

In this video in the on-going series dedicated to healing the american states of mind, I speak with three people who know well how masculinity in the extreme has the ironic effect of eroding one’s masculinity, and perhaps even killing the person who bears the weight of it, maiming the souls and spirits of those left behind.

My guests are:

Chief John Morrissey of the Kenosha, Wisconsin Police Department (Ret). After 33 years as an officer, 28 of them in Kenosha, Chief Morrissey retired from the force in 2016, but is still intimately involved in what happens on the streets of Kenosha as city administrator, a job he took just before his hometown erupted in violence after three Black Lives Matter protestors were shot by 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, killing two. While leading the police force, Chief Morrissey lost two officers to suicide in less than 6 months. Mr. Morrissey has been actively involved in suicide prevention since 2010. In 2017, he became leader of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention Public Safety Taskforce. He also serves as a member of the Workplace Suicide Prevention and Postvention Committee, and is a member of the IACP National Consortium on Preventing Law Enforcement Suicide.

John Marx, CPP, was a law officer for 23 years, 19 of them as a hostage negotiator with the Westminster, Colorado Police Department. Marx is now the executive director of The Law Enforcement Survival Institute and founder of CopsAlive.com. He is the author of several books and training manuals that take a wholistic approach to law enforcement training and wellness. When a fellow police officer and good friend of his committed suicide at 38, Marx decided to dedicate his life to helping law enforcement officers serve and protect by learning to first protect their emotional needs and those of their colleagues.

Sally Spencer-Thomas, PsyD, lead editor of the mental health for men series of books, Guts, Grit, & the Grind: A Mental Mechanics Manual, and the creator along with the Colorado Department of Health and others, of Mantherapy, a very funny series of videos challenging what it means to be manly and to hide emotions behind a moustache. Sally began her career studying the effect of trauma on first responders, and has been actively engaged in suicide prevention since her brother took his own life in 2004. She is now the president of United Suicide Survivors International.

The take-away from our conversation is that calls to defund the police or even to abolish it, as Colin Kaepernick is now doing through what I believe is his impressive and well-reasoned co-venture with the publishing platform Medium, LEVEL: Abolition for the People, are actually aimed at the same goal as many visionary law officers want to achieve: and end to lethal law enforcement encounters for black men, a reduction in violence overall, and a healthier citizenry through the direct involvement of the community in their local police force.

As stated in earlier docu-mental posts, law enforcement has had to take on far more societal ills than they are equipped to handle, and guess what? They burn out. They snap. They underperform. They stop being manly men, even if they’re women.

My guests address this problem and explain why defunding the police will make this worse, not better.

But I don’t let it stay there. Providing better training, less tasks, and more opportunities to be emotionally vulnerable might make better cops, but if it doesn’t change the fact that young black men are two and a half more times likely to be shot than a white man the same age,

then it is a white vanity project.

I also pointed out the FBI’s findings that there has been an infiltration of white supremacists in law enforcement over the years, something my guests claim they were not aware of, but did not downplay.

Credit goes to all three of my guests for their candor about the different ways blacks and whites view the police, and I give them credit for hanging in there when I suggested the Jungian concept of there needing to be more feminine character, not women, in the force. I think all my readers, many of whom are involved in policymaking and politics, as well as all of us thinking deeply and carefully about this moment in our nation’s history will be intrigued by this dialogue.

Thank you for continuing to support docu-mental, whether materially, or by being a faithful reader and sharing it with others whom you think will be stimulated to think differently by my thinking out loud.

Below is the annotated list of places in the audio where you can hear highlights of the conversation, and also a list of links to the resources and data citations made in the discussion.

Peace,

Whitney

Annotation:

3:00 John Marx and John Morrissey on the mental health challenges of policework

12:00 Mental health burn out on the job 14:30 Statistics on lethality of police encounters with blacks

18:20 The need to balance hardness with softness in law enforcement

27:30 The causes of mental health crises on the rise

29:30 How this reinforces built-in bias, and impacts crime, police response to minorities, and black communities' fears of law enforcement

34:00 Is law enforcement a cover for white supremacy?

41:00 There is less enforcement now that police are less proactive and more reactive now

42: 30 Is the system not changeable from within?

45:00 The harmful impact of the media on law enforcement-community relations 46:00 What Trump and Biden could do but aren't -- Chief Morrissey

52:00 Would more resources for law enforcement mean less deaths for black men?

55:00 Communities no longer in touch with reality in expectations for law enforcement

57:20 Community policing is ideal and here's what it requires

Additional Resources:

JAMA: Prevalence of Mental Illness and Mental Health Care Use Among Police Officers

LEVEL: Abolition for the People from Colin Kaepernick

Washington Post: Trump, Biden and masculinity in the age of coronavirus

Law Enforcement Survival Institute

Cops Alive Magazine

International Association for Suicide Prevention

Pew Research Center: From police to parole, black and white Americans differ widely in their views of criminal justice system

ACLU: The war on marijuana in black and white

Just Security: White Supremacist Infiltration of US Police Forces: Fact-Checking National Security Advisor O’Brien

National Academies of Science: Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex

Journalist’s Resource: Black men 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police

21st Century Cures Act and addressing mental illness in law enforcement

Neighborhood Defender Service: A community-based, wholistic approach to public defense and law enforcement

NYT: Opera Grapples with Race

docu-mental: McMindfulness

docu-mental: Batman is not coming

Police b roll footage by Kelly Lacy at Pexels.

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vol. 2 issue 41

Greetings,

This past Tuesday marked the 401st anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the ship called The White Lion at Point Comfort, now Ft. Monroe, off the Virginia coast.

Today is the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech, part of the peaceful March on Washington. It’s also the 65th anniversary of the disappearance in Mississippi of black teenager Emmett Till, found dead three days later, having been not just murdered, but gruesomely tortured and disfigured by two vigilante white men who believed the lies of a white woman who’d said the 14-year-old had made advances on her. She eventually admitted she’d lied. The woman paid no price but perhaps with her own conscience. The murderers went free.

Also 156 years ago today, the Union was debating what to do with the swelling ranks of black men and women who were fleeing to the protection of Union forces to become contraband of war, in hopes it would lead to their freedom.

Ultimately, on January 1, 1863, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which did not free slaves so much as encourage them to flee the clutches of their “owners” and seek protection from the Union Army that desperately needed ranks to continue fighting the rebellious South.

It wasn’t until December 1865, after the Civil War had ended, and the 13th Amendment was ratified, that slaves were actually, legally freed in the US.

The adoption of that amendment began with the actions of three enslaved Africans who did not want to be sent away from their families by their “masters” to build fortifications against Union troops. Instead, they escaped to Ft. Monroe near Hampton, Virginia, and asked protection from Union Major General Benjamin Butler, who cannily sensed an opportunity to punish the South, but which ultimately rewarded all enslaved Africans.

The names of the three men who sparked that fire: James Townsend, Shepard Mallory, and Frank Baker.

Why are blacks ‘invisible’ in America?

When my son was younger, he worked a series of manual labor and service jobs. Many of his coworkers were young black men from less affluent communities. My son observed how he was treated by managers and customers compared to the treatment they received.

“Mom, I don’t think whites actually see black people,” he said to me one day. “If they did, they would notice how hard they work, and how much nicer and more attentive they have to be to others so they don’t get their ass kicked. But then they get treated like they’re not even there.”

My son went further. “Considering the b**t they put up with every day, you’d think there would be more black violence against whites.”

There is a profound truth packed into my then 17-year-old’s impression of how America works. Namely that white America has gone about its business without much consequence for our inability to “see” our fellow citizens with darker skin.

It was in 1952 that black author and social observer Ralph Ellison published his novel, Invisible Man, a fictional account of the very real phenomenon of how a black man making his way through white America post-WWII and before the Civil Rights movement, was largely ignored and disrespected. It won the National Book Award the following year. Yet it was in the last decade that my son, who had not read the book by the way, shared his observation with me, signaling not much has changed for the better.

Black Americans today, with protests in the streets and professional athletes taking a knee or refusing to play altogether, certainly have our attention, even amidst a sizeable portion of the nation being on fire, another being under water, still another huge portion clearing the rubble from powerful windstorms, and all of us under siege thanks to the political war raging, the economy collapsing (Wall Street gains are not the economy), and a plague inundating our hospitals and upending our lives.

But attention is not what black Americans are looking for, according to my guests in this interview. Aside from an end to unjustified murders and harassment of black men by some white authorities, what is actually at issue is empathy. Black Americans want to trust white Americans are with them, that we won’t abandon them in their pain, and especially that we will not make their pain worse than it has to be.

What is their pain? It is the pain of being ignored en masse, of not being remembered in the calculations for who gets access to resources in this country, and of being made to suffer unnecessarily as a result. In particular, it is the pain of being promised something in return for loyalty and sacrifice, only to have the terms change, the promises broken.

That is what is explored in this interview with three officers from the Contraband Historical Society, a Hampton, Virginia-based nonprofit educational group focused on the contributions to American freedom made by the contraband slaves in the US Civil War. My guests are Pamela Holley, a contraband slave descendant and research advisor to the Society; Phillip Adderley, president of the Contraband Historical Society and a board member of the Citizens for Fort Monroe National Park (CFMNP). His efforts helped lead to the proclamation by President Barak Obama that May 24th is now “Contraband Day’. And also, Dr. William Wiggins, a former history professor and assistant dean at Columbia University, who is the Society’s historian. The Society was founded more than 20 years ago by another contraband descendant, the late Gerri Hollins.

Who were the Contrabands?

As detailed in this video, the original contrabands were three slaves who fled for their lives to Ft. Monroe near Hampton, Virginia at the start of the Civil War. When their “owner” demanded their return, the Union general in charge countered that if the men were someone’s “property”, then they could be confiscated, making them contrabands of war.

This became known as the Contraband Decision, and it paved the way for what ultimately became 200,000 enslaved Africans leaving their bondage and joining the Union’s fight against the South, attending to the needs of the white soldiers, as well as fighting alongside of them in hopes of being made truly free.

Why should we care?

The contraband slaves’ story is important because it contains the key to how the Civil War went from being a fight over economics and keeping the nation intact to being centrally about emancipation and freedom. These Africans’ bravery and loyalty forced the Union to consider the unvarnished question, “What do we do with all the black people?”

The path to civil rights for blacks in this country eventually might have happened some other way, since, as Dr. King said four days before he was murdered: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” an optimistic view of humanity if ever there was one.

However, it is this view that black Americans largely have held from the beginning of their time on this continent, beginning more than four centuries ago.

Who best exemplifies the American ideal of ‘freedom’?

It was because black men who, despite having been enslaved by some white men, chose to put their trust in still other white men, and believed that through their service they and others like them would be recognized as humans. That they would be free. That other men would treat them justly, would allow them to live in a just universe.

As a result, I can only conclude that the freedom I have considered my birthright as an American woman began resonating not with the Constitution, which was directed at white men even if its spirit was expansive enough to eventually include me, but with the trust and actions of these black human beings who understood the nation’s spirit, perhaps better than any other white man living or dead who’d ever tread foot upon this land.

That is why we need to care about this story. It is not just black people’s history, it’s all of ours as Americans. To bang on about freedom without acknowledging and respecting that it was black men who made sure we focused on its promise, is to fundamentally misapprehend what Land of the Free, Home of the Brave actually means.

‘What would Jesus do’?

When we speak of reparations for the ancestors of the enslaved in this country, many in the white community become angry and defensive. Some of us claim there are not enough resources to retroactively “cover” the price admittedly paid by blacks. Others of us are upset to be placed on the hook for past actions none of us in the present day had any say about. Others claim that since they aren’t racist, they should not be made responsible for racist actions.

These sentiments are collected loosely within the argument that if America were a racist country, we would not have elected a black president, and perhaps might soon elect a black vice president. The argument also contends that there are plenty of prominent black Americans such as Gen. Colin Powell, Sen. Corey Booker, former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, or former National Security Advisor Susan Rice (no relation), so it’s impossible to claim racism is a barrier to equality in America.

Although a plausible defense, it’s a naïve one, one that ultimately deflects taking responsibility for the nation’s original sins of genocide of the indigenous Americans and enslavement of Africans, two sins of our fathers that are so irrefutable, no one dare seriously say otherwise, not even MAGAs.

To that end, and especially for the self-proclaimed evangelical Christians who make up just under a third of our total population, I offer an insight that undercuts this position of “not my problem”: If Jesus died for all our sins, and then commanded that to gain entry into heaven, we be like him, then it’s time for us all to clear the spiritual miasma of our nation’s sins by taking responsibility for them, even if we think we had nothing to do with them. That’s my answer to WWJD (“What would Jesus do?”).

Many Evangelicals do think this way, thankfully. Well, some of them. There are those who are going off like rockets because of the also indisputable fact that the Black Lives Matter movement is overt in its opposition to all pillars of our white-built hierarchical structures, and states clearly its alarming intentions such as to disrupt the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure”.

And yet, are we so critical-thinking impaired that we can’t see the personal and societal benefits of treating black Americans with empathy, regardless of what a political movement — including those enmeshed with the religious ones — also says about it? Just because the BLM organization, Evangelical churches, Republicans or Democrats, or (fill in the blank), has anything at all to say about the intrinsic value of a human life, we somehow need some organization to spin it for us?

How about we forget everything that any of these groups say and just get back to the basics of what all successful societies across time have said in one form or another: do unto others as you’d have them do to you.

That’s not synonymous with letting others think for you. Spiritually mature, thinking adults can whole-heartedly support and embrace that life matters across any and all demographics without having to wait for some group to clarify that moral imperative.

In my case, not being an avowed evangelical anything, I confess that because I had black friends, my initial reaction to my son’s insight was that it didn’t apply to me. But after I thought more about it, I realized that because my friends and I were all roughly equal in our social standing, it just made the existence of racism harder for me to see.

Once sensitized to it, however, I began noticing how I often did ignore black people outside my usual sphere, or how I tended to prefer interacting with whites over blacks in my everyday life. If I had a choice on a train to sit with a white person or a black one, the white person usually “won out”. If I had a choice to be served by a black person instead of a white one…and so on. It wasn’t because I hated anyone, or because I consciously thought of myself as “above” black people, it was because I was acting according to what was familiar to me.

As for our having elected or “allowed” black people to prominence in this nation, why should we think that pointing to these aberrations is proof that the norm they flaunt doesn’t exist?

My black friends might seem to enjoy the same fruits of their labors as other Americans such as myself who have seized whatever opportunities we could. But the fact remains they are more in danger of losing what is theirs than I am simply because they are black. Life is hard for everyone at one time or another, that is true, but white Americans are less likely to be killed or harassed by those in power than are blacks. That is a fact, and saying racism doesn’t exist because “look at all those successful black people” doesn’t change that fact.

Neither does it change the fact that statistically, when we talk of social ills in this country, they predominately center on black communities where material poverty and blight might not be evident, but where education, housing, job access, and nutritional foods are poor. This is also a fact, and it is to do with how our hierarchical, not democratic, system so often explored here in the pages of docu-mental, naturally makes it so.

Who leads us along the ‘arc toward justice’?

In this week of important anniversaries in American history, there is an irony afoot. This week has also been that of the Republican National Convention, replete with so much red, white and blue theatrics so as to become a patriotic burlesque, all aimed at a distinct demographic of Americans who, like so many black Americans, feel certain their needs have not been met.

This group, the MAGAs, have invested their hope in the future in a white man whom they call “the people’s president”, a moniker that was thumped over our heads more than once during the convention festivities, and one that was cheered by these Americans who love their leader because he has flaunted the so-called kingmakers of both our political parties, appealing to their sense that they too have been left behind by someone and now need someone to look out for them, a phenomenon with which I don’t quibble, but unlike the MAGAs, lay fault not at the amorphous “Radical Left” but at the feet of the white men in Congress and on Wall Street who have by various means, stolen MAGAs’ dreams, a phenomenon also explored often in these pages of docu-mental.

In any case, these are the Americans who believe that their chosen leader will not bow to The System, or so it would appear anyway as he tweets and tweets without subjecting his thoughts or unilateral policymaking to a formal vetting process. Take a knee? Never. There is far too much humility in that.

And this is what is so striking: whether it be through protesting in the streets or taking a knee on the field, or even refusing to take to the field, black Americans are choosing through their lawful, humble actions to refuse to play the game of being seen as inferior.

Is there looting and rioting and burning and resisting arrest right now in the black community? Yes. Is it warranted? No, but I understand the rage and opportunism behind it, and I note that it is not being condoned nor committed by the leaders of the black community. Therefore, are whites in danger of being attacked and brutally murdered by black mobs? Nope. Are blacks at a heightened risk of such attacks? Sigh. What do you think?

Black America is putting its faith in our democracy, in our common goodness and decency. They continue to trust that in time, as the moral universe continues its arc, we will do the right thing.

Meanwhile, white MAGAs who feel aggrieved by being seen as less-than by the powers that be have responded by celebrating as their leaders knowingly and repeatedly break the law.

Putting aside all known and debated other violations of the law by this POTUS, every single night of the RNC Convention was knowingly performed in full violation of the Hatch Act which bans political leaders from campaigning on federal property, among other statutes. When asked about it, the acting White House chief of staff said in a stunning moment of candor in a year full of such moments from the pack of law breakers in this administration, “No one cares.”

So, there he was, P45 and his entourage, all week unlawfully using the people’s house indeed, as well as the White House Rose Garden, and even the resources of our State Department to campaign for a return to America’s past, the one that no one, not even MAGAs, will deny is a past predicated on breaking the Mosaic commandments of not coveting, stealing, and killing. A sinful, painful past.

And as we have seen and documented here, that past is in fact The System, the very one that has begun to erode the privileges of every American except those at the very tippy top, and the ones in power whom we allow to flout the law. Which is to say, it is a system that if we continue to support will eventually crush not just black Americans, but all of us.

What is the road to reparations?

Seen this way, to not take responsibility for our nation’s original sins is as costly or more so than if we refuse to atone for the inherent evil within all our institutions, or to refuse to offer reparations for the resulting harms.

But let’s be sure we even know what we mean by that.

My way of making reparations was to change my behavior. It wasn’t hard. I committed to looking black Americans in the eye when I encounter them and to say hello so there is no mistaking that I see them, that I recognize them.

I don’t wave signs, I don’t yell at the police, and I don’t look specifically to support black causes, although each of these actions do have their time and place. I didn’t even have to admit I was wrong, nor feel as though I were taking on the burden for all of white America, even though I do accept that my awareness of the burden is the same as being responsible for it. In any case, all I had to change was my way of seeing.

It is a reparation that costs nothing, but means everything. For this small investment in other Americans, I have been repaid with smiles and warmth. People respond positively to being seen as people. Imagine: if this were the norm, blacks would not be placed in the demeaning position of having to insist, yet again, that they matter.

The road to reparations does not start with calculations but with empathy, with admitting we have a shared history and then bothering to learn from it. The idea of freedom that we cling to in this nation isn’t the one that we wave our flag around the world professing; it’s the one that black Americans have fought to secure right here under our noses and always to everyone’s benefit, definitely mine as a white woman.

Maybe there will be a time for writing checks, but until we listen and hear with our hearts, writing checks will only serve as an attempt to buy off black America in exchange for our continuing not to pay the real debt: remorse and sorrow for our nation’s foundation being set firmly upon abject inhumanity, for our forefathers having broken God’s laws, and for our white privilege arising from those sins, regardless of our either professed or true ignorance of this fact.

This interview is an opportunity for us to consider how freedom for all Americans was secured by the actions of enslaved Africans before, and how it is reinforced by African Americans now. It’s an opportunity to listen without being defensive, and to learn to see the love of freedom for all reflected in the faces of every American.

Links of interest:

Sacred Ground: The Episcopal Church’s response to racism

The National Park Service’s Ft. Monroe and Point Comfort history pages

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Next month, video number 3 is a conversation with IN Series Opera company director, Timothy Nelson, who will discuss what role the arts have in helping society create and perform meaningful rituals that bring us together through catharsis, common stories, and a shared vision of a peaceful future.

Thank you for exploring these topics with me.

Whitney

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