An American and Napoleonic Romance: Jerome Bonaparte and Elizabeth Patterson

In my post on Prince Charles Napoleon the great great nephew of Napoleon, I promised to write about the great grandfather of the "latest Bonaparte" on the scene.

Prince Charles Napoleon's grandfather was Jerome Bonaparte the youngest sibling of Napoleon. He was born in Ajaccio, Corsica in 1784. Jerome entered the French navy, and while on a stop over in Maryland, he was welcomed into Baltimore high society where he met a beautiful young woman named Elizabeth "Betsy" Patterson (born 1785).

Betsy was the daughter of the second richest man in the state, William Patterson, a merchant who was an immigrant from Ireland. When they met in August 1803 it was love at first sight for the handsome, dashing Jerome and the lovely, witty, and cultured Betsy who was fluent in French. The two were captivated with each other, but Betsy's father was extremely cautious. Though he did not entirely doubt the sincerity of Jerome's love for Betsy, he doubted that the ambitious Napoleon who was rapidly rising in Europe would approve of his young brother marrying an American without noble blood and without his permission. Jerome's prospects seemed too good for him to get bogged down in America, so Betsy's father hesitated for at least for awhile. However, by Christmas Eve 1803 William Patterson's reluctance had evaporated, and Jerome and Betsy were married. Jerome had just turned 20, and Betsy was 18.

Once Jerome's family had learned about the union, almost everyone seemed to approve, except Napoleon. Even though Napoleon was not the eldest Bonaparte child, he had long before pushed aside his older brother Joseph to establish himself as the family's head. He made the final decision on everything including whom his brothers and sisters could marry.

When Napoleon declared himself Emperor of the French in May 1804 he ordered Jerome to come home, "without the young person to whom you have connected yourself." Sympathic to your younger brother's plight, Joseph and another brother Lucien encouraged Jerome to get American citizenship, as did also Betsy's brother. However, Napoleon was having none of it and ordered Jerome to come home immediately and for Betsy to not even think of setting foot in France.

The couple finally realized that they could not continue to ignore Napoleon's demands, so they sailed from America in one of William Patterson's ships. Betsy was pregnant. Once they arrived in Lisbon, Portugal, they saw to their dismay that Napoleon had sent a French frigate to prevent Betsy from disembarking. During their journey, Betsy had been convinced that with her charm and learning she might be able to plead their cause with Napoleon since Jerone had told her that his older brother was very susceptible to feminine beauty. But adamant, Napoleon had shown by sending a frigate to block her way, he did not want to see or speak to Betsy.

Reluctantly, Jerome left his wife to go on alone to Paris to beg Napoleon to allow them to stay together. In the meantime, Napoleon had been working fiercely to get the marriage annulled. He had gone to the pope with his demands, but had been rejected. Nevertheless, cowed by Napoleon, the imperial council of state had agreed to have the marriage declared null and void. On hearing that Jerome was on his way to Paris to see him, Napoleon wrote this letter to him:

My brother,

Your letter of this morning informs me of your arrival in Alexandria. There are no faults that a true repentance will not efface in my eyes.

Your union with Mademoiselle Paterson is null, alike in the eyes of religion and of the law. Write Mademoiselle Paterson to return to America. I will grant her a pension of 60,000 francs during her lifetime, on condition that she will under no circumstances bear my name,--she has no right to do so owing to the non-existence of her marriage.

You must yourself give her to understand that you are powerless to change the nature of things. Your marriage being thus annulled by your own consent, I will restore to you my friendship and continue to feel for you as I have done since your infancy, hoping that you will prove yourself worthy by the efforts you make to acquire my gratitude and to distinguish yourself in armies.

After Jerome's departure, Betsy's ship sailed to Amsterdam, but once again she was not allowed entry on land since now two men-of-war ships blocked her way. Seeing that she could not receive entry on this route as well, Betsy's ship sailed to England where she gave gave birth to a baby boy, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, whom she called "Bo."

Jerome and Betsy were to never see one another again. Jerome was remarried on Napoleon's orders to a German princess, Catherine of Wurttemburg, and he was crowned King of Westphalia also in Germany. Prince Charles Napoleon whom I wrote about comes from this union of Jerome and his German princess.

Betsy never remarried. After the fall of the Napoleonic dynasty under Napoleon I, she left America for awhile and traveled in Europe being welcomed and feted in European high society as a beautiful, tragic, and intelligent curiosity. For decades she fought to have her marriage to Jerome recognized as legal and her son listed as legitimate. Oddly enough, Jerome seemed to had forgotten all feeling he once had for Betsy because he actively fought against Betsy's son having the surname of Bonaparte. With three children from his royal wife, he wanted Betsy's son to be known only as Jerome Patterson. After Jerome's death in 1860, Betsy's case was resolved and her son was recognized as a legitimate child of France. Still Betsy's long time desire that her son be accepted as a member of the Napoleonic dynasty of Europe would never come to pass. She died in 1879.

Because of the short lived union of these star-crossed lovers, there was the American Bonapartes, the line of which ended in 1945 when the last male Bonaparte died. Betsy's grandson, also named Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, was a soldier who served on the Texas frontier and who also joined the imperial French army. He received medals for his valiance in the Crimean War from not only France and the queen of England, but he even received a medal from the sultan of Turkey. Another grandson, Charles Joseph Bonaparte, served as US Secretary of the Navy and US Attorney General and was the founder of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Where Have I Been, Where Am I Going

The past few days have been hectic, baffling, and exciting for me. I have not taken the time to write because so much has been going on, plus I decided to downgrade my amount of writing here. Recently I received the stimulus to finally go after my passion less here on the blogosphere and more in the privacy of spiral notebooks and Microsoft Word. After years of just dreaming about it, I am going to pursue my dream of writing a book and doing freelance writing. I began my memoir 15 years ago, but I was not mature enough then or had overcome some of life's difficulties to really present a complete and interesting portrayal of my life to fill a book. I had been inspired to take on such an endeavor of writing a memoir after reading the unique and inspiring Maya Angelou's series of autobiographies of her life. Nevertheless, I just was not ready.

I began this blog on November 22 after returning from Turkey less than 2 months before. I was reeling from so much disappointment. I had been paid far less than I had been promised by the family who had hired me as a live-in English tutor to their unruly daughter. I had languished for close to 2 months in a new affluent development on the outskirts of Istanbul with these people who saw me more as a family member and just ignored my calls to study. They really did not want a professional around. The Ottoman Turks were fond of and fascinated by blacks and this fondness still exits in Turkey in a number of quarters. But I will not go on with this. I have diverted myself from what I was going to present in this post.

After so many ups and down and peace and quiet, I began this blog. In a short time I have been honored to have two published authors making comments here. When I did the post Quest For Romance Ended in Murder, two authors Ellen R. Sheeley who wrote Reclaiming Honor in Jordan: A National Public Opinion Survey on "Honor" Killings and
Karen Tintori who has written Unto the Daughters a book about an honor killing which actually occurred her family nearly a century ago both of these authors made comments which have graced my effort here. I was intensely elated when I discovered both. I found Ms. Tintori's comment last week while bored, down, and preoccupied I scrolled back to my honor killing post. Ms. Tintori had left her comment almost two weeks after the post, so I might have never discovered it because it had moved from the main page of my blog. I had thought about writing to Ms. Sheeley shortly after I saw her comment, but I got too busy and later lost courage. I did not know how to approach her at the time with my question of what suggestions could she give me on what to do to become a published writer. When I discovered Ms. Tintori's comments I was spurred on to write her because at the time I felt a little world weary. I wrote her last week and last night she wrote back to me. This morning on firing up the internet and checking my e-mail, I received this very warm letter of encouragement which other aspiring writers should read. I hope the author does not mind I am sharing this.

Dear Sincerae,

I am thrilled to learn that my comment on your blog lifted your spirits. I was impressed not only with your blog post, but by the fact that you invited participation by asking those who visited to lend their voices to the discussion. It was a friendly, and engaging way to elicit comments. It was "hey, don't just run in and out of my house, stay and converse with me." I was impressed by that.

If you itch and burn to write every minute you are awake, concentrate on it. Focus on the book you want to write, and don't divert all that energy to the blogs -- you know? We have only so much creative juice in a day, so give the greater part of it to the book, and the rest to the blog. You are right in your comment that the blog is a way to perfect the craft of writing. Anything you write makes you a better writer as you think about words, sentences, structure.

If you haven't read Writers Market 2008, from Writers Digest Books, go buy it or borrow it from your library. It is filled with markets for writing -- from which publisher buys what kind of book, to which magazines buy, to whom to pitch and how they want the query sent. It is the bible of getting published. Format, substance, how to find an agent, etc., it's all there. And Writers Digest updates the book annually, so I'm thinking 2008 is the most current edition.

If you have some short pieces to sell to magazines, etc., and can do that while working on a book, great. It will add to your resume and be a hook for an editor. I have only done some freelance journalism articles locally, and eight books.

Keep writing, keep sending stuff out and lots of good luck to you and many blessings.

It is obvious you have overcome a lot in your life, and so I know you are a person who isn't dissuaded easily and doesn't give up. All the better to have those attributes if you want to be a published writer. There's a lot of rejection sometimes before that one editor says "yes," but those who stick it out and have some talent will succeed.

God bless and good luck! Keep writing.

All my best,
Karen

This e-mail made my day before it barely began. I was thrilled, honored, and uplifted. Today was a holiday for me because it was a planning day for the regular district's teachers, and I am only a substitute teacher, rather like an itinerant teacher for those outside the US who are not familiar with the term. I immediately decided to take Ms. Tintori's advice and get a copy of Writer's Market 2008, a massive tome of articles of how to get into the writing business and listings of hundreds of places to send your work from publishing houses and magazines to greeting card companies. Years ago I had bought a copy of Writer's Market, but my readiness to be a writer was not there. Since that time I have had articles and letters to the editor published in newspapers in my town, but I just did not have the courage to branch out. I was not ready no matter how much I dreamed and dreamed. Blogging has actually gotten me in shape to write regularly, so in the right hands and for the right reasons it is not a trivial exercise.

This afterrnoon I bought the 2008 edition of Writer's Market. I have a customer membership with the store where I made the purchase, so this morning to my good financial fortune I received in my e-mail a 40% off coupon from them and I was able to use it towards the purchase of my volume of Writer's Market.

Other excitement that has cropped up is I was given another job in the school district as an assistant to the afterschool program director which will pay more then my current position. Now I just have to find a school that needs me. Hopefully tomorrow I will.

Like my mother says, "Turkey will always be a part of your life. You will not escape the Turks." Saturday night when I called the time of day service, which is a recorded message offered by a local bank giving the time and the weather our house phone was not working, so I decided to use my cell phone. Someone had left a message on Friday and Saturday afternoons on my voicemail. I usually keep my phone off or just on vibrate, so it might have been days before I checked if the house phone had not been out. Shocker of shockers it was a former Turkish friend in distress. I will not put her name here, but she had jumped up on a humbug, like my mom likes to say, and married some guy here. I had written her a letter of invitation last summer even though she had developed a very rude and cocky attitude towards me. I will not put all the details here, but suffice it to say, she has been thoroughly humbled since she found out that one cannot get instant US citizenship by just marrying an American citizen. She has also learned that getting a job in her profession is not likely to happen either without a green card. She has learned that it all is a long uncertain process especially in post 9/11 America.

Yesterday and last night when I spoke to her, she sounded listless, broken, and slightly frighten. I have no idea who this guy is that she has gotten connected with. Gone are the snide, cocky, arrogant, know-it-all, rude, and insulting remarks. She has learned that Hollywood movies and her own dreams do not always mesh with reality. It is a sad story really, the complete details of which I still do not know every thing about. The irony of her situation can be seen in her lack of access to a phone. In Turkey she had 2 cellphones. Here she really does not have one except the one her husband uses and which he takes sometimes with him to work leaving her without access to a phone.

It is a very different ballgame here from in Turkey where it was easier for me to make friends with people there. I heard it once said that it is easier to go to the moon than to get to know your neighbors across the street in America. I guess she sees the difference. Families are not as close knit in the states as in Turkey.

My former friend has begged me to come and see her and stay a couple of days. She said she calls friends in Turkey, so I wonder does her husband not allow her to have the phone at times. I called her this morning just like she asked me too, but there was no answer and the voicemail said the number was not available. She told me last night that if her husband did not leave the phone with her to leave a message with him. I left a message on the voicemail, but she never called me. When I she told me yesterday to call back, her husband sounded a little angry and hostile when I asked for her, answering the phone with not a "hello" but with, "May I help you!" When she came to the phone she sounded listless and a littled scared and told me that she had to do yard work. She told me she would call me back in about 2 hours, but it was 5 hours later before I heard from her again.

Abuse is a problem for women everywhere, so I just hope and pray she has not gotten herself in a terrible situation where this man is controlling, terrorizing, and abusing her. I just wish I had not written the letter of invitation for her to get a visa. I sent that letter to very irresponsible, immature, and uninformed hands.

This poor young woman was very obsessed with getting her a black husband, and I know how some black men are abusive, controlling, and very uncaring about anything but their own selfish needs. My father was never verbally or physically abusive to my mother, but he never allowed her to control her finances and more recently when she sold some property, he scorned both her and my advise about investing it. He took most of it and spent it all to pay off his debts. I am a very forgiving person, so I am here again for this young woman who had been my colleague and friend, but who ruined our friendship by her arrogance. I fear for her, but I am powerless.

So I am taking Ms. Tintori's advise, and I will not be posting here as frequently. I am not putting myself on a definite schedule, but I will say that I will be writing here from 1 to 2 days a week. From afar I am trying to help a responsible Turkish friend who loves me like a sister and I am also being morally supportive of my Turkish boyfriend who says he is going back to Istanbul after taking care of his sick mother for over a year in his home town of Edirne near the Greek and Bulgarian border. An American friend of mine who hired me there last year to work in the language school where he was once one of the managers has offered my boyfriend a place to stay until he can get back on his feet. My Turk with the reddish brown hair and blue gray eyes has expressed a desire to come here and meet my family, but that will be in the far future, if ever.

Therefore much is going on. I will be changing jobs and taking on more responsibilities once I can find a school here that needs me for the position the school board has hired me for. I have been spending more time reading again, and I must get myself into the mood and mode to do all the things Ms. Tintori told me to do.

Sometimes I run across very good blogs that were abandoned without any comment on why. Then I see blogs that are an insult to the blogosphere and classy and sophisticated bloggers everywhere that should be abandoned.

I am not abandoning this blog that I take pride in, but I will be spending less time here . Nevertheless, I will continue to offer my usual eclectic mix once or twice a week when I have time.

Ciao for now:)

The Legend of A Female Pope

For centuries there have been whispers of a woman of great learning who donned the clothes of a man and was elected pope by cardinals who had no idea that they had chosen someone of the "weaker sex" to sit on the highest throne of the Roman Catholic Church. This legend of a female pope had largely been unknown to most in the current generation until Donna Woolfolk Cross resurrected it in her amazing and controversial novel, Pope Joan, published in 1997. I read Pope Joan a few years ago, and the novel is one of a few books where I actually saw aspects of myself in the character.

Pope Joan is the story of a girl born in the 9th century to an English canon and his Saxon wife in Frankland in what is now Germany. The canon had come to Frankland as a Christian missionary to convert the heathen people to Christ. There he had spotted and fallen reluctantly in love with a pagan Saxon woman. The marriage is very unhappy because the canon despises his wife because he sees her as an instrument of the devil, seducing him away from his Godly mission and causing him to lose his purity in the possess. He goes into violent rages when his wife seems to hang on to her heathen gods and passes the stories on their daughter. He hates just about every thing about women because like the Biblical Eve, he believes women are always the impetus for sin and trouble. He is abusive of his wife and daughter, whereas he is more lenient with his two sons whom he encourages to be scholars.

Early on Joan has strong curiosity about learning. When a Greek scholar in exile from Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) comes to their town, he teaches Joan's brothers not only about the great authors of the church like Augustine, but also those from classical Greek and Roman history like Plato, Seneca, Ovid, and Homer which were almost unknown or banned by the western church, but appreciated by the church in the east. The 9th century is at the tail end of the Dark Ages in Europe. Learning and scholarship have moved east to Constantinople which is the capital of Byzantium which was the Byzantine Empire (Rome in the east). The Greek scholar witnesses Joan passion for learning and stands up to her father, demanding that he be allowed to teach her as well. Like the slogan for the National Negro College Fund here in the US, to him "a mind is a terrible thing to waste," even if it is a female mind.

The patience, devotion, and attention that the Greek gives Joan plants a seed that will eventually carry her to a Benedictine monastery where she will further her learning. After her last surviving brother is killed in a Viking attack she cuts her hair and dresses in his clothing. No longer does the questions she has asked herself plague her, "Why am I different? What is wrong with me?" She has come to terms with the fact that she and no woman with potential should be confined to a life dictated by men and society. She will go her own way, but living as man because she knows that in her world, women are confined to the home as only wife and mother. Learning and scholarship are not an option.

In time, Joan goes to Rome posing as John Anglicus. She wins the respect and envy of many. During her years of study she has become a physician, eventually becoming the personal doctor of the current pope. She is the one person who inspires this pope who is a fat overeater and a crybaby to be courageous. The Rome of Joan's era is a place of piety, corruption, nepotism, sexual licence, competition, and murder, even in the halls of the Vatican. In the meantime, Joan has also fallen in love with a handsome, open-minded German landowner and minor noble named Gerold. Gerold was married when she first met him, but his family and estate is wiped out in the same Viking attack in which Joan's brother was killed. Gerold follows Joan to Rome, and when she is elected pope he remains faithfully by her side, keeping the secret that the most powerful personage in Christendom is a woman.

Joan's robes and mien conceals her deception until she becomes pregnant by Gerold. Joan is so ambitious that she is set on never allowing her secret to come out, even to him. She knows that Gerold would tell her to stop her act, vacant the papal throne, and marry him. Stubbornly Joan concocts a potion that she takes to abort her child. The potion does not work until a terribly violent tragedy happens in the streets of Rome one day to Gerold right within Joan's view. Now without her lover and best friend, Joan miscarries and dies in the street to the horror and fascination of the people in her papal entourage and the general populace. As Joan dies moving from grief to fear to peace, the people around her nearly riot believing that it is witchcraft that has gripped their beloved pope or that "he" is possessed by a devil. Others think it is a miracle because a tiny premature infant has appeared beneath the pope's robes. For almost 2 years, Joan named Pope John, has been the supreme leader of the church. She had come a long way, extracting herself from a limited life to a life of power and prestige. But in the end, in her 40s, even though she had played the role of a man, the reality of her sex had come to haunt her in a way she had not expected at her age to have happened. Since Gerold her friend, adviser, protector and lover was even older than she, she never believed that she might become pregnant.

The legend of Pope Joan has been around since the Middle Ages. The legend was once as popular as that of King Arthur. Writers such as Boccaccio even mentioned the female pope. However, the Catholic church has vehemently denied the existence of an amazingly scholarly woman who tricked the church establishment and ascended to the throne of St. Peter over 1000 years ago. The Catholic church has viewed the legend as a weapon of the Protestant Reformation to discredit the church. Arguments by some who say that the church waged an active campaign after Joan's death to expunge her from history are championed by other scholars as unfounded. They feel she never existed. The first mention of La Popessa was in the 13th century 400 years after the time of Joan. So the skepticism remains, but I love the idea of a woman who overcame the chains of her age to go out into the world to seek her fortune.

In 1972 the Swedish actress Liv Ullman starred in a filmed entitled Pope Joan.

Now I have learned that next year Donna Woolfolk Cross' novel is slated to be brought to the big scene. Franke Potente, a German actress, recently seen in the US movies Blow and The Bourne series starring Matt Damon will be playing Joan.

The novel Pope Joan brought to life a time of savagery, brutality, and Romance. The novel is a fast read even though it is a little over 400 pages. All the elements of human drama, life in The Dark Ages, and of even our time can be found in the novel. Joan's story is timeless and universal, because as Cross said in an interview at the back of the novel:

"I want readers--particularly women--to understand one basic truth: to empower yourself in this world you must learn. Joan armed herself with the power of knowledge. This knowledge allowed her to rise to the very highest rank of the most powerful institution of her day. Even today in countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, Algeria, the first priviledge that is taken away from a subservient group such as women is the right to an education."

As an African-American woman and being a part of an group where too many now encourage mediocrity and low achievement because to learn and to be articulate is "being white" or to be a "real woman" you must have a child before you are 15 or 16 by some immature teenager or some worthless guy with no intention of being a man and responsible, Cross' words speak volumes to me. Most of my life, I have gone against the grain of what it means to be a black woman in America. I have flown and fell down, but always with the determination to be unique and to go totally against the grain.

British sculptor Philip Jackson's piece called Pope Joan.

The official website for Joan Woolfolk Cross' novel Pope Joan can be accessed here.

Murasaki of Japan

Long ago in the mists of time in feudal Japan a daughter was born to a provincial governor and his wife. They named her Murasaki Shikibu.

Not only was the governor an official, but he was also a scholar. The traits of the enjoyment of learning and curiosity was passed on to his daughter who from a young age showed a remarkable ability to grasp and understand literature and languages. This was a miracle and a source of pride and disappointment for Murasaki's father who once said to her, "If only you were a boy, how happy I should be!"

Murasaki's brother, unlike her, did not display her swiftness in learning. In ancient Japan, women were allowed to do some basic learning, but the realm of the classics which were in Chinese was the province of men. Being a man with an open mind and appreciating his daughter's singularity, Murasaki's father allowed her to sit in on her brother's private tutoring sessions.

When Murasaki came of age, she was married off to a distant relative. She bore him a daughter. In time, plague appeared in the land, and Murasaki's husband was carried off in the epidemic. Alone, except now for her daughter, Murasaki began to write a book. Since she was the daughter of a prominent man and quite a curiosity herself, she captured the attention of the empress. She was brought to court, where she became the special companion to the empress, even teaching her Chinese in secret. She is given the title of "lady."

Lady Murasaki continues to write her book which is about a prince named Genji, getting ideas for the plot from her surroundings. She also keeps a diary which is a vivid description of life at the Japanese court and also expresses her distaste for what she sees as a vapid existence of nobles intriguing, backbiting, and focusing mainly on the silly and trivial. She writes one day in her diary, "Pretty and coy, shrinking from sight, unsociable, fond of old tales, conceited, so wrapped up in poetry that other people hardly exist, spitefully looking down on the whole world-such is the unpleasant opinion that people have of me. Yet when they come to know me they say that I am strangely gentle, quite unlike what they had been led to believe. I know that people look down on me like some old outcast, but I have become accustomed to all this, and tell myself, 'My nature is as it is."Despite her indifference and dislike of court life she becomes a reluctant celebrity when her novel, The Tale of Genji, is discovered. It is presented as a serial and read orally. Lady Murasaki writes this in her diary, "His Excellency saw The Tale of Genji laying about in the Empress's apartments. He made his usual stupid jibes, and then handed me a poem written on a piece of paper to which he had attached a branch of plum-blossom: 'What with these ardent tales of love, little can I think that men have passed you by, as they might this plum-tree's sour fruit.' And so I replied, 'If no man has tasted, who can say if the fruit is sour, or if the writer of these tales herself has known such love?'' Is the novel's hero, Prince Genji, Lady Murasaki's alter ego?

Unlike most at court who live only for the moment, Lady Murasaki knows winds of change are moving inside Japan. The decadent lifestyle of the court will eventually be swept away by the samurai who will install a military dictatorship ruled by a shogun.

At age 50, Lady Murasaki asks to retire from the court, leaving it for the peace and serenity of a convent. Finally, she is at peace.

This is my personal rendition of the life of Lady Murasaki (973-1025?) She is believed to have written the first modern novel, The Tale of Genji. Both Genji and the Diary of Lady Murasaki can be purchased on Amazon.com. The quotes listed in my tale are from Lady Murasaki's diary.

In 2001, Liza Dalby, an anthropologist and the only westerner to have been trained as a geisha, wrote the novel The Tale of Murasaki which is a fictionalized account of the life of Murasaki Shikibu.

Ideas for the writing style in this post were inspired by entries in the blogs The Victorian Era and Emma Alvarez Site, Hans Christian Anderson, The Brothers Grimm, and The Thousand and One Nights.

Cutely Romantic: Barack Obama

He may not get the Democratic nomination for president and become the next president because despite all of our greatness and advancement America still has not matured in certain areas, but I have the optimism that if the world stand we might get there. Nevertheless, Barack Obama is the first serious, mainstream, and classy African American candidate we have had in a long, long time. In a post tomorrow I will mention the other long forgotten serious black candidate.

Because presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is using her husband as her own personal attack dog and the mud is really flying now from the direction of the Clinton camp, Barack Obama has told his African American supporters to not get angry and bitter and view the Clintons as racists because this is politics, not something that should be perceived as personal. I agree with him, because Barack Obama knows our people must stop being stifled and stopped by words or even something as hideous and sick as an empty noose. We must start back progressing the way we did in the days of Dr. King. There can be no retreat for us; we must keep our eyes on the prize.

What Barack Obama is doing is symbolic and will open the doors for more progressive blacks in the future if we hold on. I am very proud of him. He is a symbol of hope at a time which often seems bleak, trivial, hopeless, and unRomantic. The other week a news clip showed him speaking in that deep mellow voice of his, and when someone in the audience fell behind him he forgot about himself and what he was saying, but turned around and asked, “Is everybody OK?” What a sweetie and a Romantic and cute to boot and so is his wife Michelle and his kids.
My mother thinks that Hillary has a secret crush on Barack Obama, and all this picking and mudslinging has a Romantic element. We both think Hillary has never fully forgiven Bill for his Don Juan escapades but ambition makes her hold on to him. Now that Bill is not cute anymore, she really has a crush on Obama. Mom jokes that Hillary says she is only using Bill to get what she wants, and once she gets in the White House, Bill can move to Harlem if he wants. I very seriously doubt that she will get in the White House again. Bill knows this, but is playing the game with her being the devoted husband. Once she is defeated and destroyed by the Republicans, Bill knows she will need him and Chelsea more than ever. He might even have to put Hillary in mental health treatment for awhile, but he cares for her and will always be there for her even though she rides a VERY high horse.

To Die So Young A Hero

Today fellow blogger Hans posted a story about a Turkish Muslim who will be playing Anne Frank in a stage production of The Diary of Anne Frank.

Besides having read Anne Frank's diary in middle school, I have become familiar in more latter years of a Jewish diarist and poet whose writing was equally if not more powerful than Anne Frank's masterpiece. The creator of this other great Holocaust document was Hannah Senesh (1921-1944). In fact, I am an even greater fan of Senesh's diary than I am of Frank's because of its' maturity and depth. More about Hannah and her poetry can be read here.

My most favorite of all her poems is this one.

Walk To Caesaerea

God---may there be no end
to sea, to sand,
water's splash,
lightning's flash,
the prayer of man

Africa's Tragic Romantic: Bessie Head

"Love is so powerful, it's like unseen flowers under your feet as you walk"
----Bessie Head

It is my desire that this blog will never become stale in its' subject matter, and even though my blog has a theme, there is a world of Romance out there both past and present to be written about.

Ardent's latest blog entry got me to thinking about my very first international sojourn, as a Peace Corps volunteer in the African nation of Botswana. African nations south of the Sahara get such bad press. It is always about disease, war, poverty, or genocide. There is little mention of the good of the extraordinary. The most recent case of bad news are the elections in Kenya. It has hit home with one of my neighbors, because presently he is hosting a student in his home who is Kenyan.

Botswana is one of the richest countries in Africa because of its' diamond resources. It does not get much attention because the people are quiet and peaceful with their neighbors. Also there are not a conglomeration of tribes there, so no tribal problems. The Batswana are very tolerant. I used to silently laugh when some Batswana would tell me, "Botswana is not true Africa. You have to got to West Africa, to see true Africa."

I was in Botswana when apartheid was running its' course in neighboring South Africa. In fact, depending on where I was, I sometimes lived as close as 15 miles from the South African border. As a non-white person I went to South Africa only once, because the climate there was very tense and even some British friends of mine who went were harassed by white South African soldiers.

There were a number of people both black and white whom the Batswana like to talk about when I was there. One of them was a person they held in high regard, the writer, Bessie Head. Bessie Head is one of Africa's greatest authors, dying at age 49 just when she was about to come into her own and get the recognition she deserved. Her life was short, difficult, lonely, and tragic. Nevertheless, out of her hardship, she birthed writing of get power and sometimes disturbing beauty.

Bessie Head was the daughter of a white South mother of patrician background and a black South African father who was a stable hand to her mother's family. The relationship was totally illicit because it broke apartheid laws which applied more to white women and black men than to white men and black women. According to my Batswana students and friends who related Head's story to me, when Bessie Head's white grandparents learned that their daughter was pregnant by their black stable hand, they had her committed to an insane asylum. There Bessie Head was born in 1937. Life was tough from the beginning. Of course, her mother's family did not want her, and neither did her father's family. Therefore, Bessie was placed in an orphanage where she grew up.

Having showed strong intelligence, Bessie went to school to become a teacher. Later she married a journalist and had a son, but she eventually became a divorcee.

Unable to tolerate life under apartheid, Bessie Head went to neighboring Botswana where she became a refugee. Even in Botswana life was hard, and Head lived in extreme poverty. She ended up in the village of Serowe, one of Botswana's most famous villages one reason of which is because it is the home of Botswana's first president, Sir Seretse Khama, another person common on the lips of many Batswana. In Botswana, Head found her calling and began writing. Also in the process she became an alcoholic and died of hepatitis in 1986.

Bessie Head's work is hard to classify under one genre. Unlike many African writer's her work is not very political. Her novels tend to be semi-autobiographical, with Biblical and classical imagery. She was also influenced by D. H. Lawrence.

Here can be seen an online project by students at the University of Botswana (which was spic and span and new when I visited it) concerning Bessie Head.