Write for God

I live in Pinellas County, a peninsula on the peninsula that is Florida. We have sunshine almost every day and world-class Gulf of Mexico beaches. Ten minutes away from our house is the approach to Caladesi Island, Dr. Beach’s top beach destination this year. Our county has depressed areas and some very nice real estate. Our house is somewhere in between.

There’s a strange sort of hoodoo in Pinellas when it comes to the correlation between affluent ZIP codes and complaining about the economy: it seems that the better off do more kvetching about the economy than the ones on the brink. The folks complaining that it’s costing too much to gas their SUVs and to renew their Tampa Bay Buccaneers season tickets are the ones who write to newspapers and organize e-campaigns against higher taxes. I seem to hear people who make more than I do dish more about the economy than those who make less than I do.

The poor in the heavily African-American Midtown section of St. Petersburg have to live with drugs, crime and indifference on the part of folks who are better off. Children have to hear gunfire on their streets and have to cope with the reality that their parents find it tough to provide for them. Those from “nice” neighborhoods drive really fast with the windows up when they find themselves in Midtown. The divisions between rich and poor, black and white, old and young are sometimes chasms in our densely packed county.

On June 12, the Pinellas County Commission will meet for a budget discussion in advance of the fiscal year that begins October 1. On the table is human services funding to help the less fortunate. A project named Pinellas Hope will surely be a source of contention.

Pinellas Hope is a Ministries of Mercy initiative by the Diocese of St. Petersburg. Anyone with a TV or internet access around the nation couldn’t help but be aghast to see members of the St. Petersburg Police Department slashing the flimsy tents used by the homeless for shelter in 2007. The diocese’s solution was to use tents on land from its real-estate holdings to provide working homeless people with a safe people to sleep, store their belongings and get a meal at Pinellas Hope. The tent community recruits volunteers and donations from Pinellas and strives to preserve the dignity of the poor who live there. Other communities around the nation are looking at Pinellas’ project as they explore ways to care for those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder with the dignity they deserve.The Diocese of St. Petersburg is asking Pinellas residents to write to the seven County Commissioners to express their support for funding for the project. I sent my comments in advance of the June 12 budget meeting:

There are many differences between the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate and the taxpayers who live in affluent ZIP codes and those who live in the tents at Pinellas Hope: the latter in each set doesn’t really have the ear of the County Commissioners. The poor, the illiterate and the homeless usually don’t make it into Commission chambers to speak on their own behalf, so it’s up to those of us who’ve been more blessed to be their messengers.I would like to speak for the residents of Pinellas Hope.

Those of us who profess to believe in the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition have been raised to follow the Golden Rule. In order to love our neighbor as ourselves, we must share some of our resources to help our brothers climb out of poverty. Unless we as a community come together to help those who need a hand, we cannot count ourselves as Christians or as good human beings. I urge all of you to vote for continued funding for Pinellas Hope.

You will hear the more affluent speak out in measured tones that they’re tired of funding alcoholics, that they’re drowning in taxes and that gas prices are sky-high. They will make the case that we cannot continue spending tax dollars on the less fortunate. The poor who can’t count on a roof over their heads or the grace of being treated with dignity by others won’t be as persuasive speaking in front of you at the lectern during their three minutes.

We can’t afford to be compassionate in this dire economy, the more fortunate will tell you.I would like to remind the Commission that, yes, the economy is in bad straits as a result of an incompetent White House, but that should suggest to you that human services funding will be more in demand as the economy continues to worsen. Instead of cutting funds and services, now is the time to make sure the safety net will hold together as more and more men, women and children fall into deeper poverty. Larger numbers of us may be using programs such as Pinellas Hope soon as a result of failed economic policies, an irresponsible national debt and rising unemployment.

 I urge all of us to examine your consciences and to vote on the side of the most vulnerable members of our community. They may not speak as eloquently before you, but they deserve to be heard.

We Catholics know that the Lord hears the cries of the poor, so he will keep the residents of Pinellas Hope close to His heart. Those who turn their backs on their brothers will hear, “I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.” By then, it will be too late for rending one’s garments, gnashing one’s teeth or complaining about the cost to fill up your SUV. The time to do good is always now–for the residents of Pinellas Hope and for all of our brothers.

I was tied up with errands today, but my husband emailed me the news that Bo Diddley had died at his Florida home. Kevin knew that Bo was always one of my special rock artists and, even though he’d been been ill and he was 79, the death of Bo Diddley was still a shock.

I have Bo’s music on record albums, cassettes, CDs, mp3s–in short, as new media came along, I always made sure the Diddley beat was playing somewhere in my house or car. The classic Bo Diddley beat that everyone copied and that Bo could have copyrighted is rock ‘n roll at its most pure and powerful. The obituaries in the news today have mentioned how many came after Bo and copied his rhythm. No one said they copied Bo himself, who was a true original, and Bo never copied anyone else, either. He was one of a kind.

Who else had a monster rock band that featured a guy on maracas? Or a no-nonsense guitar player named the Dutchess during a time when women in rock looked more like debutantes? Who else wore thick Poindexter glasses on a rock stage? (Buddy Holly came after and also copied Bo’s rhythm in “Not Fade Away.”) Or who wrote so many odes to a mythical hero named “Bo Diddley” who could do anything? Bo was actually Ellas McDaniel, a former violin player who designed his own guitars. Those rectangular guitars, the ones covered in fur and the ones that looked unlike anything other than an electrified folk guitar were also Bo’s innovations.

Despite the thick glasses, I don’t think anyone would have called Bo a dweeb, only because he could be scary looking and because no one rocked harder than he did. He could also do lovely, lyrical songs such as “Dearest Darling” and hilarious tunes such as “Hey, Man,” where he and his maracas player, Jerome Green, trade insults that include “You’re so ugly the stork that brought in the world ought to be arrested.” Bo Diddley could also be supremely funny.

I love “The Story of Bo Diddley,” where between cackles and laughs, he records the tale of the character he became. Even though Ellas McDaniel never knew his father, the father of the character “Bo Diddley” in the song says, “Mama, this boy is gonna be a myth!” Bo Diddley ended up as just that.

Years ago, I was home sick one afternoon when Kevin told me that our local news station was going to feature Bo Diddley as the call-in guest. I had a terrible cold and no voice, but I did something I haven’t done since: I dialed the radio station waiting to speak to one of my favorite artists. When it was my turn, all I could tell Bo was, “You are the true king of rock ‘n roll. Thanks for all the great music.”

Bo was appreciative and thanked me before the station went to the next caller. I think that everyone who dialed in that afternoon felt the way I did about Bo Diddley’s huge musical contribution and his style. In music, there are originals and there are imitators. Bo Diddley was unique even among the greats in music.

Bo’s originality never really paid off in terms of material riches. The groups that imitated his style made millions more than he ever did. One of Bo’s famous quotes was, “A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun.” The contracts he signed in the 1950s deprived him of any royalties from songs that still play constantly on mp3s, jukeboxes, CDs and live performances around the clock all over the world. Bo was forced to tour as much as he could to make a life for himself and his family. He lived on a farm near Gainesville, FL, instead of a mansion like Graceland.

Even as Bo Diddley aged, his bad self never got older. My favorite cut in the soundtrack to “La Bamba,” a 1987 musical bio about singer Richie Valens, is the song that accompanies a motorcycle ride by Bob, Valens’ reprobate older brother. As Esai Morales, the actor playing Bob, rides, a totally wicked version of ”Who Do You Love?” that sounds like hell breaking loose, sets the mood. That version was newly recorded by Bo Diddley when he was old enough to collect Social Security. There wasn’t a better true rock song that year than Bo Diddley’s version of the song he had written and recorded more than 30 years before.

Bo Diddley’s beat came from West Africa by way of the slaves who managed to bring remnants of their music to America. A Brazilian anthropologist whom I once interviewed about the journey of African rhythms to the New World told me that, in Cuba and Brazil, African music stayed at its most pure. Everywhere else, he said, the drums had been taken away by the slavemasters and the music had become a hybrid. That melange found a great interpreter in Bo Diddley, as towering a figure in American music as Louis Armstrong or Charlie Parker.

Bo Diddley boasted in “Road Runner” that no one could keep up with him, and he was right. A true original left us today and American culture is less vibrant as a result.