Karessa Dawson Lang talks to reading students at the Family Learning Institute last Saturday about her grandfather, George Dawson, who learned to read at age 98. (Photo by the writer.)

Last Saturday, at Ann Arbor’s Family Learning Institute, Dawson’s granddaughter, Karessa Dawson Lang spoke to a group of reading students about her grandfather.

She told them he’d said, ”People have read the Bible to me all my life, but I wanted to read it for myself.” When he was finally able to read the Bible for himself, Lang told the children, “For him, that was the greatest accomplishment of all time. Besides writing his name. Which was huge.”

The visit to FLI was part of two days of activities for Lang and her sister, Mashelle Dawson, involving their late grandfather’s 2000 autobiography, “Life Is So Good,” the featured book of Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads. The two flew up to Ann Arbor from Texas last week.

Launched in 2003 by the University of Michigan Life Sciences & Society Program and now co-sponsored by the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti district libraries, Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads promotes reading and civic dialogue through reading and discussing a common book. The program’s theme this year is “What Makes Life Worth Living?”

In his autobiography, George Dawson, Sr. reflected on his life, which began in one century, spanned a second, and ended in a third. He was the grandson of slaves. Lang said her grandfather – she and the other grandchildren called him Jump Daddy – credited his attitude to trust in God.

“He prayed about it, left it with God, and whatever will be, will be,” she said. “He didn’t worry about anything.”

“He believed in the simple things. As long as you had sufficient food, housing, and clothes, then everything was all right, everything was good. And even in cases where the Lord took people home, he felt that was a good thing, too. Because it meant they were going to be with the Lord.

One of his mottos: “If it can be done by anyone, it can be done by you.”

The lifelong Dallas resident didn’t go to school because he worked in the fields to help his parents, then worked to support his own seven children, Lang told the students. George Dawson, Sr. died in 2001 at the age of 105 following a stroke and a fall.

Lang said she was shocked to learn that her grandfather couldn’t read because he could give detailed directions to any address in Dallas, and could talk about any subject matter. She later learned he relied heavily on memorizing information to get by.

“So when he said he was going to school, I said, ‘Going to school for what? At 98 years old?’”

She laughed recalling the day her father took his father to buy school supplies and a backpack. From then on, he’d stand on his front porch every morning wearing his backpack and waiting for his ride to the adult literacy program.

“He was so excited to go to school!” Lang said, before encouraging the kids to appreciate their own education. “One day, he came in and said, ‘Big Legs, let me show you something,’” she said, adding with a laugh that every grandchild had descriptive pet name. “And he got out his pen and started writing his name. He had never written his name before.”

She later learned her grandfather once missed a promotion at his job at a local dairy because he couldn’t sign his name on the paperwork. That was a painful experience he never forgot. Even so, he kept his spirits up. So much so, that when he was 100, he said: “I do believe it’s getting better every day.”

Lang asked the dozen students in the audience what they hope to be when they grow up, and then stressed the importance of reading in each profession.

When one boy said he wanted to be a pro football player, Mashelle Dawson noted with a smile that he’ll need to be able to read the contract.

Lang said her grandfather compensated for illiteracy all those years by diligently memorizing information everywhere he went. She figures that’s why his memory was so keen, and why he was able to fill a book with historical facts.

She told the kids that her grandfather got over his fear of sharing his life with a white man who co-wrote the autobiography, Richard Glaubman. The two ended up becoming good friends, the book was well reviewed, and his memories were preserved forever.

“So don’t be afraid,” she told the students. “Sometimes you have to take a chance.”

She also told them to follow her grandfather’s advice to give everything their best effort, or not do it at all.

“You know how you do your best at something you love doing?” she asked. “Well, even the things you don’t love doing, do your best and you may start loving it. And then when you start accomplishing things, and making good grades, and moving forward, you may start to like it.”

Family Learning Institute provides tutoring to low-income elementary school students in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area. Board president Jeff Harrold said the talk reminded the kids to value the ability to read – something so many take for granted.

“We’re in a knowledge-based economy, especially in our state,” he said. “The old economy of making a living with your muscles is past. We’re going to have to help our kids read and write and take advantage of everything they can in this knowledge-based economy. We had kids today who said they wanted to be pilots and dentists and doctors and novelists and police officers. That’s going to take a literate work force, and we’re happy to do our part here to help those kids reach those goals.”

Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads is co-sponsored by the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti district libraries and is supported by civic groups, the University of Michigan School of LS&A, the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti public schools, local bookstores, Eastern Michigan University Libraries and Washtenaw Community College. For more information about events related to this year’s book, check out the Reads website.

About the author: Jo Mathis is an Ann Arbor-based writer. Her work appears monthly in The Chronicle.

Sandy Iran Canales, Rev. Bayardo Lopez Garcia and Karl Pohrt in Catarina, Nicaragua. Pohrt was part of a delegation that traveled to Catarina to celebrate the wedding anniversary and ministry of Rev. Garcia, Padre of the Church of the Remnant.

In the midst of all the sturm und drang surrounding the future of Shaman Drum Bookshop, I went to Nicaragua.

Dianne, my wife, had been teaching for the last month in Catarina, a town in the mountains south of Managua. She volunteered under the auspices of the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, a small congregation in Ann Arbor of which we are both members. ECI is collaborating with the Iglesia Bautista Remanente, a Baptist church in Catarina, on projects that “will bridge the divide between wealth and impoverished countries by providing capital, employment and opportunities for cultural exchange.”

Joe Summers, our minister, is an old friend of mine – we worked together in the bookshop years ago – and ECI is an openhearted, diverse community that is serious about creating a better world. Although I’ve been mostly engaged with Buddhism in my adult life, I was attracted to this church because of the willingness of Joe and the congregation to struggle together around difficult issues. And I still enjoy a good sermon.

I hadn’t had much of a chance to talk with Dianne about the state of the bookshop given that our telephone and internet connections were short and infrequent. The experience teaching in Catarina was transformative and very positive for her, but living conditions were difficult. She asked me to come. I traded my frequent flyer miles for a ticket to Nicaragua.

I traveled to Nicaragua with a delegation of eight members from the church. There were many moments during the trip when these good people made me feel that it might still be possible to fix (or at least patch up) this broken world. The delegation came to Catarina to celebrate the wedding anniversary and the ministry of Bayardo Lopez Garcia, Padre of the Church of the Remnant.

After Haiti, Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, according to Joe. The U.S. State Department says it is “prone to a wide variety of natural disasters, including earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions.” The country, situated on two converging tectonic plates, is a “Belt of Fire.”

Nicaraguan history has been every bit as volatile as its geography. From 1853 until the Great Depression, the U.S. Marines landed there seven times and occupied the country for twenty one years. In 1937, General Anastasio Somoza seized control of Nicaragua. He and two subsequent Somozas robbed and thugged the country blind until 1979, when Tachito Somoza was overthrown by the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional), named after Augusto Sandino who led an armed insurrection against U.S. interests in 1937.

From 1981 to 1990, the C.I.A. ran a secret operation to topple the government, mining harbors and financing the Contras, who fought a vicious civil war against the Sandinistas.

The current government is led by Daniel Ortega and is a coalition of the Sandinistas and the Liberal Party. Ortega is widely believed to have stolen the last election, and his leftist posture is seen as a rhetorical cover to rob the country. I’m told he requires his staff to address him as El Commandante.

Catarina is a windy town of eight thousand souls perched on the lip of an extinct volcano, which is now a lake. During a recent earthquake, people reported that the water in the lake sloshed around like it was boiling. The town is paved with flagstones and you can still see men on small, fast horses galloping up the steep streets.

Just inside the cemetery at the edge of Catarina is the grave of Benjamin Zeledon, leader of a 1912 uprising against a puppet government installed by the United States. He was killed by government troops, who then dragged his body through town. Augusto Sandino, a teenager at the time, witnessed the desecration of Zeledon’s body, which led to his radicalization.

I stayed at the Hotel Jaaris. Rooms there rent for ten dollars a night. Water was only sporadically available, and there has been a serious shortage in the area, which set off a noisy protest demonstration in Catarina a week before I arrived. The hotel did not have hot water.

The walls in our room didn’t meet the corrugated metal ceiling, so you could hear what was going on in the other rooms. The metal roof created an almost perfect interior acoustic bounce. Some nights it was difficult to sleep.

The poet-activist Ernesto Cardenal (back row, center) with the Ann Arbor delegation from the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation to Catarina.

No matter. The vibe was positive. The hotel had a pet bird and a barking dog. There were lots of clucking chickens and crowing roosters in the next building. And the people of Catarina were extraordinary. Near the end of our stay a number of them said they would pray for us. I’m not used to having people speak to me this way. I always felt it was my responsibility to cultivate Great Doubt – as the Buddhists say – around religious claims, but it became increasingly obvious to me during this trip that people living in such impermanent economic, political and geographical circumstances just might know some things I didn’t.

I replied gracias when people said they would keep me in their prayers.

I had the good luck during the trip to meet the poet-activist Ernesto Cardenal. One morning we drove to the Galeria casa de los Mundos in Managua to look at Nicaraguan folk paintings from the Primitive Painting School. The building is also Cardenal’s residence, and he was in his office. At eighty four he is still very active and spry. He greeted us warmly, signed autographs and posed for pictures.

Cardenal was Minister of Culture in the Sandinista government following the revolution, but he has dissociated himself from Daniel Ortega. Ortega has countered by freezing all of Cardenal’s assets. Although he is obviously beleaguered, he seems at peace with his situation.

Cardenal’s poetry is direct and accessible, and it is clear that North American Beat poets influenced him stylistically. His books have been widely translated and are available in the U.S. from City Lights Publishers, New Directions and Curbstone Press. He is the most important living poet in Nicaragua, which is a country that values its poets. The great Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario’s picture graces the Nicaraguan currency.

Cardenal is also a Catholic priest and was a friend of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. In the early 1970s he founded a lay religious community on one of the islands in the Solentiname archipelago in Lake Nicaragua. Among various other community projects, he read the Bible with a small group of campesinos. Cardenal asked them to respond from their own lived experience. He recorded the conversations and eventually published them as “The Gospel in Solentiname” in four volumes. They are among my favorite books. They were published in the U.S. by Orbis Books, and I’m afraid are now out of print.

At the Church of the Incarnation in Ann Arbor the congregation is invited to reflect on the sermon immediately after it is given. This is modeled on base communities like Cardenal’s that were developed by Latin American Liberation Theologians in the 1970s. They exemplify a radically democratic hermeneutic.

Joe told me, paraphrasing Martin Luther, that “the scriptures become the Word of God in the hearing of the believer. This is a wonderfully nuanced view; very different from saying the scriptures are the Word of God. It becomes an active, dynamic process – it’s what is meant when we say this is the living Word of God.”

Christianity offers its adherents a rich and vibrant set of symbols and stories – as do all the major religions – and it provides a context in which people can structure their experience and give meaning to their lives. At its best, it is a powerful force for social change, a counter-cultural critique of the dominant society. Cardenal represents this form of religious culture.

And politics are another context. We spent a remarkable evening talking with five Catarinians about local and national politics in Nicaragua. Four of them were former Sandinista companeros. (Joe told me he preferred companeros to comrades because its etymology implies “to break bread with.”) These men, now middle aged, had all been active in the 1979 revolution.

Near the end of the night I asked what it was like to participate in a revolution and then see its ideals eroded, compromised and betrayed. Perhaps it was impertinent of me to ask this question because it implied assumptions I had no right to make, but they welcomed the opportunity to reflect on their experience.

Ariel Perez Olivas, a former Sandinista political analyst, said, “It makes me homesick when I think of the ideals and goals of the revolution in the early days. All our resources were used up in the war with the Contras. Now we have to deal with the problem of an entrenched political class that is focused on its own interests.”

Sandy Iran Canales, who still carries fragments of a bullet in his chest from a wound he received in 1979, told us, “When I was young I was moved to fight against the National Guards. All the people were so excited by the revolution, but then lands were stolen and money was misused.”

One of the men said, “Our revolution has become a rob-olution.”

Erving Sanchez, the former mayor of Catarina, said, “The government wants to politicize everything. They show favoritism. When I was mayor, we sat down together to support the people who really needed it. We need to form a culture of resistance against the national leadership. To me, Sandinista means simply to find a way to help the poor.”

Joe ended the evening with a riff on Kierkegaard. “We begin in the land of the aesthetic, which is a place of endless choices. Then we grow into the ethical life. We make commitments. At a certain point we fail at them. This will lead you to the life of faith or you can chose to return to the aesthetic life. Faith begins when what you’ve given your life to betrays you.”

____________________________

On the drive back to Catarina following a visit to a Spanish School I start to nod off, but it is difficult because I’m sitting between Joe and Bayardo, who are having a spirited discussion in Spanish with Sandy, our driver. After a few minutes Joe translates.

Jennifer Reyes Rosa and Rev. Joe Summers

He says Bayardo and Sandy are talking about the Sandinista Literacy Campaign in 1981 when High School seniors went into the countryside to teach the campesinos to read.

In two years illiteracy was cut in half in Nicaragua, despite the murder and rape of many students by the Contras.

Bayardo tells us he hid books underneath his poncho as he moved on horseback around the countryside.

“We carried lanterns with us so we could teach people at night. I was teaching in a relatively sparsely populated area filled with Contra soldiers. There were spies all around and I had to move from house to house fairly quickly or I would be betrayed.”

“I was very frightened,” he says and then laughs.

Then he and Sandy break into song. They sing the anthem of the Sandinista Literacy Campaign:

Avancemos brigadistas
Muchos siglos de incultura caerán
Levantemos barricadas
De cuadernos y pizarras
Vamos a la insurrección cultural.

-
Jennifer Reyes Rosales translated the lyrics:

Let's advance brigadistas
Many centuries of illiteracy will fall
Let's build up barricades
Of notebooks and blackboards
All the people to the Cultural Revolution.

-
So there you have it. I’m riding down the road with two men who are laughing and singing together after they recall risking their lives thirty years ago to teach people to read.

These men speak about what happened with … a great lightness. To speak any other way about these things would not be appropriate, but what they are saying is simply so far outside of my own experience that it is unimaginable to me.

It strikes me that this is why I came to Nicaragua. I was meant to hear this shocking and moving testimony.

If these men were willing to risk their lives to teach people to read, the least I can do is to try to keep the bookshop going. Despite the downturn in the economy and all the trash talk about the “death of the book,” I intend to do just that.

Life is very strange. When I left Ann Arbor I felt it was the most inappropriate time in my life to leave town. By the end of the trip my opinion had changed. It was the perfect moment.

Right to left (counterclockwise) Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Julie Herrada, Scott Westerman.

On Monday evening at the University of Michigan’s Hatcher Graduate Library, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn addressed the 300-400 people who had packed into the space, answered written questions and signed copies of their new book, “Race Course: Against White Supremacy.”

Ayers had gained renewed notoriety during the presidential campaign, through the speculation about a connection between Ayers and then presidential hopeful Barack Obama. When Republican candidate for vice-president Sarah Palin spoke of Obama “palling around with terrorists,” Ayers was the guy she meant – Ayers was a member of the radical 1960s group the Weather Underground. (Ayers rejected the label “terrorist” on Monday.)

Although it was Ayers and Dohrn who headlined the event, the story that The Chronicle found was in the people who attended, many of whom were linked in somewhat unpredictable ways.

Take Jim Manganello, whose real interest is in directing theater, but who’s completing a teaching certificate at UM, having already earned his undergrad degree. Part of the reason he went to hear Ayers and Dohrn speak is that he’s taking a course in the history of American radicalism, and his professor mentioned the event in class.

Manganello rents the place he lives from another attendee, Roger Manela, who now is a social worker and also the guy who recruited Carl Oglesby to Students for a Democratic Society. That recruitment is described in detail in Chapters 2  and 3 of  Oglesby’s “Ravens in the Storm.” Oglesby served as the president of SDS from 1965-66.

Bill Ayers conveys something to Paul Courant, UM's dean of libraries, as Bernardine Dohrn speaks.

The first president of SDS (elected in 1960) was also on hand Monday evening in the form of Alan Haber. Haber remains active in the Ann Arbor community, currently focusing on the Megiddo Peace Project.

Haber’s high school teacher at University High was Scott Westerman. Westerman was superintendent of Ann Arbor schools when Ayers ran for school board. Westerman was also there for Ayers’ talk and stopped by the book-signing table afterwards to chat with Ayers and Dohrn.

And even if Ayers hasn’t been palling around with Barack Obama, it might be fair to say that he’s palled around with Karl Pohrt, owner of the independent bookstore Shaman Drum. On Sept. 11, 2001, Ayers had been scheduled to give a reading for “Fugitive Days” at the store when the events of that day canceled the reading. And Pohrt was at Hatcher on Monday – not really as an attendee, but as part host. Monday’s event was sponsored by Shaman Drum, and it was Pohrt who had pitched the idea to Paul Courant, University Librarian and UM Dean of Libraries, that UM could provide an appropriately-sized venue. Pohrt made introductory remarks on Monday.

That brings us back around to Jim Manganello, whose connection to Karl Pohrt is that he just finished a 3-week temporary stint working the textbook floor at Pohrt’s Shaman Drum.

Not everyone who attended could be linked up in similar fashion.

Oscar Whitehouse was there because he had no choice – he looked to be only a couple months old and was there with his mom, Melissa Stewart. Stewart said she and her husband were there because they wanted to hear Ayers speak first-hand. She didn’t think that the hype surrounding Ayers was fair, and after the talk concluded that their notion of Ayers was correct: “He’s really not crazy.”

Geoffrey Williams, a UM undergrad toting a giant chemistry textbook, said he would not be heeding Bill Ayer’s advice to go to Shaman Drum and buy a book (not necessarily his own) and read it. He was, however, planning to go to Shaman Drum afterward – to by a ticket to Homegrown: Poetry from the Ann Arbor Underground, which will be performed this Wednesday, Jan. 28, at Lydia Mendelssohn Theater in the Michigan League. [confirm date]

Alan Haber.

Julie Herrada, curator of the Labadie Collection at the UM library, was in attendance Monday.  Courant mentioned her in his introductory remarks because her exhibit, “The Whole World Was Watching: Protest and Revolution in 1968, Selections from theLabadie Collection,” was connected in topic and space to Monday’s talk. It had been on display in the same Room 100 at Hatcher Graduate Library  through Dec. 19, 2008.

Ken Magee, new director of UM’s Department of Public Safety, was there partly by virtue of his position. It was his responsibility, he said, to make sure it was a safe environment. But before his long career as a federal agent, he had grown up in Ann Arbor. He remembered riding his bicycle through the Diag. And he had a recollection of the events of the late ’60s in Ann Arbor, even if he had no recollection of Bill Ayers as a person.

Rich Tolman, a professor at UM’s School of Social Work, was hanging around after most of the room had emptied, waiting for the long line at the book signing table to slowly shrink. Tolman is a former colleague of Ayers at the University of Illinois at Chicago – their offices were on the same hallway. Tolman had exchanged some emails with Ayers before his arrival, and depending on the lateness of the hour when the signing was done, the two were perhaps heading out for a drink.

When The Chronicle left Hatcher Library and Tolman, he was sussing the problem of what downtown establishment would still be open past 11 p.m. Otherwise put, where do you take Bill Ayers for a drink in downtown Ann Arbor?

Left to Right: Karl Pohrt, Roger Manela, Alan Haber, Odile Hugenot Haber, Scott Westerman

Bill Ayers was entreated by several young people to pose for pictures with their newly-acquired book while flashing the peace sign. One young man (not this one) declared he would be finding Ayers on Facebook and friending him.

A crowd of 300-400 people in Room 100 of the Hatcher Graduate Library gathered to hear Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn speak.

Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn signing books after their talk.

Oscar Whitehouse was there because he had no choice. He was there with his mom, Melissa Stewart.

Library staff deployed another 150 chairs for a room initially set for 150.

Fox 2 News was on hand working for you. Channel 7 was also there on your side.