"Sam Town" - by Sharon Flood Kasenberg

Alexandria, Louisiana - 1985:

This is the part of town we hurry by -
past social engineering gone awry.
A neighbourhood that politicians built
in probable attempt to assuage guilt.
(As if the rows of houses all the same
could somehow undo decades built on shame.)
These little houses have morphed into shacks,
offset at times by shiny Cadillacs.
Where white paint covered sins of bygone time,
now weathered walls are grey with grit and grime.
These sagging hovels stretch for blocks and blocks,
and through these stagnant streets nobody walks.
Not here to comfort were concessions made -
no stately oaks are seen providing shade.
And hot behind the windows boarded up,
another generation sits to sup
while I, in air conditioned car, whizz past -
and say a prayer I don't run out of gas.

Sharon Flood Kasenberg, July 5, 2010

Black lives matter. There - I've said it. And by saying it I have in no way implied that any other lives don't matter.

I have no special qualifications to be a spokesperson for this particular movement. I'm fair skinned, green-eyed and blonde. I am friends with only a handful of people who are black. But I'm writing this post because I came across this poem - a memory written in rhyme.

When I was almost 23, I spent 18 months living in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas. Life in the south was culture shock for a girl born and raised in Northern Ontario. I had seen "Roots" and read several books about slavery and the Civil Rights Movement, but had somehow come to the conclusion that "all of that race division stuff" was far in the shameful past. I had even been warned before I left that the "racial issues" in the southern states would offend my finely honed sense of justice, but still I was unprepared for the blatant racism I witnessed.

I was living in Shreveport, LA when I saw my first "Projects" - cinder block buildings that seemed to go on for miles, and little wooden houses in appalling shape (for the most part), that likewise filled whole neighbourhoods. As a female voluntarily proselytizing for the church I belonged to, I was warned to steer clear of these areas.

So I did.

Later, while living in Alexandria, LA, the apartment I lived in was in a mostly black neighbourhood that bordered on "Sam Town". (Seriously - that's how it was marked on the map.) Curiosity finally made us drive through the area, and I was appalled by what I saw.

A lot of the houses had no glass in the windows, and a few had blankets hanging where doors should have been. I was shocked that people could live in such horrible conditions. I felt a whole range of conflicting emotions as we drove through the area that day - outrage that humans could live in such impoverished conditions, sadness that those native to the area accepted this as the norm, fear - what if we ran out of gas or got lost there?

Three words kept running through my mind:

This isn't right.

Twenty-five years later, while looking at a picture I'd snapped of project housing in Shreveport, I sat down and wrote this poem. Twenty-five years of additional experience had added to the racist experiences I'd had in the south. Now I had new emotions to add into the mix as I looked at that sad little hovel in a blurry picture - shame and despair. What gave me the right to live so much more comfortably than that? What was wrong with the world? How could parts of the world still live that way? How could parts of North America still live that way? Why hasn't more been done to equalize opportunities?

Six years have passed since I wrote the poem. I've watched video now of southern police officers, not too far from where I lived, shoot an unarmed black man in the back. I've read stories written by educated, gainfully employed black men who are being harassed, even here in Canada!

This isn't right!

All lives matter. If you're in possession of a conscience at all you know this. But right now we need to acknowledge that black lives matter. We need to stop living so comfortably in our pale skin, and start seeing that people around us are mistreated far too often just because they have darker complexions than we do. These people don't really expect us to understand what they go through. They're smart enough to know we can't. All they want is some acknowledgment. I've seen enough, read enough and heard enough to give it to them.

Black Lives Matter. 

Home Again - Again. By Sharon Flood Kasenberg

An Ode to My New/Old Victorian Home:

I loved you when I saw you first
although I saw you at your worst.
I loved your turret and stained glass
and ornate woodwork - so much class!
I saw bay windows - transoms too -
but oh, how they'd neglected you!
Your faded carpets reeked of dust,
your filthy sinks adorned with rust,
bare light bulbs hung where fixtures were,
and lack of kitchen caused a stir.
In spite of flaws confronting me
I saw how you were meant to be -
I looked beyond the dirt and grime
to see how you looked in your prime.
I vow to shine you up, old friend,
so you will look that way again.

Sharon Flood Kasenberg, August 17, 2016

Moving is hard.

We began seriously looking for our next home in early winter. We saw a huge variety of properties that could potentially offer us space for a home and a business. We looked at commercial properties, residential properties and institutional properties. We were quite taken with a church we found, but the location of the building (in a VERY small hamlet) worried us. We considered an old school - until we found out that a garbage dump was very likely going in across the street. We liked the look of the two buildings we looked at with storefronts, but the towns they were in seemed rather dismal. We saw an old hotel that was about to fall down, a commercial building that should've been condemned, and an intriguing (but small) funeral home. One house we viewed was on the most gorgeous plot of land, but it was also a bit small and sadly just couldn't easily be added on to.

One day we had two buildings to look at - a church in one town, and a huge old Victorian house (and former headquarters of an insurance company) in a smaller town just south of the first. My husband was quite taken with the church - but I just couldn't wait to see the next property. Always a bit of a real estate junky, I remembered the pictures of the building's interior that I'd seen online when the insurance company sold it a half dozen years ago. I knew it was filled with gorgeous woodwork and that it had huge rooms and bay windows. I knew my husband would see its potential immediately.

We pulled up front and our realtor led us through an echo chamber of a front entrance before opening a second door - and that's when the Wow! hit. The original woodwork was lovingly preserved, with the year the house was built burned neatly into the lintel above the pocket doors into the next room. Four wonderful stained glass windows lined what would've been the front room of the original house, and a lovely wooden staircase led the way upstairs.

We loved all of the period details of the house - the turret in one corner, the bay windows, the transoms over the doorways, but there were obvious drawbacks to the place too. The carpet had been in place since the earliest days of the insurance company, and was faded/dirty/ugly, and the entire building interior was coated in wallpaper circa 1980. A kitchen had been added in what had once been the boardroom by the people who last lived here. They had later pulled it out when their rent-to-own deal had gone south. Now the former kitchen had holes in the walls and a long strip of missing ceramic tiles where their torn out island had been. There was a water connection in the room, but no kitchen sink.* (Remember this part.) There were still hook-ups, but there were no appliances. The whole place smelled of dirt and neglect.

But we loved it. The next day we booked a second viewing. Within a week we made an offer, and after a little back and forth negotiating we'd bought a rambling Victorian. We went to our bank to arrange financing, and they balked at the lack of kitchen sink. "We'll have to send in an appraiser", they told us. Their appraiser, on hearing about the lack of sink, refused to step foot in the property. "If it has no kitchen sink it's uninhabitable and I can't recommend financing" he told our bank branch. The bank manager apologetically promised to send a second appraiser, who then called me and asked questions about the property. Guess what? He flat out refused to look at the house too! *The moral of this story is don't ever expect a bank to finance a place that has "everything but the kitchen sink"!

Heeding some good advice, we went to a credit union, explained our situation, and they had a reasonable appraiser look at the property. He quickly informed us that he saw the value in the house and recommended financing to the credit union. Victory at last!

We've lived here for almost three weeks now. It's been kind of like camping, but in a big old Victorian house where some rooms have air conditioning. I still don't have a proper kitchen sink, but our stove and fridge are both connected, and the plumber very obligingly moved the laundry tub into the kitchen so I wouldn't have to haul dirty dishes upstairs after every meal. He's also connected our washing machine, but the dryer doesn't get hooked up until tomorrow. Good thing the previous inhabitants saw fit to string clothesline all over the big empty room upstairs that has the ugly, but functioning shower in one corner! Seriously - just as I got my laundry washed the driest summer on record turned wet, and an indoor clothesline was a godsend. I don't quite have to use an outhouse either. The toilet, and urinal!, in one bathroom upstairs work, so I just climb the creaky back stairs across from the air conditioned main floor bedroom we've opted to sleep in for the time being. It isn't ideal, but I'm coping.

Yesterday we bought eight more light fixtures to cover the bare bulbs in the house, and tomorrow the electrician will start connecting them for us. We'll still have a few institutional fluorescent fixtures here and there, but eventually we'll replace them with pot lights. Once the disgusting carpet is gone, our Victorian manor will look downright homey!

In the meantime, if you visit us, keep your shoes on and focus on the many assets the old girl has to offer. Look up at the carved woodwork that surrounds her doors and windows. Admire her graceful curves - I'll take you up the steep attic stairs so you can see her turret. Sit and admire the green trees outside through one of her bay windows. There is a very peaceful feeling in this house - even when it's full of tradespeople fixing one thing or another.

Every time I step into the yard to pull a weed or two (or three - hundred!), neighbours stop to tell me how great it is to see this place getting attention again. They shake their heads as they tell me how the last people here didn't deserve this house. Over and over again I hear these words: "They didn't look after it." They offer helpful suggestions about who can help us fix what. Clearly they are grateful to see this old Victorian lady getting the attention she deserves.

I think the house is grateful too. She has welcomed us in. I feel it whenever I walk through her doors.

Yes, moving is hard, but I'm home again - again.