Intro and prologue (revised)

Introduction - My American Sojourn

Welcome to Raymond’s Memoir Writing by me, Raymond Maxwell. Librarian, archivist. Retired foreign service officer, former naval officer and enlisted submariner from Greensboro, NC. Docent and storyteller. Study group leader for the August Wilson American Century Cycle.

I guess this is as good a place as any for an introduction.

And what goes into an introduction? One expects there will be folks who will find a reason to read what you’ve written, whether out of curiosity, or just because. So the introduction is a letter, a conversation if you will, with you, the reader. I want to talk to you about the writing of the book, why I wrote it, perhaps who is the intended audience. So let’s begin that conversation.

My 65th birthday fell in the middle of the coronavirus lock down of 2020 and my remote archiving contract was reaching its conclusion. I had time on my hands, and, I felt, a story worth telling. There were all these pieces floating around, these writings I had stashed on my hard drive, or posted to several different blogs, particularly my career transition blog, also called “might be time for a change here.” Those pieces became the nucleus of the thing. But there were bits and pieces that had not been written, nor even explored in my memory. So I made an outline and began the process of filling in the missing parts.

There is no great tragedy outside the normal ebb and flood of life that had to be overcome or that formed a central pivot around which events would turn. At least none that I claim. My sister and I had a fairly normal upbringing, and it was only when my mother told me there wasn’t money to buy the books for the Junior Great Books Program I wanted to join that I began to understand the idea that some families had less money and some had more. Not to be deterred, nonetheless, I decided to skip the “Junior” stage and go straight to the Great Books of the Western World whose volumes were available for free at the public library.

But back to the point. Why is my story even worth telling? Well, there is an element of egoism here, I mean, after all, it is my story. Life, wrote a young Langston Hughes, ain’t been no crystal stair. But it has been a progression of sorts, finding my way among the various paths that existed, and when necessary, finding my way back to the path. I share the story in case there is someone out there in similar circumstances, trying to find their way.

And who is the intended audience? I would hope some of this may be of interest to friends, colleagues, fellow travelers I’ve met along the way. My experiences in prep school might be of interest to my classmates and to the successive generations of folks who have tried that path. Certainly, speaking with current students, co-alums, suggests that many challenges not only remain, but are the same if not similar.

Perhaps some of my detours may be “enlightening” to anyone contemplating their own version of a detour.

Those navigating a career in a bureaucracy might find clues, if not solace, in my navigations, in the military, and in the foreign service. Even in way finding in general.

Someone may be curious about life on a submarine, or about the inner workings of foreign policy, the layers and levels underneath the romanticism and the pomp and glitter. They can find that in spades here.

Particularly, family, friends, near and far, this Bud’s for you, as the beer commercial says. And if you only know of me publicly, not closely, this Bud’s also for you. And if you are just curious about how and why a guy like me made it through a non-tragic life of ups and downs, overcoming minor setbacks and constantly charging forward, then hey, this Bud’s for you, too.

There is no potential movie here, not enough drama for the stage or the screen. It was recorded by his students that Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living." But Malcolm X is credited with the first corollary to the Socratic theorem: "The examined life is extremely painful." Join me in the examination because it’s all been worthwhile.

postscript. If you only read the foreword, the sandbox, the introduction, the prologue, the epilogue and the afterword you’ll get the gist of the story. You can do that in less than half an hour. But the grit of the story is in the details.

Prologue - Collage - Kaleidoscope

“I didn’t know what I was searching for. The only thing I knew was something was keeping me dissatisfied. Something wasn’t making my heart smooth and easy. Then one day my daddy gave me a song. That song had weight to it that was hard to handle. That song was hard to carry. I fought against it. Didn’t want to accept that song. I tried to give my daddy back his song. But I found it wasn’t his song. It was my song. It had come from deep inside me. I looked back in memory and gathered up pieces and snatches of things to make that song. I was making it up out of myself. And that song helped me on the road. Made it smooth to where my footsteps didn’t bite back at me. All the time that song getting bigger and bigger. It got so I used all of myself up in the making of that song. Then I was the song in search of itself.”

   - Bynum, from Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

This story is a collage of sorts, things pasted together over top of other, sometimes similar things. This prologue may be best described as a series of overlapping, intersecting, non-concentric circles. Things overlap. Things repeat. It also provides a kaleidoscopic view. Colors of images cross borders. I venture out to the edges and sometimes have to struggle to find my way back to the center. It is neither orderly nor uniform in shape or configuration. There is nothing I would change. I have no regrets.

They say Euripides invented the prologue. He prefixed a prologue to the beginning of his plays to explain upcoming action and make it comprehensible for his audience. Other dramatists in Ancient Greece continued this tradition, making the prologue a part of the formula for writing plays and epic poems. Greek prologues generally explained events that happened in time before the time depicted in the play. Roman dramatists carried the prologue to a new level, giving even greater importance to this initial part of their plays.

*

I was born and raised in Greensboro, NC, where I attended F.D. Bluford Elementary School. From Bluford we went to Lincoln Street Junior High School, also in the neighborhood. At Lincoln the Anne C. Stouffer Foundation people found me and presented me to Woodberry Forest School. Later, I attended the Governor’s School of North Carolina, a summer enrichment program for the state’s top-ranked high school students.

After three years at North Carolina A&T State University, where I bounced back and forth between majors in electrical engineering, biology and economics, I enlisted in the Navy Nuclear Power program. Following boot camp and engineering training, I reported to the Sturgeon-class nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, the USS Hammerhead (SSN-663).

Fifteen months later, I volunteered for the pre-commissioning crew of the USS Michigan (SSBN-727 (B)), the second of the then new Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, and served there from 1982 to 1985. 

From the Michigan, after a very short enlisted assignment at the Pentagon with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I ended up at the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) unit at Florida A&M University (FAMU) in Tallahassee, FL. At FAMU I earned a reserve Naval commission and a B.S. degree in Economics (summa cum laude, Distinguished Military Graduate). I got orders to the USS Luce (DDG-38), a Coontz-class guided missile destroyer.

In 1990, while still on active duty, I took and passed the Foreign Service written and oral exams. I joined the Foreign Service in May, 1992 at the end of my obligated military service. Later, assigned to Embassy London, I completed an M.A. at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), jamming up my evenings and weekends. I met Filomena Pinto Pereira in London through Guinea-Bissau mutual acquaintances. We got married and lived happily ever after.

My last foreign service assignment, capping a 20-year foreign service career, was as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Near East Affairs bureau (2011-2012). I am a MIT Seminar XXI fellow and a former member of the Warlord Loop. I served overseas in Guinea-Bissau, London, Angola, Ghana, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. I retired in 2013.

Post-retirement, I completed a graduate degree in library and information science at Catholic University and landed a my first job as a reference and instruction librarian at Western Carolina University. Within a year, I returned home to Washington. I loved the mountains but life apart was a drag.

***

Forty years ago, during a four year stint as a submarine diesel mechanic (among other things) I was exposed to pendulum motion. What, one might ask, does pendulum motion have to do with diesel operation? OK. So you have these cylinders (the Fairbanks Morse machines we ran had two opposing rows of twelve cylinders) that go up and down, hence reciprocating. Then there is this rocker arm assembly that connects and transfers the reciprocating action of the cylinders to rotating action of a main shaft, and it is that rotating action, inside a magnetic field that generates electricity.

So what is the pendulum connection? Well, these cylinders are timed to fire sequentially in a way to smoothly turn the shaft, mimicking a pendulum in that the piston starts at the cylinder top (one extreme) pushes down to the bottom (opposite extreme) compression ignites the fuel, the piston is driven back to the top, passing an imaginary point in its travel called top dead center. Same as the swing of a pendulum, far to one side, midpoint, far opposite side, back to the mid point, and so forth, covering the whole range of the pendulum swing.

So what? What does this have to do, say, with the price of tea in China? (A rather fitting analogy for another time, but some theorize demand and supply curves shift on an oscillating plane, setting the price, or as the old black preacher used to say, “da Sun do move.”)

Political “things,” movements, changes occur on a spectrum that is “pendulumic,” i.e., from one extreme, past the middle, to the opposite extreme, back past the middle, and on and on. Social “things” move on the same pendulum model, a sort of oscillation around a mean. Even businesses operate on a business cycle. It actually makes things predictable. And history can be viewed on the same alternating spectrum.

But in the political realm, you have to be careful. Entrenched interests seek to prevent the pendulum swing, to keep themselves or their party in power. But the pendulum is not just a nice thing to think about, it is actually physical law. We see a sort of contrived political alternation in the election of “opposite” parties for executive and legislative office, and correspondingly for judicial appointments. I say contrived because increasingly, in our two party system, the “opposing parties” begin to look so much alike as to become hardly indistinguishable, which basically means there is no pendulum motion at all. Ah, but as the old preacher, Reverend John Jasper used to say, “da Sun do move,” and the pendulum action is in effect, sooner or later. Of course, folks ridiculed Rev. Jasper because they thought he was saying the Sun revolved around the earth in a geocentric way described by Ptolemy of Alexandria, debunked by Copernicus and Galileo long ago. Now we know that the Sun moves through the galaxy, orbiting around the center of the Milky Way. (Now that’s a poem begging to be written.)

Those on the bottom will someday swing to the top. “Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.” And those at the top will eventually descend to the bottom. In an analogy, yesterday’s slave will be tomorrow’s master, a frightening consideration for some but a necessary prospect for all parties.

*

After retiring from the foreign service I worked on and off as a reference and instruction librarian, as a project archivist at a municipal repository, as an archivist consultant in a small town archives, as manuscripts librarian at a university research center and presently as a freelance contract archivist. Ever the bibliophile, going back to grad school in my late 50’s for a masters in library and information science was a challenge. Later, I completed docent training at the Library of Congress, where I led tours a couple of weekends per month before COVID derailed everything. Perpetuam uitae, doctrina.

One more thing. Since 2018 I have led an August Wilson American Century Cycle study group every spring in the OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) program at American University. In 2020, with the onset of COVID, we met by ZOOM! Ten plays in ten weeks. Eleven, give or take. In 2021 I experimented with two-day and three-day “short” course focusing principally on themes. And negotiations are underway to export the course to other OLLI programs nationwide.

Volume two (2) of the memoir project is apparently already underway. Time seems to be on my side.

Writing poetry is my creative outlet, my moments of relief from the daily routine. I figured out that poetry has three dimensions: it is autobiographic; it is ethnographic, and it is meta-poetic. That is, poetry reflects, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes unconsciously, the life events of the poet or writer, his immediate environment and state of mind, and, sometimes at a deep level of reflection, just what he or she thinks about poetry itself. I confess all three.

*

Again, by way of introduction.

I live in Washington, DC, the capital of the United States of America.

I am married to a loving wife. We have been together for 26 years. I dragged her around to the various hellholes and arm pits where I was assigned and she has always been a trooper, a very present help, and a trusted companion.

I’ve had formal instruction in four languages: French; Spanish; Portuguese; and Arabic. I have more books than bookcases to house them. Along the way I learned how to do stainless steel welding, diesel maintenance, warehouse management, government procurement and contracting, beekeeping, and weather forecasting.

Deep secrets. Poetry. I love reading it. A spirit that comes and goes forces me to write it on occasion. Percy Shelley, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Claude McKay, Etheridge Knight and Bob Kaufman are a few of my favorites. That’s a lot of favorites! I kept my love of poetry in the closet for many years.

During my late teenage years I experimented with the Baha’i faith and with a black nationalistic brand of Islam. I am not ashamed of either. Also, as a Boy Scout I earned every merit badge related to nature, conservation, and electronics.

My high school motto was “A posse ad esse,” that is, “from the possible to the actual.”

p.s. How did I leave out music? Perhaps because I haven’t been doing any serious listening lately. Wow, is that ever a metaphor!? Anyway, I played viola as a child and began to internalize the overall majestic feeling of “making one’s own sound.” A local percussionist, Hubert Long, with whom I worked at a summer job at UNC-G, introduced an 8th grade me to jazz, classical jazz, mainstream jazz, modern jazz, free-form and improvisational jazz, and that mere introduction pretty much changed the way I’d view the world from that point on. Jazz, blues, it’s all the same for me. Just recently, teaching August Wilson plays has fully acquainted me with the majesty of the Blues, the original American music.