We get yellow rocks by being in each other’s corner
As modern humans, we have the luxury of learning about our DNA endowment to supplement family genealogy and origins lore. For example, I’ve learned that my mother’s ancestry is responsible for the West African and my father’s for the Western European although there are smidgens of Scandinavian on both sides. My ethnicity has been a small-talk staple since I was very young.
Well-meaning yet rude people asked me where I was really from as they couldn’t figure out how to situate my olive skin tone and coarse hair. On my mother’s, generations were lived in rural Louisiana until the family migrated to the Seattle area.
One set of maternal great-great grandparents
On my father’s side, I’m a 5th generation Oregonian descending from Methodist circuit riders.
One set of paternal great-great grandparents
Adding spice, my folks met in Thailand during the first wave of Peace Corps volunteers.
From article in Life Magazine, March 1965
Both were career educators and high expectations were set for learning and critical thinking along with a way of speaking that largely vacated Black English and Southern accent flavors from how I talked growing up. Being considered as hailing from neither here nor there by my neighbors and classmates along with having a loving integrated family experience that still is unusual around here, I’ve felt most at home in liminal or threshold domains. I mean that I have always needed to explain and translate myself to people. I believe this is why I so appreciate Trickster figures in stories, dreams, and myths.
Anansi, crow, rabbit, coyote, Mercury, Hermes, and Thoth among others exist at the intersections of the opposites. They shuttle information between realms and test boundaries the whole time.
A common feature around the world is the unity of music, dance, and the sacred. Although divisive, historic influences make square dancing seem a far cry from, say, the whirling of the dervishes, a deeper look reveals a palpable spiritual vibrancy. I like Slavoj Zizek’s take on the Christian holy spirit as being the esprit de corps of emancipatory communities. This potent sentiment is watered down in the idea that square dancing is “friendship set to music.” But, if square dancers are a kind of “fellowship of the ring” and the friendships kindled by all the hand-holding adventures intoned by our square dance callers are exponents of a sweaty whooping divine enthusiasm then it is the right idea.
Elevating the contributions African and Indigenous Americans have made to square dancing makes it more interesting and accessible to current generations. The fact that learning square dance choreography can make learning computation, mathematics, and the sciences they drive easier to understand and apply, endows it with a secret worth sharing with the world. Anansi, in one of his famous exploits and classic trickster fashion, accidentally delivers wisdom to humankind. Lovers of square dancing would do well to likewise share its rich history and secret cognitive booster power with the world as space is becoming the place where people think the future resides as this planet’s condition radically changes. I think if we celebrate our ethnic diversity and circulate our folk wisdom, we can work together in new and better ways that are just, regenerative, and deeply bonding. We get yellow rocks by being in each other’s corner.
