I started this book when Deb Coulter-Jackson wrote her book about Jane Foreman. At first, I was angry that there was nothing in the book at all about the Programming Academy or Portland Oregon. I took this as a personal insult. But little by little (with some wise words from Ruth), I realized that the book The Slave Formerly Known as Jane Foreman was the story about a cast of characters that met in a high school in Ohio. It was their story. So I decided to write my story. Here we have it.
It is time to get my readers caught up with my family to where we are in 2073. My kids are all in their mid to late 30's. That is the same age range of their partners. Sam has had a long-term relationship with Amy Xia. They have chosen not to get married. Sam married Ann Ng a few months after Mary's wedding. Julie married Douglas Fisher at about the same time. Like Raymond, Bobbie has a long-time partner, Mathew Green, but has chosen not to get married. All of them have children of their own. I wanted to list all 18 of my grandchildren. They are aged four months through age 14. I got overruled. The family voted to keep the names of the grandchildren out of this book. It was the price I had to pay to get their cooperation on all other aspects of this book. I am allowed to refer to grandchildren as a group, like a flock of birds, but I am forbidden to give them names and unique identities. So somehow I must end this book without naming the 18 people who are most precious to me right now. I can say that they are all the colors of the rainbow. I can also say that they can all speak Mandarin. It is an event when we invade a Chinese restaurant. By now, just about everyone in the Chinese community knows who we are.
Fifteen years ago, Mary and Samantha got married. Just after the wedding, I asked Mary about their plans for children. She replied, “It is very important that our children look like they are a proper mixture of their parents. I would have to search the whole country to find a willing sperm donor who is the same blend of Chinese and black as I am. Portland is loaded with white folks that look like Samantha. So I will carry all our babies since it is so important to have kids that look just right.” I was outraged. I argued, “You spent your lifetime arguing that you and Bobbie are twin sisters. Now you want to match your kids like you were buying the right shade of paint at a store? What has gotten into you?” Mary answered, “Sisters are one thing, and babies are another.” It took me a few months to discover that she was yanking my chain. Mary and Samantha gave birth to three beautiful children. I do not know the criteria for choosing sperm donors, but getting the skin tone to match was not on the list.
Ruth and Quincy's parents have all passed. When they could not work any longer, we took them into our big house. We hired staff to take care of them round the clock. Their lives were both bitter and sweet. They all lived long enough to see slavery abolished. They lived long enough to discover their children were deeply respected all across the nation. Even more important, they learned how much their children loved them. As each one of these fabulous people left us, we held a banquet in their honor and memory.
Quincy had a nasty accident three months ago. A truck swerved in traffic and knocked him off his bicycle. He broke his leg and collarbone and had a bad cut on his face. The healing has been slow, due to his age. He is still walking with a cane and a big limp. We have all insisted that he only travel by car now. We hired a driver for him. Ruth likes to travel with him a lot. Faith and I joke that Ruth does not trust Quincy not to have an affair with his driver. Both of us knew how unlikely this was, but we did enjoy the joke.
Four years ago, we totally refurbished our house. It was virtually gutted and rebuilt in the same location. We rented a large house for almost a year while the work went on. We now have a secure sub-basement for our memorabilia and our treasures. Our new house has much more security, and we have better communications than the old house. Now we don't have to run around the big house looking for people. After a few decades of chasing around the house, it gets a bit old. We have an elevator, which was very useful for getting Ruth and Quincy's parents from their bedrooms to the dining room. There is a motion detector system in the shooting range in the basement to prevent any accidents from happening. The zip line in the backyard is padded and safer than before. We have a fancier breed of chickens in the yard, but we still raise our own chickens. I think we are the same people, but we do live in a bit more comfort. I have to say that I am tired of the jokes that end with the punchline, “The House that Chris Rebuilt.”
Our tradition of having a special Friday night meal did not translate well into having everyone over to our house. Each family unit has a special Friday night meal at their own house. We all still take late night walks on the full moon. Perhaps twice a year, we do it all together with all the children, partners, and grandchildren. As we gather together, we refer to “kids” and “parents.” The four people who bought a house together in 2032 (forty years ago!) are referred to as “the GP's” or “the partners.”
Once or twice a month, we have dinner, usually at a Chinese restaurant, with the extended family. We call these dinners The Council of the Elders. We limit these dinners to grandchildren who are eleven years or older. When you take the four partners, ten parents (when you count their partners), four grandkids who are old enough, plus Jennie and her husband and child, that gives you 21 people. It is at The Council of the Elders that the parents and the partners begin to offer the newest generation some sense of who they are and how they got there.
When my own kids were small, we were not famous. Our personal lives were our own. It was true that some of our neighbors were bothered by the fact that we treated our slaves as normal people (and even worse, our slaves treated Faith and me like normal people), but no one gossiped about us.
Things are very different now. The grandkids come with so many questions, such as, “Are you gay?” This never came up when the kids were small. We all just lived with each other. So I answered, “Wendy, why don't you ask your father. He grew up in our house.” If the reader has been paying attention, the reader knows that I am not allowed to name any of my grandchildren. So now you know that none of the grandkids are actually named Wendy. Wendy answered, “My father says he never checked who slept with whom. But Bobbie and Mary are living proof that you all have slept with different partners. Great-aunt Jennie says that she once walked into a bedroom and saw Faith and Ruth having sex. Isn't that gay?” I replied, “You seem to have answered your own question. Or are you trying to ask if I ever sleep with Quincy? Let me answer your question this way. Gay and Straight are names people use for couples. I have been part of a true partnership made up of four people. I love all of my partners. But here is an important point. Most people are so used to couples that speaking openly about our relationships can be damaging. You do not want headlines on the newspaper quoting you, do you?” Wendy emphatically stated, “No!” I continued, “Ever since your parents' wedding, people have lost their curiosity about our family's private affairs. Please do not say or do anything that would revive this curiosity unless it is something very, very important to you.” Wendy looked disappointed. I added, “Do you want to know how we came to be a partnership?”
At this point, all the parents were wide-eyed. They had rarely heard us old folks be so open to discussing our personal sex life. Faith took over from me. She said, “Chris knew that before we were married that I sometimes slept with women. When our partners joined our family, we told them that they had a choice to accept or reject our offer to them. Our offer included allowing all of us to form additional deep and personal relationships. We would not have an extended family of thirty people if they rejected the offer. So we are the people we are today because two married couples came together to become one partnership.”
Ruth spoke up, “One way to think about this is that we are all married to each other. Married people love each other, have kids, raise kids, and God willing, live long enough to see their grandkids thrive. So we are no different than other people. The question ‘Are we gay?’ seems to be a way for your friends to ask, ‘Are your GPs different from my GPs?’ But the question is loaded because the question implies that being gay is wrong. My own opinion is that you should feel free to answer this question any way you want. You can say ‘No,’ ‘Yes,’ or ‘Maybe’ as you wish. And you are free to choose the life partner or partners you desire as well. Follow your heart, and do not worry about the questions that other people have.”
Samantha added, “Look, Mary and I are gay. We are both women who live together and are parents together. When we walk outside together, we hold hands. How often do you see Ruth and Faith hold hands or Chris and Quincy hold hands? Not very often, and when they do, it all seems to be part of a joke. My own thinking is that each GP has a primary partner, the one that they married. As a double couple, they all have additional sexual partners who they use to strengthen the bonds of the partners, with the goal of strengthening the bonds with their primary partner. The whole thing would become unglued if anyone of them switched who was their primary partner was.”
Quincy added, “Well thank you, Dr. Barnes. You just shaved three years off my therapy. No, I am serious, that makes a lot of sense to me. I just never thought of it that way.” Even the smartest grandkid was getting lost at this point. They all wanted a translation that they could understand. Ruth said, “Samantha says that Quincy and I love each other the most and that Ruth and Chris love each other the most. Anything else we do in our partnership to show love and affection bounces around until it makes our primary partner happy. The next time that I sleep with Faith or Chris, I want a laser or ultrasound device so that I can watch the love bounce around until it hits Quincy. I'm sorry, I should be careful about my words tonight. I like Samantha's approach. I certainly like the positive spin it gives everything. I hate it when people are all judgmental and say things about me having kids with two different men. I happen to have two husbands: my main husband and my second husband.”
The grandkids wanted to know how old Bobbie and Mary were when they learned that they were “crossover kids.” Bobbie said, “I think I was nine or ten years old. When kids learn that it takes one mother and one father to make a baby, my parents were very clear as to who the biological mommy was and who the biological daddy was. There was never a secret about anything. But it took a few years for me to realize the significance of the love story that led to the birth of Mary and me.” Wendy asked, “What do you mean?” Bobbie answered, “Well, Mary and I knew that our lives depended on keeping the family together with all four adults. We also acted out a little bit, since that was a lot of pressure on two little kids. I think we gave the partners a lot of grief. It was hard for us to be quiet kids and good students like Sam.”
We got many more questions. The younger grandkids wanted to know the details of our bedrooms. In our new house, we had adjoining bedrooms with a semi-hidden door connecting them. The grandkids loved operating the hidden latch and exploring the common room the partners used as a closet.
As is my pattern, I get roped into projects by other people. Jane Foreman visited me and praised our family's leadership of Liberation University. She was concerned about the pace of development of quality higher education in the rest of the country. We covered many topics until we identified the areas where I could have a leading role. Once again, I leaned on my family (especially Faith, Sam, and Samantha) to help execute these plans.
Right now, I am working on three related projects. One is to assemble as many books as PDF's which allow the underlying text to be captured. We are not so interested in trashy novels but in books with lasting social, economic, or historical import. We also want to scan as many textbooks as possible. We need millions of skilled workers in our new America. Our effort to revive the printing industry has been lagging. There are enough books still in circulation to depress the industry, but not enough of the right books in the right places to foster education. We are trying to spread electronic books to encourage the publishing industry, not to suppress it. But when a print book costs five dollars, and an electronic book costs five cents to add to a computer network, it is hard to jump-start the publishing industry. If we could print textbooks for fifty cents each, then we can start another industry.
We have located the servers of Google, and have obtained millions of books which were still under copyright during the years that Google Books was operating. The archive is so massive that it is overwhelming. I am working to de-centralize this archive so that people across America will be able to read from this enormous archive. My role is to help funnel talented people into this project and to fundraise from major business people.
My second project is to do what I can to encourage the formations of new Universities across America. We are spoiled here in Portland. In almost all of America, cities lost electricity for years at a time. Wiring and plumbing were destroyed and stripped. It is very tough to take an old college campus and turn it back to education. It is even more difficult to build a University from scratch. We are working on new tools and techniques to rehab old University buildings. We are designing simple building designs that can be shared around the country. We are working on innovative funding and staffing issues.
The pitch that Samantha and I give to the wealthy of America was based on a detailed explanation of the current critical historical moment. We covered our decline and the stabilization under the thumb of the Supreme Councils. Samantha discusses interest rate policy and how we need to avoid boom and bust cycles. I explain how a single functioning university can empower them to be at the forefront of the struggle to rebuild America. As a bonus, the new institution would bear their name. Meanwhile, Samantha would describe our vulnerability until we can regain control of our technology:
Right now, much of our technological, economic, and business life depends on what has been left from decades before. We have abolished slavery, but we are slaves to the past. Sometimes it seems that the more we learn about the technology of decades past, the more we discover that we need to learn and reconstruct. We are fortunate that we have been able to reconstruct as much as we have. With an educated workforce, we can start to focus on areas that we want to develop. It is about time we build the future that makes sense to us right now.
My third project is an attempt to deal with an intractable social problem: integrating ex-slaves into society. No one worries about the x plus or the double x. These ex-slaves are integrating well into society. It is the x minus that is on everyone's mind. The x minus are the frustrated x-slaves who expect the world to come to their aid. The problem is that their previous owners, Jane's group, my family, and others have spent a fortune to free these people. There is not enough economic activity in the economy to offer them enough money except for a few dollars beyond minimal food and dismal housing. All around them they see others advancing with greater wealth during the transition to better technology. No matter what is done to improve the situation of the x minus, the excitement of other sectors of the nation only highlights the stagnation of the x minus.
Where there are real problems, the x minus want their lives to be provided for them. No more working, just sitting back, collecting and spending money. Just like the advertisements for winning the lottery you see in museums these days. It is not going to happen. The macroeconomic policies that are recommended to assist the x minus are highly destabilizing. These will bring us back to the insane bubbles of the last two hundred years or so. When I argue this point, I am told how heartless I am.
The solution is centuries old: by dedicating ourselves with lifetimes of hard work, we make life better for the next generation. I know everyone wants a shortcut. If we have learned anything from history, it is that shortcuts can be very destructive. I still think we can find plenty of abandoned properties (farmland and factories) that we can turn over to the creativity of ex-slaves to help build a better life. I just need the right vehicle to make this argument.
Recently, I had the experience of watching the movie Schindler's List which was made by the celebrated filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Here is a description of this film:
Schindler's List is a 1993 American epic historical period drama film directed and co-produced by Steven Spielberg and scripted by Steven Zaillian. It is based on the novel Schindler's Ark by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally. The film relates a period in the life of Oskar Schindler, an ethnic German businessman, during which he saved the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories during World War II.
Watching the movie, I saw how morally compromised Oskar Schindler was. He starts by trading with (and cheating) high-ranking Nazi officers. Bit by bit he acts more morally, but the fact that he has been enmeshed with moral corruption puts him in a position to run a factory to supply the Nazi army using Jewish slave labor. Near the end of the war, Schindler devotes all his cash, gold and diamonds to the cause of keeping his enclave of Jewish workers alive. After the war, he eventually becomes a great hero for his singular actions. Schindler remains a complex character. He was brilliant at black market activities. Not shown in the movie is that Oskar is a failure at businesses. After the war, “the Schindler Jews” three times pooled their money to set up a business for Oskar Schindler. All three businesses failed.
I could not help but notice the many similarities between my life and the life of Oskar Schindler. We both traded in diamonds, gold, and cash as contraband to further a goal that ends with the liberation of many people. Just like Schindler, my initial efforts were to exploit captive people, not to save them. But rather than offer a detailed comparison between myself and Oskar, I will instead imagine that I have just died, and I am facing the Almighty. There is a prosecutor and a defense attorney to deal with my case. However, due to a mix-up, my defense attorney can only show up tomorrow. So I have to stand there as all of my faults are listed, without anything being said in my defense. My only hope is that even the Almighty does not get overwhelmed by the mountain of my faults. Here is the speech by the prosecutor:
This case is made more complicated by the fact that Chris is considered a great hero in the struggle against slavery. The problem is that Chris fails as an ordinary human, so he fails a thousand times over as a hero. All of the crucial decisions of his life were passive ones. His wife makes a proposal. He says, “That sounds fine to me.” Where are the positive steps that show that he has an active moral compass? What are his great innovations? What he did was based on a lust for money, a lust for sexual fulfillment, a lust for revenge, and a great desire to be a key part of important institutions.
If I look at the beginning of his life, he desired to be a computer programmer the way some kids want to be a firefighter. Did he understand what it took to be a programmer? Not really, but he focused his middle school and high school years on doing so. When he was in college, he found out how much better a programmer Faith was. Faith was very excited at working with Chris' parents because of her direct experience that she could make a real difference there. It was her first taste of being an adult and making adult decisions.
As a child, he was so focused on his own issues and aspirations that he ignored his own sister. If he had been one-quarter of the sibling to his sister than his own children have been to each other, he would have been much more able to pull her out of her downward spiral. Subsequent events showed that Jennie had no underlying mental issues. She just found life outside of her nuclear family much more fulfilling than life inside of it. He could have helped her to trust the rest of the family. If Chris and Jennie had been able to work together, they could have worked as a united front to resist the poisonous effects of that awful group of evil lawyers and gun-thugs.
He did not find a good solution to his hopeless situation after his parents died. All of that, bringing in a second couple was the work of Faith Winters. He stood by and said, “That sounds like a good idea.” When his wife was not bailing him out, it was his kids that were doing it. His daughters brought home a treasure chest of contraband. His wife told him how to use it. He enjoyed the bloodlust of waiting to kill thieves in the jewelry store. At every stage of his life, others showed him a roadmap. That Chris walked on that road does not make him a great moral leader.
When did he go after the business-stealing gun-thugs? When he wanted to close down the jewelry store, did he challenge the gun-thugs? No. He just shrugged and said, “Your offer is acceptable to me.” Only when the gang demanded his second business did he challenge them. And how did he do this? He allowed his young daughters to battle them virtually without any aid. He just sat in his chair, waiting until his kids killed all the gunmen. Does this sound like a great hero? Ordinarily, at this point, I would hear the objection of the defense attorney. Since she is not here, I will continue.
In the last fifteen years, Chris had three great moments of public triumph. These were Mary's wedding, Jane's rollout, and the formation of the so-called House of Chris. While publically, these were all triumphs laid onto Chris' feet. Each of them celebrated the accomplishments of others. The young ones and the Barnes family organized the wedding. The Programming Academy was based on an idea of his son Sam. When the Academy needed the best of leadership, Chris failed. Faith stepped in and saved the day. The financial doings which led to the formation of House of Chris were given to him by Jane Foreman, who masterfully anticipated exactly all the financial ups and downs.
Now let us get to the heart of this matter, which is his relationship with slavery. In middle school, he detested slavery. His wife suggested they use willing slaves to raise funds. He agreed. His own child was a slave. At one point, he and his wife owned eight slaves. It does not matter that they were well treated. He tolerated the legal fiction that one human can own another; in the same way that one human can own a bicycle. The real test for Chris came when he came home to discover his crossover girls brought home three slave women. His greed for revenue allowed him to trade a slave for another to keep his revenue and profits high. He showed no regard for the slave ejected from his household unless urged to by his family members.
His initial business to train slaves for programming positions was based on financial greed, and appealing to the greed of slave owners. They all clamored to be part of his program to get wealthy by having their slaves participate in his program. This was no grand project to free slaves. Slaves were no freer after years of his project than before. Only the scale of Jane's project and her insight into financial affairs allow him to make any real headway into freeing slaves. So the real question is how much of a moral leader was he? He freed slaves very late in his life when he had an overwhelming amount of money from exploiting slavery. He gets to play hero while still holding onto a lot of that money. Chris Ritter reminds me of Alfred Nobel, who accidentally saw his own obituary. Alfred endowed the funds for the Nobel Prize to improve his legacy. In the same way, he donated most of his money at the end of his business project towards a good end. Everything before this point is hopelessly compromised. I rest my case.
I would like to report to the reader that my defense attorney was able to give a brief speech the next day. She pointed out that I had done some extraordinary things, that I had put much at risk, and had used good judgment throughout my life. My advocate did say, “The argument made yesterday was that Chris did nothing to support Jay once she was swapped with Patricia for the initial three-person training project. Chris monitored her status to make sure she would not be sold outside a loving community. He directly contributed over $15,000 to her slave custodial account as a way of making up for her leaving that opportunity. Chris worked with Samantha to arrange for very favorable employment within Samantha's Carp Computer Company.” My advocate spent most of her time pointing out that that I should not be held responsible for the acclaim that I have obtained. She said, “Just because people are misguided and treat Chris as a hero, does not mean Chris should be cast down. The simple fact is that he has done more to end slavery than just about anyone else in the world. I think we can all agree that mindless hero worshiping distorts everyone's legacy. All members of Chris' family and their associates all deserve their proper credit.”
As I wind up my book, I have to admit that I never had a representative argue my case before any deity (good, bad, or indifferent). Of course, I used this as a device to say as directly as I can that I am quite aware that others around me are largely responsible for the projects or decisions for which I am being lionized. I hope I get some credit for knowing that all fame and fortune is fleeting and knowing that my own role in our society's transformation may be much smaller and more conflicted than most people think. Anyone who thinks that I wrote this book to promote my brand had better reread this last section of this chapter. I claim no grand plan or mission. I was swept along with events. Somehow, I ended up with a great life and an amazing family. After a lifetime of being fairly secretive about myself, I am now letting my story be an open book. Each of my readers, day by day, writes their own life story in the metaphysical Book of Life. My hope is that each one will take an even more active role than I have in making our world a better place.