glory-i-am

fare thee well mj

2009-06-26T00:38:00.001-04:00

I loved Michael Jackson from the time I was two years old. Thriller was my favorite video. I have several of his albums. The brother had soul. There are plenty of things about his life that I didn't understand from his perspective, but I know he had an extraordinary life and an extraordinary talent. It still hasn't sunk in yet, I think. I think it'll take me a couple of days. But here's a prime example:

Live your best life, and maximize every moment that you can.

loaded

2009-05-25T01:56:00.004-04:00

I just ain't had time to blog lately. Shoot, I can barely keep up with reading the blogs I like to read, let alone trying to figure out what I want to blog about. My life is so full right now. I'm working. I'm keeping my house clean. I'm going to church. I'm trying to connect with the things that have made me happy in the past, like spending more time with my friends. My beloved and I need time together. And I'm trying to get enough sleep. So by the time I get to picking up my laptop, it's already late and at most, all I can do is read a few blogs before crashing into sleep. Shoot, I can barely keep up with the news, which is something, 'cause I'd been kind of a news junkie. There ain't enough hours in the day for me to be blogging regularly, though.

I don't mind.

I really don't mind, 'cause I'm glad my life is full. The things I've wanted most are mine - God is continually blessing me. I got love, and a place to call home, and a means with which to make money and pay off these student loans. I got family and friends and I'm making new friends at work and at church. This is what I wanted.

All those years I spent wandering in my twenties, that's the stuff I was searching for. I would lay alone in my bed at night wondering about a man. I was going out as often as I could, looking for community and a place to be myself. I found it, but I was distracted by being sick and tired of being broke and having bills and hating my jobs and knowing I could do more. I was pulling all nighters trying to get a degree. Shutting down my social life trying to get my credentials straight. Worrying about my car breaking down. Scrimping and saving to get myself some financial security. Worrying about when or if it would all come together. Praying for patience. Praying for sustenance, and breakthroughs, and reprieves. Praying for more patience. And one day, after regular spells of unemployment, renting several U-Haul trucks, dealing with jerks wooing me and then deciding not to call me anymore, living in walk-up apartment after walk-up apartment with no air conditioning and raggedy heat, battling back and forth over whether or not I wanted to try a new church, again...

I looked up and I was where I wanted to be. Not long out of the day's church heels. Drinking sweet tea on my own porch. Clean, reliable car in the garage. Dishwasher running. Trees out front giving just enough sun and shade. Just enjoying myself. I'm not lonely. I'm not worried. I'm just blessed. Savings in the bank. Food in the fridge. Central air. Oh, I'm working for it. And praying for it. Praying that God keeps me afloat, and that I don't get the big head - thinking I'm entitled to this much contentment, forgetting how far I've come and how much worse it could be. This Universe don't owe me nothing. I'm thankful. And what's more, I'm not in this alone anymore. I don't have to do everything by myself no more. I'm not carrying my groceries into the house all by myself no more.

It's still a humble life. I could have done better in school, taken a more ambitious career path, and made more money sooner. Or I could have coupled for money instead of love, and dealt with one of those obnoxious types of brothers who just wanted an accessory wife/co-wage-earner he could brag about, instead of a friend and lover who makes me soar and inspires me to be better and likes me the way I am all at the same time. I could have done a lot of things differently. But this is what I wanted. And I feel so wealthy and rich... I mean really wealthy and rich.

I want to travel, and be a mother. I want to go into business for myself. I want to finally get that doggone book published. Learn new things. Make myself useful to someone besides myself and my own household. I feel like as blessed as I am, the world is open to me to grow and explore. It's such an encouraging feeling...

time

2009-04-23T16:27:00.002-04:00

In a way I think the elders had it better. No TV, no internet. No hyperstimulation. You can reflect on a lot while shelling peas, or snapping beans, or shucking ears of corn. Maybe too much convenience is a bad thing. I'm not saying I won't ever pop something in the microwave or send a text message again. I'm just saying maybe I need to slow down on conveniences more often.

anybody understand the bailouts?

2009-04-22T10:56:00.003-04:00

I'm no economist, and my thinking on such matters is largely uninformed and simplistic. That said, I'm not blogging here as an expert but a citizen who's trying to figure out what is going on. But you know what I think that this government bailout is? Trickle down economics, or as the link I've provided later calls it, the "horse-and-sparrow theory" - feed enough oats to the horse, and eventually enough will pass through so the birdies will have something to eat too. Let the companies that are "too big to fail" not fail by propping them up with government money, so that they don't go out of business, so that "regular people" won't lose jobs and their life savings due to a soured stock market. Except instead of tax breaks being given out like candy to the businesses, as people usually think of when they think of the trickle down economics theory, this time it's accountability breaks. The businesses are supposed to use the money to do better work and stay working. That's supposed to keep the economy from kicking the bucket and kicking our butts.

When I first heard about it, it sounded like a necessary evil to me, you know? My understanding is that the government, especially a Republican administration - and when this bailout stuff started, it started under President Bush (though I believe Senator and Presidential Candidate Obama agreed with the plan) - wouldn't want to participate so directly in the marketplace by giving companies money by buying stock in them. My understanding was that capitalism is all about the best competitors excelling in the marketplace, while the inadequate competitors fall by the wayside, encouraging excellence in competition. So, I figured, if the government, first under Bush and then under Obama, was going to participate in the marketplace by basically "betting" on certain struggling businesses that would hurt the public good if they crashed... well then, this must have been really necessary and our only option. It was all gloom and doom in the news. The stock market had people wigging out. At the time, I wasn't thinking, "This sounds like trickle down economics."

But as time passes, and the money has been given out in amounts much larger than I can even fathom, I am hearing that unemployment is still on the rise, that people are still losing big chunks of their life savings, and that the Congressional Oversight Panel isn't quite sure what's really happening to all this money - only some of it is accounted for and we're still not sure whether the equity the country purchased in these floundering companies will turn a profit, according to Elizabeth Warren of the Congressional Oversight Panel, which is in charge of watching what happens to the money.

I believe we were told that this was the best thing the government could come up with at the time to avoid worse consequences, but that no one knew for sure whether or not it would work. I wonder, would the unemployment gains and personal net worth erosions be even worse if we hadn't done this? Or are the problems we're seeing indicating that this plan isn't working? Is it too soon to tell? Either way, we already know that the businesses have benefited - they got the money. But what about the economy for the rest of us who are trying to hold on to jobs and retirement savings? See, that's been one of the criticisms of trickle down economics. We never know quite exactly when the horse isht produces food for the birds.

don't have to wait

2009-04-20T16:19:00.002-04:00

You don't have to wait to thank God for things that you have asked Him to do for you. He is timeless. Go church! for reminding me of that.

You don't have to wait until something scary happens to tell people that you love them.

You don't have to wait for something to change in your life in order to enjoy it for what it is.

communal brain damage

2009-04-16T13:47:00.003-04:00

The Field Negro featured a story last night about a young sixth grade boy who was teased in his new school for being active in sports, the boy scouts, volunteering and going to church. It went on for months - calling him gay and teasing his clothes - and it didn't end until he committed suicide. His mother complained to the school. His school hardly did anything. The bullies were relentless. It really hit home for me because my sixth grade bullying experience was so similar. Here is my two cents on the matter, which I originally posted in the Field Negro's comments.

"that wasn't just homophobia. that was communal hatred of the pursuit of excellence. i relate to this boy's story - i went through the merciless teasing that happens when you're the new kid in a school and you stand out for the pursuit of excellence. if i had been a boy, they would have called me gay, too.

the teachers knew i was being teased because of how they fawned over me, but they didn't care, and they continued to do it. i was depressed. i tried to hate myself because everyone else did. i was 10/11 years old. my only resources were my parents. there were no counselors at my private school. and i imagine that this boy begged his mother NOT to come to the school, just like i did, knowing it would only have made the situation worse with the other kids.

he knew the school wasn't going to do anything about the teasing - adults don't take child teasing seriously. they don't see a line between friendly teasing and the chronic kind between enemies that makes you depressed and suicidal. they don't even think kids would get depressed like i did, or suicidal, like this young man. they think eventually the bullies will tire of the game, and that the victim will get over it with the resiliency adults think all children have. i can tell you that is not how it works. it took me years to get over what happened to me in the sixth grade. years.

and part of the problem is that black people, in fact low-income people of any race (whether or not they have pastors) often don't take mental illness seriously. it may not have occurred to this boy's mom that a shrink was necessary. she probably had no suspicion that he was so far gone that he would ever be tempted to kill himself. and her son probably covered it well by continuing to put on a front that nothing within him was changing. that's what i did. sometimes i would cry or complain, but when i realized nothing could be or would be done by adults, like when i was molested by another child, or when i was teased mercilessly at school, i got real stoic, and covered my inner turmoil as best i could.

some of our children are suffering in silence because they don't see any other way.

and too many adults don't think of bullying as life-or-death, wellness-or-illness dangerous to the well being of a victim. especially in low income black communities, where hazing is done both within the home and in the neighborhood from early ages, to harden children and make them tough enough for a world seen as inherently hostile. nobody wants their kid to be the soft one, and in the minds of parents like these, whoever their kid is picking on could probably use the toughening up, anyway, since the victim's parents obviously didn't do a good enough job of it. i have a friend whose three year old son is being targeted - not by strangers but by his own grandmother and father - as needing to toughen up. they don't want him to cry or ever act like his feelings are hurt. at three.

homophobia is part of the problem, yes, because of the 'gay' label, which children aren't just using for labeling homosexuals, but for any behavior they see as out of the stereotypes of what it means to be black, or appropriately hard - sometimes it doesn't have anything to do with gayness, but the fact that it connotes gayness is an added emphasis or bonus to the slur. 'not only are you acting like a soft white boy, but you like boys, too.'

this is a multifaceted problem that can't be solved by a lawsuit, or prayer without action, or a bunch of shrinks. it is a societal and cultural problem."

I survived my situation by the grace of God. I suppose I was resilient enough to keep taking it everyday without losing myself in the process. I got a into a fight with one of the popular girls, and afterwards, they respected me a little more, even though they still didn't like me. I shouldn't have had to physically fight and get in trouble to get respect - I was lucky it was one on one and that I didn't get jumped. I managed to make a few friends, which made avoiding the bullies easier. After a year, the worst of it passed. The next two years weren't as bad as the first. Mercifully, I then made it to high school where the teasing wasn't nearly as bad, since everyone there was reaching for good grades and college. But I was affected by distrust of my peers, insecurity, low self-esteem, and unsolicited hostility as a preemptive measure at least for the next four or five years after that. And looking at this young man's situation, I guess I got off easy.

fade to... well, not black

2009-04-10T11:25:00.002-04:00

It's fair to say that when I was growing up, I watched way too much television. I was a bookworm and I wasn't an athlete. I preferred my own company to the company of some of the catty little girls who lived on my block, so that kept me in the house. So I loved watching television. Unlike my mom and dad, who grew up either without television, or with few and fleeting blacks on TV, there were lots of shows I could watch that had either lead black character or majority black casts that were either taping or were in syndication.

Among them were Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Gimme a Break, The Jeffersons, Good Times, The Cosby Show, A Different World, 227, Amen, What's Happening, What's Happening Now, Benson, and Sanford and Son, just off the top of my head. Eventually I guess the major networks got tired of shows featuring blacks and the only place to find them were on the fledgling networks, which at that time included Fox, the WB, and UPN, which later merged with WB to become CW, by the time I was a teenager. These shows included New York Undercover, In Living Color, The Wayans Bros., Living Single... Occasionally, a major network show would pop up, like Family Matters, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, or rarely found black dramas, like City of Angels. I remember this one drama about a family with James Earl Jones in it - that didn't last long at all. There was another with Terrence Howard and Anna Maria Horsford that didn't get off the ground. There were lots of shows with black casts that didn't stick around long or like The Smart Guy and Girlfriends, got shuttled from network to network. The biggest sitcoms at the time didn't have any black characters in them at all. And most of the blacks you did find would be in multiracial ensemble casts, like on ER, or Boston Public, a trend which continues with Heroes, 24, House, Grey's Anatomy, Scrubs... I could go on. I guess we stopped being funny or interesting when I was a teenager.

We must really not be interesting now. In recent years, I can count network shows with black casts quickly and easily, and except for The (still underrated) Bernie Mac Show, they were all relegated to the fledgling network, CW. Girlfriends. Everybody Hates Chris. The Game. One on One. All Of Us. If you want to see black folks on TV, you better catch some old shows in syndication or get yourself some cable, 'cause all but one of those shows has been cancelled, and the one - ONE - remaining network show on TV with a majority black cast, The Game, is hanging on for dear life. I can't say it enough - ONE. It's not completely lonely on TV if you have cable, though. Tyler Perry's sitcoms - you know, the ones I can't sit through - are on TBS and running in syndication already on the fledgling MYNetworkTV. And I hear there's an actual family drama on the ABC Family channel called Lincoln Heights that's still in production for a couple more seasons. That's nice, and somewhat shocking. Of course, if you're into reality shows, there's plenty of black folks on those. Ray J/Flavor Flav meet supposedly-unscripted 'hoes", supposedly-unscripted "hoes" meet Ray J/Flavor Flav. Notice I haven't mentioned BET. As I understand it, they just seem to have reality shows in production. I'm talking about drama and comedy. Thank goodness for relative newcomer TV One, which picks up all the shows we miss that were cancelled too early, moved to bad time slots to be destined for failure, or simply not promoted well. But right now who is actually writing and producing stories about blacks and their families?

Anyway, I just want to say that I'm glad I grew up in what seems to be shaping up as the golden age - the peak, if you will - of being able to see black folks on television. There are people trying to save The Game now, by trying to convince the network to change it into an hour-long drama (since CW wants to quit sitcoms), and I hope it works. If it doesn't, there won't be any more majority black casts on TV. Wow. Unless, you know, one of the fledgling networks - which is pretty much just MYNetworkTV at this point - comes up with something for the 2009 fall season only to make enough money off advertising to black viewers to afford dumping them in 2011 to produce something more "mainstream." Which is funny to me because it's well known we black folks tend to be more loose with our disposable income than others. You'd think we'd be an audience worth keeping. And you'd think that the "mainstream" would be just as entertained by black casts now as they used to be when I was a kid. Oh well. What do I know?

I guess I better snap up some black shows on DVD for my unborn children.

style

2009-04-03T16:01:00.003-04:00

I'm bout sick and tired of seeing Michelle Obama's name in the same sentence as "style" and "fashion." I'm not saying that she isn't stylish or fashionable, or that I think it's a bad thing per se to mention that she is. Shoot, I love to see pictures of her in the press myself. But something doesn't sit right with me about all the chatter about fashion. Seriously, it's like I'd rather they not mention her if all they're going to say, again, is that she's fashionable. Now I know that it's a conscious choice that she's making on her part to be a major policy advocate or to take an official advisory role in the President's administration. And maybe if she served more in that capacity, then maybe the press would have more occasion to talk about something other than what she's wearing. But still. I don't know. It's just starting to sound like a broken record. Is it just me?

edited: i meant to say that she made a choice NOT to be a major policy advocate or advisor. guess i was typing too fast. my apologies.

just damn

2009-03-26T17:52:00.004-04:00

Now this is disappointing.

Dallas police chief apologizes for conduct of officer who drew gun on NFL player outside hospital

Ryan Moats, his wife and her family members were trying to be with his mother-in-law in her last moments and an officer stopped Moats and his wife's grandfather from getting into the hospital in time to say goodbye. I can't imagine how Ryan Moats' grandfather-in-law must feel, missing the death of his daughter over something so trivial, but I feel compassion for this family. I actually watched/listened to the video, and the longer it went on, the more angry I became.

No, you don't want to claim that it was racism that made this cop such an asshole. But this is one of those situations where your gut just tells you what it tells you. Every incident of racism doesn't come with a "N-----" or coon epithet purposely hurled to let the victim know that his race is the reason for the harassment/oppression. Racists know better than to be blatant nowadays, especially when they're on the job. So no, neither I nor anyone else can say without a doubt that this happened because of racism. But this is the kind of stuff that keeps black people suspicious of racism. And this is the kind of stuff that makes people of all colors resentful of police authority. This guy makes cops look bad, even though I still believe that most reasonable officers would have let the family go, much sooner, and without all the self-righteous posturing about what they have the power to do to the driver.

You know what got me? All the officer's talk about Moats' supposed "attitude," especially after the officer was made well aware of the fact that Moats' mother-in-law was dying. It was as if he knew he had been a jerk, but he insisted on shifting the blame to Moats. The officer sounded like an adult lecturing a child about being impertinent... or an old school racist talking down to a black person for not knowing his place.

where i'm at

2009-03-17T17:38:00.003-04:00

I've been reading a lot of political news and gossip. Michael Steele needs to resign. Jon Stewart is the man. Joe Scarborough is a punk. Barack Obama has a lot of work to do. Michelle Obama's dress choices don't have anything to do with anything.

I don't know why people are acting like they're surprised that Rihanna is back with Chris Brown. That's how these things tend to work. Most people saying that she's stupid need to fall back - no one knows what they'd do in her shoes because they haven't been in her shoes, and only those who have been in her shoes understand. Only those two can determine whether they'll learn from mistakes made and take steps to grow and heal from past wounds. Why are people still paying attention to Nadya Suleman, really? She bores me. People should have gotten over the initial shock and matured past the she's-a-welfare-queen-self-righteous-accusations that continue to fly around. Meanwhile a bunch of babies need care and raising. Everyone wants to know how she's going to do it by herself. She ain't. She needs help to raise them, and somehow she'll get it. Move right along, people, there's nothing else to see here.

I value my mom's opinion and advice, and I trust her motives and her counsel. Sometimes I don't agree though. And sometimes the things she says stay with me longer than I want them to. We have a really open and candid relationship that I've long been thankful for, but I'm thinking that I want to pull back a little bit. I realized lately that I'm worrying a little bit too much about my judgment based on her commentary, and it's messing with my head. I trust my own judgment. Only I know what makes me happy. I have to learn to take what she says with a grain of salt sometimes.

I'm not a kid anymore, and I haven't been for a while. When I really stop to think about it, I've lived a lot of life - lots of different experiences. I don't pretend to have the wisdom of the elders, but at the same time, I've been growing and changing a lot over these years. Before I know it, I'll look up and realize that I've lived as many years as an adult as I lived as a child. Marriage and motherhood are not far off. I can't let the many lessons I've learned fade into forgotten memories. I just finished reading a novel. Maybe it's time for me to start reading my old diaries - my own personal novel. It may serve as a little refresher course.

think, damn it!

2009-02-10T11:35:00.008-05:00

I am angry with many people's responses to this situation where Chris Brown was arrested for allegedly hitting a woman, who is reported to be Rihanna.

People have been saying that R did something to make her attacker beat her up. Unless she physically balled up her attacker's fists and busted herself upside the head with them, that makes absolutely no sense. If she somehow angered CB while they were in a car, his proper response would have been to pull over and leave the woman on the sidewalk calling a taxi if that's what it took to keep from going upside her head with a closed fist. Yes, some women are crazy enough to provoke a man and try to get him angry. And that is wrong. But even so, anyone with an above-junior-high-school mindset is supposed to have enough restraint to walk away and not catch a case.

First, the nasty rumor about why he hit her is a RUMOR. I personally think jealous outsiders made it up to malign one or both of them because they made a cute couple. Neither R nor CB has had much to say in public about this, so I doubt this rumor came from either of them - I distrust any other source. Second, if the rumor was truthful it STILL wouldn't be an excuse for violence.

This is killing me. A woman gets her nose bloodied and her lip busted by someone with martial arts training, and some people's first response is to say, "Well what did she do wrong to cause someone to beat her up?" That is DYSFUNCTIONAL and scary.

This aspect of our culture is what makes people ignore women when they have been raped or molested. And it's not just men, it's women being contemptuous against other women, teaching their sons not to trust women, taking their sons' side when they disrespect women by beating them, cheating on them, or abandoning their fatherly responsibilities. To justify it, they jump on the bandwagon saying dumb stuff like, "That fill-in-the-blank was messing with my son/brother/friend," without trying to be objective about the fact that the woman has a side of the story too. Men and women alike are justifying mistreatment of women because they're working with the stereotype of the conniving Jezebel - perpetuating the stereotype that women are untrustworthy, deceitful, and deserving of violent treatment. And then when something pops off, people want to look the other way, saying it's none of their business, or claiming "Well, we don't know what really happened." Funny how the same people saying we don't know what happened are the first ones to insinuate that it was the woman's fault - I thought we didn't know what happened! Both R and CB have a story, and it makes no sense to just jump on R because she's the woman, yet that's exactly what's happening.

I don't know what happened between R and CB. Hopefully, the facts will come out in court. And if CB actually did what the reports are saying he did, he should be punished. He's young and can get counseling and do better. He's a victim of witnessing abuse, just like me, and he probably needs the counseling. And if the rumors are true about R provoking him somehow, then she should get some counseling too.

We have to do better. I have to wonder if our communal focus on racial equality and respect sometimes distracts us from working on achieving gender equality and respect as well. We will continue to live in a climate that is dangerous to our mothers, sisters, and daughters if we continue to blame the women who get beat up for what someone else did to them of their own free will.

(I wrote another version of this rant in The Black Snob's comment section.)

how's it going

2009-01-29T12:35:00.004-05:00

This is my 401st post.

Diva in Demand wanted to know how the year has been going so far. Here's my unabridged answer:

Well, so far, I think the patience lesson the Lord has been trying to teach me is finally making headway. But I got some ways to go, still. But I am more patient with my beloved, and less likely to obsess over things that don't matter. There are dirty clothes in the bedroom. I will wash them when I get home. When I feel like it. I can relate to Diva in Demand here.

Being in a new place, physically, is already doing wonders for my satisfaction with my life. I moved, and I have an office of my own, and my stuff is out of storage, and I can chill on my college furniture, surrounded by my inexpensive but sentimental treasures again. I just unpacked Humphrey, a bear I've had since before I could talk. He's been everywhere with me. And now we both have a new home. It's hard to leave home for work in the morning. I love the way the sun shines in the windows and the way the colors of the furniture and the walls and the floors make me feel warm and well and happy. I haven't felt this way in years, and I appreciate it so much.

I haven't made a move towards the healthier body I covet, yet, but my procrastination actually has a good reason. Next month's birthday will not come and go without that task being addressed. At my heaviest, I'd gained almost 20 pounds since I started college. I could afford to, because I was too bony and I wanted to gain weight. But not this weight. I've got non-muscular, slowing-my-metabolism weight. I want to wear a bikini this summer without being self-conscious. That will happen. I have to get in shape BEFORE I get pregnant, so that my baby can grow in a healthy body. And I will get pregnant. Not now, but soon enough. (That's my new thing - "soon enough.")

I opened myself to a new possibility regarding my career. I bet a lot of people are doing the same now. I have goals to meet, and the status quo is not an option if I'm going to meet them. To meet my goals, I have to make the money, period. Funny thing is that most of them have less to do with material gain than they have to do with peace-of-mind - debts paid off, savings in the bank, the ability to make decisions without worrying about how I'm going to pay for them. I think wealth will be a natural outgrowth of good financial habits and the pursuit of my talents. I probably won't ever be stinkin' rich, but I still want to at least smell a little bit.

I am still hitting snooze on my ticking biological clock... but not so much that I'm not making arrangements for my family a consideration in my current decision-making. It's coming...

2007 was a year of change, if I remember correctly. 2008 was all about fruition. 2009 is a different animal altogether. In a sense, I'm in a holding pattern - it's like the time between harvest and planting season. I gotta get my ground ready.

Interview

2009-01-22T15:32:00.002-05:00

1. If you want to participate, leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.” (And your e-mail address, please.)
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

My questions came from Diva in Demand.

What is the one thing you regret most in life?

Not being more demonstrative with people that I loved and cared about before they died. It's important to me to try to keep up the ties that bind.

Tell the details of the most most memorable day of your life so far?

I was ten years old and attending a school I hated where all the other kids teased me. After school one day, I saw my parents were there to pick me up, so instead of going to the bus, I hopped in the car. That's when I found out that we were going on a trip back down south! My uncle was coming back from the Persian Gulf War and the family - all my dad's brothers and sisters, all my cousins, everybody - was going to be there to welcome him home. We decorated his house with yellow ribbons and went as a family to wait for him. My dad, who'd driven the farthest, even got interviewed by the local newspaper! And there was lots of food. And popsicles! I remember thinking, after we went to my uncle's house and I was outside playing among all my cousins on the swing, that it was the most wonderful day of my whole life... and then I got a monster allergy attack and it ruined the whole moment. It's funny now, but it wasn't then!

You're planning your perfect day.......tell us about it?

I am getting married outdoors to my beloved. My two best friends are my attendants. My grandma and parents and his mom are all there, in addition to a few friends and family. It's early autumn and the trees are beautiful, and so am I. My skin is clear, my hair is done, and I'm not carrying any water weight! LOL! I woke up nervous and excited today, I'm in a simple but pretty dress, and I just want to get to the part where he kisses me in front of everybody. We have the short and sweet ceremony, smash a little cake on each other, and then join our families in eating southern American and West Indian soul food. We are going on honeymoon to a quiet, non-touristy place tonight, with the security of knowing that when we come back, there will be no wedding debt.

The ship's going down and you can only grab 5 things before you have to get off and go to the island....what do you take?

A blanket, 'cause I can't stand being cold. My beloved, 'cause I couldn't bear to see him go down in the water. My bible, 'cause it'll probably be the only thing to keep me sane in the long run. Some food to tide me over, 'til I can figure out how to feed myself. And music.

The secret video is out.....who do you call first and why?

My beloved. 'Cause nobody else matters. We'll figure out what to do together.

rest

2009-01-07T14:16:00.000-05:00

Do not sacrifice rest. It ain't worth it. I am much less effective in every area of my life unless I've had enough rest. Now there's a resolution for you, if you want one.

reflecting

2008-12-31T11:09:00.002-05:00

God answers prayers. His spirit is generous and bountiful. His lessons are wise. His counsel consoles. Knowledge of His word can be the difference between void and fullness. His law is love. His gift is perfect peace. He is awesome and perfect, a sanctuary for those who seek Him.

It's been a good year, full of friends and family, lessons to be learned, and reasons for new hope and inspiration. I am blessed and looking forward to the new year. I am entering 2009 with gratefulness and a sense of purpose about my choices and actions that gives me hope.

If I have resolutions this year, it's to continue to set goals and work diligently to meet them, like I've been doing throughout 2008. It's to listen more intently to the Spirit's guidance, and be still and contemplative more often. It's to continually aim to be my best self, in mind, body, and spirit, for myself and for others.

I wish you a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year!

already

2008-12-21T23:14:00.002-05:00

All the stuff that I want to do to have a better life in the New Year are things that I'm working on now. But you can only work on so many things at a time. So I'm moving forward, as time and energy and inspiration permit.

Coulda lost my life this past Friday. God protects. I am grateful for being alive.

Are transition periods real? Feels like to me that something is always in transition. Then maybe it's not so much periods, just a whole life full of transition. I'm just saying.

I'm not planning on traveling for Christmas next year. Period.

Why are garment boxes so hard to find?

Cashmere ain't all that. Really. There is no reason for it to cost as much as it does.

Why do men always come back? You see them. It ends. Time passes. Then they come back. They want to know if you can talk, if you want to go out, if you can help them with this or that. I don't understand it. I'm not one of those people who believes that it's best to burn all bridges regardless of the circumstances. In most circumstances, I'm always willing and able to at least be cordial, and depending on the circumstances, even friendly, with past paramours. Even if I didn't like how the dissolution went down, or if I was the one who broke it off. But I don't understand what it is about men just wanting to know if you are somehow available to them AFTER it's ended. They have all come back in one way or another - each and every one of them. Phone calls, e-mail, passing the word on through a mutual friend. Always. For example, when I was in college, my ex used to go by my parents' house to get in good with my mama. Is it in the man playbook, chapter thirty-one? "After it's over, check in to see if she'll take your call or go out with you or get back with you or help you with something or give it up one more time for old time's sake." I sometimes feel like Chapter 31 is really about starting a no-hard-feelings, let's-be-friends dialogue. Other times I feel like it's because the guy is going through something and he knows you have enough kindness in you to do what the girlfriend he wishes he had would do for him - listen and be a sympathetic kindred spirit. Or maybe other times, it's much less innocuous and really just selfish - he just wants to boost his ego by seeing if he still has an effect on you. I don't know. Men aren't all the same. Every human is motivated by different things. But anyway, isn't there a certain cut off point? Two weeks? Two months? Two years? I wonder.

I'm glad the holiday is coming up. I'm really looking forward to spending some time with my crazy-behind family.

I want to change my hair. I haven't decided how exactly. But it may involve some cut. And it may involve some color.

made me smile

2008-12-18T01:03:00.000-05:00

I sent my Christmas cards out last weekend, and I got a text message yesterday from one of my cousins thanking me for the card. But that's not all my cousin said. He said that if I needed anything, I could just call. And that he loved me. And we're really not the kind of family that just goes around saying that all the time, so whenever I hear that, I'm happy to hear it. Warm fuzzies are the best for Christmas.

anchored

2008-12-05T22:46:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it's like life is trying to tell you a lie about yourself. Like circumstances are there specifically to get you to doubt your own value. It's up to you to know yourself well enough to stay encouraged about who you are, what you're worth, and what you're capable of. Otherwise you could wind up lost and confused. Greater is He that is within you... you know?

ten years old

2008-12-03T01:18:00.000-05:00

I was inducted on December 5, 1998 with fifteen other young ladies. It was the best celebration of my eighteen-year-old life. And the very next day, we had a chapter meeting. Our mama didn't play! I wish it was warm enough to wear my line jacket. I'd have been rocking it all week. I'm officially an old head now, if I wasn't before. LOL!

EE-YIP!
Deep Impact, bka Glory, 10GMFA98

dream world

2008-12-02T02:06:00.000-05:00

Did you ever have a dream that just stuck with you?

I had a dream over the weekend that I'm glad I rode out all the way to the end. I had to know what was going to happen next! Even when sounds or movement would make me stir from sleep a little bit, I'd dive back in to stay in the world of my dream. My days, lately, have at least partly consisted of mulling over the story of the dream. I think I had it because of all the television I'd been watching - suspense, science fiction, action - it was really interesting to be a character in a story like that. So interesting in fact, that I've been writing about it. It started at my beloved's suggestion to write the dream down. It became a hunt for answers. Why did this happen? Why does that person think the way they do? What made these people tick? This thing has a life of its own. Will it become a full-fledged story? I dunno - only time will tell if I have the discipline to ride the writing out like I did that dream. But it is fun thinking about and writing about my story and my characters daily.

longevity

2008-11-29T23:19:00.000-05:00

Tonight my beloved and I went to a performance by one of the special revue groups singing covers of an old R&B crooner group. I watched the men in their crisp suits glide across the stage with all their precision and finesse, the way they used to do in their prime for their audiences. They were really classy. We were the youngest adults in the room, (we were there as guests of an older couple) and I couldn't help but wonder: when the songs we liked as teenagers become golden oldies, will anyone want to see the likes of Blackstreet, Shai, and Jodeci attempting to hump the stage and rip their shirts off when they're in their sixties? I don't think so. Pretty sure about that one.

on time

2008-11-22T14:29:00.001-05:00

I was just sitting here thinking about whether or not I am bothered by the fact that my next birthday will be the last time I turn twenty-anything. For years I've celebrated anniversaries of my 25th birthday. I might start telling people I'm older than I am, so I can be amazing for my age, like my beloved's friend has been doing. Ha ha. I don't know where the time is going. I just realized that it's been the better part of a decade since I graduated from college. Not high school - college. All my girlfriends are mothers, or pregnant. My biological clock is ticking, and I'm all up in the middle of a very frustrating nesting phase. I'm looking at my life and realizing that despite the occasional bumps and hiccups, I am very happy.

He fits into my life well, and when I woke up this morning, I thought about how there was no one in the world I'd rather see all sleepy-faced beside me. He allows me to love him shamelessly and sloppily, grown and child-like, and all without making me worry if I was giving him too much. You know how some men do. You get too sweet on them and they get uncomfortable or push away. He is a breath of fresh air. I can be my silly, nerdy, selfish, giving, righteous and contrite self with him - it's so alien to me after all those years I spent in the wilderness, that I don't quite know how to act here in the land of milk and honey. And when I'm having moments of self-reflection, and I'm concerned about if I'm in the right place, it's memories of all that past dysfunction that help me to see that this is exactly where I need to be - I have so much to learn and share with this man, it will take a lifetime of loving and procreating to get it all in. I believe that's why I wandered in the desert for so long. I come from long lines of women who tucked themselves into themselves in order to keep the peace with their man. I'm not talking about compromise, I'm talking about chronic self-denial. I was weaned on it. I think the Creator offered a way out to me, and this man is the road. All those times I worried if I would find the right place, and here I am.

When we have a home to provide, which if all goes well won't be long, I can worry about silencing that clock. In the meantime, I'll just have to dote on my girlfriends' babies, and hit the snooze button for myself. I don't think I wasted all this time. I would have been a capable mother ten years ago. I would have been a good mother five years ago. But my unborn are blessed to have the person I am now as a mother. I have so much more to give now. I understand love so much better. My faith is so much more balanced. I feel like my life is really just beginning. Now I see why there are so many articles about life beginning at 40. But. One step at a time. Interestingly enough though, the farther I walk on this journey, the more timeless I feel. The less my age matters to me. People ask me how old I am, and I have to actually think before I answer because I'm just not as mindful of it as I was once before. I'm most interested right now in securing a place for us and ours in this world that is safe and has strong roots. I'm most interested in how we work together to make that happen. And even as I write that, I'm just a little taken aback that when I say what I'm most concerned about, it's not a "I/me/my," but a "we/us/ours" statement. Just wow for a second. Just wow.

I need to write more often. I'm glad that lately, I have been writing. I think my writer's block is over. Just in time to catch the good parts.

safe in the house

2008-11-16T16:48:00.000-05:00

I haven't really left my home for the past two weekends. I think it's a phase. I like being here. It could be the weather. It could also be not wanting to move my car and having to find another parking space when I come home. I don't know, but I have really just wanted to be in my home. Which is really funny, because between my neighbors and my slumlord, I don't even like my apartment. But hey, it's a space to call my own. I can watch dvd's, knit, call friends and family, watch a little television, read on the internet. It's where I wanna be. But I guess I've always been a homebody. Even when I was going through my going out phase...

the death of us all

2008-11-13T23:47:00.000-05:00

It's been my opinion for a very long time that religion will be the tool humans use to kill us all.

My mom had an unsettling dream the other night. She was walking through the city, and there was debris and carnage everywhere. She went to her father's house, and he opened the door holding a book with no pages. That book was the Bible before the pages were all ripped out. He told her that they were going around ripping out the pages - that no one could have the Bible anymore - that people had to pray in hiding. As she told me, it all sounded very much like 1984. It reminded me of what the nuns in school told us about special rosaries invented because of Catholic persecution. My mom told me that she couldn't imagine why she might have had this dream. But I knew why.

She had that dream so that she could tell me about it, and put an emphatic punctuation mark on the end of the thoughts I've been having lately about religion in our society and the failures of tolerance.

I discussed with my mother that I've been noticing intolerance towards people of faith much more often lately. I told her about how I'm ashamed of people like the ones who planned to boycott the president-elect's grandmother's funeral since she raised him, and he is pro-choice. I told her that people like that makes it harder for people of faith everywhere. It's hard to respect people like that, which might be why there seems to be a growing contingent of non-religious people who speak about people of faith and about faith itself with no respect.

I am feeling a tension that scares me. Forget red states and blue states. It's all about Team Faith and Team Faithless. There are extremists on each team, and it seems moderates like myself are either being overlooked or are too silent.

Team Faith's extremists think that their religion gives them a mandate to impose their beliefs on everyone else, regardless of whether everyone else has Constitutional rights to believe or not believe what they want. Some even think that everyone who doesn't believe what they believe has rejected their God and deserves no respect now, in addition the damnation that will surely follow their deaths.

Team Faithless' extremists think Team Faith is a bunch of weak-minded nut jobs who use their superstitions as a crutch. Religion is for the mental midgets so far as they see it. And according to them, the fantasies of religion do way more harm than good because they defy and belittle reason, giving license to the faithful to suspend reality in their own minds. A suspension of reality that serves mainly to self-righteously bully and impose upon the faithless.

Others, the reasonable among both the faithful and the faithless, just want to respectfully live and let live. Good fences, good neighbors, celebrate diversity type stuff. I'd hope most people fit in this category. But it sounds like only the intolerant extremists have anything to say lately. And as long as those extremists continue to go at each other, my mommy's nightmare is sure to come. In one moment, intolerant bigots lobby to keep civil rights from others based on an agenda to make others adhere to their faith. In its counterpoint, intolerant bigots make expressions of faith subject to ridicule in the popular culture in such a way that society becomes hostile to the faithful. Team Faith and Team Faithless will keep tussling until the mushroom cloud goes up.

And what neither side will realize is that the problem isn't that people are brainwashed by antiquated texts or that people are evil because they lack faith in a higher power. The problem is that people on both sides refuse to respect and be tolerant towards the other side.

tolerance works both ways

2008-11-11T21:10:00.001-05:00

I have attempted to stay silent about this subject, but I have reached the full extent of my restraint.

Many have been talking about the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which took away the right of gay people in California to have legal marriages. In virtually every discussion of this, a spotlight has been put on black people and people of faith, to state that Prop 8's passing is due to the black folks that came out to vote for Obama. Then inevitably it comes up: black people should be ashamed of denying a civil right to a fellow minority. They, of all people, should have a special sympathy for the plight of oppressed gay couples, because they, of all people, should remember how wrong it was for interracial marriages or slave marriages to be outlawed. They're homophobic! They're using their religion as an excuse for their oppression of gay people! For shame! Foooooor shaaaame.

I don't live in California, so I had no say on Prop 8. Also, I can't reasonably speak for the black people in California, or black people of faith. That said, I take quite a few exceptions to what's being said.

First of all, the numbers that they're using to vilify California's black voters are arguable. People need to stop blaming blacks for California's Prop 8 passage. See a worthy analysis of this point here. I'm not saying that homophobia doesn't exist among blacks, but I am saying that I'm not going to let black people become The Face of Homophobia without putting in my two cents.

As one black Christian, here is my opinion on gay marriage. On a pragmatic level, whether or not marriage for gays becomes legal, gay people will continue to be with each other, and I will continue to try my best to keep from judging them for it based on my beliefs, seeing as how I and most people I know do things that we might be a little uncomfortable telling a pastor or discussing with the Lord. I want to give gay people the same respect that I give others, and to that end, I am not opposed to them being granted the legal privileges and rights that come along with marriage.

Thing is, though, I think that "marriage" is a religious matter. I see the privileges and rights granted by the government in a different light than I see the religious significance of marriage. On the one hand, you get to ride your spouse's health care benefits. On the other, you've created a spiritual covenant under the Lord. I really don't think either of those has much to do with the other. I think that one is under the authority of our government. I believe that the other is under the authority of the Lord, and the best approximation we have to operating under the Creator's order is using the guidance of our respective religious communities.

Imagine then, how torn I might personally feel if confronted with that referendum question. On the one hand, I want gay people to feel free and respected as citizens in their own country. I want them to feel as free as I do as a heterosexual. On the other hand, my spiritual beliefs preclude me from wanting to call a gay union a "marriage" because of what I believe that term to mean, or from even thinking that I have the authority to weigh in on the issue.

I don't even think that question should have gone to referendum in the first place. I think the legality of gay unions is a legal civil rights issue that "regular people" have no business creating law on in the voting booth. When blacks won the full exercise of their civil rights, it was won mostly in the courts. Think about it: in 1954, if the people of Topeka, Kansas were asked by referendum if nigra children should be allowed to attend school with white children, what do you think the result would be? There's a reason that the Brown case was in court. There's a reason that Reconstruction ended when the federal government left the south, and why the Civil Rights Movement became fruitful when the federal government got involved. Sometimes We, The People and our legislatures get it wrong when it comes to our neighbors. Sometimes, high level courts and executive orders are best at carrying out the spirit of what freedom in this country is about, and our constitutional structure is there to balance everything out.

I read a suggestion somewhere that all couples, regardless of sexual orientation, should get "civil unions," and those who seek to have their union ordained by their religion can do so privately. I think that's entirely appropriate. I think that this gay marriage issue may be the best thing to happen for pointing out how ridiculous it is to regularly tout "Separation of Church and State," while allowing judges and courthouse clerks-or-whoever-else to pronounce people "married" after taking vows based on Christian marriage traditions.

Did you notice that I haven't said that I support gay marriage? I didn't say it because I don't. I could likely have voted for Prop 8 myself, and I refuse to be shamed by others for my opinion and my religious beliefs. I am an American. I have the right to my religious beliefs. It's not because I'm homophobic - because I am not. I am neither disgusted by, afraid of, hateful towards, nor superior by any measure to gay people. It's not because I'm black - my black parents and family never taught me to hate anybody. Even though I am in favor of allowing gay couples to legally unite with all privileges and rights if that's what they want to do, I think that there's a better way to handle this than saying, "Let them join, and have the state call it marriage." I think we need to separate marriage and the government for couples of all sexual orientations, and just call all marriage licenses "civil union" licenses. Then people can work out the aspects of what "marriage" and spiritual union means to them on a personal level in their own private lives. This isn't another version of separate but equal. It's all equal, and it keeps our churches and our states as separate as they should be.

There are more reasons besides homophobia or religious intolerance for someone of any race or religion to have voted for Prop 8. There are some hateful people, yes. But there are also some ignorant ones, some misled ones, some people who simply disagree with how the right was given in California in the first place (but not with the right being given). Regarding people who voted against gay marriage because of what they believe, try to understand them. I'm hearing a lot of people talking about how intolerant they are, how blinded they are by their religion, how they're not following Jesus' Golden Rule... it should be obvious that all of that finger-pointing is judgmental. Point your finger, and there are three pointing back at you.

There needs to be dialogue, education, and cooperation, not rhetoric aimed to shame and belittle people based on identity politics. Gay rights activists and social liberals will never get Prop 8 voters to come around if they continue to denigrate them at every turn for who they are and what they believe.

resolution revolution

2008-11-05T11:16:00.001-05:00

I fell asleep during Barack Obama's victory speech last night. I really wanted to hear it live on television, but I was exhausted. I got up before the sun, shortly after five a.m. on the morning of November 4, 2008. I had to get to the polls of Philadelphia's Ward 11, Division 16 on Venango Avenue in North Philly before they set up the voting machines. I was an official poll watcher for the Barack Obama campaign. I spent the entire day gathering and transmitting names and numbers and watching for possible voter intimidation and suppression. Pennsylvania was a battleground state, and my job was to make sure that if Pennsylvania turned out to be the 2008 version of Florida in 2000, the Obama campaign would have a detailed record of Election Day's voting process at my assigned polling place.

What a day. I met other volunteers - three election observers had come down from New York City just to help. My polling place had two Divisions, and the volunteer from Division 15 was a nice woman. Then there were the people from the Board of Elections who operated the machines and administered the sign in process. By the end of the day, we had broken bread together and we all felt like old friends.

The polling place was in a building where mostly old people live, and most of our voters were old enough to be my grandparents. The oldest voter who came through my Division was 108 years old. We had octogenarians come out of the booth saying that it was the first time they had ever voted. We had baby-faced teenagers voting for the very first time with pride. By seven o'clock in the morning, when the polls opened, we had dozens eagerly waiting to cast their vote. By eight o'clock in the evening, when the polls closed, we had record turnout for the division, and there was a sense of anticipation like no other. As we shut the machines down, the pundits projected Pennsylvania in favor of Senator Obama and the room erupted with joy.

I took two of the out-of-state election observers, a husband and wife team, "home" to their hotel on my way home. One of them was old enough to remember when John F. Kennedy was elected and said that this election reminded him of that victory. We talked about race relations, foreign relations, and by the end of the conversation, I finally allowed myself to speak optimistically about the possibility of Barack Obama being elected. I imagined traveling down to D.C. in January for the inauguration. The Audacity of Hope is infectious. It took me until Election Day to really allow myself to let go of the pessimism about American race relations that kept me from believing that Obama could win. At least I did so long enough to enjoy watching the returns on TV that night. I had lived through the nightmare after the 2000 election, where we didn't know if Bush or Gore had won for several weeks. I still harbor the belief that that election was stolen, and my impression of voting in this country has been marred ever since. I had to really work hard to be encouraged while watching the results.

Sometime around ten o'clock, I called home to Virginia to talk to my parents, who I knew were eagerly anticipating the results. My mother answered the phone saying that she couldn't sleep. She tried, because she was exhausted from not having received a good night's rest the night before. But she just couldn't relax until she knew the Obama had won. Mom told me that she voted early in the morning after waiting in a line for an hour and a half. I thanked her for not giving up and leaving to get to work on time. She assured me that nothing could have made her leave that line. I know, from having lived in Virginia, that their electoral college votes are usually for the Republicans, and my Mom and Dad's votes could possibly have been outnumbered by Republican John McCain devotees' votes. As Mom and I talked, the television stations were saying that Virginia was "too close to call." Suddenly, NBC called Virginia for Obama! I let out a few hollers! My mom hollered - she wept, she laughed, she sighed! I did along with her, as she burst into the bedroom to wake my sleeping Dad, whose glad words I could hear in the background.

And then, shortly after eleven o'clock, I saw it.

CNN called the ENTIRE election for Barack Obama. I interrupted my mom's rejoicing over Virginia to let her know that he won the whole thing. We were almost silent for a moment, as someone being aroused from sleep would be. I felt as if I was being aroused from sleep. I felt like I was dreaming. I asked my mom if this was real. She didn't know what to say, as we watched people of all colors and ages in Chicago, California, New York, and Kenya jumping up and down, crying, and screaming. Then we followed suit. Tired as I was, I was up off the couch, tears streaming down my face, hopping up and down, babbling like a fool! My mom then announced that she'd seen what she'd stayed up for, and it was time to go to bed.

So I called my grandmother. She'll be 75 this weekend. She's kind of a night owl, so I was surprised to find her in bed. But I got to be the first to tell her that Obama won. Her response sobered me up a little: "I believe it... I believe that. Now all we have to do is pray that he stays safe." There is nothing like the words of the elders for providing perspective, is there? I assured her that I would pray, not long before Senator Obama appeared on television to give his victory speech, and I drifted off to a deep and satisfying sleep myself.

But I don't want to end this re-telling of history on that note. I want to talk about what's really important, starting with a young lady who came into my polling place yesterday evening about an hour before the polls closed. She couldn't have been any older than 21 years old, and her friend, who had already voted, drove this young lady to the polls when she said she hadn't voted. Her reason? She had moved, and she didn't register in her new neighborhood. We told her that her vote would have a better chance of being counted if she voted where she had been registered before. But she didn't want to go to her old polling place, even though her friend and other poll workers volunteered to escort her there. She said she would rather stay at our polling place and vote with a provisional ballot, because at her old polling place, there was, "Trouble there. People shooting."

If Senator Obama is right, then "Yes, we can," make it so that young people can vote without fearing for their lives. We, not "someone," not "them," not "the government," but We, The People. On this, the morning after my countrymen surprised me by picking a biracial black man for President, I am thinking about that young lady, who ultimately chose a paper ballot rather than risk her life to elect him by machine. We all should be thinking about her. We all should continue to use the energy, money, and time that we have donated to get Barack Obama elected in order to get the change that he has been promising us. Because it was We, The People who got him elected, not Obama himself - he couldn't have done it without us. And if we can do that, we can do anything. We can change our communities. We can save our children. We can change the world. As long as we remember that November 4, 2008 isn't the end of anything, but rather, the beginning. I am crying silent tears as I am typing this.

What's your Yes We Can resolution? If you don't have one, make one, and keep it. Resolve to continue being the change you want to see in this world. Be specific, and get to work.

Yes We Can!

just think

2008-11-04T23:41:00.000-05:00

Mrs. Dunham

2008-11-03T16:41:00.000-05:00

Dear Mrs. Dunham,

I'm poll-watching all day tomorrow for your grandson. I gave money to help his campaign. I'm wearing one of his buttons right now. I was thinking about you earlier today, hoping that you would stay with us long enough to see if your grandson wins, but I guess the Lord had other plans for you. I'm hoping that He comforts those who love you and will miss you, especially your grandson. I lost my grandma eight years ago. Like your grandson, I knew it was coming. But I was so sad to know I'd have to live with her memory and not her hugs anymore. Like your grandson, I was away when my grandma passed too. But I was where she would have wanted me to be, studying in college, fulfilling the hopes and dreams of her and the rest of my family. I visited her before she took her last breath. It was hard knowing I might not see her alive again. And for a while I felt guilty for not having been there on that last day. Until I realized that I knew enough about my grandma's love for me to know better than that. Even now I feel her approval of each of my reaches for more opportunities to become a better self. Your grandson is reaching for one of the biggest opportunities he's ever reached for in his entire life - the chance to serve and make a better place of his entire country. I hope he can move forward in the confidence of knowing that you support what he's trying to do. Mrs. Dunham, please pray with me that God comforts those people that were left behind when the Lord took you. Thank you for your service during the war. Thank you for raising an open-minded and dedicated mother in Ann, and thank you for raising a progressive minded public servant in Barack. You and my grandma have something in common. You were loved, and you will be missed. May God grant you rest and peace.

glory

down ticket

2008-10-30T20:13:00.000-04:00

Who are you voting for? And I don't mean for President of the United States. For those of you who, like myself, are not able to vote early and/or who have not voted yet - what other choices will you have to make on your ballot? I took a look at the sample ballot for my voting ward, so that I would know ahead of time. Since every other local election has been relatively quiet in comparison to the Presidential election, I honestly did not know what else might be asked of me as a voter in the booth. Turns out that where I live, "down [the voting] ticket" there are at least two state-wide positions, four referendum questions, and some state general assembly positions that I'm going to have to weigh in on. I'd hate to go in there and just pick people at random, like I used to do when I first started voting and I didn't think about down ticket races until they were literally staring me in the face.

I put some research into my presidential pick. It wouldn't make sense to not put the same amount of effort into the other races and issues! Especially since - no offense to the future President - the next President will probably have less impact on my daily life and weekly paycheck than the locally elected officials that most people put little effort into choosing or monitoring. Every four years, I pay lots of attention to the presidential race. But I'm a little more mature now. I'm paying taxes. I'm going to be starting a family. There is too much at stake for me to fail to pay attention to what's going on with my state assembly and local officials, not just Congress and the President. The next president will not be able to put his hands directly on my local issues! To the extent the next president will change anything in my life, it will happen over time, after filtering down through the various levels of government. Meanwhile, decisions about finance, safety, education, even the water I drink, will be made right here where I live and in my state capital. It would just be stupid to pull the lever for a president and leave the booth thinking I've done my job as a voter.

If I am going to properly pay homage to the role and rights of the citizenship my ancestors fought so hard to give me, not only do I have to exercise my voting privileges, I must also take them seriously and follow through. I traced my family tree and found ancestors who could not read, and who were probably prohibited from voting and having a say in Chesterfield County, Virginia during Jim Crow. They couldn't say their peace. But I can. I have a say!

So, as I've done for the last few elections, I went online and found out who was running down ticket. I checked them out by reading a bunch of different things that matter to me, like experience, records, and platforms, and then I made my best educated guess on which candidates would be best for the positions. (Actually, I'm still deciding on one of them - it's a tough decision, and I'm glad I still have a few days to mull it over). Then I checked out the referendum questions and figured out my yesses and noes. I feel so much better and more responsible now. And if the ultimate winners - up or down ticket - ultimately screw up, I'm coming back to vote them out.

what'd i say

2008-10-29T22:30:00.000-04:00

I saaaid....

HOW

'BOUT

THEM

PHILLIES!!!

belief

2008-10-22T22:58:00.000-04:00

Lately I've just been exercising my faith muscles. There's a lot going on with me lately. You can't worry about every damn thing. Sometimes you need to just recognize that you do what you can, and what you can't do... you'll deal with, like you've dealt with everything else you couldn't control. Faith is an excellent tool for that.

So many people seem to be atheists and agnostics. It's getting more and more acceptable for people who don't subscribe to "organized religion" to say so and not be reviled. I'm glad that our society has become tolerant enough for that. That said, I don't really understand atheists. Not because I think you have to have an organized code to live by in order to live well and compassionately, but because I can't imagine life without faith. I totally understand agnostics' reluctance to state with certainty a belief in something that they cannot prove with certainty. I personally believe that the difference between someone who is agnostic and someone who subscribes to religion is a choice of whether or not they choose a faith.

I don't think faith is an easy thing. It may be for children, who wide-eyed and trusting, will accept what they are told. But I believe that maturing minds must try what they profess to believe. They should examine it and ask questions. They must, at some point, come to terms with the limits of their knowledge, and then in turn decide whether or not they are comfortable with those limitations. Even still, they must decide, what explanation, if any, answers the questions many of us have about the nature of life, our purposes, and our futures. In my mind, this process is where the atheist parts from the agnostic, and the agnostic from the religious adherents.

In any case, whatever you choose, it was chosen. Atheists choose not to believe in anything. Agnostics choose not to believe the same things that religious adherents choose to believe. But it is a choice, and for those religious adherents who try to strengthen their faith through trials, it is a continually made choice. I have to constantly make the choice to be a person of faith and subscribe to the religion that I have chosen. I do it because I find faith to be filling and inspiring. I find it to be strengthening and empowering. When I need it to be, I find it to be chastening and character building. I don't think that I'm a mental midget because I recognize the limits of my understanding. Though my faith is cerebral in many ways, it has more to do with the inclination of my heart and intuition. And I am okay with that. It is enough for me. I believe that where my limits are, the Creator I believe in takes over. I can't imagine an existence without that.

I believe that in my various day to day concerns, it is He in whom I believe that makes everything work out alright in the end.

I don't need to push this on anyone else. But if anyone is open to it, I would gladly share my faith. I hope to mature to a point in my faith where people see my wellness and want to know what it is that sustains me. But in my mind, regarding public life, my faith is private, not because I'm ashamed, but because I figure that I don't want anyone telling me what to believe, so in turn, I think it is the merciful and loving thing to do to avoid assaulting others' will with my own. I understand that other people of faith can be a pain in the ass, with all their attempts to insinuate their beliefs into public life. But it troubles me - all of the ridicule that people of faith are increasingly subjected to as nonbelievers find an increasingly braver audience in each other. And I'm not just talking about that movie, either. Many of the depictions of people of faith are downright insulting and disrespectful. End of tangent.

I'm thankful for my faith. It has been a much needed medicine for me lately. I am so glad to have it. I am so very blessed.

how bout them

2008-10-15T23:41:00.001-04:00

Thanks guys.
Way to make your city proud!

we know who they are

2008-10-13T13:06:00.000-04:00

We know about the latest rallies of McCain and Palin, and how they are getting a tremendously angry, vicious, and self-righteous response in their rallies from their Republican voters. I was reading a comment made in LH's blog - that the Republicans are looking and smelling like the Dixiecrats. It sent me on a tangent of my own, and this is how I responded:

And of course, they look and smell like the Dixiecrats, because they took actual Dixiecrats, who were frustrated in their original party, into the fold once upon a time. Had the Democratic presidents of the sixties not worked with and supported the civil rights changes we were asking for, they’d have had no reason to jump ship. Even today, their arguments for small government and states’ rights echo the arguments of the segregationist Dixiecrats, who found such arguments convenient when being told by the federal government that Jim Crow had to end. (For clarity, I’m not saying that either of these ideas are inherently racist, but they were the best way for segregationists to legally argue against extending full citizenship to blacks without explicitly saying that nigras don’t deserve citizenship, since that argument has no legal merit.)

You’d think that Dixiecrat sentiment would have died out over the past 40 years, as people like Strom Thurman have died off. But Republicans like Nixon and Reagan kept stoking the fire by contributing things like the Silent Majority and the Welfare Queen to political thought. By the time Dubya got in, he really didn’t even have to do any work to keep the Dixiecrat mentality going, because the Angry White Man syndrome had taken on a life of its own, complete with propaganda and coded language. So coded in fact, that I think some of today’s Republicans don’t even realize the racist legacy of the ideas they espouse. Through successful propaganda and indoctrination, they believe that their views are truest to the spirit of the Constitution and the soul of the country itself. They have hijacked and twisted the Republican party, which only a few generations ago wasn’t known as the default party for racists.

Even now, we’re hearing the word Socialist thrown about by them. They’re not worried about the rise of Marxism, believe me - many of them don’t even understand what it’s about. But if you look back to the Red Scare and McCarthyism, many of the people whose lives, privacy, and careers were targeted were minorities and people with sympathies towards minorities and the poor at home and abroad. Same goes for today. If you want the government to get involved in helping people who are having problems helping themselves (name any Democrat here), you’re liable to be branded a Socialist, like Barack Obama has been labeled recently. Anything to get people who care about the minorities and lower classes branded as un-American.

1960’s parlance: “nigger loving Communist”
2000’s parlance: “un-American Socialist”

No wonder John Lewis compared them to George Wallace. He was absolutely right.

I try to view elections through an Independent lens, because depending on the issue, I may feel either conservative or liberal. But the Republicans keep making it hard for me, because of stuff like this.

Ask the Question

2008-09-26T09:46:00.000-04:00

Do you know anyone who might not be registered to vote? Don't assume too easily. My best friend told me AFTER the primaries this spring that she has never voted. She's never even registered to vote. I had no idea, because we'd never discussed it before.

After I calmed down and we talked, my friend promised me that she'd register in her new county of residence. So, to hold her to her word, I found the voter registration form for her county online and e-mailed it to her. All she has to do is print it, fill it out, and mail it in, postage-paid.

That got me thinking. Who else could I reach out to? I texted my lil' cousin who's in college to see if her absentee thing was going OK. She just sent off her absentee ballot request on time - which is great, because she's a resident of a swing state.

But my proudest moment in recent days was getting my cousin's son, who is seventeen years old, but will be eighteen on Election Day, to fill out a voter registration form. I took it to his house and watched as he filled it out. I put it in the mailbox myself. He chose to register as an Independent, but he said, without any prompting from me or his mother, that he is voting for Barack Obama. Getting him to register was a coup for me, because although his mother is registered, she doesn't vote and is proud of it. She did vote once - for Hillary in the primary, and now since her candidate is out, she says she won't be voting in November. (Don't get me started on how bad a role model she is for her kids on citizenship.) Her son was reluctant to fill out the form because of her influence, but she told him to register, because she didn't want to hear my mouth. Thank goodness for my big mouth! He promised me that he will vote on Election Day, and I'm going to make sure he has a photo ID and voter registration card before that day.

Take some time and ask among the friends, family members, church members, mentees - hey, even co-workers - and see if they're registered in their residence. They might not be, especially if they've recently moved, or if they're a young adult (or seventeen-year-old October/early November baby). I bet we can be more influential on people we know than strangers with clipboards can be! And once you get them registered, take responsibility for them and make sure they follow up and get to the polls.

Each one, reach one.

seeking peace

2008-09-23T00:09:00.000-04:00

I am really loving the weather. Almost everything else in my life is causing me to seek peace and quiet in my affected spirit, but the weather lately is making me soar. There's sunshine and cool breezes. The fall briskness is beginning, reminding me of how new everything felt when each school year would begin. Funny how, because of when we start school, fall feels new to me, but so many things start visibly dying. I feel a little like that. Some of my idealism is dying. But I still feel like something new is happening. Even though the use of Phoenix to illustrate this concept is very overdone, it fits well with what I'm feeling. Walking to work this morning, I felt like I was falling apart on the inside, while only half heartedly trying to keep it together on the outside. But I'm stronger than that, or at least I believe I am. I sometimes forget what I'm capable of, so when I remember it's like, it feels like I'm finding something new in myself. All of this is happening at the same time. Meanwhile, the leaves are drying up, and the tenor of the wind is changing. I'm making moves and seeking peace.

I'm taking dance classes

2008-09-14T19:37:00.000-04:00

i was wrong

2008-09-10T09:57:00.001-04:00

I've had a health problem lately, and when I tell people who are close to me what it is, the first question they all ask is, "Are you stressed?"

I always answer that I'm not, because I don't feel like I'm under any more pressure than I usually am. I'm not awake at night with worries. My hair isn't falling out. And I don't feel like running away from home, or dropping all my concerns altogether - a form of paralysis that has happened in the past when I really was stressed out.

But I think I'm wrong. Now that I think about it, I've got some running issues in my mind that I think about so much, I guess I'm too sleepy at night be kept up by worrying about them - I've been worrying myself about them under the surface all day. I've got some running tasks that I'm concerned about as well - a running volunteer project and a board position in a professional organization. I'm concerned about my job security and career direction (rather, the lack thereof) and how that's going to affect some of my financial goals. I'm concerned about spending quality time with my family - not being a stranger. I'm concerned about my relationship with my honey, because I know that when I'm stressed or frustrated, he's usually the first one to see it, and that's not a good thing, because no matter how much I try not to unload on him, I am a different person when I'm "trying to get stuff done." I'm less tolerant, easily frustrated, and perhaps worst of all, I have absolutely no patience. Those things don't work well in relationships, even with people who are patient with you because they love you. Oh yeah, and there's the ongoing mystery health problem, which is one of those things that's constantly nagging on my mind. I am also fighting this uphill battle to keep my home clean and cook on a regular basis. It's like Mission Impossible with all the activity going on. And I don't know if you remember, reader, but I think clearer and I'm a happier person when I am living in a clean and orderly house. That's just one more straw on the camel's back.

I guess when you put it that way, yeah, I am stressed. I was wrong. Lately, I have been really stressed, but I've been too distracted by all my concerns to notice. I've even had the nerve lately to think of other responsibilities to add to my list. Sheesh.

Here lately, I have not at all been the woman I was when I started this blog three years ago. That woman was so joyful. Even my best friend noticed, and said so. Between writing, reading poems, socializing at venues, going to see live music, learning how to date, cooking, enjoying my home, exploring new music, shoot, even playing hooky from work to paint pictures, my life was great. But I was also more irresponsible then. I had abandoned my career goals (and I think I'm paying for that, even now) because I hated my job, so I was just showing up and doing enough to get the money. I had no financial goals and I spent without diligence. I wasn't really doing any good for anybody else - I was pretty much indulging whatever made me happy. I had so much joy running over from my cup, I was spilling it onto this blog on a daily basis. I was a much more prolific writer. It all just came at a cost - honestly, I was stressed at that time, too, because I knew I was being irresponsible. Funny thing is now that my priorities are supposedly in order, I'm stressed, just in a different way.

Perhaps there's too much on my plate. But there really isn't anything I'm doing that I'm not obligated to do. Really. I've made promises I will not break, not just to others but also to myself. So what is one supposed to do when they have multiple obligations and priorities besides manage their time really well? (I'm working on the time management thing - it really does seem like there aren't enough hours in the day.) I'm just going to pray. And keep living.

the hopeful

2008-08-29T19:39:00.002-04:00

I did watch Senator Obama's speech last night. Before I parked myself in front of the couch, I was thinking about how I might want to write a letter to my children about it. One of these days, I imagine that they'll come home from school and ask me about it.

"Mommy, what was it like? What did it mean to you?"

I used to ask this question of my parents when I was a child. My mom grew up in the same town I grew up in, before the fall of the industrial economy, white flight, and the crack epidemic ravaged the place. My dad grew up in the South before it became the New South and attended segregated schools. During their childhood, so many things happened. They were toddlers when Topeka was ordered to desegregate its schools and when Birmingham was told to desegregate their buses, but there was so much more to the Movement. I was fascinated with the twenty-five years that predated my existence in which America wobbled while turning right-side up. I read everything I could get my hands on, from the Freedom Riders to the Panthers. From Muhammad Ali to John Carlos and Tommie Smith. From Malcolm X to Thurgood Marshall. I was engrossed in Eyes on the Prize, Roots, and every other made-for-TV biography of a black hero. I excelled in school during Black History Month each year. I always wondered what it was like when history was the news. But at the time, parents were too busy being children to really reflect on the magnitude of what was being witnessed or how profoundly it would affect my life. Also, memories fade with time.

So I figured that I'd try to get my feelings and observations down while they're still fresh. I did watch Barack Obama's speech when he accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for President. I knew it was a first, and I knew that's all anyone would be talking about for months to come. Obama's candidacy has engaged so many black people in the political process. You can turn on the television, turn on the radio, go on the internet - black people are talking about this candidacy everywhere, whether or not they are planning to vote for him, though most of us are planning to vote for him in the general election. One of the most fascinating things about his candidacy is that it isn't just about electing a black man for many people, myself included. He is smart, he is personable, he has some good ideas (depending on who you ask), and he has demonstrated the ability to look and sound and act presidential. He speaks to the optimism in people and he challenges people to question their cynicism and believe in their own ability to make their country and their world a better place.

He has supporters from many different ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds and political beliefs. People flock to see him speak in record audiences. They call him a rockstar. Others say he's too popular. One thing is for sure - no American has seen anything like this ever before in politics. Whether people like him or dislike him, most do it passionately. When he speaks, people listen. Many are fascinated because other black people have run for President, like Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Carol Moseley Braun, and Al Sharpton but no other black candidate made it out of the primary elections before. No other black candidate had a shot at actually becoming President before. Whether or not he wins in November, he will still have opened a door that most Americans thought was closed to black people. He isn't just black. He is also white. He has been embraced by many blacks and many whites, and many others who are biracial as well.

On the night that he became the presumptive nominee - when it was determined that he had swayed more Democratic convention delegated than his only remaining rival for the nomination - he gave a speech, and I watched as he and his wife stood before the whole country. I did cry. I was happy for my country - happy to see that this was possible in America.

And last night when he gave his speech, I didn't cry. I already had almost three months to get used to the idea that a black person could become a major political party's nominee for President. I felt the weight of the moment, but by the time his speech came, I was actually less impressed with the race of the candidate than I was concerned about how strong a candidate he was or wasn't. As he came out to talk to the 75,000 people who came to listen to his speech in a gigantic stadium, my first thought was, "I hope he doesn't mess anything up," because I wanted everything to go perfectly. My second thought was, "I hope the Secret Service [the people who are responsible for his safety] doesn't mess anything up." I thought about President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., who were assassinated when my parents were young. I thought about how the elders - my grandmother and others - were probably thinking the same thing.

And then he began to speak.

He spoke about his predecessors in his party - he thanked everyone, including his family, his running mate, his opponents. He talked about civic responsibility and his plans for the country. He criticized his opponent. He challenged everyone to make a better country. It was patriotic, it was substantive, and it was something I was proud of. I thought about how the family he made with his wife is like the family I come from and like the family I want to make one day. I thought about how the rest of the world can see a family like mine in public view - that good black families exist and are happy and normal, like many other American families from every ethnicity, religion, class, and political leaning. I knew that he had done a good job and shown why he had the chance to be our president. And because I agreed with the things he said, I hoped that one day he would be our president.

He gave the speech forty-five years after Martin Luther King Jr.'s legendary I Have A Dream speech at the March on Washington, which happened before I was born, when my parents were in junior high school. And although he talked about the speech, it was only indirectly, and I loved that he didn't try to abuse Dr. King's legacy in that way. It would have been seen as presumptuous of him to declare that his candidacy was the ultimate fulfillment of Dr. King's dream. But he talked about it just enough to let people know that he was aware of the weight of the moment, and that his hopes are similar to the great pastor's.

I think that most of us who know our history in this country have been humbled by the idea that we are living through history. I don't know one person who isn't paying attention as this candidacy goes on. We all want to know - will he win? Can he win? Is America ready to vote for him? The ghosts of our history still haunt us and we watch and wonder. So many of us hope very cautiously. My grandma, who was born during the Great Depression, lived through a World War, and raised children in the segregated south, likes him. But she fears for his safety, wondering if his life will be taken. My parents think it can happen, but don't trust other Americans to get past prejudices and vote for him. And me? Well I don't know. I think I'm a little less pessimistic than my grandma and my parents... but not by much.

But I don't see this as a test of whether or not America has gotten over racism. It's a political contest, and there just might be enough people who disagree with him politically for him to lose the election. If he doesn't win, it might not be race that caused it. It might be, but it might not be. That's how racism works today. It's not in-your-face like it was when my parents were children. It's very quiet and sometimes when it happens, because you want to believe the best about people, you're not sure if the thing that made you wonder about racism is really racist or just something else... like political disagreement. Only the progression of time will tell us what we want to know about Senator Obama's future - America's future.

Only time will tell if my children will ever want to hear this story on a former President or a former presidential hopeful.

C-Span, my eyes and ears

2008-08-28T12:05:00.000-04:00

I have been watching C-Span for my Democratic National Convention coverage, and I wish more people would join me. First of all, the other major news networks aren't showing everything. It's not that I necessarily want to see everything, but I'd rather hear what John Kerry has to say than hear what Pat Robertson has to say. Another problem is all of the speculation you have to hear from pundits whose job it is to chatter on and on about the goings-on at the convention. Some of them are truly empty eggheads who just talk to fill the silence... except if they would shut up, it wouldn't be silent, because there's someone at the podium who's getting ignored by the network so that we can hear the empty egghead make a paycheck. I don't want to hear all of that. I want to make up my own mind about whether or not I agreed with something that was said, or whether I thought someone was sincere, or whether their words were appropriate for their intended purpose. There are no commercials to watch. There are no unreliable poll results to hear. There aren't any miscellaneous and unnecessary graphics floating all over the screen. And when a keynote or closing speech is finished, the impressions I have of the speech get to last, because the empty eggheads don't immediately jump in to talk over my thoughts with their commentary, which I can sometimes swear has an agenda. The empty eggs are always spinning. I'm really grateful for C-Span.

it's whatever i'm tired

2008-08-24T22:24:00.000-04:00

I don't have much to say about Joe Biden, since everybody else does. I heard somewhere that the cardinal rule of VP-pickin' is "first, do no harm." I think it remains to be seen whether or not Obama got this one right... and I think it will continue to remain to be seen until at least the day after election day. No gaffes willing and the creek don't rise.

The challenge is now to get through Denver without Obama getting escorted out the back door by security, without the Secret Service lunching on the job, and without Billary acrobatics. Y'all might not like me saying this but ah, I still like Bill, even though I don't trust him anymore. And Hillary, well, it's whatever. Whaddaya gonna do.

I kinda feel like this whole thing is scripted anyway. I might need to stop caring and just show up for election day. This train wreck is taking up too much of my time. I got other stuff to do, you know? Y'all got me checking political blogs and news sites three times as often as I used to before the primaries started. I'm all on my laptop on a regular basis... doing corny stuff like watching politics on TV.

That is just not acceptable. I gotta do other stuff.

STOP IT

2008-08-20T15:49:00.000-04:00

"Me, personally, fill-in-rest-of-sentence-here," is not an acceptable sentence.

It has never been an acceptable sentence. It never will be an acceptable sentence under any circumstances. I'm not an English language purist at all times, but there are certain abuses that should never go unchecked. The use of "Me, personally," is one of them.

Stop it.

Suitable substitutes, among others, include: "In my opinion," "I think that," "I believe that," "My opinion is," or simply stating your opinion without any introduction. Another option is to state your opinion and follow it up by stating that it is your opinion (and omitting "Y'ahm sayin'" or "Y'ah mean" unless you are talking with your casual acquaintances in casual circumstances, which do not include talking to any representative of the media or any person in law enforcement.)

Thank you.

What's Not Going On

2008-08-19T21:49:00.000-04:00

Pretending that America is a theocracy is Not Going On.

Matters of faith and values are not, NOT, relevant to whether or not a person is qualified to be the chief executive officer of the country. They may be relevant to whether or not you trust or respect or like a candidate, or even if you think they're going straight to Hades, but they don't have anything to do with the stuff that Americans have to deal with that the President can actually affect. I say this with the possible exception of appointments to the Supreme Court of justices who might encroach upon and further sully the separation of church and state, which I believe is an important distinction to keep up. A candidate's position on gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, even the place of evolution in a school curriculum, though important to certain people for certain reasons, should not be CENTRAL to a sound assessment of whether a candidate for president can run the country in a time of war, economic crises, educational deficiencies, and national security fears.

This is how we wound up with Bush's dumb ass in the first place. People were busy voting on Bush praying that America could "crusade" against an "axis of evil" and keep the gays from marrying, instead of electing a leader who could keep us out of the muck we're in now. I haven't yet been threatened by Adam and Steve, but Iran, North Korea Russia, inflation, and threatened retirement prospects are really starting to scare me, and I'd love to know where Dubya has been effective with any of that.

I am not saying that values are not important to me. I am a Christian in belief and not just in name. But since I'm not going to make it my absurd personal mission to go killing everyone who doesn't believe what I believe, I need to live in peace with my neighbors, and that means living and letting live. I don't see Jews trying to keep me from eating pork, or Muslims trying to make me wear a burka. Lesbians don't want me to kiss girls. Atheists don't want me to renounce my beliefs. And pro-choice activists don't want me to abort my unborn children. I don't need to tell these people what to do either. I don't want my government in my business, so I don't want it in theirs either, 'cause it just opens the door for them to come after me next.

Meanwhile, I do need my government to govern. Balance the budget, please. Fix the local, regional, and national infrastructure, please. Stop leaving children behind in the schools, please. Figure out how to stop the violence in urban communities so I can stop seeing all these damned teddy bear shrines and RIP t-shirts, please. Fix Social Security so my parents don't have to die at work, please. I WISH that the pressing issues weren't so many and so urgent that we had the time to worry about whether or not a candidate for president is going to Hades, but we don't. Can the candidate lead? Can they use the sense God gave them to serve their country well? Do they have a plan to make our lives and opportunities better? 'Cause that's what we need. You want salvation and righteousness? Go to the Lord to find it, not to the polls. Because for as much as people pull levers worrying about whether a candidate shares their values instead of worrying about their actual competence, that's how much less will be done about the issues that affect our lives and our opportunities.

We are the soul of our country, not our executive officer.

What's Going On

2008-08-19T21:13:00.000-04:00

The Olympics are going on. I kinda don't want to watch because of the whole human rights thing, but for real? It's the Olympics. You can't get away from them. I've decided that Jamaicans deserve to be the fastest people in the world. They put up with all kinds of hell behind sorry stereotypes, and it's great to see them representing and kicking butt on the track. Oh - and the Chinese are winning all the gold medals because their athletes raison d'etre is to bring glory to the People's Republic, and has been since most of them were virtually infants, seeing as how China has known- for how many years now? - that they would be hosting in front of the world. I'm still a little scared after that opening ceremony. All those synchronized drummers? Shooo.... I'ma need the US to pay their debts. That's a lot of people. Thanks.

Mango smoothies are Going On. I'ma hook one up at home soon for the first time, and it's going to be banging. I just have to get some more supplies, 'cause ah, mango and ice ain't enough. LOL.

Vice Presidential Speculation is Going On and it is so exhausting - I wish everybody would shut up, 'cause you know what? Y'all don't know. Now if it winds up being who y'all think it would be, well, cookie for you. But I am tired, tired, tired, tired, TIRED. Y'all won't know for sure 'til we are told. I can't believe I'm stuck rubbernecking on this wreck of an election until at least Thanksgiving (it will not be over by the day after Election Day, I'm sure.)

Pregnancy is Going On. I must be at that age, 'cause all the friends I see with any kind of regularity are preggers. Right now. Plus some other people. Perhaps I should stop drinking water until this mess passes. One thing I know for sure - if I thought having men slowed us down insofar as hanging out together, that won't be anything compared to the babies. Maybe we can start a playgroup... and I'll just come stag.

shameless

2008-08-08T00:41:00.003-04:00

During the primaries, Senator Clinton was known to challenge Senator Obama to publicly reject and denounce certain statements made by certain people that no senator concerned about the welfare of the American people should espouse. In light of recent events, I find that ironic.

At this point I think she should definitively and convincingly reject and denounce any notion that she is interested in hijacking the Democratic presidential nomination from the presumptive nominee. I think that she should tell the truth about the 18 million voters soundbite that keeps coming from her and her surrogates - that there weren't 18 million, the number was rounded upwards for effect, and that of those who voted for her in the primary, many have no plans or aspirations to vote for her in the general election. I think that she should "go hard" for the presumptive nominee or refrain from "going" at all. I think that she should end egging people on with rhetoric about her supporters needing catharsis. I think that she is responsible for misleading her primary supporters once it became evident that she did not and would not have a mathematical chance of getting the nomination. I think that, instead of asking supporters of the presumptive nominee to see things from her supporters' perspective, she should ask her supporters to take the perspective of all of those who have prudently and reasonably accepted the presumptive nominee as the eventual nominee.

Three weeks away from the convention, Hillary Clinton is not supposed to be the main news headline. This is not a time to rehash the primary, it is time to win the general. Hillary Clinton and her husband are being transparently disingenuous, doing as good a job as any right-winger at distracting from the legitimate campaign issues and undermining the presumptive nominee's campaign. Her actions and omissions are tantamount to campaigning for the other guy. In fact, the McCain camp is already beginning to use her previous statements, which were made without regard for the welfare of her party, and by extension, this nation, against the presumptive nominee. Of course it was widely theorized that this would happen as she was making these statements in her own self-interest, and she knew it then, but did not care about the consequences.

Shame on you, Hillary Clinton. Shame on you. Meet the party you are betraying in Colorado. There are people who will never, ever, in 2008, 2012, or any other year, put their trust in you. Do what you will at the Denver convention, but understand that the party you want to run will remain fractured and worse, ineffective, as long as you reach egomaniacally for the helm.

joyful noise

2008-08-05T22:34:00.000-04:00

I am thankful for gospel music more and more. In the midst of all that swirls around me on a regular basis, trying to enter my psyche, requiring me to guard my heart, I need a salve for my spirit. Often music is exactly what the Doctor ordered, and especially lately, the Word of God helps me to, as one of my favorite poets says, get my mind right. I am so thankful for John P. Kee today. So thankful for Tye Tribbett, who's from the same city I grew up in. So very thankful for Fred Hammond. You wanna talk about the audacity of hope? I can tell you where to get some of that.

late 911 wears the late crown

2008-08-05T21:44:00.002-04:00

This horrible crime happened within a short two minute walk from the front door of the home my parents raised me in.

I don't know the victim or the victim's family, but once, eleven years ago, I knew the neighborhood intimately. My aunt lives around the corner. I still have some family friends there. I can still be found in the neighborhood, visiting family from time to time. But this kind of thing didn't happen near my house when I was growing up there. Things like this were the fantastic stuff of gritty urban 90's movies, not the reality of the neighborhood where I safely played softball, rode my bike, jumped double-dutch, and went to the ice cream truck. Apparently, a lot has changed in the last decade. My old hood is the new hotspot.

This crime happened in less than a week since the newly tripled police force fanned out across the city in a show of force, parading down the main avenue of my old neighborhood one cruiser after another in a cacophony of sirens, showing off. I'm guessing that was display was meant to show the criminals that "the law" was in town. Then on Sunday, the police received a phone call warning that there was a man riding the streets openly carrying a gun. Guess they didn't get him, 'cause that Monday afternoon, that man sprayed a neighborhood while exchanging fire with another man, scattering the playing children in every direction, and ending the life of a bright-eyed preschooler. The child was the son of the woman who called the police to report the threat.

There but for the grace of God goes one of my loved ones. It just hits so close to home.

Now I'm not saying that the police are to blame for the bad choices of the shooters, or the decision the mother made to let her child play outside that day, knowing that someone was riding around on a bike with a gun. But it remains to be seen why the murderer was cruising the street with impunity the day after it was brought to their attention that this guy was out there. Especially since "the law" was in town and in full force.

This is the kind of stuff that makes people from the hood reject the notion that their suspicions and chips on shoulders are figments of their imagination. This is the kind of stuff that makes people from the hood say things like, "If a man was riding a bike with a semi-automatic weapon in [insert predominantly white middle-class neighborhood here], and someone called the police, something would have been done to make sure those children were safe." It's not every theorist's favorite, "black pathology," that makes us not trust the police. It's stuff like this.

May God comfort and strengthen the family of little Brandon Thompson.

revisiting cynicism

2008-08-05T21:16:00.001-04:00

You know, you grow up black in this country, and you think you have it all figured out: black people will never be "mainstream," black people will always be "other," and racial tension will never go away. No matter how good things are getting with black billionaires, black Secretaries of State, black Oscar winners, and the ability of sisters to wear their hair without relaxers in the workplace - one should never, ever get too comfortable. One should never, ever be fooled into thinking that we are accepted for who we really are - fellow citizens, brothers and sisters in humanity. So goes conventional black wisdom.

And then every once in a while... stuff happens. Bernie Mac's sitcom would get an Emmy nomination, for example. Or here and there, DNA evidence helps a falsely accused black man to go home from prison to his family. Or Barack Obama wins the Democratic primary in Iowa. And some of us wonder, should we toss the conventional black wisdom out the window? Maybe classism and LGBT issues are the only remaining frontiers of acceptance, tolerance, and compassion.

Then you look around and realize that, "Naaaah, it's still the same old mess."

My un-scientific review of commentary on "the Internets" has convinced me that the absence of honest and progressive dialogue about race relations is still stark, and it is still having disastrous effects on public discourse. A simple visit to a major city's newspaper's website will reveal all of the racist trolls who pop out of the woodwork to comment on articles to blame government for spoiling Negroes, or blame Negroes for every urban social ill in existence. But perhaps more obviously during this election season, the obvious place to go see how dysfunctional Americans are about race is any discussion of Barack Obama's campaign, since race almost always comes up, and when it does, ridiculousness inevitably ensues. And it's not just white folks, either - it's some of us, too. Spewing poorly-reasoned ridiculousness from every direction to everyone who's willing to listen.

I shouldn't be as surprised as I am by the amount and intensity of these rampant displays of ignorance, intolerance, and hatred, but I am. I think it may have something to do with living on the East Coast in or near major cities, full of highly educated people who are more used to diversity and who are less tolerant of political incorrectness in "mixed company." It could be that I haven't been paying much attention - in fact, that must be it. I've been so busy living the American Dream that I've forgotten that there are people who don't believe that the American Dream is possible for blacks, or that blacks are American enough to live the American Dream, or that blacks who are living it didn't/couldn't earn it like everybody else did. Let me tell you, many of you Americans are starting to get on my nerves.

sigh

2008-08-05T21:06:00.001-04:00

I saw a comment online the other day thanking Michelle Obama for making dark-skinned sisters back in style.

"Back in style"??? Really? How 'bout I'm tired of hearing stuff like people of certain skin colors are or are not "in style."

You know what? However much we need a progressive discussion about how we psychologically process the differences in our skin tones, that progressive discussion could have happened many years ago and it hasn't happened yet and may not ever happen, so... let me just cut to the chase.

If you are, in 2008, still talking about whether or not a certain skin tone is or is not in style, you should stop talking. If you don't know why, you betta ask somebody, but then stop talking again, until somebody breaks it down for you.

joyful joyful

2008-07-15T22:42:00.000-04:00

i am making a concerted effort to be more joyful. to see the brightside. to take more deep breaths. to enjoy the sun rays.

precious few of us are joyful all the time for seemingly no reason. many of us have gotten so wrapped up in certain details of life that we need to prioritize having the experience of joy.

i realized in the past few weeks that i'd gotten off track. life really is what you make it in many ways. i've had so much on my mind. i haven't made the effort to live in the moment. i'm trying to do that now. i am so very, very blessed. i am trying to walk in that blessing.

thanks to a friend of mine who gave me a little wake up call, the Content Black Woman who is being more mindful of how destructive complaining can be, my desire to be a better partner for my beloved, and a nostalgia for the woman i remember i was before i got off track, i am being more mindful of the choices i make. i'm paying more attention to the thoughts that i choose to express and why. i'm taking my time waking up and starting the day because i find that my day goes better when i don't bombard myself with life's demands all at once. i'm attempting to eat better because my conscience is eased when i do so. i'm working on keeping up those connections with family and old friends, because those kinds of relationships make life sweet. i'm paying more attention to the health of my plants. i'm trying to live my life more abundantly.

God and i have a lot of talking to do.

a lot of misc thoughts

2008-07-10T21:52:00.001-04:00

If some white person said they wanted to castrate Obama wouldn't we be wiling like how people were wiling when Imus called those sisters nappy headed hos? No, seriously - isn't castration what was often done to brothers by lynch mobs? Just eww, Jesse. Just. Eww.

I think that no matter what Obama does at this point, people who are voting against McCain are going to vote for Obama anyway. So he can approve a revised FISA bill. He can talk about men not raising their children in a black church on Father's Day. Short of cheating on Michelle with a white girl, there pretty much isn't anything that he could do to irrevocably piss off black folks. And no other liberal or reasonable moderate is going to vote for McCain. Most Democrats won't vote for McCain. Shoot, a bunch of Republicans are gonna vote for Obama. So it is what it is.

If he was playing Mother May I, I don't think Obama is taking a big giant step over to the center. We could call what he's been up to a regular or teeny weeny step. Read his policies. Really actually read them. He was never the uber-liberal that Hillary and the Republicans made him out to be. I guess if someone only took their word for it maybe Obama is surprising them, but he ain't surprising me.

I'm 'bout to go to the Harlem Book Fair. (I think.) Maybe I can find Ta-Nehisi Coates' book there for a good price. I see Tananarive Due has a new one, and so does Diane McKinney Whetstone. Look people, at $25 a pop for hardback books, I'ma need y'all to schedule your book releases accordingly. I liked it better when I was oblivious to book releases, 'cause it made it easier to buy things in paperback without having to wait and wait and wait. It seems like it took forever for Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali to go paperback. I did pick up Stephen L. Carter's Palace Council, which just came out. Can't wait to eat it up. I like his stuff, and I like that for my $25, I get over 500 pages of pageturning.

I keep hearing a lot about this Lil' Wayne person... I'm just not attracted to that sound, though. I'm thinking that no matter how creative he is, I probably won't enjoy what he has to say. Oh well. Maybe I should give him a chance, but he too shall pass. Now when is Erykah's next joint going to drop?

Michael Eric Dyson. Dude, I got no deal-breaking problems with you, per se, but for real? You are oversaturated in the media. Must you be everywhere? With that reaching-arse vocabulary? Could you take a month long vacation like once a quarter maybe? You're like that kid who knows all the answers and raises your hand on every question but the teacher doesn't call on you 'cause she wants to hear from someone else.

Bill O'Reilly. You might have said some nice things about Malia Obama, but you still get nowhere with me. Believe me. A pox on your network. Seriously, I hope y'all antennas just mysteriously stop working.

Oh yeah, and flip-flop is overused, both by political pundits and by women this summer. Of course politicians are going to change their minds, both for political expediency and because they think their new position actually is better than their first. It's older than this country, it's how politics works, and people sound stupid when they level it as an accusation to discredit political candidates. Be more creative. And sisters, there are other types of sandals. And I don't mean leather flip flops as opposed to rubber ones. Besides, Hannibal says they're bad for your feet, and I believe whatever he says. LOL! Be more creative.

Leave Madonna alone. Not because she doesn't deserve how she's being called a whore/homewrecker/slut again but because you should really have something better to do with your time. And besides - you don't know the truth and you never will.

But I'm telling you right now if Will is a Scientologist, I might just cry. Really. No, really.

Hell no I'm not helping Hillary with her campaign debt. Let those PUMA bitches do it. I'm just sayin'.

Changing your diet is hard.

Is the news tired of talking about Zimbabwe or something? I haven't heard much lately. How's Tsvangirai doing, still hanging in there? Or are we not supposed to care anymore?

Oh, and, stank as his comment may have been, Jesse Jackson is not irrelevant or played. He does more on his feet for the black community that I (and many other black folk do on our asses), which is sit around jawjacking. That said, his style is, let's say, version 4.0. Right about now, we need like version 8.0 on the forefront. I'm not saying that that's Barack Obama, 'cause it ain't. Community organizer though he may have been, he's still not a civil-rights race man in the vein of a MLK. He is not the "leader of the Negroes," and he never will be (see, that's v.8.0 thinking right there, 'cause there isn't a leader of the Negroes slot to fill) and he doesn't want that role. You can't be president AND leader of the Negroes. It's a conflict of interest. Anyway, there's still room for computers that run on XP instead of Vista. As long as Jesse does good for others, I say good for him and thank you, veteran, for still putting in work. Just play your position - you are not the voice of the dark monolith, yet you keep on letting the media shove that damn mic in your face for that particular purpose. Why? Stop that. That's how you find yourself in trouble, running all over the country having to apologize for bringing back alley language to everybody's doorstep. Got those crackers feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

And I know that's his problem with Obama, and others' problem too. People keep trying to figure out if Obama is reaching for white acceptance by dissing Black people with all this faith and values and personal responsibility talk. I am insulted by that. Whether or not people mean it this way it sounds like they mean that it is "white" acting to talk about values with black people. It's like "personal responsibility" have become buzz words for racism against black people. Do I think the Fathers Day speech was 100% OK? Honestly, no, I think the timing was inappropriate. But I don't find anything wrong with what he said. And now people want him to go on tour and talk about values to white folks and Filipinos and Guatemalans too, to - wait, exactly what would that accomplish? Does he have to prove he's not racist or Tomming now, even though every black person over 50 that I know has been saying the same exact stuff about values for as long as I can remember? Dude is not Uncle Ruckus and we should be more concerned about FISA and the economy and education and jobs than whether or not he told the truth and shamed the devil on Father's Day.

gratitude

2008-06-25T23:19:00.000-04:00

Words associated with Michelle Obama during her husband's campaign for president have included ingrate, ingratitude, ungrateful, and spoiled.

This disturbs me.

I gather that these comments come from people who believe that Michelle Obama owes the United States gratitude because this black woman is an Ivy League graduate with an enviable standard of living.

And since I am, like Michelle Obama, a black American woman from a relatively modest background who is using higher education to attain professional and economic success, I am taking these words personally. I will not argue that the United States is not a place where there are many opportunities. But I submit that the opportunities that are available to me as a citizen of this nation are mine by inalienable right and not by charitable grant.

To the extent that I have had any help in becoming a viable and productive citizen of this country, besides my Lord there are many, many people and organizations that I can thank. Among them are my parents, teachers, scholarship sponsors, educational institutions, clergy members, civil rights agitators, black and female professional pioneers - I could go on and on. Yet this gratitude has nothing to do with whether or not I love my country or whether or not I am patriotic or whether or not I am now, or have ever been, proud of my country.

When I hear people accuse Michelle Obama (and me) of being ungrateful, it reminds me of a sentiment I have encountered too often in America. Black people should be grateful that of all the things that could have happened to our ancestors, ours were privileged to have been taken from Africa and brought to the states. We should be grateful that slavery was abolished, Jim Crow repealed, integration ordered, and Affirmative Action enacted. In the name of gratitude, we should be happy and uber-patriotic Americans. We should not criticize our country's policies or conditions. We should reach for material possessions and feel satiated on having reaped the promise of the American Dream. We should get over the history of how blacks were treated in this country and the fighting that our forebears had to do to make our citizenship meaningful. We should turn our backs on the reality of how many blacks are still not reaping the full benefits of that citizenship in this country today, blame them and their ungrateful excuses for their plight, and turn away from the unpatriotic idea that we have any solidarity with these, our countrymen, for fear that we will be seen as militant and ungrateful. To be good (but never authentic) Americans, this is what upwardly mobile blacks in America must do to show our gratitude. Any action to the contrary would insult everything that this country stands for and the good (benevolent white) Americans within it.

The problem with people like Michelle Obama is that they exercise their rights as American citizens to have and express their own opinions. Unfortunately for some, such a wholeheartedly American independent streak is bound to conflict with the above litany-of-all-things-grateful. How terribly inconvenient it must be for some that this highly educated woman fully understands and exercises her right to do what any American has the right to do - question authority. It is an entirely American right to question whether or not you should be proud of your country, warts and all. It is an entirely American right to reserve your pride for those things which you feel are pride-worthy. A truer measure of gratitude for America is to preserve its ideals by keeping them alive through such exercises - freedom of thought, freedom of choice, freedom of speech - freedoms which Americans, in particular black Americans, hold dear.

Calling Michelle Obama ungrateful is more telling regarding the deficiencies of the speaker than it is a fitting indictment of Mrs. Obama herself. The connection being made between the level of her pride in this country and the level of her gratefulness for her successes isn't even logical. Shame on those who subscribe to the litany-of-all-things-grateful (and patriotic). Such thinking endangers our country, being more reminiscent of the groupthink of Orwell's 1984 than of the spirit of independence that birthed this nation.

Women as accomplished as Mrs. Obama didn't make it through all of those years of education just to smile demurely all the time and then kiss folks' posteriors whenever given a chance to speak. That's not how this works. Get over yourselves.

fatherhood

2008-06-15T21:04:00.008-04:00

First and foremost, I love and respect my father. He gets no cookie for being and staying married to my mom and raising me - that would be an insult to his character and upbringing. It was a given. Not an extraordinary feat. In his view of the world, and thanks to him, in my own view of the world, being my dad was not an option, but a God-given mandate and a blessing. What is extraordinary is what he did with his opportunity as a father. There is nothing he wouldn't do - no science project too onerous, no word too long to help me with its spelling, no lecture that wasn't worth the time, no passion he wouldn't help me chase. In the sixth grade, when I talked about how not being able to jump double dutch was the bane of my existence on the playground, it was his idea to take me and my mom to the park so I could literally learn the ropes with practice. Yet he was my biggest critic - and his praise has always meant so much more to me because of it. His morality remains with me, his reverence for God will never leave me. His belief in me means the world to me. I love him. And one greeting card feast day just isn't enough to show how much - so I tell him every time we speak that I love him.

I really do.

There's two other fathers that I want to give a shout out to, though. Earl and Tiger Woods. I love their story. I love the story of Earl Woods fostering his son's passion and talent until he became the best - unquestionably the very best - at what he does. Did anyone see his performance in the US Open tonight? My gosh. Recovering from surgery and everything! I'm blown away. This is like when Michael Jordan (raised by the late James R. Jordan Sr., which whom he had a special and enduring relationship) led the Bulls to victory when he was weak with the flu. Nobody does it like Tiger. Even from behind, they couldn't count him out.

And did you see this commercial?

I was touched. It reminds me of my dad.

Barack Obama is right about taking absentee fathers to task, though. He isn't saying anything I haven't already heard during my upbringing from various elders over the years. He isn't saying anything I haven't thought on my own as I continually meet people who have absolutely no relationship with their fathers. It is the responsibility of both parents to make a good upbringing for their children, and it is the responsibility for mothers to choose and commit with good fathers as opposed to just incidentally procreating with boyfriends. Creating life is not supposed to be incidental. And neither is deciding to leave your child, leaving the entire responsibility of raising your child to their mother, just because you and the child's mother can't get your relationship to work. Every child needs what Earl Woods gave his son. Every child needs what my daddy gave me - still gives me.

Happy father's day.

Pass the Kleenex

2008-06-03T22:39:00.000-04:00

I know what I just said. But I hadn't heard Obama's end-of-primary-speech yet. And damn if I'm not crying a little bit. Whew.

Congratulations, Senator.

Get to work, fellow countrymen.

No party at my crib.

2008-06-03T20:10:00.000-04:00

There are a few reasons why I’m not jumping up and down today about Obama and the Democratic nomination. First, the Clintons are formidable and crafty - I don’t care if she concedes tonight or not, the convention hasn’t happened yet. She doesn’t strike me as a line-tow-er, and I expect fireworks in August. In addition, provided she doesn’t pull a rabbit out of the donkey’s posterior at the convention, Clinton will be seen, in retrospect, as easy in comparison to McCain. Republicans. go. hard. The general election will be a tough one. Obama’s got problems with overt and covert racism, class warfare, character issues, and a perception that he is not detailed and knowledgable enough for the job. He will have to overcome these issues. And, I hope they step up his and his family’s security - right NOW.

One more thing: moments like these remind me of when they let Mychal Bell free on bail in Jena, or when OJ Simpson beat his case. Ain’t no check coming to black folks’ mailboxes just ’cause a black man isn’t getting shat on today. Having a black presidential nominee will be cute for the record books, but ultimately useless if he doesn’t win in the general. In fact, having a black president is useless if our people still get ignored after the election, like other presidents have been known to do. We hope things will be different because of who Obama tells us he is… but we won’t really know unless and until he wins the election and either gives us his ear or shows us the door. He can’t be a black president for black people only - in order to make it to the White House, he has to be an American president for all Americans, and he knows it. I just hope he doesn’t try so hard for the latter that black concerns get pushed to the side to preserve his claim that he’s not biased.

Happy as I am at the possibilities involved, I will not be content just to see Obama get the nomination. I require more.

woman of war

2008-05-27T23:30:00.000-04:00

I won't limit my war to just the one thing. But I've noticed that as my blog changes, I think it reflects what I find most imperative to share on my own soapbox. As of late, these things are my wars. I've been keeping my peace close to my heart. If this blog is all you know of me, it's been a long time since you've heard about what makes my mornings good and what makes my evenings peaceful. You're not hearing much about my contentment, because I've been busy sharing my discontentment. It's strange, because when I first started this blog, I was surprised by the reactions I was getting - reactions to my expressions of what made life good. It is as if this blog is now being written by a different person. It is. I am not the same glory I was even three years ago.

I'm cool with it.

Stagnation is death's close kin.

That said, I kinda miss sharing my peace here. Part of the blessing in doing that is that blogging becomes a moment in which you still yourself and reflect on what brings you joy. Sharing it with others plays the multifaceted role of acknowledging the goodness in your life and reminding others of the goodnesses in their lives. Shout out to Melette, TJ, and Diva for sharing those things with me... whether or not you know it, it inspires, ministers, and heals. I'm not saying I'm going to boomerang back to 2005. I can't make any promises about this forum - I have finally learned better. But I know that right now, I am inspired.

helping or hindering

2008-05-25T18:47:00.001-04:00

Meet The Press transcript for May 25, 2008. Comments between Tim Russert and Maureen Dowd. Source: MSNBC.

MR. RUSSERT: Maureen Dowd, "misogynist," "gender bias," it seems as though the Clintons are being--trying very hard to lay that out as a premise for Hillary Clinton's difficulties in this primary contest.

MS. DOWD: I think it's poppycock, really. I mean, Hillary Clinton has allowed women to visualize a woman as president for the first time, in the way Colin Powell allowed people to visualize an African-American. And she dominated the debates, she, she proved that a woman can have as much tenacity and gall as any man on earth. We, we can visualize her facing down Ahmadinejad. But the thing is, Hillary hurts feminism when she uses it as opportunism. And she has a history of covering up her own mistakes behind sexism. She did it with health care right after health care didn't pass. She didn't admit that she was abrasive or mismanaged it or blew off good advice or was too secretive. She said that she was a Rorschach test for gender and that many men thought of a female boss they didn't like when they looked at her. And now she's doing the same thing, and it's very--you know, in a way it's the moral equivalent of Sharptonism. It's this victimhood and angry and turning women against men and saying that the men are trying to take it away from us, in the same way she's turning Florida and Michigan and riling up and comparing them to suffragettes and slaves. And it's very damaging to feminism.

following up - potpourri

2008-05-24T16:20:00.000-04:00

Old Business:

Barnes and Noble don't want my business. I got a response back saying that I should go back to the store and speak to the manager, who is in the best position to address my question... except they told me in that store to contact corporate. Sounds like the run-around to me.

So far as fear is concerned, I still worry about the comings and goings of my honey and probably always will. But the police chief fired four of the officers, and disciplined the rest. I expect at least four to eight of the officers will be arraigned on assault charges. We'll see what happens with that... and I'm sure the families of the victims of that beating will have their day in civil court as well after the criminal proceedings... It'll be a while before we see how this all turns out.

New Business:

I am one of those people who doesn't want to be labeled as a member of a political party. I don't like either major party. Whether or not I'm liberal or conservative depends on what issue you ask me about. That said, anticipating that I will not be voting for McCain, I re-registered to change from independent to Democrat just so that I could vote in the primary, and I voted for Obama. I have also contributed to Obama's campaign. At the outset, I was adamantly opposed to his campaign. I figured that he was a mere flash in the pan and that he would waste time and money and not even come close to getting the nomination. I figured that he was too inexperienced and would be a distraction. He changed my mind. I fought him off, speech after speech, soundbite after soundbite. But I couldn't help myself. I read the candidate's positions. I looked at their backgrounds. I saw more similarities than the minor differences I found. But what really made the difference for me was that, all other things being pretty much equal in my eyes, the differences between the campaigns themselves and the effect that they were having on my neighbors and myself says a lot.

It has been my position, ever since deciding to vote for Obama that if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination I will vote for her as a vote against McCain, because I agree more with her positions than I do with McCain's. But it won't be any thanks to how her campaign was run. For someone who has all but had the nomination wrapped up for the past three years, her campaign has turned out to be a miserable failure. Obama should have been steamrolled a long time ago. Her campaign should be poised to afford a general election contest by now. I shouldn't have had to constantly question myself about the motives behind some of her statements, especially in recent weeks. I am so very disappointed with her. I expected her (and her husband) to do better.

On the other hand, for as much as I expected Obama to perform dismally, I was pleasantly surprised by how his campaign has gone. There is an energy and a drive in his campaign's operation that surprised me. I was one of the estimated 35,000 who joined him for a campaign rally in Philadelphia - that was an amazing experience. I have seen him bounce back from some fair and unfair criticism, articulate his views in a way that seems mindful of the limitations he faces as well as optimistic about the potential in our citizens... There is something about him that has nothing to do with his melanin. I like his judgment. I like his vision. And I like how when you ask him a question, he answers it without bobbing and weaving.

I think that if he made it to the Oval Office, he could do it, not only as well as Hillary can, but even better. This isn't just based in hope or change rhetoric. It's also based on my opinion that Hillary can't pull off universal health care - not with that price tag, she can't. It's also based on my feeling that Obama will be more open to varying viewpoints instead of loyal yes-man consensus, which I believe Hillary would demand in the Oval Office, based on her campaign (which is scary to me because that's how Bush is running his administration now).

That said, I think Hillary should stay in at least until the primaries are over. I think that if she dropped out now it would divide the party even more than if she stayed in, because all of the Hillary supporters who already think she's a victim of misogyny will draw the line at her being "pushed out" of the race. It will be harder to get them to vote against McCain or vote at all if they feel as if their candidate had a shot but it was stolen from her. That bitterness is as real as how Democrats feel after Gore didn't take the 2000 election, and that sentiment has STILL not gone away. Look, Obama has the numbers. Let Hillary play this thing out. I suspect that the longer her limping campaign drags on, the more she talks herself out of the nomination, anyway.

I am not in favor of a joint ticket between Obama and Clinton. But if I'm only given that option, I'll still vote for it.

See, I don't believe in protest voting. I think that sitting at home because you don't like either guy is asinine. That is the equivalent of voting for the other guy. I also think that voting for someone whose positions don't reflect your preferences (McCain) just to spite the fact that your original candidate lost the nomination is worse than asinine. It is poisonous. Like littering, or not paying taxes, or destroying public property, all of which are and should be punishable offenses.

I respect Hillary supporters. I think that they have made a good choice - she is smart and capable. I tend to disagree with the notion that she has more meaningful experience than Obama, but I understand why they think so and respect that. What I am hoping is that between now and November, if she doesn't get the nomination, that they come around. I've been hearing a lot of protest vote talk, and it is spiteful, petty, and of no help to this country.

Upcoming Events:

Last year, because I was getting my grind on, I missed spring and most of summer. But this year, I am going to enjoy the weather, play on beaches, slap at mosquitoes, eat burnt hot dogs, and log a lot of walking time. This is the time of year that makes the rest of the year just a prelude. Happy Memorial Day weekend, folks, and enjoy.

Fear

2008-05-06T22:22:00.001-04:00

First, some fools robbed a bank and one of them used an assault rifle to kill a cop who was tailing them. The officer has left a widow and three children behind. It breaks my heart that this family man was killed in this way. It has been reported that his last words were that he loves his wife and his children. I'm tearing up just thinking about it. My city is in mourning.

But in case that wasn't enough, tensions are rising. There is a manhunt for one of the suspects involved in the bank robbery. The police are hunting for the bad guy - it's been half a week now, and they still don't have him. I hope he turns himself in, because if they find him first, I hope he survives the encounter...

Because this is what's going on in my city now.

And I'm fearing for my honey's life, as he goes to and from, praying that this doesn't happen to him, like it did to these murder suspects, who were snatched out of their car, kicked and beaten.

Arguably, they're murder suspects, so maybe that's why the police went off on them... but it still looks like excessive force to me. It looks like maybe all of these emotions - this rising tension in the wake of the slain officer's death, is making it dangerous to be on the streets.

Barnes and Noble's response

2008-05-01T19:42:00.001-04:00

I received this response from B&N's customer service:

> Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 11:59:58 -0400
> From: service@barnesandnoble.com
> To: glory's email address
> Subject: Re: General Question (KMM21013458I15977L0KM)
>
> Dear Customer,
>
> Thank you for your e-mail.
>
> As booksellers, we carry thousands of books whose subject matter some
> may find offensive. Over the years, we have received countless requests
> and demands to stop selling everything from The Merchant of Venice to
> The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Rise and Fall of the Third
> Reich, even The Living Bible.
>
> At Barnes & Noble, we take our mission very seriously - to be a valuable
> resource to our customers, bringing books and ideas to the public. We
> live in a diverse culture, and that diversity is reflected in the wide
> range of interests, philosophies, and lifestyles of our customers.
> The guiding principle we use is to offer every book in print and allow
> our customers to decide what to buy and read. After all, freedom of
> choice is at the very heart of our democratic society. It is
> understandable that some people may strongly oppose the content of a
> particular title and choose not to purchase it; we respect their
> opinions. In return, we ask that our customers respect our
> responsibility to offer a selection of reading materials as diverse as
> the society in which we live - the very society that grants the freedom
> for these materials to exist.
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Robin
>
> Customer Service Representative
> BarnesandNoble.com
> http://www.bn.com/
>
>
>
>
>

And here is my response:

Thank you for your timely response, Robin.

However, this response does not address the suggestion that I posed. I do not object to the merchandise being sold. I instead suggest that it be shelved differently so that customers can more expediently find the books that they want to find without having to weed through unrelated books. Is there a possibility that this can be done, and if so, please let me know if, as a customer, I can assist with this effort.

Thank you,
[glory's gov't name]

Please notice that I gave my name and was responded to as "customer," and that my issue was not actually addressed. I suspect that the message I sent was scanned and certain buzzwords triggered a form-letter-type response. Not good enough. I'd rather have a "no" than a non-answer.

Barnes and Noble, what's up?

2008-04-30T21:46:00.000-04:00

I left this message on Barnes and Noble's website tonight because I went book shopping. I was looking for something by Toni Cade Bambara, Paule Marshall, or Alice Walker. I went all through the fiction section, but I couldn't find any books by these authors. I was directed to the African-American section - I didn't know where it was because I don't shop for books very often, but there it was, stretched out along a wall near the entrance. I walked over to the section and I felt very uncomfortable. All I saw were half naked people, guns, seductive mouths licking on candy... I didn't want to be anywhere near that trash - I don't read that crap. I don't want to read that crap. Call me bourgeois - whatever, I don't care - I didn't want to even look like I was looking for books like that. And from what I could tell during the thirty or so seconds I stood there, those kinds of books vastly outnumbered the kind of black fiction I was looking for. I just walked away. I asked a salesperson if there was a suggestion box, and she said there wasn't one, so I told her my issue. Since I don't know if she'll have the ability to relay my message to what she called, "corporate," I decided to find them on the web and type the following message, using the customer service feature of their website.

"In the same way that romance books and science fiction books are shelved differently from general fiction and literature, African-American urban/sexual books should be shelved differently from general African-American fiction and literature. It is embarrassing and somewhat demeaning to have to look for prize-winning literature among this relatively new and tawdry genre of urban/sexual fiction. I declined to even look through the 'African-American fiction' section for the literature that I could not find in the general 'Fiction and Literature' section, because standing in front of those books is as embarrassing as I imagine renting pornographic films would be. Your company lost my business because of this issue, and will continue to do so.

I can be reached at this email address and would love to help if your business is interested in addressing this issue with customer input.

Thanks for listening,
glory [actually insert government name here],
Philadelphia, PA"

I figure that if you're going to separate the black authored books from the other ones so that their readers can find the books easier, I think that burying general black fiction/literature books among less literary, more romance-caliber books makes no sense. I don't think they'll actually adequately respond, but I figured it's worth a shot. I only wish I had a vast readership who agreed with me and would be willing to do the same...

i need a break

2008-04-29T21:55:00.001-04:00

i'm frustrated
angry
worn out
behind
divide them and conquer them
drop a noose on their desk when no one's looking
blue by day white by night
some of my best friends are
bla- i mean african americans
and i just love dave chappelle
and mos def
it's poverty, the economy, stupid
not color
it's not racism
that was centuries ago
it wasn't even me or my parents (you can't prove it)
shoot we were immigrants
escaping our own oppression
at least you have welfare
affirmative action
let me tell you something
about the potato famine
gas ovens
'cause jim crow wasn't shit
and besides it was two or three
generations ago
the race is on even ground
the race card is played
you played it
but it's not real
your blues ain't real
matter fact
your blues ain't yours no more
or your rock n' roll
and hip hop
that's everybody's
'cause certainly it wasn't birthed
from the pains of black labor
through fields
running from whips and sheets
through chain gangs
through nooses
through sit-ins
through burning churches
through the welfare office
through the shotgun shack
to rowhouses and projects
cracked out corners
raggedy schools
crumbling molded jails
certainly it's just sad songs
some cool songs
some black magic we can dig
'cause for real, your sense of this
experience
this supposed oppression
surely you just want to be special
we're just waiting
while you keep killing each other
and fighting amongst yourselves
for you to realize
you are not special
and your special treatment needs to end

peace

2008-04-23T21:09:00.000-04:00

aight family. i've been to church, literally and figuratively. i looked in the mirror and saw a beautiful black girl, clear skin, bright eyes - how bout that? i've been sleeping better. working less. talking to God more. enjoying the weather more - walking, window shopping, reading in the park... taking advantage of all that philly in the spring has to offer me. and i'm feeling good, baby. you know what my problem was?

i'd been neglecting myself. you'd think by now, with all the life i've been living, i'd know better.

self-denial, self-deprivation... that ain't sexy. it's just not.

gotta remember that. gotta find a church home, too. i've been missing it for a while - it's time. my spirit is crying out.

on november

2008-04-15T22:22:00.000-04:00

I really do think that if things continue at this clip that John McCain will handily win the November election.

Just because people support Obama doesn't mean they're blind or stupid or something is wrong with them.

Just because people support Clinton doesn't mean they are sell outs or Uncle Toms.

I personally think that reasonable minds can differ on this. And what troubles me is that so many people are so venomous and petty that there may be no hope of getting the White House back from the Republicans, because half of the Democrats will be so busy bitching that they will lose sight of the ultimate goal.

It is absolutely disappointing to see how people are regarding each other as these two candidates go at it. A spiraling pit of stankness, leading to Democratic defeat in November. All McCain has to do is sit back and watch as half the Democrats either refuse to vote or vote for him, and laugh his ass off. A sad sorry shame.

on bitterness

2008-04-14T22:53:00.000-04:00

This is really all I want. A little balance, if you please.

the goings on

2008-04-04T23:58:00.001-04:00

I started this post already and erased what I wrote. I'm trying to stay cool. I'm temping... it's going okay but I'll be unemployed again soon enough. I hate networking and business card peddling. I hate smiling at strangers and pretending to be interested in anything other than whether or not they know where I can get a damn job. I want some stability. My dad and I were talking about his hopes and dreams and fears for me. He's proud but a little concerned about my career. This is a man who doesn't have 30 years in with a company - there is no retirement windfall, no gold watch waiting for him. He wants me to get into a secure situation before I get to be his age. It's hard to explain to him that it doesn't work like that for my generation. But anyway, I'm not for all the azz-kissing and status symbols, hundred dollar blouses, and seventy hour workweeks. Um, no. I'll find something for me. Somehow. My back hurts. I'm working in a chair for over 10 hours everyday. Sometimes it seizes up. And there's this pain round about my left hip. Doctor's office said take two of these as needed and call in a couple more months if it's still bothering you. Okaaaay. My skin is breaking out. Vision all blurry - I'm actually preferring my glasses to my contact lenses now. I'm hoping this vision thing is temporary. I don't need to take another job where I'm doing this same self-destructive stuff, running my body into the ground. But. F%@$ it, I got bills. I'm saving for a house. Understand, I'm on a mission.

I don't have time to blog everyday. I don't have time to write poems, compile a chapbook, record a cd, go to the poetry venues, join a gym, shop for cheap power suits, send out resumes, rub elbows with the strangers, help my cousin write this letter she wants to write, flat iron my hair, do my laundry, clean my bathroom, cook a decent dinner...

I know I'm blessed. I know that complaining is wack. I don't care tonight, though.

I mean really. If it's like this when I'm childless, renting, and cohabiting, should I even be bucking to give birth, have a mortgage, and be a wife (not in that order)? I've been asking myself this a lot over the last little while. No point in indelibly joining my life to others' lives until I've found some balance in my own.

The good news is I saw Jill Scott in concert. It was an amazing show. The other good news is that I went to the open mic and read a new poem I was inspired to write yesterday. I went to church on Easter. My aunt who was ill is doing better. I'm taking a road trip later this month. My mommy quit smoking. I started volunteering more. I am still in love.

Part of me wants to go back to the time when I was playing hooky, letting my inner artist shine through instead of worrying about my outer warrior/hunter/gatherer. For a delightful couple of years I was able to float with it, you know? Go to the event? Yeah! Roll to the after event? Most def! Road trip? Hayle yeah! New CD? You better believe it. I miss that.

Responsibility is constraining. I feel constrained - that's what I think I've been getting at. And nobody is doing this to me, that's the thing. It's all my choice. I don't have to be (somewhat but not totally) ambitious. But that's my thing. I do enough to keep the thang rolling. I must hustle. It ain't optional. And it doesn't matter if I might be interested in something other than what I studied to do, 'cause the bill collectors, miscellaneous emergencies, future babies, and years of my future jobless old age don't give a #&@% what I would rather be doing with my time, period. Don't matter if the bed feels good when I wake up.

Friend of my honey's told me that I don't sound very happy. She told me I wasn't happy. When she said it, it was like I was hearing a news headline that was about somebody else. It didn't occur to me to ask myself whether or not I was happy. I think it's less about happiness and more about transition. I think my quarter-life crisis (if there is a such thing) is here. I think I've been in it for the last four years or so. And I don't think "crisis" is the right word, either. "Transition" is better. Longest transition I've ever had to go through. I suspect it doesn't end. Whatever.

I had to start telling myself to enjoy the ride back in high school. The thing was, life doesn't start when you meet a goal - it's the stuff that happens along the way to the goal. So I'm trying to enjoy being childless. Even though sometimes I think I'm so ready. And sometimes I think about my 28-year-old eggs. My 28-year-old womb. It's not time for me to be mom yet, and I know that on both an emotional and on a financial level. And my eggs are 28, not 48, but still...

Sometimes I just want to curl up into a little ball and sleep. It's late. I think I'll grab a snack and do just that.

according to my zune

2008-01-22T21:41:00.000-05:00

I am officially jacking this from the Diva…

The rules: you select shuffle on your ~~iPod or iTunes~~ Zune and plug in the songs as the answers to the questions. No cheating!

Feel free to steal this for your blog.

If someone says, “Is this okay?” what do you say?
Not Enough, Little Brother (I wish I was more assertive like this - maybe this is a hint.)

How would you describe yourself?
Realove, Musiq (Isn't that cute?)

What do you like in a guy or girl?
I Cried For You, Billie Holiday (I love that my Godsend is open with me, I love that about him!)

How do you feel today?
Astronomy (8th Light), Blackstar (Interesting... head in the clouds a little bit...)

What is your life’s purpose?
Slide, Jill Scott featuring Jeff Bradshaw (I am really feeling this, especially after my last post.)

What is your motto?
Don't Waste Your Time, SWV (I have not yet kicked my procrastination habit, but I am learning to enjoy myself more instead of wasting time worrying or acting out of fear.)

What do your friends think about you?
You'll Never Get to Heaven (If You Break My Heart), Dionne Warwick (Umm... I can be kinda blunt, but I certainly hope they don't want me to go to hades for it...)

What do your parents think of you?
The Real Thing, Jill Scott (Now that's the truth, Ruth. In stereo, baby.)

What do you think about very often?
Dontchange, Musiq (When I think of my Godsend this is how I feel. When I think of my own youthful spirit, this is how I feel.)

What is 2 + 2?
I'm Still In Love With You, Al Green (I'm getting a chemistry vibe from this one...)

What do you think of your ex?
Wish I Didn't Miss You, Angie Stone (Ewww. I don't miss him. I wish I never had missed him.)

What do you think of the person you like?
It's Going Down, Brown Sugar Soundtrack (*Smile* No comment.)

What is your life story?
Where Is The Love [From Oliver], Will Downing (I suppose that this is the substance of what I chase every day.)

What do you want to be when you grow up?
Nights Over Egypt, Incognito (This is so true! "She was the queen, under the moonlight...")

What do you think when you see the person you like?
Going to a Go-Go, Smokey Robinson ("Nah-nah nah-nah yeah-hay... don't you wanna go-" Most definitely! LOL!)

What will they play at your funeral?
Roots (Back to a Way of Life), Incognito (I sure do wanna be that earthy mama 'fore I di-i-i-i-ie...)

What is your hobby/interest?
Turn It Up, Kindred the Family Soul (Wrong - I am not the party starter... I'm more like the one who blends in trying to have fun without being seen.)

What is your biggest fear?
Superlady, New Edition (Interesting. Scared of being Superlady? Inability to be her?)

What is your biggest secret?
Intro, Bugz in the Attic (Awww, come on, I should've been allowed a do-over.)

What do you think of your friends?
Games People Play, Dionne Warwick (Ouch! I only think that of my associates, not my friends.)

Wow - it was like a magic eight ball: on point sometimes, way off on others. Total fun!

got a map?

2008-01-16T20:41:00.000-05:00

i still don't know what i want to be when i grow up. which is a little disturbing, 'cause i know that i am grown already. the disturbing thing isn't that i don't know what i want to do with myself, 'cause it's been my opinion for many years, that you can't expect an inexperienced young person to know what experiences they'd like to have. if they know, great. if they don't know, at some point, they'll know from experience, which is better than making an arbitrary decision that they'll stick with for the sake of being seen as responsible, or successful, or whatever. the disturbing thing is the possibility that once i figure out what i want to do with myself, i might have a hard time pursuing that path because of other stuff that i've already done. for example, it's too late for me to become a tennis champ now, at the ripe age of damn-am-i-that-close-to-30? or here's another: it's too inconvenient (read: expensive) for me to go to school to become an engineer now that i've gotten into my current amount of debt to do what i'm doing now. i guess it's good that i don't want to be either one of those things. but i do worry about how motherhood and my career may keep me from trying new things. even now, i know that they can. i had to put poetry on the side for my career about a year ago, and it ain't been the same since. might as well face it - it won't be the same. i don't know when or if i'll finish my book, do any freelancing, use my passport to go to the motherland... i hope so. i intend to. i just don't know, you know? i'm a pisces - watery, mutable, noncommittal - we're just like that. i realize now that throughout my adulthood, once weaned from the guidance of my parents, i've gone where the wind has taken me, kind of like the feather in that movie about the man who did all these extraordinary things just by kind of falling into them. it's been a wonderful life. it is still a wonderful and charmed life. i just don't know where it's going. i'm not even sure what i want from it. the question has confronted me often over the last few months - how can you have an action plan to achieve something when you don't have a goal in mind?

today's thoughts on the candidates

2008-01-09T08:48:00.000-05:00

Now that we've got two states' contests under our country's belt, and I've officially gone on record saying that I have not made up my mind yet, I figured I'd disclose where my head is at so far on this. This is a comment I left over at The Breaking Point.

the problem for me is that even though i understand that many folks can't help it, it seems that for other folks this is really way too much about the "female" thing and the "black" thing. honestly, i wanted obama to win last night [in NH, where he came in second to hillary], but with the hopes that hillary would remain a formidable candidate in the race so that i'd still have some time to check them both out - i want a real race, something that should show us what both are like when tested, and i didn't want obama to just walk away with this so he could have the chance to get lazy with it. i got half of what i wanted. two notes on this: i DON'T appreciate at all how the media has been calling him cocky since his iowa win, and i think that will unfairly taint folks' perception of him, especially since he is black, and to me that smacks of jim crow era "uppity" descriptions. also, i am glad obama won in iowa, otherwise hillary would be cakewalking this thing, which would keep folks from seriously considering obama, which was what she wanted going into this and i'm glad she didn't get it so easy.

i won't lie, i'm excited about a strong black candidate, much more than i am excited about a strong female candidate. but i'm not so nuts that i'm going to pick by choosing between those characteristics. unfortunately, looking at the policy points alone, their pros and cons come about even for me based on what i've found. it's going to come down to who i trust to do the job based on how they carry themselves during the race.

so far, hillary's not looking good to me with the almost-crying to get old lady votes and the claiming people double team her 'cause she's the girl (duh, it's because she was the frontrunner/biggest threat to the frontrunner, not 'cause she was a girl). i don't like that at all. (but i do think the media handled her crying thing differently than they would have if a man got quiet and had a catch in his voice). to balance this, my caveat about obama is concern for whether he can backup what he says - but then, i'm also concerned about whether hillary can do the same - for example, i think his health care plan is more doable than hers. but i wonder if her couple more years of senate experience will help her more in washington?

hey, i still need time. but please notice that i'm not thinking, do i want to go with my gender or my race? do i want to pick the more "electable" candidate? (i think they're both electable.) for me, it comes down to who i think can do the damn thing, and being both black and female, i know i can't judge competency or probability of success by either characteristic - it's too simple an analysis.

Blacks and the Democratic Hopefuls

2008-01-08T15:53:00.000-05:00

Please take a moment to peep the commentary from two black women. I enjoy both of their blogs, and I respect both of their opinions.

The Content Black Woman's Take at Why Black Women are Angry

Sugar's Take at Sugar and Spice

Please do take a look at the comments as well! These women, both intelligent, are sitting on opposite ends of a bench. I'd love to see what could come of a conversation between them! In any case, I think that diverging commentary like this helps to really show how reasonable minds can disagree about these primaries and the candidates. I hope you enjoy their opinions.

move on it

2008-01-07T11:25:00.000-05:00

I gave some advice the other day that I've been forced to consider for myself and I thought I'd share it.

You can't defeat your own question by asking and denying it in your own mind instead of opening your mouth and actually asking the question. No person can limit your possibilities more than you can by not trying for them.

At some point, a desire has to bring you to a point of movement - the act of actually trying.

Readiness

2008-01-04T13:58:00.000-05:00

I was at a holiday party a few weeks ago, and there I met a man who told me that he was helping with the Barack Obama campaign. He asked me what I thought about Obama, and I told him that I wasn't sure who I wanted to be president, but I hoped that Obama really had a chance. He asked what made me worried about Obama's chances. I'd heard about how Hillary Clinton was supported by many Black women, and I suspected that a WHITE woman would get more play than a BLACK man. He said that that was fair, but what about Obama's then-current standing in the Iowa polls? He assured me that Obama was a contender.

My new friend asked me: If Obama could get the votes and be a real contender, would that change my feelings about him as a candidate?

Most definitely.

Now I have to get more serious about this thing - really look at the candidates' positions. Tuning into debates gives you sound bites only. I've got to know what these candidates claim they're really about. And in all honesty, I hope that when my digging is over, I come out on Obama's side.

Because I am so proud of what happened in Iowa yesterday. So proud to see a 94% white state come out at almost 40% for a candidate who happened to be a black man. So proud to see a man who is like the many black men I know exist - intelligent, ambitious, positive - standing on a podium kissing his wife and daughters in the eye of the nation, and the world. So proud to know what an important moment it was for America, and that I was witnessing it!

Congratulations to the Senator.

I understand that many primaries lie ahead, that Clinton and Edwards each have their own shots at the nomination, and that many Americans still might not be ready... but I can't help but wonder, what if? What if more people are ready than those who aren't?

Eyes on the Prize came on late last night. (I've got to remember to buy that series.) Watching the stories of James Meredith and the black citizens of Birmingham, and the NAACP legal team... It helped to put the importance of last night into perspective for me. Sometimes change came when folks weren't ready. What if this time, people are ready for change?

Never forget.

2008-01-02T16:48:00.000-05:00

My local news is asking its viewers whether or not the state of New Jersey should formally apologize for slavery. Most of the viewers who are responding are saying that New Jersey should not apologize. They believe that the effects of slavery are long gone, and that at some point, people should have stopped dwelling on it. Others believe that such an apology would do little for anyone living today. The news station itself is also asking the viewers: if an apology was extended, who would apologize, and who should receive the apology?

My theory is that the viewers who believe that it is too late to even think about slavery are not as concerned about the fair placement of blame as they are annoyed by the possibility that black Americans will use such an apology to continue to talk about past wrongs, using slavery as an excuse for the problems in the current state of Black America. I personally think that many people are simply tired of thinking about slavery. White folks are tired of being blamed for something that happened before anyone who is currently living was born.

My thing is, White folks don't seem to be tired of reaping the benefits of African servitude, so why should they get to be tired of hearing about the institution that made these benefits possible?

If an apology were extended, it should be extended by the government of New Jersey, not by individual white people. It should be extended to the descendants of people who were enslaved in the state of New Jersey while the government continued to permit the ownership of human beings as property, and continued to permit forced free labor which contributed to the economy and infrastructure which continue to benefit all New Jerseyans today. The point would be to acknowledge that a wrong was done, not to provide anyone with blame for something that their ancestors may not have even done, or to provide others with the right to condemn anyone else.

To what end should this be done? How would this benefit anyone, really? It is a matter of principle. It is about a government accepting responsibility for allowing human rights violations to occur under its watch. This is rather simple, but tremendously meaningful.

This is why - and this is something that some of the white detractors may not have an appreciation for: the more acquainted I am becoming with the lives of my ancestors, the more meaningful my ancestors' lives become to my own life. White people have the opportunity to go to places like Ellis Island, and ancestry websites, to find out what's in their family tree. The fortunate can go back centuries, through American history, across borders, across the Atlantic and even home to an "old country." People do this because of curiosity and because of ancestral and ethnic pride. In search of the same, many black Americans like myself, if they're fortunate, can go back only so far before they hit roadblocks in the nineteenth century - that dark period in American history where Negroes were property and listed not with the citizens, but with the chattel in the Census. Alex Haley's experience was a singularly lucky one. I don't expect to hear the origin of my bloodline from a griot in my own "old country." Frankly, I don't expect to find out which "old country" is my own.

Consequently, so far as my family may ever know, "my own" is Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and North Carolina. So far as we may ever know, this is the only history - the only legacy available to our family tree. Slavery. The direct predecessor of Jim Crow, illiteracy, and back-breaking work in a racially inequitable society full of redlining, intimidation, and animosity. Additionally, I attribute the fact that it took over a century to produce college graduates in my family to slavery and its aftermath. If I were personally offered an apology from the governments of Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and North Carolina, that would be extremely meaningful for me, even if it did all happen before my birth. Because contrary to detractors' beliefs, it matters. It couldn't free my enslaved ancestors before their deaths, it couldn't keep Jim Crow from retarding their children's educational and financial progress, but it still matters to me, right now, in 21st century America. Along with equal opportunity policies, acknowledgments like these are bricks in the road to recovery for race relations in this country.

We cannot forget the past. We cannot shrug off its present meaning. It's not because we want to guilt anyone, but it's because of honor for our ancestors that the history of slavery will remain alive. We cannot remember the fighting against slavery to taxes by teaching about and commemorating the Boston Tea Party, but on the other hand, forget about the Virginia Iron Manacles because it makes some whites uncomfortable.

The fact that the slaves and slaveholders are dead doesn't make the apology moot - it just makes it overdue. Today's governments were in existence at the time of slavery, and they are a suitable apologist. If New Jersey decided to extend an apology, I would approve of the gesture.

Saturnalia

2007-12-28T13:14:00.000-05:00

I see Christmas as two holidays:

The celebration of the birth of the Child is one holiday.

The feasting, gift giving, and decorating are another secular (pagan) holiday (of which I know the ancient pagan influence), not unlike Thanksgiving or Valentine's Day.

Every year I reflect on that. I celebrate both Christmases, but it's not my favorite time of year, and every year, I'm glad when it's over. But I do enjoy giving gifts to others, and I enjoy being with family, 'cause let's face it, most families only get together nowadays for holidays, when they have days off from work, and funerals. I've decided that for me, secular Christmas is about nostalgia and family. I don't object to presents, because despite some of the entitlement to gifts people feel, you can get around it by choosing how much you want to participate in gift giving. If people have issues with that, shame on them. I don't give presents to other folks' kids at Christmas. In my eyes, it's up to the parents to spoil their children if they want. I don't want any part of that. When I give gifts, it's usually for birthdays, and it's often books.

I think that with my own children, I will make efforts to somehow separate the celebration of the Child from the pagan holiday, so that they will understand and attach importance to the difference. I would like for them to be knowledgeable about my faith. But I want them to participate in the other Christmas - the food and family part - because that means so much to me. Spoiling will NOT occur. Period. And I think that parents are to blame when their children are materialistic, because it's their job to guide their children so that American materialistic culture doesn't program their kids into a sense of entitlement. Once upon a time, kids received oranges and little cakes and clothes and stuff for Christmas. I'm not giving my kids that stuff, but if I'm going to give them nice presents, why does Christmas have to be "jackpot day?" There are 364 other days in the year. And why does it have to be for the most expensive stuff - stuff many people will be paying for until next August? I think it sends the wrong message to the kids.

Christmas is not the most holy and meaningful time of the year for Christians though - Easter is. I feel much of folks' frustration with secular trumping the sacred even stronger when Easter bunnies and Easter baskets and new clothes become the focus. It's a mix of the celebration of the spring equinox and the resurrection of Christ, and it's disgusting to me to see the focus get lost every year. I don't celebrate Spring at Easter time - to me, that time is about faith alone. I can celebrate spring all the other weeks - why should it be all on top of the most Holy time of the year for my faith?

"not religion and not politics"

2007-12-18T16:12:00.000-05:00

I was clicking past some channels on tv when something caught my eye on FOX news. I don't like FOX news - I don't like their coverage, I don't like their staff, I don't watch their channel habitually. But I stopped briefly because they were talking about presidential candidates, and apparently there's some controversy about Mike Huckabee's Christmas commercial. In it, he talks about how tiring the political commercials must be, and then he says the most important thing to focus on right now is Christ. In the background, there was a Christmas tree next to what looked like some shelving.

FOX News' question was whether this was an appropriate message from a political candidate. There were two people on a split screen talking with the reporter behind the news desk. One man in particular, an atheist, was disgusted. He said that the shelving resulted in a "subliminal cross" behind Huckabee's head, and that Huckabee's use of religion was shameful pandering to Christians and was insulting to everyone else - Jews, Hindus, Muslims, etc.

Why is everyone so hung up on Mike Huckabee's religion? I can't say this enough:
RELIGION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH A PERSON'S CAPABILITY TO EFFECTIVELY SERVE THE PUBLIC. Whether a candidate is Mormon, Baptist, Catholic, Sunni, Shiite, Hindu, "animist," agnostic, or atheist among others, my questions are still going to be the same. Are you smart? Are you experienced? Can you lead? Can you work towards the good of all citizens? What are your plans for the country?

If Mike Huckabee or any of the other candidates want to shout their religion from the rooftops, I'd encourage them to do so. I think that it's a good thing when a person is not ashamed of what they believe. I fear that the climate of religious intolerance in this country necessitates that people be brave about what they believe, lest we lose our right as citizens of this country to worship (or not) as we please. Also, publicly identifying with one religion does not mean that you necessarily have no respect for other religions. But I have one caveat: don't think your professed religion alone is going to sway my vote. I am a Christian, but I would vote for an atheist if that atheist had the character and qualifications to do the job and was a better candidate than the others. That doesn't make me a bad Christian. It makes me an honest Christian and a conscientious citizen.

You know what happens when people vote a candidate in based on religion? George W. Bush. A narrow minded, short sighted, egotistical, wannabe-cowboy whose character I refuse to attribute to his professed religion. I don't think all Christians are great candidates for president any more than I think all Muslims are terrorists - that would absolutely ridiculous and unreasonable. People have the opportunity and the ability to assess a candidate without making dumb assumptions based on one characteristic about that candidate.

My point is it shouldn't matter even IF Mike Huckabee was reaching out for the Christian vote. He has a right to campaign how he wants - to show whatever side of him he wants to show. It's our responsibility as voters to determine whether or not we want this to influence our decision next fall. Maybe I shouldn't assume that voters have the capability of making intelligent choices - Bush received more of the popular vote in 2004 than I thought he should have received, given the very expensive and deadly war, and I'm sure a percentage of that came from folks who just wanted to vote for the guy who was "more Christian" than the other guy. But part of being an American is recognizing and respecting that other people are capable of making decisions and choices for themselves. As much as I disagree with the people who voted for Bush last time, I respect their right to make that choice.

And I respect Mike Huckabee's right to talk about the religious meaning of Christmas in a campaign commercial. And even if I fear that people may do the stupid thing and choose someone based on one characteristic alone - Christian, female, black, hispanic, male WASP - I'm going to hold out hope that we've learned from our most recent mistake.

with time

2007-12-13T13:20:00.000-05:00

i noticed the other day that i don't drive as fast as i used to. where i used to use my peripheral vision, now i look and look again (as my dad told me to do when he was teaching me how to drive.) i used to be so crazy with it. once, my mom, dad, and i were on our way from some random outing, and since i was able to drive, my dad suggested that i drive home. he wouldn't shut up, and it was so hard for me to concentrate on what i was doing, that i could hardly drive anyway, so i stopped right where i was. in the middle of the road. no hazard lights, no pulling over, nothing. i just stopped, and scared the isht out of my folks. i told my dad, "look, if you want me to get us home safe, you're going to have to stop all the talking. i can get us home, but not with all you're shooting at me from the passenger seat, i just can't." of course, he wanted to strangle me, or at least switch seats, but with cars whizzing by on both sides of the family car, that wasn't going to happen. after a dramatic pause, i put the car back in drive and got us home. i was crazy. it's his fault, he'd been driving like a maniac for as long as i can remember, and since i grew up used to maniacal driving, it was nothing for me to put the car in park in the middle of the road. during my college years, i drove some of everywhere in my own on-again/off-again hoopty, and driving a van for the school's security escort service (i LOVED that job). it was on the crazy streets of baltimore that i both came into the confidence a driver needs to have, and learned just how far i could push the rules of the road.

but, one hydroplane into the back of a moving truck, one doze on I-95 during rush hour, another doze on the DC beltway in bumper-to-bumper traffic, one broadside through a red light into a BMW, two speeding tickets, and one court-ordered driving class later, my maniacal days were over. somewhere in that time span, i stopped feeling that urge to rush to get where i was going. i stopped feeling invincible.

then i noticed that other people were speeding up to my bumper and zooming around my left side. i noticed that i felt more comfortable out of the fast lane. that two or three car lengths worth of buffer in front of me just made me feel better.

i'm not perfect. i still don't drive the speed limit in low traffic, low pedestrian areas. sometimes i still get distracted. sometimes i get sleepy while driving... but i'm more careful. i don't rush so much. i don't get road rage as often. if i need to, i'll pull over until i can get back on the road.

but this isn't really about my driving. it's about who i am becoming overall. the driving change is really just a part of an overall pattern in my life. it's interesting to be able to reflect - zoom out and witness my own maturation...

my pedigree

2007-12-03T10:46:00.000-05:00

The oldest person on my paternal family tree as it stands so far was born in 1820 in Virginia. I have about 5 or 6 other people about 6 or 7 generations back that were born Negro in a slave state before emancipation.

Many of the people I've found were not able to read and write, down into the early twentieth century. Hardly any of them had any formal schooling, but some children started to read and write around the turn of the century. Many rented land and hired out as laborers, railroad section hands, factory workers, housewives, maids, and laundresses. They married, had several children, and went to church. Eventually, folks started to pick up small parcels of land in the same little patch of the country where it seems we've been for at least a couple centuries.

My grandmother was the first professional, a licensed practical nurse. My dad's sister was the first, at least in my branch, to earn a bachelor's degree. Yet I've heard stories of my father's upbringing - there were hard times. Schools were still segregated up until they started busing my dad and other kids in the late sixties, and subsequently closed the colored schools. Even then, men in my family were doing "odd jobs," like digging wells and fixing things.

I am the second in my family to earn a bachelor's degree, and the first to acquire an advanced degree. I have letters after my name. My little cousin is in college - she wants to get her MBA one day.

Needless to say, I am not part of the black bourgoisie. I am not derived from any of the Talented Tenth. I didn't debut for society. My parents and grandparents didn't go greek and shuttle me to homecoming games in early fall. There are no family jewels, no hope chests, no trust funds, no rich uncles. And I am overwhelmingly proud to be who I am. I am a child of former slaves, who lived and loved through poverty and Jim Crow, and took almost a century and a half to produce a middle class not obligated to hoeing and weeding, scrubbing, hauling, or digging to provide for our families. My inherited legacy is faith, perseverance, and a respect for education.

We've been blessed to make it this far. We are the strong. We are the purposed.

I am the future.

blue

2007-11-28T11:26:00.000-05:00

is it the weather? the high cost of gas messing with my money? dissatisfaction with the wonderful blessing of a job i have, or guilt for feeling this way about the blessing that enables me to put food on my table? the fact that my dad got robbed yesterday? hormones? sundown before five o'clock? the stress of holiday travel?

i don't know, but the only bright spots in my life right now are my beloved and my genealogical research.

i need to start writing and doing poetry again, or something.

at first i thought it was that once-a-month thing that some women go through. i've been touchy, more impatient than usual. more apt to be bratty. less inspired, smiling less, less joyful in general. but this feeling has been getting me for the better part of an entire month, and it's not going away. i have seriously considered calling out sick from work EVERY WORK DAY i wake up since about a week and a half ago. i have to talk myself into going, even though i want to curl up in a ball and sleep until i just can't anymore. and if i had a lot of greasy, salty, fatty food in the house (which i don't for financial and nutritional reasons), it would probably be gone by now.

i keep thinking it will just go away like how it just came. not so, not yet.

every year since high school, this happens. it could be seasonal affective disorder. it could be depression. i don't know. but as long as i'm not suicidal or creating a danger to my important relationships, i'm not going to see a shrink. i'd rather pray and wait.

it's a good thing i'm not a drinker.

census

2007-11-26T10:30:00.000-05:00

The first time I was in the Federal Census, I was an infant, just born a few months before it was taken. I suppose one of my parents filled out the form. We were the only three living in the house.

Ten years later, I learned all about the Census in school and was so excited to help with filling out the Census form. I was in elementary school in another state, and was just about to graduate and go to sixth grade.

The next time the Census caught up with me, I responded twice. Even though I sent a form, the Census taker came to my home because my form was lost or something. By that time, I was living on my own in college, an entire state away from my parents. My profession was listed as "student."

Next time, I won't be carrying my maiden name anymore, and I'll be listed with my husband and perhaps even a child or two, with an actual profession by my name.

What blows my mind is that one day after I'm probably buried, some curious person will probably look my record up with some technology I wouldn't even recognize, just to see who they might find. That is so crazy to me! But not as crazy as it may have seemed before last night, when I did the exact same thing.

I've been looking through the Census records to see who I might find, with a laptop computer these former slaves wouldn't even recognize. Thankfully for me, the Bermuda district of Chesterfield County, Virginia kept faithful and legible records, even of the Colored population. I used digital photos of records and obituaries my Grandma has, as well of notes I've taken of her own recollections, and I went hunting for my old folks in the Census. Last night I found out my great-grandmother was the first in her immediate family to read and write. I found out the names of ancestors who were likely born enslaved and were emancipated as young people. I come from farmers, laborers, and railroad men, and possibly, a mulatto shoemaker. My next step after getting census records is to visit the Library of Virginia and the Chesterfield County Courthouse to hunt for birth, marriage, and death certificates, and deeds (since my family has sold off, but still holds some land which I can identify). I may also look for Freedman's Bureau, military, and Indian records.

I've been wanting to do this for years, but I was inspired by finding a certified copy of my great-grandfather's birth certificate and his marriage license at my Grandma's. No time like the present. I hope to discover much more. This is just the maternal side of my dad's family. I haven't even really gotten into his dad's side, or my mom's family, yet.

All I know is that I'm glad that when the Census taker came in 1880 and 1910 and 1930 and the decades between, somebody was at home and willing to talk. It was so amazing to see those names I've known and repeated for years pop off the page.

word choice

2007-11-14T12:13:00.000-05:00

This is why choosing your words is important.

This article says that 37% of polled black folks believe that the divide in values and experiences between black folks is so wide that you can't think about all black people as one race.

That's some of the dumbest isht I've heard.

That sentence would make a lot more sense if you substituted the word "class" for "race." Black folks have been trying to make the point for years now that we're neither a monolith of hand-to-mouth people in the projects nor carbon-copies of the affluent Huxtable family. The idea that black people have different life experiences and are varied in their class dynamics and values is not a new one.

There's a big difference between the behaviors of rich white folks and white folks who live in shacks, but we aren't trying to make another race for poor white people to belong to, are we?

If we tried to consider two different races for black people, how would we separate the groups if not by economic status? And if a person like myself grows up in an undesirable neighborhood and comes from a low economic background, would we switch that person's race once they have obtained a higher education and climbed the economic ladder, or would we simply say that they've ascended in economic class? That's what we do for people of all other ethnicities. Why should it be any different for black folks?

When discriminating, do you think racists stop before calling a black person a derogatory epithet to think about whether or not the person has values that align with middle class whites?

I attribute the stupidity, not to Juan Williams, not to the people who responded to the poll, but to the people at the Pew Research Center who conducted the poll with this particular phrasing: "Which of these statements comes closer to your view: Blacks today can no longer be thought of as a single race because the black community is so diverse, OR Blacks can still be thought of as a single race because they have so much in common." This question was put into a poll that asked folks a series of questions related to the socioeconomic status of black people, not about their racial/cultural identity. If it was racial/cultural identity that the study was trying to parse out, then the context was misleading, and so are the results of the study.

relationships- what i think

2007-11-09T16:33:00.000-05:00

everybody else is talking about black relationships and families out there. i figured i'd put in my two cents, too.

i think we need to all kick back a minute. i think that there is entirely too much hype out there. i think folks are getting entirely too stressed about all the negative statistics we're hearing about black relationships. i think some folks are a tad bit too sensitive sometimes. and i think we all relying entirely too much on gender roles in our analysis of what's going on. i'm not saying men and women aren't different, 'cause we are. but this whole business about men are supposed to be this and do that, and women are supposed to do this and be that... i think we, especially women, are creating unnecessary mines in this field.

i think too many of us are hung up on the wrong isht. acquiring a mate is not like acquiring a car. this whole, 0-60 in 7 seconds (master's degree), great gas mileage (well-connected), BOSE sound system (great salary) box checking off of a list is for the birds. sure, find someone like you. a kindred spirit. someone who likes the same stuff, be it shopping at the pawn shop for bargains or wine tasting, but for goodness sake, toss out the lists with boxes next to attributes. i had one when i was seventeen. then i grew up. it's not about abandoning standards, it's about being open minded. you could get exactly what you need from someone you might not expect to be the gift-giver. the Creator knows what you need more than you do.

i think that when folks are feeling each other, they figure out how to communicate that to each other. and when they don't, it's probably because their past, or their fears, or maybe even their inexperience tangled the communication all up, leading to misunderstandings. even so, no worries. 'cause i believe in fate. i believe that the people who are fated to find themselves in a loving relationship will get there, because they are the people who will make a conscious effort to learn from their mistakes, to go meet new friends, to communicate honestly, to use discretion when necessary, and to know when being secretive or trying to be cunning is simply doing too damn much. i am not the only person to get into a relationship and think: wow. there's no way this would be going as well as it is if i hadn't learned this-or-that-lesson from that friendship with so-and-so, or that relationship with such-and-such. it ain't about what you do, it's about who you are, that determines your readiness and your aptitude and even your desirableness. i also believe that people who can't weather the learning process are not fated to hook up, and if they do, they will have a sharp learning curve that they might not be able to handle.

i think that it's true that marriage is good for people and their children. but i only think that's it's the best for people and their children when it's done right! i think staying together, married or not, is only good for the kids if it gives them them the most stable, loving, and exemplary environment possible under the circumstances. i think that raising a child with split up parents is totally doable, and is the optimal situation if both parents mix like oil and water when together. i also think that when parents split up, they are BOTH still obligated to be good parents, whether from the same or different households. and i think this is possible if moms and dads don't procreate with the scum of the earth. but if you make your bed with a miscreant, get you and your child up out of it - shoulder the burden by yourself, and love every minute with your child, giving no energy to the negative thoughts about that child's non-custodial parent. 'cause as you should've known i was going to say, you should have had those negative thoughts before making that bed, not now. birth control is the way to go. we are blessed enough to have the choice up front, and more people should use it.

so far as single moms by choice go - i think what's wrong with adoption? really. if these women saw the faces of all these babies and kids and teens out there who are literally unwanted, i wonder if they'd rather spend their money on the adoption process or sperm? it's just my opinion, but that's the way i think i'd go if i was baby-hungry at 37 with money in the bank.

treat it right

2007-11-05T15:32:00.000-05:00

this is an open letter. if it applies to you, please take note. if it doesn't, and you know someone who should read this, please, do the loving thing, and help a sista out.

If you know someone who is knowledgeable about hair maintenance, perhaps you should ask for their help, because health is a good thing, and right now your hair lacks health.

Perhaps you are not drinking enough water and getting enough nutrients through a good diet and vitamins. Or perhaps it's as simple as getting a trim to save your ends from being uneven. I've also read that using a satin pillowcase or scarf is helpful at night to prevent dryness and breakage. But you should probably start trying some or all of these things to help make things a little better.

Because there is no reason for your hair line to look like that. You've probably been pulling your hair back too tightly, or getting your hair braided too often. Sometimes, your hair needs a break. If you keep pulling at it, the roots will get weak, and your hair will come out. A little variety in your hairstyle will help keep your hair healthy.

But please don't take that overboard - too much variety could wear your hair out too. You know, super-strength chemical relaxers are not for everybody. You might be that person who needs to let your hair run free for a little while. There is no shortage of information on the internet or in magazines about hairstyles you can try that will give your hair a much needed break so that it can stay strong.

Or, have you considered trying a children's relaxer? Or no relaxer at all? I'm telling you, those Dominican girls are good with those blow dryers! And they're affordable, too. Other choices include straightening combs and flat-irons. Just please, get someone you trust to do it - someone who knows how to do it without charring your tresses, sapping them of much needed moisture. Using heat is serious business, and must be done with care, if at all, because it's even better if you don't use heat. Just know that if you insist on being able to have your hair blow in the wind, you have options beyond continually processing your hair to the point where it is dry, brittle, and broken. Investing in a good conditioner is a helpful thing to try.

For all your efforts to have a beautiful mane, maybe you can't see what we see when others look at your hair. I'm sorry to say this, but it looks unloved. Have you ever considered wearing your hair in its original texture? Do you remember what it is? Think back - way back before second or third grade. Matter of fact, dig those early elementary school pictures out. Do you not like what you see? I mean, that's possible, but let's say you think the way the Creator made you was just right. Think maybe you could embrace that? Think you could try working with it?

I'm just saying, it's an option, and it would probably look better than all that excessive gel which is obscuring the beauty and texture of your hair (and contributing to dehydration and breakage). If you tried something different, your hair might be stronger, and longer, so that you don't have to snatch what little hair that didn't break off into a ponytail holder that contributes to the breakage (and can't even hold the many short, broken flyaways that the gel/hair grease couldn't hold).

If you're interested in putting your hair away, in extensions, bonded or sewn track weaves, or lace-front or cap wigs, please take note - you still need to take care of what's actually growing out of your head. Just because it's out of sight doesn't mean you can just let it go, and especially for too long a period of time. Aren't you tired of having your roots peek out, looking all forlorn and neglected? Aren't you tired of seeing something unruly when you get your weave/extensions taken out? You can only escape doing your own hair for so long. In any case, your hair won't be any better off if you neglect caring for it. We all know what happens when someone with locs does not keep up with her new growth - do you think you are exempt from having to love your hair just because it's been braided to your head or covered with cosmetics? You aren't. How many years do you think you can get away with this before you get your weave/extensions taken out one day to find that hardly any of your own hair is left?

Take responsibility for your hair. If you can't afford a professional, invest in the tools to take care of it yourself with simple hairstyles in between salon visits - or take the initiative to learn how to care for it yourself. Don't be afraid of your own hair. It came from you. It's part of you, not your enemy. If you are patient and willing to learn, you could get good at it without harming it.

I don't say these things to make people look down their noses at folks who aren't keeping up with their hair. I'm saying them because somebody has to say them. We are allowing each other to walk around with unhealthy hair and unhealthy scalps. Too many of us are causing our own hair loss. Too many of us are teaching our daughters and nieces and little cousins by example to treat their hair in an unhealthy way. It hurts to see 5-7 out of 10 of us I pass in public doing things that are harmful to themselves, in the name of style, or out of unnecessary ignorance of what their hair needs, or because someone told them their hair is "bad," or "worrisome," or "nappy" - all virtual synonyms for "unworthy of care, time, and love." Each of us is worthy of care, time, and love - our hair is worthy of good care. Our hair is NOT too difficult to appreciate and care for. We should treat it right.

Love your hair.

stop playing

2007-11-05T11:41:00.000-05:00

I watched/listened to (I was cooking) the presidential debates in Philadelphia the other week. Hillary Clinton's folks are claiming that she was attacked by the other candidates because she is a woman.

That is bovine waste, and they know it.

She is the media darling - a presumptive front-runner. She was attacked by the other candidates because she is the candidate to beat right now. Of course the other candidates were gunning for the chinks in her armor. They should have, because that's exactly what debates are for. Candidates use debates to boost their esteem in the eyes of voters, and lower the esteem of their opponents. She is an artful question-dodger, and she did flip-flop in one of her positions towards the end of that particular debate, and the other candidates would have missed a perfect and legitimate opportunity if they had not called her on it. They were right to do so, and not only that, they called her credibility into question, which they should have done, because credibility is a material issue in this campaign. Part of the reason so many Americans are dissatisfied with our current president is that he has lost credibility with us, and lost our trust. Whoever is elected our next president should be credible and trustworthy. So spare me the garbage about credibility not being at issue (as one of the candidates said during the debate - that was such a sucker move).

I am not saying that I won't vote for Hillary, or that I will. Neither am I prepared to declare that Senator Clinton is not credible or trustworthy. At this very, very early point in the process, I am still an undecided voter. But I think that the claims of late that she was unfairly targeted because of her gender are ridiculous, and I don't agree with what I see as a sneaky tactic. I think it's a ploy to distract people from the fact that she looked weak in the latter moments of the debate. I think it's a ploy to rally sympathy for her. This lady is tough and accomplished and capable - I know that she can do anything her male opponents can do - she doesn't need our sympathy, she needs to think better on her feet when under pressure and/or spin her weakness in the debate in another direction. Just not by using the "they're picking on the lone woman" argument.

imagining

2007-10-26T10:46:00.000-04:00

imagine a world where some people think that something is so important that it becomes necessary to advertise desired behavior to people who they think are either behaving badly or are badly informed on how they should behave.

imagine that the people suggesting desired behavior decide that a good way to advertise this behavior is to print big, bright posters with pictures of the desired behavior that they want to see and then place those posters on city buses.

imagine that some person on the bus sees one of these posters, pulls out a pen, and decided to add their own suggestion of desired behavior to the poster. apparently the poster doesn't say enough. the person on the bus leans over the railing and scrawls, not graffiti, but additional advice for passersby to read.

imagine that that person decided that if you're going to suggest desired behavior, you might do well to target everyone that behavior affects.

imagine that a blogger with a camera phone happens upon this very bus one rainy morning, and notices the brightly colored poster, with pictures of desired behavior, an admonishment from the advertiser, and somebody's editorial addition written in pen. the blogger chuckles, looks around wondering if the others on the bus will think her crazy, and then resigns herself to the fact that she probably is anyway.

imagine she fumbles with the camera, taking video after video but failing to take a snapshot. her stop is coming up, quickly. she might miss her opportunity to capture what could be accidental art! finally, the right method dawns upon the technologically remedial blogger. she snaps two pictures hastily, and walks off the bus into the rainy morning, armed with a visible memory of what made her chuckle... and what made her think... about social advertising, assumptions people make, and the utility of graffiti.

the poster reads: "Think you're pregnant? Get prenatal care as soon as you think you're pregnant - and keep all your prenatal appointments. Give Your Baby a Healthy Start." what's missing are the several pictures of smiling black and latino couples with babies. go prenatal care!

the scribbles read: "If you are man enough to get her pregnant, be man [sic] to Raise your child."

new developments

2007-10-24T13:42:00.000-04:00

first of all, i love my new fabric softener. i switched from dryer sheets to liquid and it makes all the difference! i love it in my clothes... in my sheets... in the linen closet... it's just wonderful.

2006 was the year of change... 2007 is the year of action. i've known this for some time now. but why did i forget that action brings about change? my finances are looking up because of some changes i made to the way i handle my money. my job is looking up because of some changes i made to my priorities. my home life is looking up because of some changes i've made - hey, i moved! (again!)

and i've already started to figure out what 2008 will be. the year of fulfillment. because of this year's actions, some things are getting ready to come together for me on the grown folks tip. dreams i've had for years will manifest. it's a very, very good feeling.

i have to find some dance class or something. any suggestions? i have to stay off the couch, and poetry is lovely but it doesn't work your abs and thighs.

i have to get my passport, too. i am so leaving this country. i don't even know where i'm going first, but there's a whole world out there and i need to go see it. i know i keep saying that, but bear with me. it takes time for someone like me to move on stuff like this.

oh yeah, and i'm recycling again and it feels good.

that's enough randomness and cryptic bragging for one day, don'tchathink?

it's who we are, not what we hear

2007-10-12T11:11:00.000-04:00

Let me just say this about hip hop.

The problem is not the music, or the images, the industry, greed, capitalism - none of that.

The problem is culture. The problem is family values. There will always be something that turns a mirror back on society, reflecting the culture in that society. Misogyny, greed, violence, hedonism, materialism - all these things are in mainstream commercial hip hop and other media because all these things are in society. No one recording artist, video model, producer, or record label has the patent on these things. If there was no appetite for these morally questionable displays of vanity set to simple beats, then these opportunists would be out of business.

I don't excuse these opportunists for what they're doing. The problems with today's mainstream commercial hip hop are inexcusable. In fact, that's exactly where things start to go awry - people are excusing the inexcusable. People know some songs say things that don't reconcile with their values, but they like the beat, so they turn it up... with their three year old listening in the back seat of the car. They wouldn't like if their three year old grew up to have a credit card swiped through the crack of her behind, but they'll watch some other man's daughter in that very position late at night while their little girls are sleeping (or up way too late, watching TV too). They would rather their son get a good job when he grows up, but they allow him to hang pictures of admitted drug dealers - street thugs - on his bedroom walls. Not affirming our values - not honoring the values of our grandparents, is excusing the inexcusable, and as long as we let this and that continue to slide under the radar of what we should know is worthy of our time and attention, that which is considered "entertainment" will continue to degenerate. It's not just the music, it's the movies, it's celebrity "news" and gossip, it's fashion - it's culture at large, not just hip hop.

The stuff I hear on the hip hop station as I turn by it disappoints me - not just because it's bad to me, but because I know people are listening and are entertained by it. Not very long ago, stuff like Chicken Noodle Soup and Laffy Taffy wouldn't have gotten airplay, because people would have said, "This song is stupid," and turned off the radio. Rappers who rhyme a word with the very same word in the next verse were once clowned. But as people allow music to dumb down by excusing mediocrity and ignorance, this is the future of radio hip hop. We have arrived. Maybe this isn't where we want to be, but until we change our appetites, we will be spoonfed whatever we tolerate.

If we, as a group, rose to the level of the people we have the potential to be - people hungry for creativity, ingenuity, integrity, and variety, the problems we have with hip hop would ebb away like a bad dream after you wake up. We have to raise, not just feed and clothe, but guide, instruct, encourage, and believe in our children. We have to teach them their worth and about the opportunities available to them in this age where the ancestors have cried, bled, marched, and achieved so much so that we wouldn't have to shake our behinds or shuck and jive, grinning ear to ear, celebrating ignorance just to make a buck. We have to expose them to a variety of music, so they can appreciate a good hip hop sample when they hear it. We have to give our kids the tools to see hip hop and evaluate it for themselves - to separate fantasy from reality, and be able to tell walking, rapping stereotypes from genuine men and women.

In short, we don't need hip hop to go away. If we know who we are and what we're capable of and we give our kids the right tools in life, they'll see the negative things about commercial mainstream hip hop, or other media images and preoccupations for themselves, and respond in kind by rejecting that which is abhorrent, embracing that which doesn't appeal to the basest levels of our existence, and changing the game.

i appreciate folks

2007-10-07T23:37:00.000-04:00

it's nice to be able to share your joys with the people you love, admire, and respect... there's something about seeing yourself through the eyes of others that can give you some idea of the impact that you're having on the world around you. if they share your joys and pains, it's an indication of their connection to you, and if not... well then, let's hope it's a good thing that you know where folks stand.

i am loved.

it feels good to have people to share my life with. it feels good to know people are praying for me, hoping for the best for me, taking joy in my joys, investing concern in my struggles.

i am so blessed.

He ministers to me through the love of others. i know all roads lead back to Him.

all love, all patience, all optimism, all faith...

it all leads back to Him. it all leads forward into Him.

personal is personal

2007-10-01T23:48:00.000-04:00

this used to be such a personal blog.

but i feel a little less anonymous here. people who've met and known me in person know how to find this blog. i've had readers who know my (distinctive) given name. and something about that just holds my tongue. somewhere along the line, i became too afraid to talk about myself, and started talking about the state of black america, using capitalization. if you've noticed, and you don't like it, all i can say is, it's just not that type of party anymore.

i've got career things going on right now. i've got money things going on right now. let's not forget the loving relationship things going on right now (this may be a pivotal turning point in my election of more privacy). i'm so busy on the grind, and in the gym, and being involved with my family - my poetry has slowed down so much. i'm still writing preliminary lines in my head that get lost to the four winds because they're never written down. i'm okay with it. this too shall pass.

i'm trying to talk to the Creator more often. it's not easy. once you get out of the habit of doing it, doing it requires effort. it's so silly how when we need him most - those times when we're juggling our worries and our cares with the day-to-day requirements - it's the time we (I, anyway) find it hardest to make time. i'm being pulled back to the church, slowly but surely. i haven't attended regularly in some time, especially since the importance of attendance has waned for me in the grand scheme of faith and faith-based action and living. but i feel that by returning with some regularity, i can regain some balance that i used to have... that i can reclaim some much-needed focus.

i decided at the beginning of this year that this year would be an important one of action. last year, it was all about change. the year before that, it was all about discovery. so many developments are happening with me - i've met milestones that i hadn't even set for myself yet, and it's not even my new year yet: i've still got all of fall and most of winter until this biological year passes into a new one. and yet, the idea of a deadline means little to me. the more i experience, the more i realize the truth of what people say about things happening in their own time - in the Lord's time.

i realize that this whole process, beginning with my exodus from the south which preceded the creation of this blog by mere months, is the process of me becoming who i've wanted to be since i was a child. that amazes me. i'm recognizing the idealistic child i once was in the woman i am becoming. if this is full circle, then what happens next? this is why i need to invest in my connection with the Creator. i don't want to get lost along the way. i have a purpose bigger than whatever i may dream of on my own. my faith can lead me there.

in the meantime, i am seriously pursuing physical, emotional, mental, financial, and spiritual well-being. privately. i can't work it all out here. i believe my written journal will begin to take back the favor i'd bestowed on this public blog and become, once again, the holder of my story - the breadcrumbs of my journey. this isn't a goodbye... it's just a clarification that i haven't lost my rich thought life. i've just pulled it in closer to my chest.

dat boy crazy

2007-09-30T00:54:00.000-04:00

this ain't the first time i hopped on the computer to blog about kanye west immediately after seeing him go off the script on live television.

this time, he was performing on saturday night live, and flubbed one of the lines about halfway through the song. no problem. what'd he do? instead of faking it until the end of the verse, then going to the chorus and hopping back into the lyrics, he freestyled his way to the end of the set - actually, not the end of the set, 'cause he cut that short, too. plus, he turned around and lied about planning to mess up and freestyle, 'cause, well, it's what came to mind. LOL! say what you want about him, but i'm a fan. no, he might not be the best at everything, hands down, and no, he's not the best at freestyling (KRS-One could kill kanye in a battle in his sleep), but the brother's got a spark about him. his album is selling well, everybody knows his name, but he's still hongry. it's endearing. i'm happy for him.

face forward

2007-09-27T23:15:00.000-04:00

I am not rejoicing that Mychal Bell made bail. Not because I'm not happy for him - I am, but because I know this is not the end. He is still facing serious charges. He still has that matter of his prior juvenile offenses to live down. The other five defendants are all in the same boat - facing serious charges that stem from their actions on the day they made the decision to jump Justin Barker. They are still in the process of becoming men, and I'm hoping that in the midst of all these events, they are reevaluating their decision making skills.

I was not, and am still not of the opinion that these young men should be "freed." I wore black for solidarity with the protesters and called attention to my position on the matter because I believed that their charges were excessive and racist in the absence of similar charges for white teens who were also involved in assaults in Jena, La - for example, the whites whose actions Justin Barker bragged about before the Jena Six decided to whup his ass.

Which brings me to this point: for actions, there are consequences. I cannot demand that white teens be held accountable for their assaults on black students and simultaneously hold the Jena Six blameless for what they've done. The solution is not to let the black kids go free like the white kids were allowed to do. The solution is to hold every kid, regardless of their color, responsible for their choices and actions. Haul those white kids into court, too.

I wish the Jena Six well - fair charges, fair hearings, and fair sentences. I also wish that the prosecutor and law enforcement in Jena bring the white teens to justice, and that they find and punish the arsonist who burned the school down.

If this country wants people to respect and follow the law, then the enforcement of the law should be just and evenly applied.

Focus?

2007-09-25T22:00:00.000-04:00

I don't like Bill O'Reilly. I've never liked Bill O'Reilly. I disagree with his politics. I hate his show. I hate his network. He annoys me. Never, have I ever thought that I would do anything that could even be mistaken for defending him, but here goes...

Scenario: Bill O'Reilly is on the radio, having a discussion with Juan Williams. In the course of their conversation, O'Reilly brings up the time he went out to eat with Al Sharpton. They went to the now seemingly ubiquitous Sylvia's in Harlem, a black-owned restaurant. Apparently, some comments he made during this discussion are making a lot of people angry. Headlines read as follows: "Bill O'Reilly racist comments," "O'Reilly: Sylvia's just like a suburban white restaurant," "Is Bill O'Reilly's Comment on Race an 'Imus Moment' ."

What was offensive? Well, he said that he "couldn't get over" how eating at Sylvia's was like eating anywhere else. He also said, "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-F'er, I want some more iced tea.' " That sounds a lot to me like one of those patronizing, "That [insert black person here] is so articulate [or clean, or polite, or insert-anti-black-stereotypical-adjective-here]." So I can see why folks are upset. But before I decided to let this guy affect my blood pressure, I figured I'd do a little digging to find the statements in their original context, since I noticed that hardly any of the articles commenting on the fallout have provided any context whatsoever.

Check this out. The relevant parts of the transcript are about halfway down the page, after the bullet points, beginning with, "From the September 19 edition of Westwood One's The Radio Factor:"

http://mediamatters.org/items/200709210007

Once I read the transcript, I realized that several of his statements had been taken out of context. In fact, even the site I've linked to has put the most commonly cited text in boldface text, as if to say that the context for the statements was irrelevant. It appears to me that O'Reilly was trying to say that his visit to Sylvia's was an example of why stereotypes are stupid. Of course, in keeping with his pompous, arrogant character, he said it with words like, "I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference," and "...[T]he people up there are tremendously respectful. They all watch [my show] The Factor." Unfortunately for him, his politics and his history of making statements that indict black culture make it painfully difficult to consider that perhaps he meant well by his statements, but in fairness, I think this is one of the times when O'Reilly was not at his worst.

This is part of the problem with race relations in today's society. We don't know how to talk to each other about race relations without mis-speaking and being mis-interpreted at every turn. Mind you, I have no sympathy for O'Reilly here. I'm not concerned about his welfare in the aftermath of his fumble. Trust me, he's already said plenty already for intelligent people to be upset about, and I bet next month he'll say something else stupid that will legitimately piss me off. I'm concerned about the rest of us, and how we've got radio and newspapers hopping all over misinterpreted comments being taken out of context - and people are reading it and eating it up without pausing to question the story - getting hyped, expending energy. 'Cause folks are all so ready to go on the next crusade against racism.

Family: rather than fill folks' in-boxes over some simple comments, a better way to fight racism is to fight for the people affected by it. Read to the kids. Network with minorities. Each one teach one. Go to PTA meetings. Start snitching. Invest in minority start-up businesses. Mentor a child. Be there for your families. We don't have time to be worried about people like Bill O'Reilly and what he has to say about soul food. We have a generation of children to hoist on our shoulders.

After Jena 6

2007-09-21T09:34:00.000-04:00

I noticed, in my unscientific visual survey of what black folks were wearing, that people in the downtown white collar jobs were more likely to wear black than the blue collar folks in the neighborhoods. Could it be that the first group of folks were more likely to listen to the radio talk shows, read black bloggers, and pass e-mail forwards? Anecdotally, I know a lot of blue collar folks that don't do at least two out of three of these things, and those were the primary ways we spread the word about yesterday's protest and "dress code." Or could it be, as a friend of mine suggested, that people in the hood are too worried about their own problems to be bothered with concern about the Jena 6. Black boys get railroaded in the court system, discriminated against, and shot regularly enough in the hood that some folks may wonder why Jena is anymore special than Camden or North Philly.

In fact, in a discussion I listened to last night, I heard a woman say something to that effect - we have a lot going on right here at home to deal with, so what about Jena, La.? Can we take care of Philly first? My thoughts are that concern doesn't have to be mutually exclusive - one can care about what's going on up the street and still show concern for what's going on down south. One can also pitch in to help out with local and national matters. Caring about the Jena 6 doesn't mean you no longer care about your little cousin.

I did some internet surfing to see what folks - blacks and others - had to say about the incident. So many people seemed misinformed, or under-informed about the mission. It seems a lot of people think that blacks just wanted the Jena 6 freed because they're black and they were provoked. Not so. The problem was that they were excessively charged, and that no whites faced any sentence remotely close to what the blacks are facing, despite the fact that a black student was intimidated with a firearm and later jumped by whites. The district attorney was lenient with the whites and heavy-handed with the blacks. That's the problem. These young men didn't get mad about some nooses and then decide to jump the first white kid they saw. Too many people have formed opinions without understanding the context of the situation. It was very disappointing to see. Wikipedia is free.

Another comment I heard a few times was that, "I'm tired of black people rallying around causes because it's the trendy thing to do. So I didn't wear black today." Or, "Wearing black isn't going to change anything, so I didn't see the point." To the first comment, I say that it's not just black people who rally around a cause-of-the-moment and then lose intensity - that may be an American, or maybe even a human societal flaw. Let's not malign black people any more than others, shall we? But I understand and agree that if you really want change, you can't limit your efforts to one Day of Atonement (the Million Man March was supposed to start a movement in several communities, not end after the buses came back home), or one month of solidarity (mainstream media wanted to believe race and class divisions were healed after 9/11 just because everyone was emotional after the country's loss). Thing is, showing solidarity on one day doesn't mean that you can't keep things going the next day. That doesn't mean continuing to wear black today. That means continuing to draw attention to the issues that matter, regardless of the clothes you wear. Your actions are up to you, and if you want change, you can be that one person to keep it on the minds of the people around you.

Regarding black not changing anything, I've said in my last post that clothes won't get the Jena 6 a fair trial. But that didn't make wearing black irrelevant. Some may disagree, but some battles are won and lost in the psyche. That's why shows of solidarity have such important in this, our symbolic culture. I was excited to see black folks wearing black - to me, it meant that people had heard about an important cause, and what's more, they supported the fact that something was being done about it. They wanted to bring awareness of the issues. They believed in the power of collective effort. All psychological, but all very relevant and affirming to those like myself who choose to believe that despite popular belief, people, especially black Americans, are not all apathetic, lazy, and complacent. I am too young to know how black folks felt when watching our two Olympians on the podium raise their black gloved fists during the national anthem. But I bet it got people hyped. I know I was hyped yesterday, and so were others all over the country.

I can't knock that. If anything, I want to support that. Which is why when I thought, "Wearing black is a waste of time," yesterday, I thought better of it and wore as much black as I could. Every little bit helps. And we should use what energy we can retain from yesterday's momentum to keep that optimistic effort for change going. Never mind past fits and starts, past unbroken promises, past failures. Our job is to learn from the past, not limit ourselves by bitter memories of it.

Again, I ask, what are we going to do today? Even better, what am I going to do today?

I wrote this blog to inspire you to give serious thought to this question. Let's try to ask it of ourselves, and find an answer, every day.

what are you wearing today?

2007-09-20T11:21:00.000-04:00

Today I am wearing a set of black slacks with blue pinstripes, and a black sweater showing my shirt's blue collar and cuffs. I wanted to wear all black, but I didn't have solid black to rock. But I got as close as I could, since today is a special day.

Today, black folks from all over the country are wearing black clothes, on purpose, together. It's a show of solidarity with the people who took off work, scraped some money together, got hotel rooms, printed flyers, made signs, and dedicated their time today to go to Jena, Louisiana, to protest the judicial system there. The district attorney there is in the process of prosecuting six black teenagers for jumping a white teenager in the aftermath of some racially-based fighting between whites and blacks in that town. The sentences these young men are facing are harsh. The background of the cases has led many to believe that the prosecution is unjustly excessive and racially based. Although the public outcry has not been as prominent in the news as say, Britney Spears' performance at the VMA awards, the rivalry between 50 Cent and Kanye West for sales, or OJ Simpson's latest arrest, somehow black people have spread the news. I heard about it via e-mail. Then a MySpace forward. Then the black internet blogs and message boards. All this before I heard any inkling of it in the mainstream television or print media. I hear that Michael Baisden was talking about it on his nationally syndicated afternoon radio show, and so was Tom Joyner in the morning. I knew about wearing black today because my best friend sent me a text message and because the DJ on the "Whispers in the Dark" radio program mentioned it before a commercial break.

I don't know what's going to happen to these young men. I hope they get a fair trial and sentencing. Merely wearing black en masse will not save these young men from unfair prosecution. Action will. May God grant the protesters safe passage during their trip, and the voice to make a change. But I do know, from seeing black people up and down Market Street wearing black this morning, that today we have proven ourselves capable of communicating effectively and acting with a joint purpose. I'm not going so far as to say that all is well among all black Americans. What I will say is that it is inspiring to see that we have the ability to communicate as well as we have on this matter. If we can do this, what more can we do given the many resources we have to communicate with each other? Imagine if, instead of stopping this massive grapevine after today, we decided to generate a list of companies to support in favor of their rivals who, let's say, have no minorities in their boardrooms but heavily target minorities for their profit? Imagine if we used this power to talk about the realities of how AIDS is coming hard for black women, affecting our families at an alarming rate? Imagine if we rebuilt New Orleans, improved child literacy, supported HBCUs, mobilized mentors for at-risk teens? Can you imagine what we could do if we acted collectively?

We don't have to imagine. What are you wearing today?

What will you - what will WE - do tomorrow?

misinformation

2007-09-12T11:42:00.000-04:00

when i first started to attend open mics about 4 or 5 years ago, i was in love with the whole scene. i was constantly in an environment where i was a minority during the day, and being with other black folks on those nights was a refreshing thing. an avid bookworm, i love words. an avid music lover, i love songs. open mics provided me with both.

it wasn't long before i realized that certain themes were used often in the poetry i was hearing - affirmations of culture, political frustration, the fallout of economic warfare - all things that merit discussion, expression, and reflection. as time went on, i noticed that there were certain things that we folks in the audience were expected to know about. i don't have time to get into all of it, but i'll just focus on one for now: the "willie lynch mentality." i had never heard of willie lynch before attending poetry venues. afraid to show my ignorance of something that i apparently should have known about, i looked him up on the internet. my search told me that willie lynch was a caribbean slaveholder whose slave-handling tactics of mental divide-and-conquer warfare are at the root of division between africans in america today.

i'll be honest: i wasn't very impressed with his speech. i'm naturally skeptical of such things, but i let it go at that. all the things in the letter were things i'd heard others expound upon when trying to explain the current cultural and economic state of black folks. i already knew those tactics had been used. i'd learned about them in my reading before ever having read about willie lynch. the difference here is that instead of talking about the divisive tactics as something that was generally done by slaveowners during slavery, the individual willie lynch now stood out as a figure to whom these tactics could be attributed. additionally, this is a name we've never heard in school. surely this must be some information kept from us for centuries, so that we would never know we were being systematically divided all this time. that way we would be ignorant of our plight and too disorganized, too disjointed, too inept to band together and resist the mental warfare being thrust upon us - suddenly the shadow of conspiracy looms. we've been hoodwinked! we've been bamboozled!

at last now i understood what the poets were saying when they talked about willie lynch. the references to the willie lynch mentality made sense - they were referring to divisiveness among black people when they dropped his name. "willie lynch" is now a convenient term to encapsulate this concept - an abbreviation, if you will.

problem is, willie lynch is not a historical figure - he was not a man who lived and breathed and singlehandedly determined the plight of africans in america. the speech in which he outlined a program for white racial domination never happened. of course, we'd never know it, the way his speech is circulated on the internet and alluded to ad nauseum by even the most well-meaning of poets. black scholars have done the research and taken the time to discredit the myth of his existence and speech, based on linguistic and historical research, and i'm glad that they have, since i'd always been suspicious of the myth, but never had the ammunition to discredit it.

please don't misunderstand me: i know that africans were stripped of culture, language and custom, bred, beaten, separated, and intimidated in order to lose identity, unity, and the urge for freedom. this is not a myth. this is something we need to understand about our ancestors. at times we need to talk about this, and it does affect us even today. one of the ways it affects us, however, is that we go searching for meaning in things that have no authenticity. contrary to what we may have heard, kwanzaa is not an african holiday - it was created for african americans who want to pay homage to african culture. "picnic" originates from the french, and does not mean "pick-a-nigger." black men received their right to vote in the 19th century with the 15th amendment to the constitution, not in the 20th century with the voting rights act. black women's suffrage followed in the 19th amendment. and folks, listen to me close: there existed no man named willie lynch, mastermind of black submission and division.

some find that debating whether or not this speech existed is a distraction. should it matter if the man wasn't real, when we know that the tactics were real? yes, it should, and this is why: part of our problem is that many of us don't know our history in the first place. when you don't know the truth, someone can tell you anything, and in your ignorance, you will believe. we once believed that in africa we were savages that swung like monkeys from trees. we know better now - that we came from civilizations with order, governments, kingdoms, knowledge, and customs. knowledge of the truth makes all the difference. we must accept nothing less than the truth. here, the truth is that willie lynch is a modern-day, fabricated symbol and not a historical figure. asking people to make that distinction is no more a distraction than perpetuating the myth.

family, please stop getting your history from e-mail forwards, rap lyrics and open mics. please stop listening to your play cousin who just came out of jail wearing a kufi, just because he said he read a lot while he was locked up. stop spreading information until you've checked its integrity. don't be a pedestrian thinker. if you want to know who we are, get cozy with carter g. woodson. take a class at the community college. shoot, even hit up wikipedia. but always question. always try to verify.

a note to all my brothers and sisters who write poetry and lyrics - i love you. but if you're going to name-drop willie lynch, please, PLEASE, explain what you mean by that to the people who are listening to your words. and in your explanation, can you somehow include the fact that he's a symbol of reality, and not intrinsically real? we must take our weighty responsibility as griots seriously. the ancestors are watching and the children are listening.

Rewind...

2007-09-11T10:48:00.000-04:00

September 11, 2006

Catherine Lisa LoGuidice and I have precious little in common. She was born nine years before me and lived several states away. I've never met her. Perhaps on one of her adventures, chasing down some hard rock star or heading out to defy death on a mountain biking trip, she wound up on a road trip, and maybe she passed me in a car on I-95 once and neither one of us knew it. I've come to believe that it's a smaller world than we think this is, and the Pisces within me likes to believe that the connection between me and Catherine is on purpose.

A big part of Catherine's life was love - she had the time and heart for lots of it. She loved her two god-daughters, and friends and family members. She had even found the kind of love that people pray and wish for in a fiancee, an old friend she'd known since high school. She was planning to get married to Erick Elberth, and all of her friends and family celebrated with her at a bridal shower. She was a beloved daughter to Catherine Masak and Carmelo LoGuidice, sister to Lucy and Michael, and an aunt to many. A part-time veterinary assistant, Catherine loved animals, too. One thing that she definitely shared with me was a love of reading - Anne Rice was one of her favorites! I can imagine her four cats finding other things to do while she got all wrapped up in some intriguing story packed with horror and suspense.

Her life seemed full. Her taste in music - on the edge. Her taste in stories - on the edge. Her sky diving and mountain biking - on the edge. This woman, of tattooes, intricate Halloween costumes, and horror movies wasn't one-sided, though. Her brother Michael knew that she loved Thoreau so much that she once travelled to his famous retreat, Walden Pond. She also took up Tai Chi, an ancient art characterized by its graceful and gentle movements that inspire health and inner peace.

What's crazy is that you could walk past Cathy, as her friends and family called her, on a crowded street - bump into her maybe - and never know all of the wonderfully interesting stuff about the woman you were bumping into.

When the planes hit those towers on September 11, 2001, I was in bed, getting ready to wake up and go to class across town. Catherine was at work. She was an assistant bond trader for a firm called Cantor Fitzgerald. As a nation, we were all shaken and confused while the tragedy was happening, but I can't imagine how Cathy and her family felt in particular on that morning.

She died that day, five years ago, at the age of thirty. She was on the 105th floor in the first tower, and it's pretty likely that she just wasn't able to get to a safe place. Like many of us, she hadn't thought much about the World Trade Center attack in 1993 since it happened. Her job was at the World Trade Center, so that's where she stayed for the several years to follow.

When she was memorialized, donations to the ASPCA were requested instead of flowers, honoring her animal-loving spirit. After her death, and the deaths of 2,995 others, I mourned, wearing black for two days and crying for many more, shocked and deeply moved by the television images of people wandering the area near the towers with signs seeking their missing loved ones. At the time, and even now, I am just a fellow American with no direct connection to the tragedy. But I suspect that Cathy's family felt the impact of the tragedy much more intensely, and I suspect that today, and every day, they remember Cathy's life more lovingly than I ever could. They, and the other 2,995 families of the deceased and missing, have my most reverent sympathy.

I hope that those who knew Cathy can get joy from their memories of what they loved most about her, and that if they are able to learn anything from the way she lived her life, that they'll honor her memory by doing so. (9/11/07 - This is updated to add that her loved ones think of her always and often. You may read their words to Cathy at the Legacy.com link, which is below this message.)

May her spirit rest in peace.

Thanks to Legacy.com and CNN.com for information on Cathy that served as the source of this tribute.

capitalism

2007-09-10T11:27:00.000-04:00

ok, i'll finally expound at length on this situation with black people wanting to boycott vh1 because they have supposedly rejected a show featuring intelligent black women who are willing to date interracially. it's been going around on the internet for some time now. the logic here is that vh1 is racist because they're more than willing to show "flavor of love" and "charm school," which feature black women behaving badly, but they've supposedly said that "viewers are more interested in seeing black women in a ghetto role," so showing educated black women isn't something they want to do.

i can't help but think that if vh1 had actually decided to do the show they've purportedly rejected, then folks would be up in arms about this proposed show about black women dating non-black men, because people are tired of that whole black men and women can't get along stereotype. i can hear it now, "oh, so when you finally do put good black women on your network, they only get the spotlight if they choose white men over black men?" if it ain't one thing, it's another.

do i think vh1's position is righteous? certainly not. but i understand it. they're selling what sells. and something makes me question why vh1 wasn't boycotted when flavor of love and charm school got started. is it only in comparison to a show about educated black women that people can realize how tacky, trifling, and bad-for-our-collective-image their already existing shows are? vh1 is in the business of airing fluff. they've found their niche, and they're sticking to it. there is no requirement to balance out their programming when there are fi'tyleven other channels in folks' cable packages. i figure they're thinking, "you wanna see positive images? turn to a pbs documentary on the civil rights movement, or watch the autobiography of miss jane pittman or whatever they're showing on tvone now."

i don't expect fairness or balance or righteousness from vh1- why should i? we couldn't even get that from bob johnson. this market isn't driven by that. it's driven by who can grab the most eyes for those advertisements. that's why bob johnson is a rich man. i can't stand what he did with his network, but i can't knock his understanding of his business. he didn't make a network for us. he made a network for companies who wanted to advertise to us. vh1 is doing the same - grabbing attention, not changing the world or catering to our higher sensibilities.

cooning sells.

if we don't like that, then we should stop buying products from all the advertisers who sponsor cooning on all of tv and radio - not just vh1. we should stop celebrating people who make it a point to act a fool in the public eye, like karrine steffans, flavor flav, and 50 cent among others, just because they're black. folks become transfixed on every single train wreck aired on tv and radio and then have the nerve to cry foul when the media wants to capitalize on the (merited) perception that people like to watch foolishness? it's not them, it's us. americans, black and white and purple, patronize minstrel shows.

don't hate the playa, CHANGE the game.

note: i don't watch flavor of love or charm school, i don't own one 50 cent album, i don't watch bet, and i've not read ms. steffans' tawdry tales.

is there a "we"?

2007-09-05T11:42:00.000-04:00

The Assertion

"N*****s destroy, Negroes assimilate, Black people build."

this is what led me to ask the question a few posts back about assimilation. i heard this sentence about two weeks ago, and it is still working my nerves. never mind for a moment the unnecessary use of the n-word (i've come to hate this "n-word" term as much as the word it unsuccessfully attempts to skirt, by the way), since i've already gone on that diatribe, and the debate will likely never die.

what's more troubling to me is the way this phrase is so divisive, as if we need any more division amongst us. all this finger pointing and "they" this and "they" that is so spinning-wheels-and-getting-no-damn-where. add that to the problem that none of these words are defined. two of them are fairly easy - destroy and build. the other words are not so simple. and based on context clues and personal anecdotes, even though i suspect that a black person hearing this sentence would know what the sentence means, they shouldn't just accept it word for word. instead, they should question.

De-constructing Semantics

now if i'd tried to get this same point across, i'd have said in the alternative that "ignorant, unappreciative people destroy," and that "progressive, positive people build." but that still leaves the middle part. this is where i really get puzzled. what is the difference between a "Negro" and a "black" person? and what (this is the really nitty-gritty gristle and marrow-in-the-bone of my problem here) is "assimilation," anyway? see, the speaker of this sentence is a brother i respect - i know he means well, and i see his point that we need to focus our attitudes and our actions on doing the best we can for our situation as a people. but this "Negroes assimilate" thing is where the whole thing gets derailed.

does assimilation mean moving out of the neighborhood to a place with bigger houses, less crime and better schools? does it mean speaking standard english? does it mean putting a relaxer in your hair? perhaps assimilation means playing golf on saturday with colleagues, or watching Friend.s reruns while baking chicken to eat with artichokes. maybe it means marrying a white person and having beige, amber-haired, hazel-eyed kids. it probably includes preferring E! to BET or Oprah magazine to Essence magazine. does assimilation mean purposely naming your daughter Katherine instead of Keesha? or purposely naming your son Matthew instead of Marquise? where do we draw the line? what is assimilation and what isn't? and if a Black person does "assimilate," what makes them a Negro instead of a Black person? for the record, some of the greatest Black figures of the 20th century were self-described Negroes, when Negro with a capital N was the most dignified way to refer to us Africans in America. have the past 40 years changed the meaning of Negro so much that it must become an insult? an assertion that someone has lost their Soul with a capital S? why are some of us always on the hunt to find words to malign each other?

Problems on Every Side

perhaps my friend's issue is that when people of color get involved in middle-class culture, and take on middle-class bills and obligations, they are less hungry for change in the neighborhoods they or their parents or grandparents left behind, where people who look like them still struggle without them, although they are probably best equipped with the education and funds to help make a difference. they are more worried about job security than agitating for change. they're less likely to tutor or clean up their old block or become a mentor, because they're busy hustling to pay mortgages and student loans (and keep up with the joneses). they're probably more likely to blame people left behind in the old neighborhood for not hustling like they or their parents or grandparents have done, both because it may relieve some of their guilt for turning away from the shells of the left behind neighborhoods and also because they do have a point about the "i'm a victim" mindset. black victims of racism and poverty have been helping themselves for centuries, and there is no reason in this post-Civil rights era to stop now. is this an assimilationist stance? to expect people to do what they can with what means they have? to expect such achievement of yourself and excel, like our ancestors fought to enable you to do?

part of "black people build"-ing (i assume the speaker categorizes himself in this group) is recognizing that change requires power, and power is not free. one thing middle-class black folks understand is how to put their time and effort into work that generates money. and in this country, money is power, and poor people get the shaft. poor people could learn this lesson from the Katherines and Matthews. and in turn, Katherine and Matthew could re-learn a thing or two about remembering where they came from from Keesha and Marquise, who pool their funds with their grandmother when that gap between this check and the next gets too long, or who watch their sister's baby after school when she starts her shift every afternoon so she won't have to spend light bill money on daycare.

Reality Check

certainly - point out destructive and selfish attitudes when it will help us adjust our focus to what is important. but there's no need for the name calling. no need for the division. we all have problems. too many of us from various economic places on the spectrum have our priorities jacked up. pointing fingers at "them" from whatever point of view you come from is a sure way to further alienate us from each other. how then, will we learn from each other or help each other, if we can't tolerate our differences, let alone appreciate them?

weariness

2007-08-31T15:34:00.001-04:00

lawd, i'm so tired of people sometimes. who do they think they are? seriously. i don't know if it's current trends in the culture - people getting paid to opine on things authoritatively (and loudly) on the news, blogs where people can beknight themselves experts, the general decline in civility in common interactions and discourse... maybe all of the above. but i'm so tired of the self-righteous. so very tired of the rude. so annoyed with the close minded. i can deal with and forgive the people who don't have (or use) creativity to think beyond what others have told them - ignorance and arrogance are not the same thing. but people who claim to know so much better than others, then fall victim to the same flaws as the rest - they really need to fall back. not because they make mistakes, but because they are wrong in trying to say that they are incapable of making mistakes. politics is arguable. religion is arguable. sometimes there are no absolute truths that anyone can lay claim to. certainly, support your point when you have one. stand up for your opinion. but don't elevate yourself in your own mind so much that you can't respect the people to whom you're speaking. i've been talked down to so much in the past week or so. it doesn't hurt my love for myself. it challenges me, sure. but more than anything, it disappoints me. because i catch more hell from my own people warring with each other than i get from "the other," and that's real talk. sometimes it feels like it's always a grind. always a trial. i know we can't be simple, 'cause being black in this country ain't no simple thing. and i know we won't always agree, and that's a good thing, 'cause i don't want us all to err together. but i believe a certain amount of respect for each other would go so very far. maybe if we weren't all trying to be right it would be better. the best, the most righteous, the most conscious, the hardest, the richest, the smartest, the realest... when did this become a competition? where is the humility? where is the concern?

assimilation

2007-08-27T20:59:00.000-04:00

hey there, family!

first, thanks for checking in and reading even though i haven't been posting everyday like i used to. it means a lot to me every time someone leaves a comment or puts a hit on my page. it lets me know i'm not talking to myself.

second, in light of my confidence in you, i have a question i'd like you to answer, if you please. the other night i was at the poetry spot and my brother from another mother brought up the concept of assimilation. i'd like to know what you think: in the context of being black in america, what does it mean to assimilate? i have tried on my own to answer that very question for the past several days now, and i cannot come up with anything solid. i wonder why? perhaps your input may help me understand why i have such a hard time answering that question...

my own race

2007-08-22T12:34:00.000-04:00

yesterday, i set foot in a gym for the first time in years.

i joined it just this week! and it's about time. i had this one post talking all kinds of smack about how i wasn't paying money to sweat in front of strangers. whatever! it's over a year later and i weigh about 10 pounds more than i did when i started this blog. i've outgrown too many clothes. i'm too far gone to be happy wearing a bikini in public. so i bit the bullet and bought a gym membership. however - i still don't have a bathroom scale. and i'm still not on a diet, even though i eat well about 80% of the time.

my first day was okay. i took a tour with one of the girls who works there, and she showed me how to use the weight machines and the treadmill. then i used the treadmill to go for a mile - walking/jogging - i am NOT a runner. then i used almost every weight machine there. i was at the gym for about 45 minutes. depending on how soon i can get my mile down, i might be able to get out in half an hour, and still get home in time to catch the news. my only concern is boredom. but i have some ideas. first, i'll switch from the treadmill to some other cardio machine, like the bike, or that other walking thing where you use your arms too (i don't know its name) to keep my cardio varied. second, once the music in the gym gets old, i'll use my z.une to listen to music. sometimes, depending on whether i use the bike or what, i may even be able to read a magazine while i work. i've got a year's financial commitment to work on this, and i'm hoping my thriftiness will keep me going, if for nothing else than to get my money's worth.

for me, the weight machines are where the treasure is. my main reason for joining was to tone up, not lose weight. that's why i'm keeping my cardio limited to jussst enough to get my heart rate hopping. to me, the most important part of working out is to keep my shape as i get older and my metabolism changes. it's totally a vanity thing. i've never been fat, but i don't wanna get there. i want to get rid of the cellulite forming on my thighs. i want my triceps to stop wobbling like my seventh grade teacher with the wig and fuzzy moustache. i don't want to outgrow the clothes i can still fit. i want a firm, developed thigh and butt area. i want to flatten my stomach back out and add definition to my abs. and i want my beloved's eyes to bug out of his head on our honeymoon one day.

i don't know how soon i'll get to where i want to be. i noticed that other women are using higher weights on the weight machines than me. that's okay. maybe they've been there for a while and have worked up to the weights they use. maybe they haven't but they're just stronger. it doesn't make a difference either way. i could try heavier weights but i could hurt myself, so i won't. i will go at my own pace - ~~run~~ walk/jog my own mile and use my own weight limits. much like with everything else - education, finances, personal relationships, my writing, lifetime milestones - i have to run my own race and work with what i have until things change.

i have to remember to take a picture as soon as possible in a bikini, so that a year from now, i can remember what the beginning of my race looked like. that is my comparison point - not people on tv or in the gym.

Mr. Trotter

2007-08-21T12:47:00.000-04:00

why oh why did the eagles release jeremiah trotter? just why.

no, really, why?

'cause i don't want him to go. dude is a hard worker, a veteran, a team player, and a fan favorite. and the eagles let him go? it just ain't right.

mr. trotter, you will be sorely missed.