The Counterpublic Papers vol. 8 no. 1 (allow me to reintroduce myself)

How to begin.

Last Saturday at about 3:30pm I was on FB. My normal Saturdays function a lot like Wednesdays. And that’s because my Mondays look something like this:

5:25am—walk to the Metro

5:45am—take the Metro to Mondawmin Mall

6:03am—take the 22 bus to Hopkins

6:30am—in the office working

9:00am—meeting for co-taught Racial Politics seminar

10am-noon—Racial Politics

Noon-1:30pm—Prep for Urban Politics undergrad course

1:30pm-4pm—Urban Politics

4:05pm—Take the 22 bus to Mondawmin

4:30pm—Take the Metro to Old Court

4:50pm—walk home

7:30pm—Chair an Arts and Sciences committee meeting on the ongoing attempt by Johns Hopkins to create a private police force

10pm—go to bed.

It seems as if the last newsletter I wrote was years ago, when in reality it was only a year and a half. One of the reasons I stopped was because with this type of schedule my weekends started to function differently, and it was all I could do to just keep my head above water.

It’s still that way….but last Saturday at 3:30pm when I was on Facebook taking a break, something changed. I saw a post by my friend Peter Bruun.

27 years ago, toward the end of my one year running the exhibition program at what was then Villa Julie College (now Stevenson University), I received a phone call from a “Baltimore” magazine reporter informing me I had been selected for my work in the gallery for their annual “Best of” issue.

That was Catherine Pierre.

The honor surprised me. Having come to Baltimore for graduate school, I had been living in the area for just over 10 years, and had happily plugged along in relative obscurity, trafficking in the marginal world of artists who cared more about quietly holing up in their studios to do their work than getting attention for it. Running the gallery had fallen into my lap as something of an accidental adventure, and while I relished the job and the learning, I was neither expecting nor looking for broad public attention from it.

So when Catherine called to tell me I’d been chosen and would be featured in the magazine, I said no.

There was a lengthy silence on the other end of the phone. A thoughtful pause.

Then Catherine spoke.

“You know, this is a good thing. Perhaps we can talk about it?”

We then did.

I cannot recall the body of the conversation so much as Catherine’s tone; her bedside manner. Her perceptive kindness.

In that memory, Catherine is counseling me, encouraging me, challenging me… gently helping me understand that I would not be betraying some (holier-than-thou) notion of purity as an arts practitioner by allowing the media to sing of me, but rather would be “doing a good thing” by allowing people a glimpse of who I am and the gallery work I was doing that exemplified a certain community-facing mindset, something worth illuminating for others. She convinced me I’d be doing a disservice not only to others but also myself by keeping my light under the bushel.

My “no” turned to “yes,” and so I was featured in the magazine with a full-page photo, with Catherine anointing me as a “trendsetter” in her article.

I was horribly embarrassed by it all at the time, but in hindsight, it’s clear that was an inflection point for me: people suddenly were taking notice, and psychologically that imprimatur of recognition helped my self-esteem far more than I like to admit, cultivating within me a self-confidence to seek and accept leadership positions in the arts in Baltimore.

After the magazine came out, I think I saw Catherine only once - ran into her in a Baltimore coffee place maybe 10 years later. I recall feeling so warmly toward her as if we were old, longtime friends.

I never saw her again.

Now I read she has died.

I am so very sad. I am so very sorry.

Some people change our lives and never know it. I’d like to have told Catherine she changed mine. I’d like to have said “thank you,” and to have called her “friend” to her face.

I did not. But perhaps, today, thinking of Catherine, I can do that with someone else.

Farewell, dear Catherine, farewell and thank you.

After I read Bruun’s post, I read the accompanying story and saw that I had….about twenty minutes to make the memorial. I threw on clothes, called an Uber…and made it about ten minutes into the ceremony. While I was in the Uber I texted Peter frantically…and by the time the Uber dropped me off I had his permission to read his post.

I did…and then added to it.

See, I knew Catherine. She’d had a somewhat similar conversation with me years earlier— and like Peter I’d changed my mind as a result of our conversation. From the comments others made at the memorial she’d done this type of thing so much that a number of folk developed an acronym WWCD (What Would Catherine Do?) as a way to challenge themselves to step out of their comfort zones.

My additions to Peter’s comments touched on this. But what I wanted to do is make a broader intervention. I didn’t just want to talk about Catherine and the way she touched individual lives. I wanted to talk about Catherine as a particular example of what we need politically in this moment. What Pierre was able to do was create the circumstances by which individuals and institutions could be the best and most capacious versions of themselves, and then through that, create opportunities for us to develop more inclusive ways of being. And she did this in the face of tragedy and crisis.

I’ve been thinking about picking this back up again for more than a minute. But I’m not sure I’d have gone through with it until Catherine’s passing…and Peter’s words. For those of you who’ve reached out about the newsletter, thank you. For those of you who are now spammed with yet another fucking newsletter, I’m sorry. 

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If you happen to be around Baltimore this Thursday, I’m going to be in conversation with Katie Wells about her book Disrupting D.C. The  Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City. Hope to see some of you there.