Postcards from Lonnie — Life on the street corner

My brother, Lonnie, had a unique perspective on life, shaped by his life on the street, the people he met, the kindness (and unkindness) he encountered, and a Norman Rockwell childhood in the 1950s and 60s. Here are 10 thoughts from Lonnie Johnson, found in my book, Postcards from Lonnie: How I Rediscovered My Brother on the Street Corner He Called Home. 

1. I disappear frequently. When I come back, the people or situations have taken care of themselves and I get treated with a lot more respect and affection.

2. I cry with happiness, I cry with sorrow. I love the sunset, but there’s still tomorrow.

3. With whoever remains, I will be a grump that people have fun with, I pray.

4. When you are young, it seems like the whole world belongs to you.

5. If you want someone to love you, you have to give the love first.

6. You ever watch two dogs in a puddle? They’re having fun, they play, get wet, and then shake it off on their masters!

7. The most important thing I carry that no one can take from me is my memory.

8. My most happy times are with my 50 or so pigeons who eat out of my hand and light on me without leaving droppings. They have peaceful and reassuring voices. Far out!

9. I never have bad dreams. They are always both beautiful and informative.

10. I own nothing but what I wear. Excuse me. I have and own faith.

Thoughts about demonstrators and authenticity

Even my most right-leaning friends agree that what happened to George Floyd was a horror, immoral, inexplicable and inexcusable. I managed to see only a few seconds of the almost nine-minute recording of a live, real-time murder. Those few seconds were plenty.

When I see the demonstrators on the news, I really wish I could join them. I'm sorry I'm too chicken. And I feel frustrated wondering what I can do.

The truth is, they remind me of me. When I was in high school, college and even graduate school, I was idealistic and hopeful. I believed that I had the right to demonstrate, to shout and carry signs and sit on steps of government buildings. (I believed I had the right not to wear a bra, too, but I never exercised that particular right. Some rights are better unexercised.) Most of all, I believed that all those actions — by me and the thousands of other participants in various demonstrations for various causes — might actually have an impact, might result in change.

The demonstrators of the past couple of weeks get what America, the Constitution and rights are all about. They believe they have the right, they believe they might make a difference. They're hopeful. They're idealistic. Ignorant? Probably not. Naive? Maybe. Authentic? Mostly.

Then there are the bottom-feeders — the looters, the opportunists, the imported (and probably paid)  thugs for whom a demonstration is as good an opening for their kind of chaos as a hurricane, a forest fire, or a flood. They are the worst kind of cynics: they don't believe in anything but gain — their own, personal, immediate gain. But worse, they are fine with distracting from the genuine heart of the demonstrations. They are fine with enabling other, more subtle cynics to label the demonstrators "barbarians," "destroyers of democracy," and other melodramatic epithets. 

Please, can we separate the one from the other? Agree or disagree with the demonstrators' cause, —their message, their methods, their demands, their slogans — but there is no way to disagree with their right to demonstrate. Whichever wing you prefer to lean toward, please talk yourself out of lumping together the authentic with the phony, the idealistic with the cynical, the civic-minded (and civilly disobedient) with the truly self-serving and narcissistic.

The right to be a bottom-feeder is not a Constitutional guarantee. The right to breathe is, and it's worth demonstrating for.