ABC News describes Dr. Benjamin in its lede about today’s announcement of the MacArthur awards:
Hurricane Katrina may have destroyed Dr. Regina Benjamin’s family clinic but it couldn’t faze her Hippocratic Oath. Though the storm had left her in a dire financial situation of her own, she began treating people at her rural family health clinic in coastal Alabama for free — and sometimes for shrimp or oysters.
Another winner is Mary Jackson, a basketmaker who lives in Charleston, South Carolina and makes sweetgrass baskets from a tradition that originated in West Africa, and then was brought to America by slaves. A beautiful example of one of her baskets is below.
EXCELSIOR for them and thanks for you, NMC. This post and that basket both give me a lift.
I have seen the works of Ms. Jackson first hand on a trip to Sapelo Island that I took as a middle schooler. The picture does not do them justice. Sapelo Island and those that still live there are truely a wonderful place and people. It is a shame that the Gullah culture that is there is at risk of being lost.
NY Times and the Ole Miss Debate. I have not seen it here today. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/us/24miss.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
NMC: thanks for the lifting of my spirits.
TI: and you-for the powerful story of Dr. Cole
Several years ago, on my only venture South, my wife and I were told to be sure and check out the sweetgrass baskets along the road side on the way to Charleston. We stopped at several shops and fell in love with the baskets, the craftsmanship, and the weavers. The baskets were, however, out of our price range. At one shop the proprietor stopped her weaving and asked if we were looking for any basket in particular. I told her the basket I wanted would jump out and say “buy me”. She slowly looked around her shop and said in a manner only a southern black woman could “baskets start jump’n!”
heh-That’s one I’m gonna remember wooabby and use on occasion as I do “leave it lay where Jesus flung it” which a friend of mine heard on a visit, years ago, to an all black church. Real little pearls both.
Great story, woo!
And sweetgrass, which must be harvested carefully stalk by stalk, keeps is wonderful aroma for more than 100 years.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. One of those little beams of sunshine in these overcast times.
TI, thanks for that link. I have to say, though, that even with the better-news parts, it creeps me out that this description fits my anachronistic birth state. So wonderful. So backward.
Another “genius” recipient is the former pro-basketball-turned-urban-farmer Will Allen. He began his project Growing Power in Milwauke, taking urban resources and those hit by poverty and uniting them to bring about “urban farms” which can rejuvenate such communities and offer fresh produce to those in poverty whose diets are usually void of such beneficial products. Check it out, a very worthwhile organization and very interesting concept that would benefit some of our communities.
http://www.growingpower.org/Index.htm
The New York Times story does not do justice at all to Dr. Cole’s whole story.
NMC – Thank you for bringing us some happy news, when other things have been so overwhelmingly stressful and negative.