A Chance In Oklahoma, Part I

December 7, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

There are times I just get GIDDY over a good document. (Yes, my life is that lame.) Imagine my euphoria, then, when I came across this enticing missive from Helen Churchill Condee published in Harper’s Weekly, February 23, 1901…

Not all of us are successful in life; possibly this is because we have not had a fair chance. The government of these United States, while it is looked upon as a cold, unapproachable body, like a corporation, once conceived the beneficent plan of giving a chance for success to any of its sons who chose to take it.

What a rich framing of the initial land runs in Oklahoma – “a beneficent plan of giving a chance for success to any of its sons who chose to take it.”

I could spend a week on that sentence. Beneficent? Really? I thought the Boomers and others raised such a fuss the powers-that-be finally caved.

Look at the nuance in ‘chance’ for success (kinda like the right to ‘pursue’ happiness) for any ‘sons’ (it was still a man’s world, in law and on paper at least) who ‘chose to take it’. The American Dream may have evolved since the days of Horatio Alger (think Little Orphan Annie as a dude, or Oliver Twist without the British accent), but the ‘live right, dare big, work hard’ ethic of such tales still drove expansion and those willing to migrate into opportunity.

In pursuance of this plan a tract of land containing about three million acres was thrown open in the middle of the Indian Territory, and every one was at liberty to take possession of one hundred and sixty acres without price. This was the beginning of Oklahoma, a Territory with a romantic and marvelous history of prosperity crowded into the short time of eleven years…
This is the chance Uncle Sam is to give his unsuccessful sons and certain of his daughters.

When was the last time you thought of Oklahoma as a land ‘with a romantic and marvelous history of prosperity’? And this was almost a decade before the oil boom! But Condee was right – our little state-to-be had become the last great hope for white homesteading anywhere on the continent.

Which, you know, was exciting for white homesteaders, at least…

The new tract is the reservation of the Kiowa and Comanche Indians, with the possibility of the inclusion of the Wichita lands. It is not easy to decide on the justice of the question so far as the original owner, the Indian, is concerned.
Those who live far from him look with disapproval on the gradual crowding into smaller and yet smaller space, of the taking away of his hunting-grounds and giving him the beef issue, of beggaring him by way of forcing civilization, of breaking even the treaties sworn to hold “as long as grass grows and water runs.”

It’s easy to forget in retrospect that many of the same complexities we recognize in history were being wrestled with as current events. Condee pairs land allotment – the most recent process by which Amerindians had been stripped of their land – with the food allotments arranged by the same treaties. Which was more destructive, she seems to suggest – taking away the source of their own culture and self-provision, or maneuvering them into reliance on the outstretched whims of federal government?

As to ‘beggaring him by way of forcing civilization’ – I… I’m simply too aquiver to even analyze that one effectively.

The U.S. picked a largely unjust war with Mexico, to be sure, but at least at some point war was declared, whatever the pretext. The vast majority of Amerindians were ethnically cleansed through handshakes and smiles and warmest assurances. The 19th century saw the U.S. perfect the art of stabbing you in the back for your own good, then resenting the few shoddy bandages it felt compelled to throw your way.

Or am I reading too much into seven words?

Those who live near the reservations see the Indian through different eyes. They regard him as a lazy, opulent child of fortune, possessing fertile lands, which lie fallow, himself rich through the simplicity of his needs and his share of the interest on the $43,000,000 which the government holds invested for his tribes.

There’s a whole separate post to be written about paper wealth and Amerindians. Most of the wilder tales involve oil money, but the dynamic here is similar – ‘lazy’ and ‘opulent’ sets a nice tension, and surely Condee recognized the cruel irony inherent in ‘child of fortune’.

The idea of untapped resources – especially LAND – was anathema to the white way of thinking. For the last generation of homesteaders all too aware their opportunities were quickly vanishing, it only fueled their resentment to see it ‘going to waste’.

And how much do you love Condee’s subtle rhetoric – ‘rich through the simplicity of his needs’ flowing almost as an afterthought into ‘and the interest on the $$$…’?

It angers a man who tills every acre of his quarter-section with unfailing industry to place his family above want to see his Indian neighbor, with boundless lands, cultivating but a tiny patch of corn, yet living in a cabin, keeping cattle, and driving off contentedly to receive from the government agent the issue of groceries and beef which the white man can only get in return for hard-earned dollars.

Condee would have made a great historian. (She actually did just about everything BUT that – she’s a story in and of herself.) Kudos to the white lady from the North who’s so able to put the reader into such a variety of other mindsets while maintaining her own narrative voice to hold it together.

Without the perspective lent by distance, the envious fail to see that the Indian’s rations are only a crumb of the just return he should be entitled to for evacuating all the continent except a few little reservations; and the white man covets. He does it so ingeniously, too, that its results work like logical morality, and crimes are committed under the excuse of civilizing the Indian.

‘Its results work like logical morality’ – Oh. My. God. Can you excuse me? I need a moment alone.

How easily we vainly assumed that kind of insight can only come in retrospect, with the benefit of distance and the perspective it allows. But at least one pithy babe was unraveling the human condition contemporaneously.

The lands about to be opened are some that have long been coveted by the white men. Greed of land grows on those who hold it.

But perhaps more on those who don’t.

I can’t help myself. We’ll have to continue this one – and talk a little more about Helen Churchill Condee. I’m still giddy – aren’t you?

RELATED POST: A Chance In Oklahoma, Part II

RELATED POSTS: 40 Credits & A Mule, Parts I – VII

RELATED POSTS: Boomers & Sooners, Parts I – V

The Death of Captain Waskow

November 11, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Ernie Pyle (1900-1945) was a journalist specializing in bringing the normal to intimate life through the written word.

He was a self-tortured soul in many ways – never content with staying in one place, but perpetually longing for home while traveling. He traveled the United States several times over, writing reflective pieces usually focused on unexpected encounters, and the quirky specifics of characters he discovered – who somehow became everymen for readers of all castes.

When World War II began, Pyle became what was then a very odd sort of war correspondent. He went to where the war was, but he wrote about people. Real soldiers, instead of the Captain America types otherwise put forth in the name of patriotism.

No, he didn’t write about all of the war. He didn’t even attempt to capture the true horrors – even had he wished or been able, the censors never would have allowed it, nor the public wanted it despite thinking they did.

But he made every mother, sister, wife, or other loved one back home feel like he was writing about their boy – their soldier. He made the lowest grunt feel like he was doing something worth doing in tangible, personal ways.

Here’s to the power of the written word.

His most famous column then and since tells a true story of a fallen soldier and the respect paid by the men who served with him. I’m posting it in full here without any sort of permission or rights to any of it, because… the internet.

The Death of Captain Waskow
AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 – In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.
Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.
“After my own father, he came next,” a sergeant told me.
“He always looked after us,” a soldier said. “He’d go to bat for us every time.”
“I’ve never knowed him to do anything unfair,” another one said.
I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow’s body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked.
Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked.
The Italian mule-skinners were afraid to walk beside dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies at the bottom, so an officer had to do it himself, and ask others to help.
The first one came early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule and stood him on his feet for a moment, while they got a new grip. In the half light he might have been merely a sick man standing there, leaning on the others. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the low stone wall alongside the road.
I don’t know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being alive, and you don’t ask silly questions.
We left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the cowshed and sat on water cans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch of mules.
Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything more about it. We talked soldier talk for an hour or more. The dead man lay all alone outside in the shadow of the low stone wall.
Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went out into the road. Four mules stood there, in the moonlight, in the road where the trail came down off the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. “This one is Captain Waskow,” one of them said quietly.
Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the low stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally there were five lying end to end in a long row, alongside the road. You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them.
The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow’s body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear.
One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, “God damn it.” That’s all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, “God damn it to hell anyway.” He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.
Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain’s face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: “I’m sorry, old man.”
Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said:
“I sure am sorry, sir.”
Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.
And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.
After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.

Recommended Reading – Ernie Pyle’s War: America’s Eyewitness to World War II (James Tobin)

Recommended Reading – Here Is Your War: Story of G.I. Joe (Ernie Pyle)

A Negro Girl’s Prose Poem (1889)

July 16, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

The Library of Congress has a fairly impressive newspaper search availabe at Chronicling America. You can search some ridiculous number of publications from 1836 – 1922. I’m not sure why it’s available for those specific years, but I suspect that’s more from my not paying attention than anything else.

The thing is, it’s strangely addictive to just search various words or names and see what you find. Last year, while looking for some information on Black involvement in the first Oklahoma land run, I came across this article. I’ve since found it printed in several different papers, all around Spring or early Summer of 1889. It grabs me and breaks me every time.

She Wrote A Poem.
It Was Real Poetry, Too, Although It Didn’t Rhyme.
In attendance at one of the Indianapolis ward schools is a little colored girl nine years old. She is miserable, indeed, for at home she is ill-treated and the shoes she wears, and often the clothes, are supplied by the teachers or some of her classmates. There is a tender poetic vein in her makeup, and it found vent in a composition.
The teacher took a little pansy plant to school one day and told the pupils of the flower. Two days after she asked them to write a poem of it and gave them the privilege of having the pansy talk and tell the story, and this, according to the Indianapolis Journal, is what the little girl wrote, the word pansy in the copy being the only one dignified with a capital:
“I am only a Pansy. My home is in a little brown house. I sleep in my little brown house all winter, and I am now going to open my eyes and look about. ‘Give me some rain, sky, I want to look out of my window and see what is going on,’ I asked, so the sky gave me some water and I began to climb to the window. at last I got up there and I open my eyes. oh what a wonderful world I seen when birds sang songs to me, and grasshoppers kissed me, and dance with me, and creakets smiled at me, and I had a pretty green dress. there was trees that grow over me and the wind faned me. the sun smiled at me, and little children smelled me. one bright morning me and the grasshoppers had a party he would play with me and a naughty boy pick me up and tore me up and I died and that was the last of Pansy.”

What could I possible add to that?

Boomers & Sooners, Part Two ~ An Editorial and a Carpenter

June 11, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 2 Comments

Elias C. Boudinot was the son of Elias “I Don’t Have A Middle Name” Boudinot, who’d helped to establish and edit the first Amerindian newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix. Remember Sequoyah and his syllabary? Boudinot was the guy who turned it into movable type so it could be printed easily.

The senior Boudinot believed acculturation (assimilation into white culture) was the best hope for the survival and success of his people. He was assassinated in 1839 for his role in Indian Removal, having signed the Treaty of New EchoStar – convinced that a move to Indian Territory was inevitable and the Cherokee should at least secure the best terms possible.

I don’t know what it must be like to have your father assassinated by members of your tribe over violations of sacred beliefs, but I can’t imagine it does much for your love of the people or their traditions and values. I’m just speculating.

The rest of the younger Boudinot’s upbringing took place in Connecticut with his mother’s family – a well-off people of some status who supported Christian missionaries among the Cherokee. These weren’t the yelling and shaking godly fists types of missionaries, or the Spanish Priests variety who thought enslavement was good for the sinful savage. These were the kind of missionaries who tried to make themselves legitimately useful among those to whom they were missioning, but who also hoped to eventually change a few key traditions and values – like, say… killing those who sign away tribal lands.

What I’m suggesting is that ECB’s later betrayal of his ancestry might not have been completely without foundation. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m writing it with great confidence so I’m pretty sure that makes it true – especially if others stumble across this and repeat it as canon. At the very least, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable interpretation.

Elias C. Boudinot became in many ways the worst version of his father’s progressive vision – a political figure who worked in both Indian Territory (I.T.) and Washington, D.C., often more in support of railroads and national expansion than anything traditionally Cherokee. The excerpts below are from a letter he wrote which created quite a stir after its publication in 1879.

Boudinot’s argument regarding the availability of ‘unassigned lands’ in I.T. sparked a land-hungry kerfuffle and spawned ‘Boomers’ like Charles Carpenter and the unofficial ‘Father of Oklahoma’, David L. Payne.

These unappropriated lands… amount to several millions of acres and are as valuable as any in the Territory. The soil is well adapted for the production of corn, wheat and other cereals. It is unsurpassed for grazing, and is well watered and timbered.
The United States have an absolute and unembarrassed title to every acre of the 14,000,000 acres… The Indian title has been extinguished… the lands {were} ceded “in compliance with the desire of the United States to locate other Indians and freedmen thereon.”

The Reconstruction Treaties made with the various ‘Civilized Tribes’ after the Civil War include ‘freedmen’ explicitly and persistently. This choice of words was presumably intended to reinforce the postbellum reality that former slaves of the various tribes were now free, and under these treaties were to receive full rights and privileges of tribal citizenship. In this case, this meant access to land under the same terms as any other member of their respective tribes.

By the express terms of these treaties, the lands bought by the United States were not intended for the exclusive use of ‘other Indians,’ as has been so often asserted. They were bought as much for the negroes of the country as for Indians…

Boudinot may be technically correct, but I’m not convinced he’s being completely honest. The implication that freedmen were ever intended to be granted acreage in I.T. outside the procedure for tribal land allotment is – to the best of my knowledge – ridiculous. Perhaps he’s playing on readers’ emotional reactions to the suggestion that the land ‘off limits’ to them would be so freely given to a bunch of ‘negroes.’

{The} public lands in the Territory… amount, as before stated, to about fourteen million acres.
Whatever may have been the desire or intention of the United States Government in 1866 to located Indians and negroes upon these lands, it is certain that no such desire or intention exists in 1879…

While the Massacre at Wounded Knee (which effectively ended Amerindian resistance on the Great Plains) was a decade away, Boudinot was correct that the vast majority of those who were to be ‘relocated’ had already been moved. This ‘extra land’ in Indian Territory was unlikely to be assigned anytime soon.

These laws practically leave several million acres of the richest lands on the continent free from Indian title or occupancy and an integral part of the public domain…

Well now he’s done it.

If these lands are public domain, they’re subject to the terms of the Homestead Act same as any other land in the west. They were pretty easy terms.

Enter Charles C. Carpenter, a former Civil War… er, ‘participant’ in various capacities, both official and not. Apparently a fan of the recently deceased George Armstrong Custer, Carpenter sported long golden curls and buckskins. A commanding officer wrote of him that “he adds great shrewdness to the reckless courage which he undoubtedly possesses.”

I can’t tell if that’s a backhanded compliment or genuine praise.

In any case, Carpenter built quite a resume for himself during and after the war – much of it rather difficult to actually document. To be fair, record-keeping was not a high priority in that century, and things like titles or official functions were far more subject to personal interpretation than is typical today. Think Rooster Cogburn in True Grit – officially a U.S. Marshall, also kinda working privately for Mattie Ross, sometimes subject to the rules and other times… not so much.

Add wooshy hair in slow-motion while swelling frontier music plays and you probably have a pretty good idea how Carpenter saw himself – or at least how he hoped others would see him. Like Custer or Cogburn, he seems to have simultaneously personified the best of the American West AND been a pompous faker-face who could irritate the crap out of anyone with a little civilization or education.

He was persuasive enough, though, to organize at least one big ‘boomer’ push into Indian Territory, where the limits of the government’s determination would be tested by a few brave souls willing to rough it and even risk trouble with the law to grab their little piece of the American Dream. Or at least, that was how they framed themselves.

The actual ‘boomers’, I mean. Carpenter didn’t go with them. He stayed in Kansas where it was safe.

Troops from nearby Fort Reno were sent to eject these ‘boomers’ and burn their humble settlement, and they were led back to Kansas in temporary defeat. Carpenter had promised they’d try as often as necessary to accomplish their goal, but he didn’t stay long enough to follow up on this first, rather anti-climactic effort. He’d received a visit from a government official familiar with enough of his background to promise him substantial difficulty should he persist in his little settlement scheme, and Charles didn’t care to test the validity of those threats.

He bailed.

His place will be taken, however, by another Civil War veteran, this one a man who’d actually served in the army proper, and who held an advantage much more durable than charm, legal arguments, or high hopes.

David Payne believed.

Liberty, Part Two – On Your Mark, Get Set…

June 2, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Liberty is a tricky concept. On the surface it seems so simple – you are either free, or you are not. You have options and opportunity, or you do not.

In practice, however, ‘liberty’ is one of the most disputed topics in history and politics, even today – not because anyone opposes the term, but because we don’t agree as to what it means.

My favorite explanation comes from Jonathan Haidt, citing philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who distinguished between ‘negative liberty’ and ‘positive liberty.’ The term ‘negative’ tends to strike us as rather, um… negative – but in this case it simply refers to the absence of restraints – the lack of things in your way to prevent you from doing as you choose.

If you’ve been in chains, and the chains are removed, you now have negative liberty. If you weren’t allowed to vote because of your gender before, but now you can, you’ve gained negative liberty. Even leaving an abusive relationship, so that the abuser no longer has direct control over your life, increases negative liberty because it removes restrictions. Students graduating high school and moving away to college or elsewhere often feel a surge of freedom from their newly acquired negative liberty! Finally! Freedom! I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT WHENEVER I WANT FOREVER AND EVER AMEN!

Only they can’t. Most can’t afford to live the way they wish to live or go all the places they wish to go. They may have to work just to eat. Social mores change around them as well, and while they may still technically behave any way they wish, they’ll begin to lose friends and employment, and their romantic options will be… unpromising. If they’re not particularly attractive or bright, the possibilities are even more limited. In a few years’ time, they’re back in mom and dad’s garage apartment, tolerating dinner conversation and being called ‘Brandon’ instead of ‘Sharktooth’ so they can eat something that doesn’t come in a box with a toy.

Why? With all of that freedom, how could they go wrong?

It’s because they lack ‘positive liberty’ – the power, knowledge, and resources to fulfill their potential. What good is negative liberty if you’re stuck in an economy or a society that offers you few real options? What good is ‘freedom’ if you haven’t been trained and oriented to take full advantage of it?

Often it’s about money or education. Sometimes it’s more about exposure to a different people and situations, and learning how to navigate them. Maybe it’s work ethic, or some desirable skill or trait – speaking Arabic, playing the drums, or even looking really good in the right shorts. These things all provide different degrees of ‘positive liberty’ – the power to DO, to ACCOMPLISH, to take advantage of whatever this life might offer you.

The Wizard of Oz is full of examples. Dorothy and her cohorts encounter all sorts of opposition attempting to limit their ‘negative liberty.’ Angry trees, flying monkeys, and that green chick who sang ‘Defying Gravity’ all try to restrict or destroy them. When the primary source of this opposition – the Wicked Witch of the West – was removed, their negative liberty went way, way up!

And yet, the Scarecrow still thought he lacked a brain, the Tin Man a heart, etc. Only through the mechanizations of the faux Wizard were they enabled to utilize attributes which were technically there ALL ALONG. We don’t judge them harshly for not knowing already – if anything, we look down on the Wizard for not having mentioned it sooner. Apparently the old white guy who happenstance placed in charge figured it worked better for him if they didn’t too quickly recognize their true strength and value.

Wait for it. OK, ready to move on?

And Dorothy and those shoes! The entire story she just wants to get home – why doesn’t she just click the damn things together and go, save us all some peril and musical numbers?

Because she doesn’t know how. She doesn’t even know the shoes work that way. The rules in Oz are not the same as those in Kansas. While some realities transfer well (relationships matter, dogs are inconvenient and essentially useless), others must be explicitly taught. And as Alice discovered in Wonderland, sometimes what’s obvious to a native never does quite make sense to the newbie… so off with her head!

Freedman after the Civil War were suddenly given ‘negative liberty’. They could go wherever they wished, and do whatever they wanted. Most, though, ended up doing pretty much what they’d been doing before – working the soil for food and shelter. They lacked ‘positive liberty’. Why the fuss over ’40 Acres & a Mule’? Because a plot of land and a work animal, taken from their former oppressors, would have given them at least minimal resources to take care of themselves, to make choices, to rise or fall on their own merits. Without those two essential bits of positive liberty, their negative liberty meant little.

The Joads. Newsies. Immigrants. Black protestors in the 1960’s or the 2010’s. Occupy Wall Street. Any Middle Eastern nation we’ve “liberated” from an evil dictator. Viewed through the single lens of liberty as absence of restraint, these folks simply MUST get over themselves. Get a job. Work harder. Stay in school. OMG, I did it – why can’t you?

Sometimes the answer is that they don’t actually have the negative liberty we assume. A central theme of the #BlackLivesMatter movement is that police departments across the country forcibly prevent them from pursuing happiness, and sometimes take their lives as well. The Joads discovered serpents in the Promised Land of California – armed authorities limiting their movements, their speech, and their lifespans. Those are limits on ‘negative liberty’. Those are chains.

More deceptive and entrenched, though, is the dominant cultural expectation that those from vastly diverse backgrounds be held accountable for achieving the same outcomes, and for valuing those particular outcomes to begin with. Take a look at this picture:

Consider the boy on the left. Do you think his parents read to him? Take him interesting places? Push him to do well in school? How many balanced meals do you think he has each day? How quickly is he taken to the doctor if ill? We can’t say with 100% certainty, but odds are good he has every advantage – and that he’s probably going to be very successful by most standards.

What about this kid?

His parents aren’t making kale smoothies – his father is with his ‘new family’ in Vermont and his mom’s at work. How often does she read to him? Take him interesting places? Help him with his homework? What are the chances he’s eating balanced meals? You get the idea.

COULD he work hard in school anyway? Choose healthier food from whatever options are in the house? Utilize the blessings of technology and public libraries as partial substitutions for travel and interesting experiences?

I’d like to think so. And the first kid COULD become a screw-up, a drop-out, a ne’er-do-well. But would you bet on it? Out of a hundred of the first kid and a hundred of the second, what percentage of each would you predict become ‘successful’? Why?

At some point even Kid #2 will become at least partly responsible for the choices he makes. Eventually ‘fair’ becomes irrelevant when talking individual, personal accountability. And there will hopefully always be stories of those from worse backgrounds who make it, who achieve.

But there’s no such thing as a truly ‘level’ playing field. We’re all too diverse economically, and culturally, and the variety of one person’s life experiences are never quite the same as another’s. Life is unfair, and just to complicate matters, time and chance happen to us all.

As blessed as we are by the freedom and opportunity in this semi-progressive society of ours, it’s never as simple as making sure all of the ‘gates’ are ‘open.’ We absolutely must keep fighting to empower every last child with the understanding, agency, and resources to actually move through whichever of them he or she chooses.