By Guy Trammell Jr.
Reflections:
· In May 2022, 73 years after the Tuskegee Airmen, using outdated planes, won the U.S. Air Force’s first ever Top Gun competition to determine the best pilots among all 12 divisions, their triumph was recognized. With only one of the winning pilots still alive, a plaque proclaiming their achievement was placed at Nellis Air Force Base, AZ, the site of the Top Gun challenge in September 1947. The Air Force for decades had listed the first winner as “unknown.”
· In April 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first Black female U.S. Supreme Court Justice. In addressing the Alabama Legislature’s gerrymander case that prevents formation of a second majority Black voting district and a possible second Black representative in Congress, Judge Jackson gave a history lesson on Alabama’s longstanding and deliberate voting discrimination: “…people based on their race were being treated unequally.”
· At a Nevada rally in 2022, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville declared all Black people to be criminals, stating, “They want reparation because they feel the people that do the crime are owed that.” (Wow, so all of us Blacks, including the college football players he coached and who helped make him rich, are criminals?)
· In August, we lost Chief Leon Frazier, an incredible law enforcement officer, historian, public servant, justice advocate, protector of the downtrodden, and media master. He recorded our first Common Ground visit, and joined us in the work. We loved this “Super Fine” human being!
· According to the CDC, 2022 ended with mostly breakthrough Covid cases and deaths among the vaccinated. Dr. Alondra Nelson, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology, stated the virus is “airborne” and “we must clean our indoor air.”
Hopes:
· In 2023, we will open more windows, avoid crowded indoor spaces, and hold more activities outside.
· We will use more solar energy, including easy-to-install roof shingles and wall-sized storage batteries.
· The world will learn, as Tuskegee’s Veterans Hospital celebrates 100 years in February, the amazing contributions the Veterans Hospital’s all Black administrators, physicians, nurses and staff have made to medicine. It became a campus of medical excellence in clinical practice and research, staffed with the nation’s elite pioneers in everything from psychology to surgery to podiatry and therapy. Yes, they were Black, and they were the best!
· Cancer victims will use T-cell rehab, repurposed drugs and other new cancer cures.
· And more of us will leave our comfort zones and communicate with each other as family.
By Amy Miller
I like to make New Year’s resolutions I can accomplish: buy better shoes; throw away chipped plates; write a letter or two before summer. Neither being a kinder person nor shedding my insecurities is an intention I can make happen just because I resolve to do so on Jan. 1.
Many fellow revelers do not believe in this contrived tradition of making resolutions, I know. But from my perspective, this day gives us a chance to review and revisit, resolve and renew. On Thanksgiving we show gratitude; on Veterans Day we thank soldiers; and New Year’s Day we reflect on who and where we want to be. And so, below I offer a hodgepodge of five reflections from 2022 along with five hopes for 2023.
Reflections:
· In 2022, we reacquainted ourselves with plane travel, parties, working at an office. It was harder than we, or at least I, would have predicted.
· Being forced to spend so much time outside in recent years – exercising, socializing and avoiding cabin fever — was a gift I am loathe to give up.
· The quiet life was beginning to get stale by 2022, but re-adjusting to a schedule that was more complicated than eat, take a walk and sit at the computer was challenging.
· The fortitude of Ukrainians gave us an awe-inspiring look at the human spirit, and the perceived value of democracy and self-rule.
· Too many people continued to use words in every day life that are corporate, academic and unnecessary.
Hopes:
· As we emerge from lockdowns and cabins, it is time to venture somewhere new.
· Friends, family and the greater Seacoast community have worked for years to support the Eben Ezer School in Milot, Haiti, so it can educate hundreds of children who might otherwise not get an education. A guesthouse and café built there to support this school will likely open to visitors in 2023, a big accomplishment we have dreamed of and worked toward for years.
· Death and aging are not popular topics, but getting comfortable with the cycle of life is a good goal, if not a particularly Western pursuit.
· The Tuskegee/South Berwick Sister City has led to friendships between people in our communities and understanding and love between Black and white Americans that could spread within and outside our towns.
· Any list of hopes includes world peace, a more equitable planet and a world that starts better protecting its deteriorating environment. But in the spirit of achievable aspirations, for the first time ever I added exercise – the nation’s most popular resolution – as a New Year’s resolution.
Color Us Connected 