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T he P o r i la n d O bserver • F ebruary
12, 1997
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Proctor Care Parents Honored
On Thursday, March 6, 1997
Morrison Center Child & Family
Service w ill honor 44 Proctor Care
Parents and nine Respite Care Par­
ents for their selfless efforts to im ­
prove the lives o f at-risk children
The recognition dinner w ill be
held at Say ler’ s Old Country Kitchen
from 5:3O-8:OOpm. In addition to
the dinner, Proctor Parents w ill re­
ceive g ift certificates for restaurants
and entertainment made possible by
several generous sponsors includ­
ing, Starbucks Coffee Co., Ponde­
rosa Inn, Mt. Hood Meadows, OM SI,
Resort at the Mountains, Tow er
Books, Safeway, Target, and the
Portland Winter Hawks.
Morrison Center’ s Proctor and
Respite Care Parents are very inspira­
tional people who sacrifice their time,
energy, and privacy by opening their
hearts and homes to severely abused,
neglected and traumatized children
and adolescents. They are everyday
heroes who are trained to provide a
treatment plans and participate in
any individual, fam ily or group ses­
sions required by the program. The
primary goal o f the Proctor Program
is to improve each c h ild ’ s social and
emotional functioning, so as to even­
tually ensure a smooth and safe tran­
sition into and adoptive home, a
public school classroom, or the com­
munity. Through the intensive thera­
peutic care that the Proctor Care
Parents provide, these children fi­
nally begin to learn trust, respect
and love.
This year. M orrison Center is
celebrating 50 years o f innovative
and effective treatment services to
at-risk children and families. Since
1947 they have helped literally tens
ofthousandsofchildren. Today, they
are one o f the largest and most diver­
sified providers o f social, mental
health and educational services in
our community, serving over two
thousand children in Oregon and
Washington each year.
safe, nurturing and consistent home
environment for over 50 children in
the care o f one o f the three Morrison
Center’s Day Treatment Programs.
The Hand in Hand program serves
severely abused and neglected pre­
school children; Breakthrough helps
adolescents struggling with drug and
alcohol abuse; and counterpoint is for
adolescents overcom ing issues o f vio­
lence.
Proctor Homes must meet State
Offices o f Services for Children and
Families’ foster home licensing stan­
dards, as well as the additional re­
quirements o f the Morrison Center
Program with which they are a ffili­
ated. Proctor Parents are limited to
two children per household in order
to provide the children with indi­
vidualized attention.
Proctor Parents work closely with
the program’ s therapists, counse­
lors and teachers regarding the ch il­
dren or adolescents in their care
They assist in the development o f
Have A Heart Food
Drive provides relief
The Portland Police Bureau’ s
Sunshine Division and United Gro­
cers are once again preparing to help
needy families throughout the Port­
land area through the Have a Heart
Food Drive, the largest food drive o f
the year for the Sunshine Division.
The Oregonian’ s FoodDay sec­
tion is helping in the drive by insert­
ing a paper bag in the February 4
issue o f the paper. People are en­
couraged to bring their non-perish­
able donated items in this bag (or
other containers) to any o f the 62
Portland area participating United
Grocers’ retailers.
Stores participating in the drive
include Thriftway, Sentry Supermar­
kets, Kienow ’ s, Select markets and
many other independent retailers.
Donations w ill be accepted through
Friday, Feb. 14.
The Sunshine Division w ill use
the food donations to help feed fam i-
lies in need throughout the year.
Last year alone, more than 185,000
lbs. o f food were gathered during the
Have a Heart Food Drive. Topping
that amount by five percent is this
year’ s goal.
Kadeem D. Strickland
Female; January 24,1997
7 lb; 19"
Mother: Crystal Ball
Father: Patrick D. Strickland
We’re All Called to be Leaders
centuries o f struggle and agitation for
our equal rights,” Henry and Comel
write. “ We, the members o f the Tal­
ented Tenth, must accept our histori­
cal responsibility and live King’scredo
that none o f us is free until each o f us
is free, and that all o f us are brothers
and sisters, in spirit.”
When 1 was growing up, I was
taught that the world had a lot o f
problems that I should struggle and
work to change M y parents taught
me that extra intellectual and mate­
rial gifts brought with them the p riv i­
lege and responsibility o f sharing
m M arian W right E d eim an
I.ike many o f us. Henry Louis
Gates grew up poor and d id n ’t
know it A ll he knew was that his
father worked two jobs—loading
trucks at a paper m ill and as a night
janitor at a phone com pany- and
that the fam ily always ate well,
dressed nicely, and managed to put
a little money away for college. He
also knew that what his parents
expected from him d id n 't sound
like poor folks’ expectations.
"Certainly my parent never al­
lowed my brother or me to doubt
that we could become whatever we
chose,” Henry says in his new book,
The Future o f the Race," which he
wrote with fellow Harvard scholar
Cornel West. "N o r did they let us
doubt that the world would yield its
secrets i f only we turned our atten­
tion to it. They believed in the
possibility o f upward m obility, o f
racial betterment, o f collective
progress. We were to get just as
much education as we possibility
could, to stay the enemies o f rac­
ism, segregation, and discrimina­
tion. I f we heard it once, we heard
it a thousand times: Education is
the one th ing nobody can take away
w ith others.
They believed that service is the
rent each o f us pays for living, and
that service is the very purpose o f
life and not something you do in
your spare time or after you have
reached your personal goals.
Cornel and Henry say that the
lessons o f recent history and the
many challenges we have yet to over­
come as Black people require us to
take a fresh look at our ideas about
what it w ill take to move us forward.
They believe that we must all find
opportunities for positive change-
w ithin ourse I ves and w ith in our com­
munity. What about government’ s
role? They make the case for getting
people o ff welfare, training them for
good-paying jobs, and putting them
to work. We must demand a wide
range o f economic incentives to gen­
erate new investments in inner cit­
ies, youth apprenticeships with busi­
nesses, and larger tax credits for
money earned. And they urge us to
stand boldly against anti-Black rac­
ism, but warn us against continuing
to repeat the same old, stale form u­
las: “ to blame ' the man ’ for oppress­
ing us all, in exactly the same ways;
from you
But as the great Black scholar
W E D. DuBois noted nearly a cen­
tury ago, education, and any up­
ward m obility that came as a result,
meant a whole new set of responsi­
bilities. DuBois wrote that the "T a l­
ented Tenth," the most fortunate,
gifted, and successful minds in the
black community, were obligated
to help those less fortunate.
“ Dr. King did not die so that halt
o f us would make it’ and half o f us
would perish, forever tarnish ing two
Tyschal Lumbrea Blake
Female; January 30, 1997
10 lbs. 7 ounces; 24"
Mother: Sonya Alexander
Father: Anthony Blake all of Portland, OR
Tatianna Laiini Ousley
Female; January 29,1997
6 lbs. 4 oz; 18.5"
Mother: Monica D. Baker
Father: Sean Ousley
Phillip Edward Johnson III
Male; January 29, 1997
6 lbs 11 oz; 20"
Mother: Latashia (Todda) Homes
Father: Phillip Edward Johnson Jr.
An Intimate Tale of an African-American Southern Family
Kook Review
by E mma J. W isdom
elist Ntozake Shange has written an
express their talents and individual-
intimate tale o f an African-Am eri-
ity. Their father, a ship s carpenter.
was lost at sea when his ship sank.
Named for her mother’s favorite
natural dye, oldest sister Sassafrass
is a weaver, like her mother Hilda
Effania, and a sometime poet. Cy­
press is a dancer and precocious
Indigo, the “ serious and thoughtful’
one,” is a fiddler and medium o f the
spirit world.
t heir stories begin in Charleston,
South Carolina and then moves to
San Francisco, Los Angeles, and
New York before circling back to
Charleston The storylines follow
the lives o f the two older sisters,
Sassafrass and Cypress, as they pur­
sue their artistic calling away from
home, while youngest sister Indigo,
now growing into womanhood, re­
mains at home and consistently
baffles their mother.
D aughter In d ig o rem ains in
Charleston She shows an interest in
the violin but she refuses to accept
her mother’ s o ffe r to pay for formal
lessons, believing that " it (is) the
spirit o f things that matter(s)." She
does learn to play the violin by ear
and joins the two-member Junior
Geechee Capitans. She confounds
all o f H ilda’ s attempts to mold her
into a properly bred young woman
This moves her mother to express,
“ Something’ s got hold to my child,
I swear. She’s got too much south in
can southern family. This third novel
by Shange illuminates a mother’ s
love, patience, perseverance, and
tenacity in raising three unique
daughters alone, as each struggles to
Shange,
N to zake
(1 9 9 6 ).
Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo. Pica­
dor, 222p.
In Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo,
renowned playwright, poet, and nov-
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IFBRUARY 1997
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to scapegoat Koreans, Jews, women,
or even Black immigrants for fa il­
ure o f African Americans to seize
local entrepreneurial opportuni­
ties,” is to neglect our duty as lead­
ers o f our own community.
"N o t to demand that each mem­
ber o f the Black community accept
individual responsibility for her or
his behavior—whether that behav­
ior assumes the form o f Black-on-
Black homicide, violationsby gang
members against the sanctity o f the
church, unprotected and too early
sexual activity, gangster rap lyrics,
and hate o f any k in d -is to function
merely as ethnic cheerleaders sell­
ing w o o f tickets from the campus
or the suburbs, rather than saying
the d iffic u lt things that may be
unpopular with our fellows. Being
a leader does not necessarily mean
being loved; loving one’ s commu­
nity means daring to risk estrange­
ment and alienation from that very
community, in the short run, in
order to break the cycle o f poverty,
despair, and hopelessness that we
are in, over the long run."
I agree. What we desperately
need now is the kind o f leadership
that w ill allow us to move forward
as a community and as an entire
nations. Given the m ultitude o f
problems we face today, we must
recognize that we all have a re­
sponsibility to serve as leaders.
"The Future o f the Race, " w r it­
ten by Henry Louis Gates, Chair
man o f Harvard U niversity’ s Afro
American Studies Department, and
Cornel West, Professor o f A fro-
American Studies at Harvard, is
published by Alfred A K nopf and
is available at most major book
stores or by calling 212-751 -2600.
N obody does it B etter for L ess .
her.”
As a mother, H ilda ultim ately
realizes that, d iffic u lt as it is to do,
she must let go o f her daughters as
they seek their own destinies in life
Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo is a
richly unified and imaginative novel
The characters’ lives, hopes, dreams,
and disappointments are illuminated
as the intimate tales unfold The
author balances three (four, includ­
ing H ilda’ s) interrelated and paral­
lel stories told on several levels and
from varied points o f view Shange
is truly a great storyteller who is
adept at weaving a storyline that
piques and holds interest from be­
ginning to artistic end