Dori Maynard – Broad Jumping the Fault Line
by
Martin Higgins
I’ll admit, as a writer and raconteur, I have two minor advantages over normal, well-adjusted people.
Equally blessed and cursed with near total recall, I’ve got several dozen billion synapses stocked with detailed memories in my noggin that reach back to my first year. Add to that, my obsessive pre-occupation with understanding everything I interact with in detail and behold, the burgeoning warehouse of a lifetime’s moments – a dazzling repository for endless second guessing, and an information cataloguing system that would make a Dewy-stack, librarian fingerflap her lips and drool.
So, when a 2011 Virginia temblor cracked the Washington Monument and crazed its tourists, my first thought was only three synapse-snaps from the obelisk to a friend I hadn’t seen in years: Earthquake, New Madrid Fault Line, Fault Line Framework, Dori Maynard.
Dori and I were friends in the mid-nineties; neighbors in a complex of San Francisco Bay lofts. We shared a love of great writing, good food, spontaneous comedy and the occasional tipple of Eire’s Usige Beathe.
She was busy carrying on the work of her recently deceased father, Robert C. Maynard (insert link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Maynard), an esteemed journalist/writer and the editor, publisher and owner of The Oakland Tribune – the first African-American owned, major metro newspaper.
I was busy directing theatre, mourning the loss of my brother and acting like a midlife-lost jackass.
Maybe we were both just mourning, looking for a way to re-enter our lives which waited patiently, sidetracked, while we healed.
Note: In 1992, the Oakland Tribune closed its doors… partly due to the Loma Prieta earthquake that flattened parts of San Francisco and the East Bay.
The Fault Line Framework (insert link: http://mije.org/faultlines)is Dori’s masterwork, built upon her dad’s brilliant observation that fault lines of race, class, gender, generation and geography are the most enduring forces shaping our lives, experiences and social tensions.
More than anyone else I’ve known in my life, Dori was finely attuned, well beyond overt divisions, to the subtle cracks and fissures that turn our social landscape into an infinite mosaic of puzzle pieces. She is a sharp, insightful woman who has a mission in life; a strategy and a goal. But there is also a prankster there; a comedic cohort of the first order.
My operational motto has always been, “If you can laugh at something, you can live with it.”
On a particularly balmy, summer evening in `95, we attended a dinner party in the Oakland Hills. Nearly two dozen renowned African-American writers, journalists, educators and business people were chatting at the huge oak table when we arrived. I took a seat next to Dori and, sitting there, in all my Celtic-Czech radiance, I stood out like a dollop of cottage cheese on a chocolate cake.
One guest kept a wary eye on me and, when the table talk turned to the ongoing O.J. Simpson trial, he waited for a pause and boomed, “Well, Martin here is probably a little uncomfortable with our conversation, given the topic and… present company. Are you uncomfortable, Martin?” Dori kicked me under the table and I shot a glance at her. She gave me Standard Conspiratorial Smile/Grimace #37 and a 1,000-yard stare.
I knew what she was thinking, “Speak your mind, but stay cool…”
So I raised my wine glass and said, “Well, not really, sir. But I am sure about one thing.”
The room took a deep breath. I took a sip, swallowed and smiled.
“I know exactly where my gloves are…”
Nervous laughter and a modicum of respect and relief followed. Partially “I understand and appreciate your cheeky tact” respect, but there was a healthy skosh of “Who the Hell is this guy?” in the mix. Dori tapped me again and smiled a little too wide. I hadn’t let her down and had acceptably straddled the Fault Line that ran across the table, separating me from the mashed potatoes and gravy.
Weeks later I invented an excuse to drive up to wine country so I could hit some of the wine tasting cellars.
“I need to run up to the Sebastiani Theatre to drop off some of my stand-up headshots and weasel a booking.” I said to Dori, “Wanna’ go to Sonoma?”
Three vineyards later, after numerous demi-glasses of eager-yet-immature vino, I was seized by a powerful thirst for real drink. So, we headed to a nearby ginmill for some light drunkation. Blame the Irish in me.
The Czech part is happy to stroll dismal gift stores full of Native American chachkies made in Shanghai and flick noticeably empty dream catchers.
We bellied the bar and sized up the haggard, retiree locals working on their midweek, midday slosh. Dori ordered some decent wine, but I went straight for three fingers of J. Daniels Old #7 Mood Enhancer, neat.
Someone’s quarter woke up the jukebox and, upon hearing the opening vamp of Starland Vocal’s Band execrable Afternoon Delight, I spouted, “I think all this merriment and bonhomie calls for a toast!”
Dori gave me the blank stare. At first I thought it was a reaction to the insipid crooning of “Skyrockets in flight! Afternoon Dee-light!” But she wasn’t with me; she was listening to something I didn’t hear.
It took a moment before the din of slurred mumbling voices flowed and ebbed to a hush. One of the patron’s was snarling; his voice punched through the hazy air and caught me completely by surprise.
“…so I told that N***** I’d have to…” then, “…what this N*****’s friend said was…”
I went in full Code 3, `Nam Vet mode. I nudged Dori. “Do it!” I whispered through gritted teeth. She flashed back The Stare. “DO IT!” I growled. She shook her head and ignored them.
“Fine,” I huffed. “I’ll handle it.”
I tossed back the Jack and sucked in a fiery, whiskey/astringent breath and opened up the box where I store my baritone announcer voice.
“Negroes? Are we having a problem with Negroes, People?”
All conversations stopped, all eyes were on us and the bartender fumbled, then killed the juke. I turned to Dori. “Say, Missy, do you know anything about Negroes? These folks are vexed.” I looked back at the people in their shocked silence, eyes wide open.
Realtime braincrashes happened along the length of the bar. One soused clown muttered, “Watch your language.”
We left and, as we walked back to my car, I asked why she hadn’t hammered the inconsiderate bastards. “I don’t do that, Marty.” she said, “You do that.” And we just left it at that.
In 2010, on the day before Halloween, Dori attended the Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington D.C. While waiting for a friend in a hotel lobby, she was accosted by the manager. “Ma’am, you’ll have to leave the hotel.” He then, escorted her through the lobby, to the exit. According to her recounting of the incident, she didn’t make a scene in response to the manager’s ignorance and rudeness, but later wrote:
“People have asked me whether I want (the manager) fired. The truth is I don’t want him ever to do this to someone else, particularly someone younger and truly vulnerable. But firing him won’t solve the problem… I would like to sit down and have a conversation with the general manager and his colleagues. I want to know what and who he saw when he looked at me in the lobby of his hotel. I want to discuss his underlying assumptions and how he came to them.”
When I heard of the incident, I wished I could have been there to put the manager in his place. Not because it would have solved anything. Just because… I do that.
But, Dori had handled the situation with a cool elan that simply evades me. She had the Fault Line Framework to lean against, draw from, and use to compartmentalize the situation into an event that would be put in its appropriate place – understood by the participants, analyzed and corrected. Dori is building a better world; word by word, line by line, person by person.
And me? She was right. I’m more of an earthquake.
Dori J. Maynard was the President of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. http://www.maynardije.org/ Dori passed away on February 25th, 2015. I miss you Dori... you were the "just-right" cookie.
- end -
(c) 2015 Martin Higgins
all rights reserved.
Equally blessed and cursed with near total recall, I’ve got several dozen billion synapses stocked with detailed memories in my noggin that reach back to my first year. Add to that, my obsessive pre-occupation with understanding everything I interact with in detail and behold, the burgeoning warehouse of a lifetime’s moments – a dazzling repository for endless second guessing, and an information cataloguing system that would make a Dewy-stack, librarian fingerflap her lips and drool.
So, when a 2011 Virginia temblor cracked the Washington Monument and crazed its tourists, my first thought was only three synapse-snaps from the obelisk to a friend I hadn’t seen in years: Earthquake, New Madrid Fault Line, Fault Line Framework, Dori Maynard.
Dori and I were friends in the mid-nineties; neighbors in a complex of San Francisco Bay lofts. We shared a love of great writing, good food, spontaneous comedy and the occasional tipple of Eire’s Usige Beathe.
She was busy carrying on the work of her recently deceased father, Robert C. Maynard (insert link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Maynard), an esteemed journalist/writer and the editor, publisher and owner of The Oakland Tribune – the first African-American owned, major metro newspaper.
I was busy directing theatre, mourning the loss of my brother and acting like a midlife-lost jackass.
Maybe we were both just mourning, looking for a way to re-enter our lives which waited patiently, sidetracked, while we healed.
Note: In 1992, the Oakland Tribune closed its doors… partly due to the Loma Prieta earthquake that flattened parts of San Francisco and the East Bay.
The Fault Line Framework (insert link: http://mije.org/faultlines)is Dori’s masterwork, built upon her dad’s brilliant observation that fault lines of race, class, gender, generation and geography are the most enduring forces shaping our lives, experiences and social tensions.
More than anyone else I’ve known in my life, Dori was finely attuned, well beyond overt divisions, to the subtle cracks and fissures that turn our social landscape into an infinite mosaic of puzzle pieces. She is a sharp, insightful woman who has a mission in life; a strategy and a goal. But there is also a prankster there; a comedic cohort of the first order.
My operational motto has always been, “If you can laugh at something, you can live with it.”
On a particularly balmy, summer evening in `95, we attended a dinner party in the Oakland Hills. Nearly two dozen renowned African-American writers, journalists, educators and business people were chatting at the huge oak table when we arrived. I took a seat next to Dori and, sitting there, in all my Celtic-Czech radiance, I stood out like a dollop of cottage cheese on a chocolate cake.
One guest kept a wary eye on me and, when the table talk turned to the ongoing O.J. Simpson trial, he waited for a pause and boomed, “Well, Martin here is probably a little uncomfortable with our conversation, given the topic and… present company. Are you uncomfortable, Martin?” Dori kicked me under the table and I shot a glance at her. She gave me Standard Conspiratorial Smile/Grimace #37 and a 1,000-yard stare.
I knew what she was thinking, “Speak your mind, but stay cool…”
So I raised my wine glass and said, “Well, not really, sir. But I am sure about one thing.”
The room took a deep breath. I took a sip, swallowed and smiled.
“I know exactly where my gloves are…”
Nervous laughter and a modicum of respect and relief followed. Partially “I understand and appreciate your cheeky tact” respect, but there was a healthy skosh of “Who the Hell is this guy?” in the mix. Dori tapped me again and smiled a little too wide. I hadn’t let her down and had acceptably straddled the Fault Line that ran across the table, separating me from the mashed potatoes and gravy.
Weeks later I invented an excuse to drive up to wine country so I could hit some of the wine tasting cellars.
“I need to run up to the Sebastiani Theatre to drop off some of my stand-up headshots and weasel a booking.” I said to Dori, “Wanna’ go to Sonoma?”
Three vineyards later, after numerous demi-glasses of eager-yet-immature vino, I was seized by a powerful thirst for real drink. So, we headed to a nearby ginmill for some light drunkation. Blame the Irish in me.
The Czech part is happy to stroll dismal gift stores full of Native American chachkies made in Shanghai and flick noticeably empty dream catchers.
We bellied the bar and sized up the haggard, retiree locals working on their midweek, midday slosh. Dori ordered some decent wine, but I went straight for three fingers of J. Daniels Old #7 Mood Enhancer, neat.
Someone’s quarter woke up the jukebox and, upon hearing the opening vamp of Starland Vocal’s Band execrable Afternoon Delight, I spouted, “I think all this merriment and bonhomie calls for a toast!”
Dori gave me the blank stare. At first I thought it was a reaction to the insipid crooning of “Skyrockets in flight! Afternoon Dee-light!” But she wasn’t with me; she was listening to something I didn’t hear.
It took a moment before the din of slurred mumbling voices flowed and ebbed to a hush. One of the patron’s was snarling; his voice punched through the hazy air and caught me completely by surprise.
“…so I told that N***** I’d have to…” then, “…what this N*****’s friend said was…”
I went in full Code 3, `Nam Vet mode. I nudged Dori. “Do it!” I whispered through gritted teeth. She flashed back The Stare. “DO IT!” I growled. She shook her head and ignored them.
“Fine,” I huffed. “I’ll handle it.”
I tossed back the Jack and sucked in a fiery, whiskey/astringent breath and opened up the box where I store my baritone announcer voice.
“Negroes? Are we having a problem with Negroes, People?”
All conversations stopped, all eyes were on us and the bartender fumbled, then killed the juke. I turned to Dori. “Say, Missy, do you know anything about Negroes? These folks are vexed.” I looked back at the people in their shocked silence, eyes wide open.
Realtime braincrashes happened along the length of the bar. One soused clown muttered, “Watch your language.”
We left and, as we walked back to my car, I asked why she hadn’t hammered the inconsiderate bastards. “I don’t do that, Marty.” she said, “You do that.” And we just left it at that.
In 2010, on the day before Halloween, Dori attended the Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington D.C. While waiting for a friend in a hotel lobby, she was accosted by the manager. “Ma’am, you’ll have to leave the hotel.” He then, escorted her through the lobby, to the exit. According to her recounting of the incident, she didn’t make a scene in response to the manager’s ignorance and rudeness, but later wrote:
“People have asked me whether I want (the manager) fired. The truth is I don’t want him ever to do this to someone else, particularly someone younger and truly vulnerable. But firing him won’t solve the problem… I would like to sit down and have a conversation with the general manager and his colleagues. I want to know what and who he saw when he looked at me in the lobby of his hotel. I want to discuss his underlying assumptions and how he came to them.”
When I heard of the incident, I wished I could have been there to put the manager in his place. Not because it would have solved anything. Just because… I do that.
But, Dori had handled the situation with a cool elan that simply evades me. She had the Fault Line Framework to lean against, draw from, and use to compartmentalize the situation into an event that would be put in its appropriate place – understood by the participants, analyzed and corrected. Dori is building a better world; word by word, line by line, person by person.
And me? She was right. I’m more of an earthquake.
Dori J. Maynard was the President of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. http://www.maynardije.org/ Dori passed away on February 25th, 2015. I miss you Dori... you were the "just-right" cookie.
- end -
(c) 2015 Martin Higgins
all rights reserved.