Dichroic Reflections

keeping memories

I'm not exactly sick, but I'm not exactly not sick either. I don't feel bad, but I do seem to be dripping rather a lot. Also, when Rudder brought me tea yesterday morning, I tried to drink some of it while still mostly lying down (it was a mug with a lid on it, so that was a stupid move but not as stupid as it would otherwise have been) which resulted in not so much burning my tongue as burning my whole mouth, including my tongue, the left corner of my mouth, the inside of my lower lip, and a spot on my throat. None of it really hurts but I can tell it's not quite right and it feels almost as if I have a sore throat. Also, the steak and baked potato I had yesterday turned out to be much saltier than I'd have normally realized they were - they stung my mouth.

I only managed to erg 3000m this morning, but I think that's mostly because of waking up three hours earlier than on either of the last two days, coupled with having to blow my nose every couple hundred meters for the first thousand. My body's been kind of logy in general; yesterday I wanted to do a half marathon but only managed 11000m. As I said, not quite not sick. Rudder seems to be feeling noticeably better, at least.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I still think that ought to be a case study for anyone studying management and leadership. Of course the people in it were inspired by a raging injustice, but it takes something more than demogoguery to keep hundreds of people organized, doing something that causes them great personal inconvenience for over a year. The logistics of organizing rides in a time and place when few people had cars, had to have been difficult at best. Many people walked to work, for miles in the cold damp winters and steaming Alabama summers. These would have been a normal cross-section of American people: old and young, fit and feeble. They walked. They put up with bombings of the leaders' houses and threats to their families. We have stories of the soldiers at Valley Forge, but they were soldiers. We have stories of the Pilgrims enduring scarcity in a new land and of the covered-wagon pioneers walking unimaginable distances, but in both cases there were few escapes: going home was either not feasible or was as difficult as continuing on. The people in Montgomery could have stopped at any time and simply returned to the status quo, which wasn't physically unendurable. They weren't starving or beaten (or at least, if they were beaten it was for the boycott itself). The buses were available, if only their back halves.

If the status quo was unendurable, it must have been their honor and spirits that were galled. And for that, they avoided the bus system for over a year. I don't know whether the drive and endurance came from the leadership of the movement, or the grassroots, though I would like to know. My guess is both.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott is a bit of history that is not forgotten, but too often reduced to a line or two in a history book. I think it ought to be remembered as one of the great American legends - I mean that not in the sense of something untrue but as one of the stories that has shaped our national character and should continue to shape our ideals. The Library of Congress has a project called StoryCorps, whose goal is to let people interview each other to recordtheir memories. I hope the idea will spread beyond the StoryCorps booths, so that people who remember the Depression, or WWII, or the Montgomery Bus Boycott will tell stheir stories to their children and to anyone else who wants to listen, so the stories will be remembered. We'll be losing most of those people in the next few decades; we need to keep their memories.

Concept II Holiday Challenge: 116300 meters left
Today I am thankful for: getting to sit in any part of the bus I choose.

Posted by dichroic at December 5, 2005 01:45 PM