Quiet No More

From Curiosity to Legacy Discoveries

• Carmen Cauthen

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What if the secret to personal growth lies in the simple act of staying curious?

Join me, Carmen Cauthen, on this exploratory journey as I share my love for lifelong learning and the treasures it has unlocked in my life. From an extended college journey fueled by a passion for legislative work to discovering new insights through everyday activities like cooking and reading, 

I highlight how continuous learning enriches not just our minds but our communities as well. Together, we'll explore the profound impact of nurturing curiosity, asking "why," and how these practices can enhance our decision-making and bring personal fulfillment.

But the journey doesn’t stop there. I also delve into the fascinating world of family history, uncovering hidden stories that shape our personal legacies. By sharing tales of my aunts, pioneering home extension agents in early 1900s North Carolina, I emphasize the importance of understanding our origins and the surprising insights that historical exploration can bring. 

Whether it's learning practical skills or unearthing family stories that were left untold, staying engaged with new information helps us grow and inspires those around us. By the end of this episode, you’ll find yourself eager to learn something new every day and share that knowledge within your own circles.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Speaker 1:

Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin and this is Quiet, no More. Did you go to school? I mean any school elementary, middle, high school, technical college, college. I went to school, I graduated, in fact, college. It took me nine years to graduate and I have to tell you this, degrees. And of course they went to school and finished in the exact correct amount of time.

Speaker 1:

And I took nine years to get my undergraduate degree because I had fallen in love with the legislature and so I would go work, and when they were in session I would go work, and when they were in session I would go work and I wouldn't go to school. And the first year it happened, we had four sessions in one year it was 1981, 1982, and we had redistricting sessions and I wouldn't pass in my classes because whenever they were in session I'd go to work. So one of my professors, dr Holtzman, finally said to me will you just withdraw from school? And I was like my mama will kill me. And he said I'll talk to your mom, okay. So I withdrew from school and from then on until I graduated, nine years later, whenever the legislature was in session I went to work and I didn't go to school, and so I ended up paying my way through school that way, and that was a good thing.

Speaker 1:

That was a whole nother lesson, but the important thing is I learned that I like to learn. I need to learn something every day. It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be something huge, but I have should learn something new every day. I've seen people come home from work, they retire, they don't want to do anything else. They said they worked, they're done, they don't want to do anything, they're not volunteering and they're dead in a couple of years. I'm not doing that. Don't you do it either? Learn something new. It doesn't have to be something huge. Sometimes I can learn something from reading a book that I didn't know, even sometimes, because I'll go back and I'll reread books, because I have some favorite authors. I'll go back and reread those books four or five times because I get something new out of it every time.

Speaker 1:

I do the same thing with the word I do do it. Well, you know me. I'm a researcher, so I'm going down some rabbit hole to learn something new every day, and it's amazing because then I can connect it with the stuff that I already knew and with the things that I'm doing now, are you learning something new? Are you teaching your kids something new? Are you teaching people in the community something new? Every day there is something new to be discovered or found.

Speaker 1:

Don't just sit Learn how to do something new. I painted my nails today. I haven't done that in I don't I can't tell you how many years and you might not want to do that. That might not be your new thing. Maybe your new thing is learning how to play volleyball. Maybe your new thing is learning how to cook, maybe cooking something from another country. That was one of the things I did growing up. I would check out books from the library that were recipes from other countries and then I would pick out the recipes and make a meal and, you know, maybe one Sunday I'd cook something new for the whole family and I remember my mama being really proud of that because she used to tell that story a lot and I don't think I did it that often. But you know, there's always something new that you can learn. It could be a new language, and you don't have to pay somebody to teach you something new, although, if you can afford to do that and that's what you want to do, that's fine. There are all kinds of apps on the computer or on your phone. You can learn something new and then you can share it with somebody else.

Speaker 1:

I am. I want to know why that's who I am. I want to know why Daddy used to tell me when I was a little girl that I would always ask why he would answer the question and then I would say why and he would answer the question and I would say why. And he would answer the question and I would say why. And you know that that was a problem in some relationships for me, because if they give you an answer, sometimes they don't want to talk about it anymore. They're done, but I think there's always something else I can ask. Done, but I think there's always something else I can ask. I want to know why. If you made this decision, tell me why you made that. I might want to make the same decision. But mostly I just want to know how were you thinking about it, because surely you thought when you were making the decision you didn't just tell me your answer and you hadn't given it any thought.

Speaker 1:

A lot of times, especially right now in our country a lot of times people just tell me stuff or I'll be watching something on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram and people ask questions and the answers that they get from the people that they ask don't make any sense. And I think did you think that through or are you just repeating what somebody told you? Ask why. If you don't know the why, is it really a good answer? Do you remember when you were taking things that you know didn't make a difference? Like multiplication tables, we just had to learn those? But there was a reason why didn't make a difference. Like multiplication tables, we just had to learn those. But there was a reason why, if I go to buy four lemons and they're 69 cent a piece, I need to be able to multiply the 69 times the four. That's the why I need to be able to know how much it's going to cost.

Speaker 1:

If I want to go visit somewhere, when I decide to take a trip, I go find those people's visitor tourism bureau and I look to see what they've got going on, because I want to know why, I want to know who. I want to know all you know, all those questions. Know who? I want to know all you know, all those questions, those five W's that the teachers taught us when we were in English class who, what, when, where and why, and sometimes how. I need to know that, and it you know it crosses over into so many things. So I'm telling you memories of my family history and things that I've learned, that I learned when I was a child. But do you know that there are things that we hear when we're children that we didn't ask why, we didn't care why, but it's so important when we come to family history and legacy? Those are things that we end up learning about as we get older. Sometimes, when we're children, it doesn't make a difference to us, but as we get older, we begin to wonder more and more about who we are why, where did we come from, where did our parents come from and what did they do? Who were they as people? Because as we get older, we wonder what was our purpose? Why are we here? And so those are such important things to question, and so I encourage you to ask the questions why and what and how and where. I will tell you.

Speaker 1:

Last night I was digging, I was looking for information on women and I had found, cut out an article, stuck it in a folder and it was an article about women doing agricultural Negro women doing agricultural extension in the early 1900s, and it mentioned a newspaper article from NC State I believe it was called the Farmers Extension. And so I said I'm just going to go hunt this article up, because it listed the names of the first black women who were part of the Negro Home Extension agents and I thought, well, that might be interesting. I'm working on stuff about black women in Raleigh and Wake County and when I started going down I found the article, I found the names and I thought you know, I had two aunts who worked in home extension in North Carolina, one in Wake County and one in Robeson County, and rather than just, you know, keep digging and searching, I put one of my aunt's names in, just her first name, because I think it's unusual. It's Bernadine B-E-R-N-A-R-D-I-N-E. I didn't put her last name in, not her maiden or her first name, and behold, all of a sudden, all these ag extension reports from a Negro homemaker showed up on the screen. I didn't have any idea that I would find that, but it was part of the learn something new, it was part of my why, my why, and so, even though my aunt's been dead probably 15 or 20 years.

Speaker 1:

I was able to find a whole five or six reports that she wrote and sent into the state of North Carolina about the work that she was doing. And it was important work and I had no idea because I always thought she was a home ec teacher in high school in Robeson County, and she was. I didn't know about this career that she had before she had even gotten married. The reports have her maiden name, not her married name, and then there were some newspaper articles along with that that talked about the fact that she had moved up, her supervisor had resigned. You just never know what you're going to find or how important it's going to be. I have another aunt who lived here in Raleigh and she was a home extension agent in Wake County but she spoke all over the state and when I put her name in the computer and just typed in her first and her last name, suddenly these newspaper articles popped up.

Speaker 1:

Part of the why, part of the learning something every day is not just learning things that are important to how to cook or how to sew or how to help your kids with their homework. Sometimes it's finding pieces of your family legacy that you didn't even know. You didn't know Because they were things that weren't talked about, because people had moved on to something else. It's just important to learn something new every day, and I want to encourage you if you aren't trying to learn something new every day, try it. Make it a point. It doesn't have to be big, it can just be reading a different book, reading a different type of magazine, paying attention to something that you wouldn't't, you would normally scroll past in your social media. Keep your mind active, learn something new. If you learn something new, then you will be quiet. No more, no more. You've been listening to Quiet, no More where I share my journey. So you can be quiet.