As a child of the 70’s I confess I am LOVING seeing the fashion pendulum swinging back around.  Of course there would be no way I could fit into my old jeans because I was a little kid.  Still, it makes me happy to see wide-legged pants coming back into vogue, little black girls either wearing their hair natural or sectioned off in braids and topped by those lucite ball hair ties I can still remember.  In the fourth grade, the same age my little girl is now, our elementary school got “busing.”  This was where they would take (black) kids from one side of town and bring them to another (white.)  I had a best friend who would “plait” my hair at recess everyday and she’d take her own different colored hair barrettes out of her own hair and put them into mine.  The next day I’d bring them to school and we’d switch.  She had barrettes in all in different colors, shapes, and styles.  My mother disliked my grandmother braiding her hair so she hated how I came home.  I can still remember sitting on the steps while Peggy divided my hair with her comb down to the scalp in precise little squares.  She would then braid each section and secure it with one of her cool barrettes.  We would sing “Ring My Bell” by Anita Ward and she would call me her “Honey Child.”  She always had candy and would share her Now & Laters with me.  It was such a happy time.  I’m not sure if it’s because my father was half-Choctaw and always had a foot in both the “colored” and the “white” world, but times were changing and suddenly I was playing tether ball on the black top and jumping rope Double Dutch style.  We would sit on the ground and play hand clapping games like “Down Down Baby,” “Miss Mary Mack,” and “The Slide” to name a few.  Ironically, I had a half-white/half-black girlfriend who was adopted into a white family and the black kids were merciless to her.  She looked “black” but she didn’t know how to do her hair, she talked “too white,” etc.  Frankly I never understood why I felt so at home with my black girlfriends with my strawberry-blonde hair and green-blue eyes.  It didn’t seem fair.  Of course Joy was the best friend I had in our apartments and I always stuck up for her.  Our parish recently celebrated its 75th anniversary and the theme was the ’70s.  Our now ten-year-old recently had a rollerskating birthday party at my childhood skating rink.  To an outsider, it’s like stepping back in time.  For me, it’s like reliving a bit of my childhood.  But I miss the carpet and the “toadstools” where everyone would would sit back to back in a circle to lace up their skates.  I miss the bi-colored streamers that would flutter from the paneled ceiling and how all the white globes alternated colors in time with the music.  The great big disco ball is still there, though, and turning in all its glory.  For me, being born in 1970, the decade meant “The Brady Bunch” and “Good Times” on TV.  I looked more like one of the Brady girls but growing up in apartment, watching my father always trying to get ahead, I related much more with “Good Times.”  I can still remember running down the hall of our elementary school and shouting, “School is out!  Out of sight!  DYNOMITE!!!” at the end of the year.  Nicholas Kristof, an American journalist and political commentator, is quoting as having said, “Since the end of the 1970s, something has gone profoundly wrong in America.  Inequality has soared.  Educational progress slowed.  Incarceration rates quintupled.  Family breakdown accelerated.  Median household income stagnated.”  In a lot of instances, I feel I must agree.  Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has described Kristof as an “honorary African” for shining a light on neglected conflicts.  For me “African-American” means a first generation “African” who became an American citizen.  I believe I have said before it was America’s 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, who barred the hyphenated nationalities from describing race.  I whole-heartledy believe this:  to hyphenate is to separate.  Our family decided to keep the ’70s “staying alive” by dressing up from that time for Halloween.  This picture I snapped of my husband makes my heart flip!  “Grease” was my favorite movie growing up and I still love it.  My formative years were a time of great change for this country; for American Indians struggling to be heard, for women whose voices were just coming into play in both the workforce and sports, and for so much more.  I do not wish to gloss over our nation’s painful past.  However, it is my hope that we can not only all acknowledge our history’s truths — but to press on toward a more perfect union … just like I learned about from the “School House Rock” cartoons I grew up watching every Saturday morning before rollerskating in the 1970’s.