Cloth Diapers...

 

© September 11, 2023, the Griot Poet

Twin Towers image source: ABC Australia

Twenty-two years ago today,
The world was propelled unwillingly into the arms of blowback:
A Saudi Sheik, Osama Bin Laden,
Trained by the CIA in the Mujahadeen,
Convinced 19 men, 15 from his nation,
To willingly plunge top-fueled planes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon,
Some "let's roll" Flight 93 passengers thwarted a fourth meant for the US Capitol.

Sixty years ago this week,
I was one year, one month and one day old,
On my mother's thirty-eighth birthday,
I was potty trained.
I was reminded of this,
Not that I would remember it after
I bragged to my big sister that my granddaughter was two and potty trained.

"We had cloth diapers back then. No one was playing with you, Reggie,"
Meaning: Changing cloth diapers, flushing the load, and WASHING them probably wasn't pleasant!
And the observation that disposable diapers might have delayed development.

On our mother's birthday,

I was one year, one month and one day old.
On that day,
Four girls were killed by white supremacists in the notorious 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, sixty years ago.

Growing old in my community is a privilege not afforded to many.
To this day, in 2023,
We rightly describe Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization,
Yet, the Department of Justice has no such designation for Nathan Bedford Forest's KKK,
Whose whole existence centered on terrorizing the newly freed and formerly enslaved into not voting in the best interests of their communities.

Two medical professionals,
Dr. Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Dr. Carol W. Greider,
Shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine with Dr. Jack W. Szostak in 2009 "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase."

Let me translate:

The long, thread-like DNA molecules that carry our genes are packed into chromosomes, the telomeres being the caps on their ends. Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak discovered that a unique DNA sequence in the telomeres protects the chromosomes from degradation. Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn identified telomerase, the enzyme that makes telomere DNA. These discoveries explained how the ends of the chromosomes are protected by the telomeres and that they are built by telomerase.

If the telomeres are shortened, cells age. Conversely, if telomerase activity is high, telomere length is maintained, and cellular senescence is delayed.

Source: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/

The National Institute of Health found telomeres profoundly shortened in African Americans, corresponding to shorter lifespans of existence.

September 11, 2001, was on a Tuesday.
September 15, 1963, my mother's birthday, was on a Sunday.
Four little girls, who should be grandmothers, were practicing for a performance that day when domestic terrorists bombed their church.

Their reaction to the March on Washington on the anniversary of Emmitt Till's lynching.

And my mother and father, the day after, had to go to work on Monday.
(For them, "Father Knows Best," "Ozzie and Harriet," and Ward and June Cleaver in "Leave It to Beaver" did not exist as an option.)
After the news, they had to drop me off at the sitter and hope that they would see me again.
Attending church services (I was told) was understandably limited.
Living in fear of being killed for being black shortens your telomeres.
There is cause and effect, not "Curses of Ham" or divined magic.

Growing old in my community is a privilege.
We are 400 years tired of this terrorism.
For the "sin" of being brought here in chains for forced servitude.

It isn't "woke": It's history.
It isn't "book banning": It's psychopathy.

You CANNOT ban the book that is seared in my soul.

What's insanity is that the Department of Justice still refuses to designate Christian nationalists, the KKK, white nationalists, and white supremacist groups as domestic terrorist organizations, like Al Qaeda.

As Americans finally experienced,
On September 11, 2001,
The psychological effects of the horrific fear of not knowing what calamity would end your existence.

Living in fear of being killed for the "sin" of being alive shortens your telomeres.

As my big sister observed:
This country needs more cloth diapers for our development.