Urban Poverty Law Center: A Look Back

I have one question for Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.

Did either of these fine gentlemen catch yellow-headed bumble bees when they were in grade school?

We did.  An acquaintance during my childhood informed us you could catch yellow-headed bumble bees and they would not sting you.  We spent many a summer day capturing them with on flowers using a mason jar and then carefully tying a piece of thread around the narrow section between their thorax and abdomen.  We would then tie the 3 foot long thread to a belt loop on our person and take the bees for a flight.

I recall a memorable day when in the spring I caught and tied a bee and brought it to school for show and tell.  The hallways were cleared by the bee for my passage.  You see not everybody knew the bees with yellow heads were harmless.  The bees were fairly powerful and I suspect a hundred bees could likely lift a small child off the ground.  We did not ever test this hypothesis.  Sometimes we did take a couple of bees out for a flight at the same time.

I still see yellow-headed bumble bees to this day, but do you think I would catch and tie one up like I did when I was seven?

Hell, no.  I am not stupid!

The art of bumble bee tying has been lost. 

And that is not all that has been lost in our country we are all like that tethered bumble bee with our freedoms chipped away one presidential executive order at a time.

Jackson Delano Maybolt, President, Urban Poverty Law Center