Wheel of Fortune

Ever wonder why Wheel of Fortune contestants scream the letters they want Vanna to reveal? Do the producers of the show encourage this bizarre bit of business? If so, why? Or why do I call my blog Moodz4Modernz? I don’t have an answer to the first question, but I can tell you a little something about the second.

In 1979 I was 22 years old and selling clothes in some retail store at the mall in Richmond, Virginia. The “hip” stores would blast hip music to show how hip and youth oriented their merchandise was and to attract hip, young people into the store.  I don’t even remember the name of the place but I’m certain it doesn’t exist anymore.

I was alone in the store that morning, folding sweaters and placing them on a table down front when it happened. I heard it once, that one day, that one time. This funky bass line and this funny bit of business with the Moog synthesizer and Funky Town-like guitar jangle. I didn’t understand a single word. I was blown away. You know, when a tune blows you away, you feel something serious is going on up in here. You’re overwhelmed with a need to just sit down. Everything starts to feel like it’s all happening in slow motion. It’s almost like being in love.

Somehow I learned the tune was by a punk rock band called Elvis Costello and The Attractions. I remember seeing a music video of this skinny white guy with oversized Buddy Holly like glasses, wearing a black suit with a white shirt and black tie, hopping about pigeon toed with a 50’s style mike to his mouth, knees pinned together like he needed to pee in the worst way but holding off until after he’d finished this performance.

When I finally got a real job and several years after my son was born in 1984, I started working on building my record collection. I would go around to record stores trying to find the tune. I didn’t know where to begin. I didn’t even have a word to go on so reading the playlist was no help. Listening stations didn’t come into fashion until the nineties.

Money was always too tight for me to make a mistake and wind up spending $14.00 for a CD and only like one song. For years, I only ever heard that song in my head and all I remembered was the little bit with the synthesizer and the guitar jangle. And whatever that was he was saying in the beginning.

Then on Sunday, May 18^th, 2008, a date that will live in infamy, all that would change forever.

Hanging out in my local library one Sunday,  I noticed a section in the middle of the library with several racks filled with CD’s. You know, I have spent countless hours in this library on numerous occasions before this day, and I never noticed the modest CD section there in the center of the library. You can check out CD’s at the library! This is something I never, ever did, ever in my life.

This day I approached the rack and began sort of tripping through the shelves. I came upon a few Elvis Costello CD’s:
When I was Cruel, King of America, and The Delivery Man. I listened to and loved all the tracks, but the tune rattling around in my head almost 30 years now was not on any of these CD’s. Then I got a brilliant idea. iTunes.

I searched Elvis Costello in the iTunes Store. I remembered that he was in a band called the Attractions. That helped to limit my search.

The release dates were all wrong. There was nothing listed before 2007. I decided I would just have to listen to the sample clips of all the songs. I double clicked the first album cover image on the list: Armed Forces– and went down the line. I knew it as soon as I heard the intro.

My heart leapt, I actually cried. I couldn’t believe I was finally listening to the tune that literally blew me away nearly thirty years ago and had been occupying space in my memory ever since. I finally knew the name of the tune– Moods for Moderns.

I had a grand total $2.14 cents left to my name in my checking account. Remember, I became unemployed May 2 and I had no prospects for the future on Sunday, May 18^th. All I knew is that I had to have this tune. I downloaded it into my iPhone that very minute.

On Monday, May 20^th, Moodz4Modernz was born. I published my first post on May 20^th.

Moods for moderns (4 X’s)

I get hit looking for a miss
I never thought that it would come to this

Moods For Moderns (4 X’s)

Though we may never be the same again
I am so proud that you’ve been taken in vain

What if none of your dreams come true?
I can never run from you
There’s never been a how d’you do
There’s never been an ending
Soon you’ll belong to someone else
And I will be your stranger just pretending

Moods for moderns
Memory lingers
I let you into
Foreign fingers

Moods For Moderns (4 X’s)

I never thought that would see the day
I never thought that I would give you away

What if none of your dreams come true?
I can never run from you
There’s never been a how d’you do
There’s never been an ending
Soon you’ll belong to someone else
And I will be your stranger just pretending

Moods for moderns
Let them break us
Strong and sudden
Foreign fingers

Fortuitous, huh? Think Elvis Costello would approve?

Moods for Moderns | 1979

The Most Beautiful Place in the World

Duke Ellington and Count Basie– Two musicians who knew how to speak volumes with just a few choice notes. Not like me. I am neither succinct nor economical with words, but I appreciate those who are. That’s why my favorite book is a little 58 page trade gem called The Most Beautiful Place in the World by Ann Cameron. I love, love, love, this story and for you moms and dads out there, it’s a must-have addition to your read-aloud library. This is a book the whole family with cherish and enjoy for years and years to come.

It’s not a recent best seller, it’s just one of those reads you find yourself revisiting time and time again. The beauty is in the brassy yet economical way the story unfolds, like a signature Count Basie arrangement– big brass flourishes punctuated by a series of select notes played with the Count’s pointer finger on the piano at the end. You will experience all the notes in The Most Beautiful Place in the World.

Juan lives in an impoverished city in Guatemala, ironically surrounded by beauty, flora and fauna. At seven, he’s been abandoned by his father, and his teenaged mother selfishly chooses life with Mr. Better-Than-Nothing over parenting and providing for her son, leaving Juan with her own mother, a world weary woman wholly preoccupied with keeping food on the table and a roof over hers, Juan’s, and all the others of her children and grandchildren’s heads.

Grandma’s a hardworking woman. She gets up early each day to make and sell arroz con leche, a sweet rice pudding concoction served like a thick hot shake, while Juan obediently toils alongside her, silently envying the fresh-faced, neatly dressed boys and girls he observes daily walking past his rickety shoe-shine stand on their way to school.

With no role models, radio or TV to plant the seed of desire to read and write, Juan intuitively dreams of going to school. He keeps his covetous desire to himself and keeps hope alive by teaching himself how to read, asking his customers to help him read the newspaper and by memorizing a word a day.

Finally, Juan is compelled to reveal his secret desire to his grandmother and her response to the revelation is both surprising and heartwarming. You don’t always have to leave home, have a shit load of cash or even escape poverty to find yourself in the most beautiful place in the world.

Devoid of any judgmental moralization or manipulative sentimentality, The Most Beautiful Place in the World is a quiet celebration of acceptance of the present while cultivating a vision for opportunity in the future. It also showcases the respect, love and loyalty Juan maintains for his grandmother and her encouragement and support of his modest ambition to go to school.

Don’t say I never gave you anything.

Walk. And Don’t Look Back! Redux

Wednesday

 

I’m upbeat today. It’s good to have a blog, to enjoy writing, to be able to be completely immersed in ones thoughts. It’s a luxury being unemployed currently affords me. It’s also given me time to think and examine what my options are now and to make a five year plan.

I have decided I’m never going to work for anybody again. I have an idea for not one but two businesses. My financial goals have always been modest. I’m not into showy displays of one’s means of support.  I neither want nor do I need a lot of things. I have always lived quite modestly and that has always been my saving grace. It’s what gets me through the rough times, so neither of these ventures will catapult me into six figures. But I believe I will be able to support myself, indulge my favorite pastime (movie going), travel a bit and attain a goal I have fantasized about since I was ten years old. I want to get a dog.

I love English bulldogs! I love their droopy-eyed charm and their jowly jaws, their stout figures and their lap dog like temperament. I really want two. I already have their names picked out for them: Mulder and Scully. I imagine myself calling “Mulder! Mulder” the way Scully always did on The X-Files. Before it went bad, that show was so good.

The writing was excellent. I especially loved the attention to word choice and vocabulary, the banter between Mulder and Scully and the way their professional relationship developed. They just had a great working relationship. They trusted each other, relied on each other, respected each other, supported each other and tolerated each other’s shortcomings. They could disagree without ever being disagreeable. I enjoyed these two characters enormously. I wasn’t sad when the show went off the air, though. The last three years of the show, I think even Mulder and Scully would agree, were pretty not good.

When my son was six, he begged me for a bulldog. At the time we had two cats, I was into Weimaraners then, and it was also an obligation I was financially unable and unwilling to take on. My boy never got a dog.  No bull.

These mental meanderings about boys and bulldogs makes me reflect on a certain April Baby who wrote about her worries and her fears and her trepidation anticipating the approach of her fortieth birthday. I wonder how much of this angst was prompted by the fact that she is unmarried and childless.

At my last assignment, a couple of the ladies there were what was once characterized as “spinster” women. In the South, they used to call them “Old Settler”* women–  Women who had “no man, no milk, an’ no money, ” hence the expression “Dried up ole…”

Many women are childless by choice. Many are single by choice. Many women are single and childless by choice.  Given the fact that choice is inherent in everything and there are exceptions to every rule, I am not talking about these women– the Exceptions.  No, I’m talking about the rest of us. Not everything that happens in life is calculated or choice. It’s not my choice to be single now and it was not my choice then to become a single parent. But when life landed like an airplane on the runway of my life, I got in the pilot’s seat just like so many others like me. Sometimes you gotta walk and don’t look back.  The Rule.

Rearing my son and keeping body and soul together completely preoccupied my life.  I didn’t date.  I didn’t put myself out there even to get considered. The “quest” in no way engrossed my thinking or absorbed my thoughts.  I have no regrets. Not one. I loved being a mom.

I never felt bored, or deprived, or isolated, or unfulfilled. I never felt the job was anti-intellectual. I didn’t walk around looking overwhelmed and beleaguered like stay-at-home mom Janey Stedman in thirtysomething**. I didn’t experience “juggling” work and home as hard. Yes, certainly there were difficult times, but parenting my son was not the problem– Providing for him was. My son reflects fondly on his childhood in spite (or because of) our circumstances. For me, that’s a relief and a reward.

“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.”  Jacqueline Kennedy | 1961

One of the single/childless, over 40,  not-by-choice ladies I mentioned earlier said to me it’s better not to have children. The remark came without context and out of the blue. She’s also a self-described cat woman ( they are her “babies”), rattling about in her tiny studio, with no cable, no TV and no Internet. Just two cats.

Is it better to be childless than to be a parent? Does the apple taste sweeter than the orange? Is the orchid more beautiful than the rose? It’s good to be resigned I guess. But you know, there’s a reason these women are living the “not-by-choice” lives they live. They seem very intolerant and have a low threshold (or no threshold at all) for any disturbing “disruptions” like people talking. They frown and smolder and chafe and sulk around joy, spontaneity and the spirit of fun. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Different strokes… But these behaviors tend to repel people they most want to attract. And what a difficult environment for a child that would be.  Sometimes things don’t happen for a reason.

So April Baby, if yer lissnin’, don’t become bitter, resigned, resentful and disagreeable. Life has landed like an airplane on the runway of your life like it’s been doing to countless others since time and memorium. Get in the pilot’s seat. Grab the controls. Walk. And don’t look back. 

 

(You Gotta Walk) Don’t Look Back Peter Tosh and Mick Jagger/1978 

*Old Settler | 2001 |

 

 What Jackie Taught Us | Tina Santi Flaherty | 2005

On Heroic Sacrifices

I awoke this morning with a stabbing pain between my breasts. The underwire had pierced through.  Another good soldier sacrificed in support of Denise and Debbie.  Yes, I sleep in my bra.  I have to.  Denise and Debbie require constant supervision and training.  They must never be neglected.  They’re still as round and plump and upward reaching as they were when I was nineteen.

Denise and Debbie have been an integral part of my life since I was ten when they made their sudden and startling debut to my horror– and my mother’s. I literally went from flat to full-up-to-us in 24 hours.  Mother was furious.  Somehow, I had done this to myself, she muttered repeatedly and to any and everyone within earshot.

To punish me and to register her ever increasing disapproval, I never got a training bra.  She figured if she just ignored us, perhaps we’d just go away. That same year, on Easter Sunday, I fell off my cousin’s bike and broke my leg.  I had been riding the bike without permission.  I ruined my orange Easter dress with the satin, royal blue bow.  Mother was furious about that, too.  To punish me, she left me at the hospital and never visited.  I was discharged after ten days.

My older sister took pity on me.  With the help of her friend, they managed to smuggle into the house a bra her mother gave to them to give to me.  It was beige, lace and it had underwire. After that, Denise and Debbie and I were on our own.  As I lie here in the dark admiring my lovely daughters, acknowledging the heroic sacrifice of this, now broken  pretty, pink bra, She came to me in a vision.

Her gaze was intense.  Strange. Dark. Penetrating. Her eyes, the color squall turns the Atlantic ocean, closely situated and framed between two thick layers of dense, coarse lashes like an artist’s sable brush.

Her voice rich, like fluid mercury, seasoned to her advantage by too many years, too many cigarettes and too much gin.  She was all of 5 ft, petite and well proportioned with square hips and a plump, round butt.  She liked to wear tanks and tees and tailored shirts which cascaded upon Amy and Alma with artful precision, emphasizing their slight uplift and soft, rounded contours.  She didn’t wear a bra because she had to.

I was surprised and happy to hear from her.  We hadn’t seen each other in over a year.  When you’re preoccupied with rearing a child, it’s hard to manage friendships.  She was a wife and mother of two, This One and That One, then six and three, one of each sex.  Each possessed a precocious intellect and were  perfect little replicas of their co-dependant parents.

Woodman and She bore an uncanny resemblance.  Both had intense eyes, expansive eyebrows, classic foreheads and perfectly angled heads capped with thick manes of fast growing brown hair, only hers was dark with natural auburn highlights.  Their resemblance to each other was startling, and yet not in an altogether weird way.

He was enormously talented.  Give that man a choice piece of wood and a table saw, and he could create pieces of beauty and utility.  He built their platform bed, and most of the furniture.  He built the kitchen cabinets and her nail salon and day spa that she owned and operated in their back yard.  He was constantly improving the house and the property.  He earned a living as a practioner of naturopathy.

My son rang the door bell and she enthusiastically ushered us in.  Sometimes you can’t go home again, though, you know?

The business was thriving.  She was taking classes to learn how to do voice-over work.  The house, though, was nearly empty except for the sofa.  The dining room furniture was vintage Pier One.  She’d taken to keeping her store and bank credit cards in a Ziploc bag in the freezer.  This One and That One, spoiled, gifted, and characteristically aloof were practicing their violins upstairs.  Together they made no other sound.

She wore a gray short sleeved tee shirt under a wrinkled, ecru colored, cotton midriff jacket with a wide, rounded lapel.  She kept up a losing struggle to pull it together across the bottom of her now enormous breasts.

“What have you done to yourself!”  I whispered, stunned, but trying not to show it.  They made her look so top heavy. They had almost completely changed her otherwise upright posture.  Her shoulders and back were curved, her flat stomach looked hollowed out to accommodate her protruding ribs. Any minute now I expected to see her snap in half at the waist.

They were a wedding gift from her new husband, a man she met six months ago at an AA meeting.  “He loves them,” she said, sliding their wedding video into the VCR.  She was discovering in dribs and drabs the down side of living la vida Double D.

Walking on thin ice,
I’m paying the price
For throwing the dice in the air.
Why must we learn it the hard way
And play the game of life with your heart?

You can never sleep on your chest or for long on your back.  You are a slave to the bra.  When shopping for these, attention must be paid.  Attention must also be paid to shopping for clothes in general. Gone are the days you can buy a two-piece suit or a bikini bathing suit off the rack.  You have to hope the size five bottom and the size ten top are both available and you must make the switch before you get to the checkout counter.  You have to pay attention to how you move when you dance.  Running and jogging are out.

After you’ve spent all that extra time mixing and matching suit tops, you find you cannot button them.  Shirts must all be tailored.  Your breasts are heavy for your bra straps. You don’t look quite right in a sports bra.  Daily, gravity is not your friend.

They swell when you menstruate, the nipples are more sensitive.  You must always get completely dressed when going out in public.  Gone are the days you could just throw on a tee and jeans and be on your way.  On those rare occasions you do, it’s only to go to the drive through.

Over time, your back will hurt, you shoulders will hurt, your neck will hurt,  your mobility will be reduced. You spend more time concealing your cleavage than revealing it.  There is not a lot of opportunity for that

either unless of course, you’re Pamela Anderson.  Or a Jane Austin heroine.

I gave you my knife,
You gave me my life
Like a gush of wind in my hair.
Why do we forget what’s been said
And play the game of life with our hearts?

“I know. You’re right,” she said with a sigh.

She had not anticipated how life, as she knew it, would change or  how it would affect all the things she’d previously been able to do and had taken for granted.  She wanted to have them removed.  She needed me to validate her decision.

“I’ll even go with you, if you want,” I said.  Turns out, while I publically praised and admired her physique, she secretly coveted mine.  People who have curly hair…

“But he likes them,” she repeated quietly.

I may cry some day,
But the tears will dry whichever way.
And when our hearts return to ashes,
It’ll be just a story,
It’ll be just a story

She pulled the video from the VCR and slowly slid it back into its custom sleeve before putting it back in its place among the others on the IKEA bookcase.

We hugged.  We said good bye.  We left.  After that, I never saw nor heard from Her again.

“i knew a girl who tried to walk across the lake,
‘course it was winter when all this was ice.
That’s a hell of a thing to do, you know.
They say the lake is as big as the ocean.
I wonder if she knew about it?”

Masterpiece: The Complete Jane Austen Collection

Emma | 1996 |

Ouch! That Hurt My Feelings! Quick! Call The Police!

Monday

“As society just becomes so filled with these conflicting feelings of ngggggh, that we’ve just gotten to the point where we’re the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along, since, you know, a long time ago.” Some Boob

Maybe it’s just me, but it just seems as though you can’t rely on anything anyone says anymore.  And what’s worse?  Nobody cares.  Oh, well.  Let’s see, you e-mailed me an address that was incorrect so now I’m driving up and down a busy, six lane thoroughfare in the heat of the day at the height of lunch hour traffic, circling about looking for an address that does not exist.  You said you were going to e-mail this information to me on Friday.  Come Monday morning I have to call your office asking for the address. Now I have to call (again) to get the correct address.  Now that’s twice I have to call to get information you said to me on Friday you were going to provide for me on Friday.   Liar!

“Just be patient, you have the job,” he said.  “We have to wait for the budget.”   Six months later I have to demand to know whether there is an intent to staff the position or not while CFO and Ms Controller sit there staring at me like we gonna party like it’s 1954.  Oh.  Not?    Liar!

“Oh, I won’t have the money until Thursday,” she demurred on Monday.  Two months later I have to ask her for it and then to add insult to injury she makes an unwilling lender out of me a second time.  Liar!

Why can’t people do what they say and say what they mean?  Why can’t they seem to…

“Just  let  your  word  Yes mean  Yes,  your  No,  No…” Matt 5:37

The cumulative effect of all of this seemingly innocuous, funny ha-ha  mendacity is that it slowly, insidiously, transforms the Hearer/Receiver of the lie into a victim.  Victimization leads to frustration.  Frustration leads to anger.

“Please don’t make me angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry.” Bill Bixby as Dr. David Banner | The Incredible Hulk

The caveat to that?  The psychological and emotional energy it takes damping it all down and reigning it all in.  You’re the victim, see?  First, you have to do all the work.  No one must ever know you’re angry, annoyed, disappointed, hurt or even a tad miffed.  Second, remember, you are made of iron.  Failing to understand how victimization works means–  Poof! All of a sudden you’re not only a problem, you’re the one with the problem. You’re the difficult person, the malcontent, the complainer, the irritating source of all the friction.  You don’t know how to “go with the flow.”  You are INFLEXIBLE!

“How does it feel to be a problem?”*

I’ll bet’cha Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold know knew.   Seung-Hui Cho.  I bet he knew.  Megan Meier. Umm… hmm.  John Hinkley,Jr.,   Jeffrey Weise, Perry Smith, John Merlin Taylor, Joseph M. Harris, Aileen Wournos, Thomas McIlvane, Mark Richard Hilbun, Bruce William Clark, Travis Bickle, Jennifer San Marco, Mark David Chapman, Willie Loman.., just a few of the former members in the sad and tragic fratorities of the walking wounded and the living dead–“How does it feel to be a problem?”

When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?**

Problem for them was they only knew  one or two ways to articulate their pain. It didn’t involve a whole lot of talking, but the results were far reaching and devastating. Could one kind word have averted any or all of these disasters? One tiny apology?  One small gesture of empathy? One olive branch extended, one promise kept? One lie not told?

You want a friend you- can rely on
One who will never fade away
And if you’re searching for an answer
Stick around. I say  It’s coming up, it’s coming up
Its coming up like a flower
Its coming up. Yeah***

It’s neither fun nor funny to deliberately and maliciously make another human being feel like a victim.  When someone physically assaults you, or steals your property, or you lose a limb as a result of medical incompetence or malpractice, the law’s the remedy for you.  But when someone hurts, or assaults, or maims, or lacerates your feelings, who you gonna call?  The police?

Society says you need to act like an adult, shake it off, grow up, be a man, turn the other cheek, give it to God. But when mean people and their lies interfere with your ability to sustain or even have a quality of life itself, it’s a tad harder to just shake it off. And it takes soo long, requires soo much energy.  It’s soo exhausting.

That’s the wonderful, insidious, paradoxical beauty of the lie.  At first glance the lie looks so innocuous, so inconsequential, so small.  It’s nothing, no big deal.  And yet the lie is responsible for all these people and all their murders and all their victims, and all our collective pain.

It’s easy for you to dismiss these people. After all, they’re invisible.  They don’t exist.  Not really.  Why?  ‘Cause you don’t know them.  You sit in your living rooms feeling smug and above it all.  You’re in the world, not of it.  Everyone knows you’re better than they are.  You have your brag-a-day blogs to prove it.  “There but for the grace of God…”  Right?

Look at them.  What’s wrong with them?  Why can’t they keep a job, get a man, pay their bills on time?  Why are they always so serious? There’s just something about them, something not quite right, you say.  Why don’t they just believe what we say when we say what we don’t mean just like everybody else? They just don’t get it.  “…not all are of our sort.”  1John 2:19

Right.  You just keep proving what we already know.

We all know sometimes life hates and troubles
Can make you wish you were born in another time and space
But you can bet your lifetimes that and twice it’s double
That God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed

So make sure when you say you’re in it, but not of it+
You’re not helpin’ to make this earth
A place some might call hell
Change your words into truths
And then change that truth into love
And maybe our children’s grandchildren
And their great grandchildren will tell****

+John 17:11, 14, 16

Miss Ziggy

Sunday

Revised.  Original post date:  June 6, 2008

Today I drove to my neighborhood Vons. I bought a half gallon of orange juice, a gallon of drinking water and four cans of garbanzo beans.  I love garbanzo beans. The bill came to eight dollars and seventy-seven cents. My hair was undone, I wore no make-up, I looked a mess. The plan was to grab a few things and be on my way.

Manning the express lane was Supermarket Checkout King, a chirpy, older gentleman in an unfortunate and unkempt toupee. As a general practice, I tend to avoid Supermarket Checkout King. Call me a curmudgeon. I just find all this manufactured “customer service” annoying and inconsiderate. Haven’t you ever just wanted to conduct a transaction without all that superfluous gushiness? But Supermarket Checkout King’s line was shorter, so…

“Would you like to make a donation to…?” some charity, he said melodiously in his usual shrill and scratchy monotone.  ”I can’t afford it,” I said as I swiped my Vons card, then peeled off two crisp fives.

“Oooohh.., Ok Miss Moodz, you saved two dollars. Oooo… hooo…” He squealed quietly, almost as if to himself as he handed me my receipt and all this other stuff that you toss as soon as you’re out the door.

“Okay, Miss Moodz, would you be needing some help out with your bags there, Miss Moodz?”  Now let’s see…  I had a gallon jug of water and two plastic bags. I think I could manage. And, yes, he said my name twice. All I wanted to do was pay for my stuff, not play twenty questions with Supermarket Checkout King. I put the change in the deli container on the counter for the charity.

I walked out to my car and unlocked the door with my key. I leaned in and put the key in the ignition, pressed the unlock button and then turned to open the driver’s side rear door so I could put my water and bags in the back seat. I heard a faint yet tentative click just as I pulled up on the latch. Locked. Had I not unlocked the doors like I thought?  (Inner speech).

I walked to the rear double doors. Locked. I checked both doors on the right side of the vehicle. Locked. Yes. It was official. I was locked out of my car in the parking lot of my neighborhood Vons. I had a fleeting meltdown. “It didn’t come to last, it’s come to pass,” I reassured myself (inner speech).  ”Now breathe…”

I went back into the store to ask for help. A young checkout guy piped up and said “Oh, I can get it open for you. I do this all the time.” I felt relieved. He goes away for a time and then reappears with a wire hanger. No… Wire… Hangers. EVER!!* I was fucked. I sent him away to call the police. Exit Vanilla Ice Ice Baby.

Just then, all of a sudden, a black SUV, rap a-thumpin’,  and with those not-supposed-to-go-flat wheels with shiny chrome rims rolled into the space near mine.

“Do you have a universal tool?” I asked.

“You mean a slim-jim?” Thin Young Thing asked in reply.

“Ok.” I said. Whatever (inner speech). He didn’t have a universal tool or a slim jim, but since Vanilla Ice Ice Baby never returned, Thin Young Thing offered to look up the non-emergency number for the police. Because this trip to Vons was supposed to be in and out, I also didn’t have my phone with me. Thin Young Thing volunteered to drive me to my house. I grabbed my phone, then we drove back to the parking lot of my neighborhood Vons.

Thank you, Thin Young Thing. You went out of your way to help a perfect stranger. I will never forget the generous display of goodwill you directed towards me today and I say “Right back at ‘cha, TYT!”  Thank you.     

At first I called the police non emergency number.  Busy.  Busy.  Busy.  Thin Young Thing even drove to the library nearby to find the Sherriff who has an office there. Office closed.  In the meantime I called my car service and discovered  to my horror I was no longer enrolled in Cingular’s roadside assistance service.  Seems  when I got my iPhone in December, AT&T did not transfer the roadside assistance service I had as a customer with Cingular and  for three years.

Quickly recovering my senses, I called my friend, Peter, who called a locksmith, who arrived within the half hour and in no time, (literally seconds I tell you), the door was open and I had my keys in hand.  And the best part:   No superfluous happy chatter.  I like that.

“Forty-nine dollars,” pleasant, smiling Locksmith said with a distinctive sub-Saharan accent.  (Sigh)  Cie la vie. What’s the use in crying? 

Forty-nine dollars.   Who knew a gallon of drinking water, a half-gallon of OJ and four cans of garbanzo beans would turn out to be so expensive.

You’ve Got A Friend

When you’re down and troubled
And you need a helping hand
And nothing, whoa nothing is going right.
Close your eyes and think of me
And  soon  I will be there
To brighten up even your darkest nights.

You just call out my name,
And you know where ever I am
I’ll come running, oh yeah baby
To see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall,
All you have to do is call
And I’ll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You’ve got a friend.

If the sky above you
Should turn dark and full of clouds
And that old north wind should begin to blow
Keep your head together and call my name out loud
And soon I will be knocking upon your door.
You just call out my name and you know where ever I am
I’ll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you got to do is call
And Ill be there, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ain’ it good to know that you’ve got a friend

When people could be so cold

They’ll hurt you, and desert you

They’ll take your soul if you let them

Aw, but don’t you let them

You just call out my name and you know where ever I am
I’ll come running, running, running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you got to do is call
And I’ll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You’ve got a friend

Ain’ it good to know you’ve got a friend

Ain’ it good to know you’ve got a friend

Aw, yeah, yeah.  You’ve got a friend.

 

Written by Carole King and James Taylor

performed by Donny Hathaway

*Mommie Dearest/Faye Dunaway    

Autorretarto con Collre de Espinas y Colibri

Saturday                                           

What a difference a week makes.  Last Saturday I was so optimistic.  My expectations for this week are somewhat more diminished. Must stay in faith!  Yesterday, a black cat ran across my path, about three feet in front of me.  Just as I pulled into my parking space, I saw the cat run from my front lawn.  It stopped by the base of the mailbox.  I could see it crouching there.  I got out of my car and just as I began my approach towards the mailbox, the cat darted out in front of me and crossed the street.

Black cats have been running across my path since I was 26 years old.  That’s when the phenomenon began.  I was 26 and I was pregnant.  A neighbor owned a black cat she called Pepe Le Pew. This night, I was driving home.  My house was the middle house on a cul de sac of six homes.  Just as I hit the driveway, the cat leapt from a nearby tree and across my windshield before scampering away into my backyard and into the darkness.  

Several months later, the cat disappeared.  The owner posted fliers.  She went to all our homes asking about her cat.  I always had the feeling she thought one of us took him.  The neighbors all felt the same way.

Once I was in Seattle walking on the side walk with an acquaintance.  Black cat walked out of his yard crossed our path and sauntered on across the street.  Same thing happened when I visited with someone I used to know in San Diego, and the capper— a merchant left a ladder outstretched on the sidewalk and we had to walk under it or risk being run over in the street.  I could not make this &%#! up. 

This was not the first time this cat has crossed my path. There are a few feral cats in my neighborhood. This is only one of them.  This is the season they begin to congregate and soon their low, long, throaty bellowing will pierce the nighttime silence disturbing many from their slumber.  Yesterday’s encounter was especially upsetting because of the “the disappointent.”  Is this an omen?  

I had to subject myself to a drug screen this week.  No biggie. I didn’t anticipate there would be a problem and there wasn’t.  I also needed to consent to a background check.  I was told the procedure would begin on Monday.  Wednesday I had to call to find out what the timeline was. I was hoping I could begin this assignment on Monday. This is how I learned the background check had not even been initiated.

“Well if you’ve lived in different states that makes the process take longer.  Do you think you’ve lived in another state other than California?”  she asked.  This is when I knew to abandon all hope.

“I don’t have to think,”  I began. “I went to college in Virginia, so I lived there for six years, then I went back home to New York.  I moved to Seattle and I lived there for seven years.  Then I went home to New York.  Now I live here.”  Southern California is the perfect place to die.  Even Jed Clampett  knew that.

“Let me call you when we get the results of the background check,” she said.  

“That sounds good.”  I said.

It’s Saturday.

There ought’a be a law.

 

*Autorretarto con Collre de Espinas y Colibri | Frida Kahlo | 1940

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Eeee– Yabba dabba doooo..!
TGIF! I got my second unemployment check this week. Obviously nothing to brag about.  I don’t know how Barbara Bush or anyone else for that matter could possibly think a “benefit” from the government “…is working very well for them.”

Let’s see… I became unemployed May 2. I applied for the benefit May 9. It was determined my waiting period was the week of May 17th. I got a check for one week Thursday after Memorial Day and now this one. Yep, BB, as you can plainly see, this is all working very well for me. Yes ma’am.

I stumbled across quite a few brag-a-blogs this week that made me wonder for a second whether people really are good at heart. Just get a load of this:

Wow, right?!  Referring to the wedding band, the blogger gushed:

“I am so in love with it! It’s not too flashy and definitely unique because I’ve yet to find a ring, anywhere that is similar!!”

No, not flashy at all.  The EG ring’s all over that part, this  simple, modest little token of his intent. Maybe not quite a thousand points of light but with all that blinding bit of “not too flashy” bling flashing in your eyes, who’s counting? It’s good to be her, huh? Damn right!

President Bush was on a weeklong farewell tour through Berlin, Rome, Paris and London– all of Western Europe’s Big Four nations.   Bush started his trip Monday, June 9^th in Slovenia where he participated in the annual U.S.- European Union summit.

He stayed in Italy to see his old friend, Premier Silvio Berlusconi, had his third meeting with Pope Benedict XVI; visited Germany to chat with Chancellor Angela Merkel; spent two days in Paris with French President Nicolas Sarkozy; went to Windsor Castle to see Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II; and stopped in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to hail the power-sharing agreement between Protestants and Catholics.

The President was on a tour of persuasion.

“I will continue to work on this trip to talk about the dangers of a nuclear Iran — not civilian nuclear power, but a program that would be aimed at blackmail or destruction — and that we’ve got to work to stop them from learning how to enrich,”

Bush said in an interview with RAI TV of Italy.

Meanwhile back at the ranch…

Iowa…   Illinois…   Missouri…  Hang on! Help is on the way!  President Bush is gearing up to tour your flood ravaged communities and offer up his unique and particular brand of encouragement and support.

“The only thing we have to be afraid of is being scared!”

Well, it coulda been a Bushism.

According to all the news photos and Al Roker, the whole of the midwest is totally submerged under water.

“God gave Noah the rainbow sign, / No more water, the fire next time!”*

Pain is pain, whether it’s persevering through a natural disaster, biting the bullet at the gas pump, or enduring the fear and isolation of prolonged unemployment, we are all experiencing the same pain, only different.  Some of you have been through it all before in ‘93.  That doesn’t make your present experience any less hard to bear.  Just different.  I feel your pain.

So here we go again.  It’s Friday.  Some folks are enjoying the good life.  Some folks are not.  The only confort in it all is that nothing stays the same.   This,  too, shall pass.  It didn’t come to last, it came to pass.  The sun will come out—“after all Tomorrow is another day.”**

Mommy told me something

A little kid should know

It’s all about the devil

And I’ve learned to hate him so

She said he causes trouble

When you let him in the room,

He will never ever leave you

If your heart is filled with gloom

So let the sun shine in

Face it with a grin

Smilers never lose

And frowners never win

So let the sun shine in

Face it with a grin

Open up your heart and let the sun shine in

When you are unhappy

The devil wears a grin

But oh, he starts to running

When the light comes pouring in

I know he’ll be unhappy

‘Cause I’ll never wear a frown

Maybe if we keep on smiling

He’ll get tired of hanging ’round.

If I forget to say my prayers

The devil jumps with glee

But he feels so awful awful

When he sees me on my knees

So if you’re full of trouble

And you never seem to win

Just open up your heart and let the sun shine in

So let the sun shine in

Face it with a grin

Smilers never lose

And frowners never win

So let the sun shine in

Face it with a grin

Open up your heart

And let the sun shine in

*The Fire Next Time | James Baldwin | 1963 |

**Scarlett O’Hara | Gone With the Wind | 1939 |

Well… At Least Moms Mabley Was Funny

I wish I had a sample of the “ka doi-ing” from Law and Order. That sound always seems to punctuate things just right.

The broadcast media is still energetically consoling themselves with maudlin (witness the James Carville/Mary Maitlin meltdown on the set of Meet the Press this past Sunday), and contrived (the shot of Luke, posing JFK-like in shadow, touching his father’s empty chair on the set of Meet the Press) tributes to Tim Russert.

Don’t get me wrong, I admired Tim Russert. I occasionally tuned in to Meet the Press. Even though I sensed his being overly preoccupied with complying with the imperatives of the network sometimes stifled an initiative to ask the tough questions, his journalistic integrity was leagues above all the screamers and shouters who clearly have the ear, heart and half-a-brain of Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

I am sorry he’s gonna miss this election in November. The world is going to miss his point of view, but I must admit I’m glad the televised long good-bye and the public displays of  ”weeping and the gnashing of their teeth*“ will finally be over.  “Ka doi-ing!” Moving on…

Then I made the mistake of tuning into The View yesterday morning. I wanted to see Michelle Obama. She looked marvelous! Her makeup was impeccable. Somebody really knew how to tone down those pointy eyebrows. I loved the little frock she was wearing.

She got to be on the panel, not a guest. She got to stand with some nutritionist discussing whether breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. She got to sit next to milquetoast Matthew Broderick while he explained his five year old’s preference for Senator Obama and promote not one but two (really bad) films he’s in. She got to largely ignore the annoyingly grating, always incoherent, trembling prattle of Elisabeth Hasselbeck. (Barbara and the nation all held their collective breath. Would there be a bimbo eruption? Mercifully, not today).

She got to listen without correction or comment as the adorable, but intellectually vacant Sherrie Shepherd mangled her eldest daughter’s name. But even all that wasn’t the “ka doi-ing!” She had to sit in stunned silence, without betraying even the slightest hint of disgust, shock and outrage, while toad after warty toad leapt, head first, from out of the mouth of Whoopi (aka Karen Johnson) Goldberg, each one landing with a resounding thud. Back in the day, when a Black person behaved badly in public or pulled a stunt like Sammy Davis, Jr. putting the squeeze on Richard Nixon, Black folk observing the behavior would say “He’s an embarrassment, ” or “She’s a disgrace to the race.”

This morning, Whoopi Goldberg’s utterly idiotic, totally out of left field, itchy and scratchy, astonishingly inappropriate, bizarre comment about Black women with no teeth or a mouthful of gold teeth who were not light skinned but “dark” like Michelle and she,  was off the charts disgraceful.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall of the Obama home as Barack and Michelle settle in front of the TV to watch the show together. I imagine the conversation going something like this:

Barack: What..? What’s she saying here?  Ya’know, what… what’s she talkin’ about?

Michelle: Dear Heart, you know I don’t have any idea. I had to freeze every muscle in my face so I wouldn’t get caught on camera lookin’ like ‘This u ‘gly bitch said what?’ I heard she was born and raised in New York City.  She from New York City, right?

Barack: By way of Alabama, I guess. Wonder what kind of Black folk she grew up watchin’ on TV. Sounds like she talkin’ ’bout Moms Mabley.

Michelle: Well, at least Moms Mabley was funny.

Uproarious laughter…  And scene.  (a beat)

Take a little time to avoid The View.  “Ka doi-ing!”

Asides or Racing thoughts:

• Barack Obama, don’t go to Iraq before the election! Remember Mike Dukakis. Remember Mike Dukakis!
• Chris Matthews, a possible replacement for Tim Russert? I say No.., no.., no!
• Andrea Mitchell, a possible replacement for Tim Russert? Yes!
• Barack Obama and Al Gore. Perfect together.
• Hillary’s “full-throated” endorsement of Barack Obama is beginning to look like OJ’s search for Nicole’s “real” killer.
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s contract. Is it up for renewal yet?

*Matt 8:12

Courage and Consequences

Tuesday

IF you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!                                       If  |  Rudyard Kipling

Last night, I dreamed I won the lottery.  I waited the obligatory 180 days before coming forward to claim my prize during which time I met with my lawyers and a team of accountants.  For some reason, I was being interviewed on TV.  The interviewer asked if I thought my life would change.  I realized then, how fortunate I was, that even a shit load of cash would not affect my life in the least. 

I have always lived life on the road less travelled. Being different and having cognition around being different makes for a life that is not full of surprise visits from family and friends. You can go whole, entire weekends without ever parting your lips to utter a single word. The phone never rings and there is never anyone to call.  I have never owned nor have I ever needed a day planner.  People abruptly stop talking when you happen by or worse, they’re talking about you just as you enter in and you have heard every word they’ve said.

So the upside is now that I have all this money, I can pay my bills, move back to Manhattan and afford to live there and live the remainder of my days confident I will not be harassed or set upon by anyone calling themselves family or friend.

Living a life of principle based on reason is not the broad and spacious road.  The world rewards its own; those whose greatest hope and highest aspiration is to be different, just like everybody else.  There is safety in numbers, in not only thinking with the group, but like the group.  While you may not be the most popular you’re not on the outside. You belong to the fratority where it’s safe. And let’s not forget the biggest benefit of all–the “fun” factor. Yep, yep, yep, it’s fun to be mean.                                                          

                                                         Popularity is people liking you…

You get to keep your job.  Keeping your job means you get to pay your bills.  Paying your bills means you get to create more bills, acquire stuff, send the kids to camp, keep in touch with mom and dad, lunch with your siblings. Own a dog. It’s good to fit in.  It’s smart, too. People like you. 

                                                            Happiness is you liking you

You’re not the Dixie Chicks, so you don’t receive death threats.  People don’t yell out at your concerts “Shut up and sing!”  They don’t run a steamroller over your CD’s. You’re not James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, so your badly beaten and shot bodies are not discovered in a ditch on the side of a dirt road in rural Mississippi.  You’re not Tim Russert, so you don’t suddenly drop dead of a heart attack because of too much passion and too much joy, and too much overworked.  (What a fortunate man he was.  Why aren’t there ever any decent, principled people like him anywhere I always am)? 

No.  Your greatest ambition is to get invited to lunch with Mean People.

I stumbled across this blog post during blogroll this morning.  It was just the reaffirmation I needed and I was filled with gratitude.  This is you, too.  So don’t keep it to yourself.   Go ahead.  Share the Moodz.

Courage is:

• Following your conscience instead of “following the crowd.”
• Refusing to take part in hurtful or disrespectful behaviors.
• Sacrificing personal gain for the benefit of others.
• Speaking your mind even though others don’t agree.
• Taking complete responsibility for your actions…and your mistakes.
• Following the rules – and insisting that others do the same.
• Challenging the status quo in search of better ways.
• Doing what you know is right – regardless of the risks and potential consequences

Source:  http://drlill.com/

Ch.., ch.., ch.., Changes

Monday

Let’s see…

These are the men who have served as President of the United States in my lifetime so far.  Eisenhower was president when I was born.  The Kennedy election was the first election process I ever witnessed and experienced and felt I actually participated in, at least intellectually, anyway. Then he was assassinated.

Of course, I was in elementary school, too young, obviously,  to do anything but watch and look and listen.  In those days, that’s pretty much what most people did.  We didn’t have all the noise and hype and hysteria of present day distractions as they exist now.  We didn’t especially concern ourselves with who was sleeping with whom or what the First Lady wore.  Nobody much cared who Bill Cosby or Bette Davis or Bob Dylan supported.

We expected our president to be men who exemplified the best of our values, who could clearly and forcefully articulate our greatest aspirations, who could inspire our highest hopes,  protect and lead the country.  We expected our president to be men who were husbands…

“… of one wife, moderate in habits, sound in mind, orderly, hospitable, qualified.., reasonable, not belligerent, not a lover of money, a man presiding over his own household in a fine manner, having children in subjection..,” and having “… a fine testimony from people…”  1Tim 3:2-5, 7

Or in other words, a good rep.

Not be a practicer of the lie, or obfuscate and inveigle, or be lacking in personal self control and sound judgment.  Balanced.  We didn’t expect our president to be our drinking buddy.  He expected he should be something of an intellectual elitist, not a conceited, social snob.  We didn’t expect him to be “one of us,”  rather we demanded that he represent us.  All of us.

Things kind of rocked along at a pretty good clip there for a while, but as times change, standards get relaxed. The press starts to exchange more and more of their journalistic integrity and responsibility for ratings, pop culture recognition and expediency. Whenever I hear “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” now I also hear “Live, from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”  

The desire of the press to be accessible to the President and his power playa’s seems to overrule their duty to inform the public. Their fact finding seems less pugnacious, more guarded and self-conscious. They’re more worried about what the President will think rather than what the people ought to have to think about. 

Even the stories themselves seem more focused on them; how they think and feel about what they’re doing, where they are or where they’re going.  Are the media journalists writing and reporting for us, the American public,  or for each other?      

Men are more free with their emotions these days.  They readily reveal their feminist side. They cry. They take less personal responsibility, more reckless, personal risks.  They allow us to see their flaws. They cry. They seem physically smaller.

Gone are the flexing square jaws, the broad shoulders, the low, melodious vocal registers, the quiet, assertive, take-charge (not control) man, driven by the overwhelming sense of duty to provide. 

Where have all the real men gone?

Change.  Change is good.  Change is progress.  Whether seismic or subtle change is inevitable. Women can aspire to the highest office in the land.  A Black man stands on the precipice of being elected to the highest office in the land.  Perhaps even the press’ frequent examinations of itself will mean the American people will once again have access to all the information they need to make intelligent decisions based on facts rather than fear.  

Change.  Things can never stay the same so try and keep up.

Viva Las Vegas!

Sunday | Revised, encore presentation.  Original post date:  May 31, 2008

I was watching Larry King seven or eight months ago. I love Larry. I love his little “Heh Heh” laugh. I auto tune in every night and will usually stick around if the topic or guest interests me. I have to tell you I had to step away from the Larry for a while when his bizarre preoccupation with Anna Nicole Smith’s baby daddy nonsense and then her subsequent tragic death got just a scotch too voyeuristic and creepy for me. But I digress…

On this night, the entire hour was devoted to promoting the first anniversary of The Beatles Love Cirque Du Soleil show at The Mirage in Las Vegas. His guests were Yoko Ono, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr , the widow of George Harrison, Sir George Martin, the manager of the Beatles since the 1960’s, and Guy Laliberte, the show’s creator.

Now I was always something of a French/Canadian sorta mime snob I’m ashamed to admit.  Freakishly contorted bodies, acrobatics and pantomime were never my cup-o-tea. I even dislike the circus!  But Yoko’s participation and enthusiastic endorsement of the project sealed the deal for me. I am such an admirer of her artwork. Right then and there I began to nurse a covetous desire to see the show.

I began stashing away money and planned the trip for April 12. This was my first trip ever to Las Vegas and the first time I had been on a plane in two years. I had one single minded purpose for travelling to Las Vegas. Casinos and gambling and stuff like that have no appeal for me.  The only thing I wanted to do was see this show.

I also entertained a secondary agenda. I wanted to visit Slots-A-Fun Casino and have one of those $1.50 colossal franks I had seen on Unwrapped or Good Eats– one of those Saturday afternoon shows on The Food Network. The plan was to leave SoCal early Saturday morning, get to the hotel and settle in, do some walking about, see the show and then hit the hay. I’m a morning person not a Vampire. I pretty much like to be home after dark.

Friends, the flight was absolutely fantabulous! April 12th , at least weatherwise, was one for the books. Sunny, glorious. The Southwest Airline flight departed on time. The sky was clear.  The view of the topography of Nevada was just a joy to behold. The weather that weekend in Las Vegas surprised me in a good way. I expected heat, humidity–heat. Instead it was sunny, bright, 78 degrees, there was a pleasant, sustained breeze. The air was comfortable, dry, perfect! Wow! I fell in love with Vegas!

The only thing I have to say about The Beatles Love show is See It! You don’t even have to purchase tickets in advance like I did. You can walk right up to the box office and get tickets. It’s theater in the round and I was seated right in the front of the stage.  There was about two feet of space between my seat and the stage. Fantastic! 

There was an absolutely delightful couple sitting to my left. They’d travelled from New York state just to see this show, and they were huge Beatles fans and excellent conversationalists. I counted their being there that night a blessing.  I am still grateful for the goodwill they directed toward me.

It was good to be me the evening of April 12, 2008.  Elements of the show appealed to your sense of smell, touch, sight and hearing. I had never experienced anything like it!  The international cast of Cirque Du Soleil performers were uniformly excellent, even the young child performers cast as the four Lads of Liverpool. The production values for the music alone was worth the price of admission!  One really important bit of advice: Spend the $18 bucks for the program.  It’s worth every penny and it’s an invaluable tool that will help you appreciate the performances even more fully.

I had a nice time in Vegas.  The only disappointment I experienced the entire weekend was not getting to have that giant frank.

Saturday

           

What a diff’rence a day makes
Twenty-four little hours
Brought the sun and the flowers
Where there used to be rain

These things never change like the sun rising in the east, the day passing into night, and  hope ever rising in the heart

These things always do like the evening turning into morn’, the sun giving way to the moon and hope ever rising in the heart

There’s a rainbow before me
Skies above can’t be stormy
What a diff’rence a day makes
And the difference is you.

What a Difference a Day Makes | Performed by Esther Phillips | 1975

A Thousand Points of Light

George W. Bush may be right about something after all.  The current state of the economy may not be as bad as the media is making everything out to be.  How do I know this?  The daily blogroll.  Everyday as I get ready to approach my Moodz, I trip though the blogroll.  It’s good to check out other sites.  I like to see what others are doing, what they’re talking about.  I especially like the About Me pages where you learn who these people are, where they live, what they’re doing, and with (or without) whom.  Sometimes they will even tell why they’re blogging.

I stumble upon blog after blog postings of people more satisfied with themselves than not.  People with really great jobs and great spouses (or fiancés) about whom they daily proclaim their love for and satisfaction with.  People who not only purchased homes during the current housing crises, but had them built from scratch. People raising children without worry, fear or dread about their futures or their grandchildren’s. 

These average, hardworking, American families seem mostly unaffected by the high cost of gas and oil and food.  They’re graduating from college, earning Master’s degrees, knitting and quilting, marrying and being given in marriage, planning weddings, showing off huge diamond rings while gushing over their “simple” diamond wedding band.  They love their families.  They love their friends.  Their oft photographed kids are just too adorable.

Outside their  doors, butterflies emerge from their chrysalises, deer strike a pose for the digital Canon, and turtles slowly poke their heads from beneath lumpy shells on their picturesque, multi-acre properties. They have time to stop and smell the roses here at home and frequently travel abroad, undeterred by the high cost of flying, without ever seeming to encounter a single foreigner who hates America. 

Oh, but don’t just take my word for it.  Here.  See for yourself:

If you had stopped and asked me 10 or even 5 years ago where I thought I’d be at this point in my life – living in a big fat house on 5+ acres in upstate New York with a fiancé (happily engaged going on nearly 8 years now with happily no wedding in sight!), 2 dachshounds, a creek, a mile long walking path on our property, two natural ponds, a flock of turkeys, a hundred frogs, 40 goldfish, a deer family, 3 chipmunks, 5 groundhogs, and a bat named Mukluk, I would’ve said I’m sorry, can’t talk, must go to my shitty management job at K*B Toys in Coral Springs, Florida.

While my rather expensive degree in Environmental Science only served to get me out of retail and not into some position where I could not only save the world, but maybe meet and have sex with Leonardo Dicaprio, I cannot complain about my job at a comics/collectible company (even though sometimes a monkey could do my job. or my dogs if they had opposable thumbs). It’s not an important job by any stretch, but it’s fun, stress free, customer free, I get to read comics, take time off to travel whenever I want, add to my always growing Batman collection, come to work in my pajamas if the mood strikes, and if I am so inclined and the guests are good, help with my company’s comic convention in New York City.

Life, she is good. Hi there.

My response:

It’s good to be you, but then again, you already know that don’t you?  Enjoyed visiting your blog. Thank you.

In response she said:

Moodz4Modernz, it didn’t used to be this way. I am grateful for every day I wake up feeling good and healthy, next to Rxxx (also good and healthy), and surrounded by flora & fauna (again with the good and healthy) alike. Which is not to say that I am not constantly battling an almost overpowering sense of fear that it’s all going to disappear one day.

Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. Come back anytime.

I wondered if she bothered to find out a little about me, or was her head too far up in a cloud of conceit and euphoria to care about anyone other than herself? Perhaps she might have been moved to offer up just a teeny, tiny, tad of goodwill, or empathy or encouragement.

The so-called Christian community seems equally as self-absorbed and oblivious:

If you’re looking for a happy, pick-me-up post today, stop right now and come back another day. This is just where it’s at…

• I’ve been involved in 2 car accidents in 2 weeksMy house has not yet sold, and showing it means keeping it clean at all times-with 3 boys!
• I have minimal support monies coming in
• I’ve pursued PT job prospects in XXXX-no openings
• as I have begun to share my life story of abuse, I have faced much criticism and rejection with friends telling me I should “keep family secrets secret”
• Many friends have turned away or pulled back, telling me that what I’m doing is crazy…or just refuse to even talk about it
• I need to find housing in XXXX, committing simply on faith at this point
• My ex… has not spoken to my kids in about 8 yrs
• I am packing, selling stuff, cleaning out, and deciding what we need to get rid of and cut back to simply pay the bills in the upcoming year

Nothing has ever been easy, yet as Job says in Job 6:10 Despite the pain, I have not denied the words of the Holy One.”

I don’t cry, but this morning I could not stop. Tears of frustration, of anger, of loneliness, of joy, of excitement, of praise, of rejection, of hurt, of faith, and of confidence in this all. I don’t know what today or any other day brings. I don’t know how it’s all going to work out and I know I can’t do it myself. I know God has called, I know He has gotten me this far, and I know that this is just all part of the journey…

I was moved.  I commented:

I wish I were not writing this but instead working to find out where you are so I could send you something more spendable than my prayers, but I can’t.  I can only pass on an assurance:  You are not alone, and even that is not original (or humorous) enough to be a real comfort.

I hope, after reading my posts over the past couple of days, you will at least be content with your cross and not be tempted to wish you could pick up someone else’s.  I have a sense you are a clever woman and you already know this as well.

killinmesoftly.wordpress.com

Thank you for sharing this.  It didn’t come to last, it came to pass.  Yes it’s an annoying pithy line, but it’s a comfort to me, and so I’m sharing…

Her response..?

Thank you. I don’t know how to respond–what a great email. Only because you asked…if I’m reading what you wrote correctly. Everything is addressed to MXXXXX LXXXX Church with “for XXXX XXXX” on it and they get everything to me…donations, prayer partners, and all. I love that you are traveling along on with us on this journey. 

Peace to you!!

Mxxxxx Lxxxxx Church
3105 XXXXXXXXX Highway
XXXXXX, GA XXXXXXX

Enjoy the day!

Uh, huh.  That’s exactly what I said.  Sigh..!

On August 18, 1988, George Herbert Walker Bush addressed the Republican National Convention to accept his party’s nomination. Given what has transpired since over the past two years, the site of the convention, the LA Superdome in New Orleans appears both prophetic and ironic. Here he put forward the idea of the so-called “faith-based” initiative and his vision of an America where people help people rather than continue this expectation of government.  Mr. Bush said: 

I am guided by certain traditions. One, is that there is a God and He is good, and his love, while free, has a self imposed cost: We must be good to one another.

And there is another tradition. And that’s the idea of community — a beautiful word with a big meaning; though liberal democrats have an odd view of it. They see “community” as a limited cluster of interest groups, locked in odd conformity. And in this view, the country waits passive while Washington sets the rules.

But that’s not what community means — not to me.

For we’re a nation of community; of thousands and tens of thousands of ethnic, religious, social, business, labor union, neighborhood, regional and other organizations, all of them varied, voluntary and unique.

This is America: the Knights of Columbus, the Grange, Hadassah, the Disabled American Veterans, the Order of Ahepa, the Business and Professional Women of America, the union hall, the Bible study group, LULAC, “Holy Name” — a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.

Sigh…  Oh well.  How quickly we forget.

 

I’ll Be Good to You | The Brothers Johnson | 1976

Decide! It’s Your Decision

“No temptation has taken you except what is common to men.  But God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear..,”   

I guess this basically means, then, that if you’re like me and have a high threshold for emotional and psychological pain, He can let it go on ad infinitum. But can you?

They say that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Is this really true?  Only if you’re Job.  Death is not the worse thing that can happen to you, you know.  God let Satan do anything he wanted to Job short of taking his life.  In the end, Satan had to leave Job just as he found him– alive and only wishing he were dead.  

Job’s ordeal only lasted a whopping three years.  Come to think of it, so did Jesus’. So how do you cope when your ordeals are recurring, last much, much, much, much longer and there is not a locust, wild fig tree or even a false friend in sight?  What do you do? 

Here’s a few things I didn’t do:  I never turned to drugs (prescribed or otherwise) or alcohol or sexual promiscuity to anesthetize my pain. I have never sought revenge against any other person or been involved in any deliberate acts of unkindness toward anyone. I have never committed an act of violence upon any person, or skulked about in parking lots or back offices plotting to have someone fired. I never willfully set out to hurt anyone or kill anyone’s spirit.  That’s murder as far as I’m concerned.

These are the usual ways the majority of people, (at least almost every single person I have ever met in my life) seems to deal with insecurity, unresolved adolescent issues, undiagnosed borderline personality disorder or “temptation…beyond” what they could bear.

I did take up smoking cigarettes for a time.  The rituals of smoking– the lighting of the cigarette and with what, the having of the cigarette with coffee and after meals, standing outside alone inhaling, then exhaling, watching streams of cigarette smoke disappear into the still, night air…  I did find comfort in that. 

It was something to do, a way for me to regain control and a sense of routine during those stark times when I needed to occupy my hands and my thoughts.  But I hated the ash, and the smell of the ash, and the discarding of the ash.  The expense became prohibitive.  It was ridicules, so after a time, I just stopped. I didn’t need a buddy or a patch, or a scary PSA.  I just needed to decide.

Just how much can one person “bear?” What does “beyond” mean? Those filthy, dirty, discolored people you see pushing shopping carts filled with all their stuff and sleeping in subway tunnels–  do they know?  Those people who snap and kill their wives, or boyfriends, or parents, or child, or classmates–  do they know?  Schizophrenics, or people living with mental illness or who have suffered severe mental breakdowns–  do they know? 

“…He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear…” 

What about the millions of people who each year commit suicide?  Is the “what you can bear” threshold beyond life worth living? At that eleventh hour and fifty ninth second, did they cry out to God in their pain, agony and solitude and saw nothing beyond “beyond” at all to be afraid of?  Did they become like God, “KNOWING good and bad?” (Gen. 3:5) Is that why they did it? Could it be death is highly underrated? 

” No temptation has taken you except what is common to men.”

Poverty, homelessness, disease, mental illness, abandonment, betrayal, isolation, hurt…  All human conditions “common to men.”  You’re not special, or unique, or being singled out for punishment or future increase.  You don’t get to stop bearing all things life burdens you with.  You don’t get to surrender your torment and become numb.  Miracles ceased upon the death of the last apostle, so don’t overstay your welcome during the sackcloth and ashes phase of grief.  Is there a limit to endurance?  Yes there is and guess what?  You decide it!

 ”…but along with the temptation He will also make the way out in order for you to be able to endure it.”

Popularity is people liking you.  Happiness is You liking you.

 “Love… bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  I Cor. 13:4, 7

Some people have families who help to stop the hurting.  The rest of us do not.  Some people have a circle of friends who help to stop the hurting.  The rest of us do not.  Some people have a so-called church home, or a job, or a community or a passion or even a dog to help to stop the hurting. The rest of us..?  We just have to like ourselves more.

“No temptation has taken you except what is common to men.  But God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but along with the temptation He will also make the way out in order for you to be able to endure it.”  I Cor. 10:13

We just have to endure.

I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
the only thing that’s real
the needle tears a hole
the old familiar sting
try to kill it all away
but I remember everything

what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns
upon my liar’s chair
full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
beneath the stains of time
the feelings disappear
you are someone else
I am still right here

what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt

I will let you down
I will make you hurt

if I could start again
a million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

Hurt | performed by Johnny Cash

Don’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edge…

“A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently.”  E.D. Hill on the June 6 edition of Fox News’ America’s Pulse 

When I witnessed the Obama fist-bump, I for one thought it was cute.

This couple seems to have a real marriage going on up in here, not just a strategic partnership.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I admire the Clinton’s relationship. Sometimes intellectual compatibility is better than great sex. Theirs is the modern day public personification of “philia,” the Greek term for friendship or amiability; a crucial component of the good life.

In contrast to the desiring and passionate yearning of eros, philia entails a fondness and appreciation of the other. For the Greeks, the term philia incorporated not just friendship, but also loyalties to family and polis-one’s political community, job, or discipline. Philia for another may be motivated, as Aristotle explains in the Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, for the agent’s sake or for the other’s own sake.

The motivational distinctions are derived from love for another because the friendship is wholly useful as in the case of business contacts, or because their character and values are pleasing.  Friendships of a lesser quality may also be based on the pleasure or utility that is derived from another’s company. A business friendship is based on utility–on mutual reciprocity.*

That pretty much describes the Clinton union, don’t you agree?  

Maybe that’s why so many people admire Hillary Clinton.  Her bruising fight in 1993 to implement a universal health care plan, the way she interacted with her husband, then President Bill Clinton.  I especially admired her choice to remain in her marriage despite the crescendo of voices that ridiculed and derided this courageous, intelligent, and deeply personal decision.

I admired how she weathered that humiliating media conflagration and emerged looking like someone devoted to principle rather that someone who cuts and runs.   For me, throughout that difficult time,  she set an excellent example, not by whining and crying and acting like a victim  but by facing her problems head on, with no shame, no blame and no excuses. 

She didn’t take the easy way out.  She took the heat rather than get out of the kitchen. That took a depth of dignity and an intestinal fortitude that, in the less capable, would have precipitated a tawdry public pity party. She kept her eyes focused on the prize not the papers and, no doubt after much soul searching, concluded she was probably better with this man than she would be without him.

After a careful examination of twenty-three years of marriage, she could see clearly from her vantage point something all the TV psychologists and media skeptics could not.  She would not throw the baby out with the bath water.  Bill Clinton may have revealed himself to the nation to be a flawed man, but he was her flawed man. The decision to stay or not to stay was nobody’s business but hers.  And here we all are ten years later and no weepy, salacious tell-all.  She got the big picture.

“Our lives are a mixture of different roles. Most of us are doing the best we can to find whatever the right balance is . . . For me, that balance is family, work, and service.”**

What a breath of cool, minty-fresh air the Obama union portends to bring to the American political scene. It’s abundantly clear they have it going on in all areas of the love triad:  eros, philia, agape.  I guess Ms Hill and her associates, on the other hand, are perhaps maybe wanting in at least one of these major areas for them to be able, not only to glean a microscopic participle of terrorism out of the affection of the Obama fist-bump in Minnesota on the evening of June 3, but to open her mouth irresponsibly, to vomit out this fat, slimy, warty toad to plop where ever it may.

Now in her defense, Ms Hill very likely did not write the tease but merely read from the tele-prompter.  Both she and Fox News, however,  have put forward a hollow explanation of  the unfortunate analogy.  It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  Why would Fox News feel it’s journalistically justifiable and OK to compare the Obama’s display of support and mutual affection with terrorism?  Is this what Fox is calling the news?  

Tell Fox News this is appalling and unacceptable, and demand an apology from Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.

Get off your butts and do something!

Sign the Petition.

Call Fox News.

Tell Your Friends.

 

 

*(Source: http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/love.htm#SH2c )

**(Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/firstladies/hc42.html)

Post title from The Message | Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five | 1982

You Betta’ Think!

We interrupt this program for this important announcement…

For all you disgruntled Hillary supporters who are seriously considering throwing away your vote in November by casting it for John McCain, I implore you: Please watch Bush’s War, from the producers of Frontline on PBS.  You can view the two part documentary online by clicking on the link in the Mz4Mz sidebar: 4More4. You can even download and print out a transcript of Bush’s War by clicking on: Night One and Night Two. 

Watch this important television event, then Think!:  Is your petulant act of rebellion really worth it?

People walk around everyday
Playin’ games and takin’ scores
Tryin’ to make other people lose their mind
Well, be careful you don’t lose yours

Ooh think (think)
Think about what you’re tryin’ to do to me
Woo-hoo, think (think)
Let your mind go, let yourself be free

You need me (need me)
And I need you (don’t cha’ know)
Without each other
There ain’t nothin’ we two can do 

  

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program already in progress…

“Hi…Ooohhh…!”

At 85, Ed McMahon is facing foreclosure. Ed McMahon, thirty years Johnny Carson’s sidekick, long time Publisher’s Clearinghouse prize peddler, and self described “pitch” man is about to lose his home. Why? Well, several reasons.  He marries young women who subsequently divorce him and are then awarded huge alimony and child support settlements.  He squandered away his millions during a long bout with alcoholism.  The house has been on the market over two years and “due to the housing crisis” hasn’t sold.  He mismanaged his millions (or sat idly by as others did), didn’t pay attention, made mistakes, broke his neck, can’t work…                                                   

Now here he is on Larry King spinning a tale of woe on all the media outlets and the Hollywood community is going ‘Yikes!  How can something like this happen to Ed McMahon?’  

To which he answers: “If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.  I want to speak for the millions of people who now have foreclosure signs on their houses nearby.  I want to give them hope, give them optimism, give them some kind of guidance.  All those hardworking people who did everything right, didn’t do anything wrong and all of a sudden they’re in this boat, and I speak for all of them as far as I’m concerned.”  

Ugh! Too low to get under, Ed.  

Ed, are you really equating your situation with all those American families who have lost their homes due to foreclosure as a result of the housing crisis, the economy and the current jobs situation?  Or is this what I suspect it is–  a shameless public appeal for help from the Hollywood community?

You need $644,000.00 dollars?  One “Save Ed McMahon’s Home” private Hollywood fundraiser would raise that much in ten minutes.  Can the average hardworking person (about whom you have used the public airways, free of charge, to pledge your solidarity and sympathy) manage that?  Can the average hardworking person go on Larry King and put their story out there?  $644,000.00 could save seventeen “average” American families, (many with minor children), from the very threat you now face. But would it garner good ratings?  

And Ed, after Jay Leno, Donald Trump, George Clooney and all your wealthy friends help bail you out of your financial morass, will you continue in your self-appointed role as “spokesman” for them then?  Ed, pulleeese…  

This just may turn out to be your most incredible pitch ever.

Another Urban Myth

“We no longer have a moral compass.”  

Hartford Police Chief Daryl Roberts’ said in the aftermath of a traffic accident that left a 78 year old pedestrian paralyzed and comatose in a Connecticut hospital fighting for his life. Angel Arce Torres sustained critical injuries as a result of a hit-and-run that occurred in broad daylight at the top of the Friday evening rush hour on May 30th.

The accident, video taped by a Hartford traffic surveillance camera, was witnessed by at least a dozen pedestrians on the sidewalk and motorists driving by, no one of whom came to the aid of the victim as he lay prone, and possibly dying, in the middle of the street. No one went to Mr. Torres’s aid or offered any comfort or any assistance. Some people are seen walking away, while others stand and stare. At one point in the video, someone on a motorbike circles Mr. Torres’ body and then, inexplicably, drives away.

                            

“…because…the love of the greater number will cool off.” Matt 24:12.

I had to ruminate on this for several days after I initially saw the story broadcast last Monday on Inside Edition. (Gasp!) Inside Edition. I had to admit I was emotionally anesthetized. Nothing seems to shock or surprise me anymore.  I’m more surprised and genuinely elated when I experience goodwill or when I witness goodwill directed toward others than I am by this horrifying display of lack of compassion and indifference. After all, isn’t this sort of behavior kind of normal now?  Most of us witness this level of passivity and indifference in the work place on a daily basis.  There is never any outrage expressed then.

I wonder if this story would have gained any traction at all were it not for the video, this often looped video which has now become the 21^st century equivalent of Luke 10:29-37.  Is this the reason why the nation is shocked and outraged? Is the nation shocked and outraged?  I wonder if any of those indifferent bystanders set up church in their living rooms every week, or donate money to Oprah’s Angel Network, or bring in cake and cookies for co-workers everyday and everyone thinks they’re sooo nice?  Good people.

It’ll be interesting in the coming weeks to see just how many of these people begin to make paid appearances on The Today Show, or Good Morning America, or sit with the ladies of The View. How will they explain their behavior choices that fateful evening, or will they instead merely attempt to ease their consciences?  How soon after this will the books begin to get published?

It’s been reported that several people did call 911.  But the thing that is most striking is that no one went over to Mr. Torres or held his hand or even checked to see whether the man was dead or alive.

Where was the Good Samaritan on Friday, May 30th?  Who really is my neighbor? Or is this all just another urban myth?

But wanting to prove himself righteous, the man said to Jesus: ‘Who really is my neighbor?’ 

In reply, Jesus said:  ‘A certain man was crossing the street in downtown Hartford and was struck by two speeding cars that ran the red light, inflicting serious blows, and each drove off,  leaving the man half dead. 

Now by coincidence, a certain priest was walking on the sidewalk  but, when he saw him, he went by on the opposite side.  Likewise, a Levite also when he got down to the place and saw him, drove around him and went on the opposite side. 

But a certain Samaritan travelling the road came upon Mr. Torres, and at seeing him, he was moved to pity.  So he approached him and bound up his wounds, pouring oil and wine upon them.  Then he called for an ambulance and rode with the man to the hospital and stayed long enough to be certain the man was being taken care of.

Who of these three seems to you to have made himself neighbor to the man struck by the two cars?’

He said, ‘The one that acted mercifully toward Mr. Torres.’ 

Jesus then said to him:  ‘Go your way and be doing the same yourself.”   

Note:  A $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individuals responsible for the hit-and-run.

He Said… She Said…

… or rhetorical (and character) differences that distinguish Him    

Final Primary Night | St. Paul, MN | June 03, 2008

Tonight, after fifty-four hard-fought contests, our primary season has finally come to an end.

Sixteen months have passed since we first stood together on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. Thousands of miles have been traveled. Millions of voices have been heard. And because of what you said – because you decided that change must come to Washington; because you believed that this year must be different than all the rest; because you chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations, tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another – a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

At this defining moment for our nation, we should be proud that our party put forth one of the most talented, qualified field of individuals ever to run for this office. I have not just competed with them as rivals, I have learned from them as friends, as public servants, and as patriots who love America and are willing to work tirelessly to make this country better. They are leaders of this party, and leaders that America will turn to for years to come.

That is particularly true for the candidate who has traveled further on this journey than anyone else. Senator Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign not just because she’s a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she’s a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight.

We’ve certainly had our differences over the last sixteen months. But as someone who’s shared a stage with her many times, I can tell you that what gets Hillary Clinton up in the morning – even in the face of tough odds – is exactly what sent her and Bill Clinton to sign up for their first campaign in Texas all those years ago; what sent her to work at the Children’s Defense Fund and made her fight for health care as First Lady; what led her to the United States Senate and fueled her barrier-breaking campaign for the presidency – an unyielding desire to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, no matter how difficult the fight may be.

And you can rest assured that when we finally win the battle for universal health care in this country, she will be central to that victory. When we transform our energy policy and lift our children out of poverty, it will be because she worked to help make it happen. Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

There are those who say that this primary has somehow left us weaker and more divided. Well I say that because of this primary, there are millions of Americans who have cast their ballot for the very first time. There are Independents and Republicans who understand that this election isn’t just about the party in charge of Washington, it’s about the need to change Washington. There are young people, and African-Americans, and Latinos, and women of all ages who have voted in numbers that have broken records and inspired a nation.

All of you chose to support a candidate you believe in deeply. But at the end of the day, we aren’t the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard. You didn’t do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else. You did it because you know in your hearts that at this moment – a moment that will define a generation – we cannot afford to keep doing what we’ve been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say – let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.

Change is:

a. a foreign policy that doesn’t begin and end with a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged.

b. getting out of Iraq

c. realizing that meeting today’s threats requires not just our firepower, but the power of our diplomacy

d. building an economy that rewards not just wealth, but the work and workers who created it.

In our country, I have found that… cooperation happens not because we agree on everything, but because behind all the labels and false divisions and categories that define us; beyond all the petty bickering and point-scoring in Washington, Americans are a decent, generous, compassionate people, united by common challenges and common hopes. And every so often, there are moments which call on that fundamental goodness to make this country great again.

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.

Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

 

From Her

                                                                                     

June 7, 2008 | Concession speech | at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C.

Well, this isn’t exactly the party I’d planned, but I sure like the company.

To all those who voted for me, and to whom I pledged my utmost, my commitment to you and to the progress we seek is unyielding. You have inspired and touched me with the stories of the joys and sorrows that make up the fabric of our lives and you have humbled me with your commitment to our country.

18 million of you from all walks of life – women and men, young and old, Latino and Asian, African-American and Caucasian, rich, poor and middle class, gay and straight – you have stood strong with me. And I will continue to stand strong with you, every time, every place, and every way that I can. The dreams we share are worth fighting for.

I entered this race because I have an old-fashioned conviction: that public service is about helping people solve their problems and live their dreams. I’ve had every opportunity and blessing in my own life – and I want the same for all Americans. Until that day comes, you will always find me on the front lines of democracy – fighting for the future.

The way to continue our fight now – to accomplish the goals for which we stand – is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next President of the United States.

Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him, and throw my full support behind him. And I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me.

I have served in the Senate with him for four years. I have been in this campaign with him for 16 months. I have stood on the stage and gone toe-to-toe with him in 22 debates. I have had a front row seat to his candidacy, and I have seen his strength and determination, his grace and his grit.

In his own life, Barack Obama has lived the American Dream. As a community organizer, in the state senate, as a United States Senator – he has dedicated himself to ensuring the dream is realized. And in this campaign, he has inspired so many to become involved in the democratic process and invested in our common future.

Now when I started this race, I intended to win back the White House, and make sure we have a president who puts our country back on the path to peace, prosperity, and progress. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do by ensuring that Barack Obama walks through the doors of the Oval Office on January 20, 2009.

I understand that we all know this has been a tough fight. The Democratic Party is a family, and it’s now time to restore the ties that bind us together and to come together around the ideals we share, the values we cherish, and the country we love.

We may have started on separate journeys – but today, our paths have merged. And we are all heading toward the same destination, united and more ready than ever to win in November and to turn our country around because so much is at stake.

1. an economy that sustains the American Dream
   
2. a health care system that is universal, high quality, and affordable
   
3. meaningful equality – from civil rights to labor rights, from women’s rights to gay rights, from ending discrimination to promoting unionization to providing help for the most important job there is: caring for our families.
   
4. restore America’s standing in the world
   
5. end the war in Iraq
   

Now the journey ahead will not be easy. Some will say we can’t do it. That it’s too hard. That we’re just not up to the task. But for as long as America has existed, it has been the American way to reject “can’t do” claims, and to choose instead to stretch the boundaries of the possible through hard work, determination, and a pioneering spirit.

It is this belief, this optimism, that Senator Obama and I share, and that has inspired so many millions of our supporters to make their voices heard.  So today, I am standing with Senator Obama to say: Yes we can.

Together we will work. We’ll have to work hard to get universal health care. But on the day we live in an America where no child, no man, and no woman is without health insurance, we will live in a stronger America. That’s why we need to help elect Barack Obama our President.

We’ll have to work hard to get back to fiscal responsibility and a strong middle class. But on the day we live in an America whose middle class is thriving and growing again, where all Americans, no matter where they live or where their ancestors came from, can earn a decent living, we will live in a stronger America and that is why we must elect Barack Obama our President.

We’ll have to work hard to foster the innovation that makes us energy independent and lift the threat of global warming from our children’s future. But on the day we live in an America fueled by renewable energy, we will live in a stronger America. That’s why we have to help elect Barack Obama our President.

We’ll have to work hard to bring our troops home from Iraq, and get them the support they’ve earned by their service. But on the day we live in an America that’s as loyal to our troops as they have been to us, we will live in a stronger America and that is why we must help elect Barack Obama our President.

This election is a turning point election and it is critical that we all understand what our choice really is. Will we go forward together or will we stall and slip backwards. Think how much progress we have already made. When we first started, people everywhere asked the same questions: Could a woman really serve as Commander-in-Chief? Well, I think we answered that one.

And could an African American really be our President? Senator Obama has answered that one.

Together Senator Obama and I achieved milestones essential to our progress as a nation, part of our perpetual duty to form a more perfect union.

I want to build an America that respects and embraces the potential of every last one of us.

Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it. And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.

So I want to say to my supporters, when you hear people saying – or think to yourself – “if only” or “what if,” I say, “please don’t go there.” Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward.

Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be. And that is why I will work my heart out to make sure that Senator Obama is our next President and I hope and pray that all of you will join me in that effort.

But our lives, our freedom, our happiness, are best enjoyed, best protected, and best advanced when we do work together.

That is what we will do now as we join forces with Senator Obama and his campaign. We will make history together as we write the next chapter in America’s story. We will stand united for the values we hold dear, for the vision of progress we share, and for the country we love. There is nothing more American than that.

Thank you all and God bless you and God bless America.

OMG! Gas is $4.37 A Gallon!

The last time I filled my tank was May 2.  Then, gas was $3.98 a gallon here in America’s Finest City. Uh, huh.  I handled the shock well.  What’s the use in crying?

My gas tank is on the driver’s side so I pull over to the correct side of the island and begin the ritual pump paradigm:    1.  Check the pump#.  2.  Go to the self-serve ATM.  3. Enter the pump#.  4. Proceed to pump.  

There are only two pump islands at this station which incidentally is undergoing renovation.  I guess this is why the ATM I’m closest to is out of order so I had to either use the other one two lanes over or go inside the store. Whenever the choice is whether to punch in numbers at a machine or walk up to a counter and have to endure an overdose of “friendly” customer service, I always choose the machine.

So I get back to my car and notice I’m pumping behind a guy, a white guy, in a white shirt and tie. He’s short, about 5′5.  He’s gassing up his gigantic, black Cadillac Escalade. I see a little girl bouncing about from this window to the next in the back seat.  I wonder why she’s not in a booster seat.  She’s only about three or four years old, but then I figure she probably got tired of waiting for Daddy to fill’er up.  Judging by how he was dressed, filling his tank probably only amounted to a minor but necessary annoyance. White shirt guy in a black Escalade. The picture of 21st century apathy.

Wait.  Shhh…  Can you hear it?  Can you hear the silence?  That’s the deafening sound of resignation and learned helplessness, the primary symptoms of terminal Bushwhackpathy. 

I got my first unemployment check this week so the gas budget for this week is $50.00. I drive a GMC Suburban. It’s not a V8 so don’t be hatin’.   Fifty dollars brought my needle just a tiny scotch past half full.  It still felt like “Ouch!” though. I don’t have to do that 40 mile round trip commute anymore so this should last me until July.

Oh!  Another bit of interesting news.  I got a notice in the mail this week that my stimulus check is on the way. I heard on the news how George Bush and company are spending stupid sums to send out these mailings.  At first I thought it was the check, but then it was only notifying me that I was going to be getting the check. Come to think of it, this was the second notification I’ve received. Note to Bush: Just mail the check. Skip the advance press.  Save a tree.

Shut ‘Cho Mouf!

On the other hand, the fruitage of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control.    Gal. 5:22,23

Brigitte Bardot was convicted Tuesday of provoking discrimination and racial hatred for writing, in her ardent defense of animal rights,  that Muslims are destroying France:

   ”tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts.”

Vice President Dick Cheney’s  joke suggests a generations long culture of incest in West Virginia:    

“So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don’t even live in West Virginia,” 

Don Imus on the the Rutgers women’s basketball team:

IMUS: Awesome rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos. 
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Some hardcore hoes.
IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos. 

Don Imus,   on Gwen Ifill, distinguished journalist, moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:

“Isn’t the ‘Times’ wonderful.  It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”

Barbara Bush on hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston after having lost everything back in Mississippi or Louisiana

“What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas..,   And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this is working very well for them.”

 Hillary Clinton, on a 2006 trip to Bosnia on March 17, 2008:

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”  

Michael Richards on

‘Nuf said.

I could go on and on.  At the risk of channeling Marvin Gaye here–  ”What’s going on?”  Is the whole world in the throes of losing their minds?    Whatever happened to a little som’ sompin’ called self-control?

Dictionary.com defines self control as “control or restraint of oneself or one’s actions, feelings, etc.” It’s interesting to note synonyms include discipline and levelheadedness.  Aren’t these at least two attributes we look for and expect in our President?

You don’t have to be anti this or pro that to appreciate self-control.  It’s not about bible thumping or right wing conservatism or any of these descriptors tossed about to silence those we disagree with or disguise and justify “us” not liking “you.” People are just opening their mouths and letting the toads plop wherever they may.

What’s going on?

In the cases of Don Imus and Michael Richards, these men had deluded themselves into believing that just because they hung out with Blacks who use the “N” word and similiarly crass expressions to characterize women, they were in the fratority. They felt safe to use the expressions themselves because “everybody knows I’m not a racist!”   They actually believed they were not only one of us but one with us. Imus has said he’s learned his lesson.  Hmmm…  That’s easy for you to say, Don, now that you’re able to go on making a living.

More than racism is rearing its ugly head as these remarks and all the other recent verbal faux pas clearly demonstrate. These tiny thumbnails should be starting to switch on our collective alarm bells. These are no mere slips of the tongue. These are revelations, a heads up if you will pointing out what really lies beneath. Attention needs to be paid!  In the sixties, the hippies mantra was love, love, love. Today..?  What’s going on?  Where is the love?

1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4

People moving out, people moving in
Why? Because of the color of their skin
Run, run, run but you sure can’t hide
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
Vote for me and I’ll set you free
Rap on, brother, rap on

Well, the only person talking about love thy brother is the preacher
And it seems nobody’s interested in learning but the teacher
Segregation, determination, demonstration, integration
Aggravation, humiliation, obligation to my nation

Ball of confusion
Oh yeah, that’s what the world is today
Woo, hey, hey

The sale of pills are at an all time high
Young folks walking round with their heads in the sky
The cities ablaze in the summer time
And oh, the beat goes on

Evolution, revolution, gun control, sound of soul
Shooting rockets to the moon, kids growing up too soon
Politicians say more taxes will solve everything
And the band played on

So, round and around and around we go
Where the world’s headed, said nobody knows
Oh, great Googamooga
Can’t you hear me talking to you?

Just a ball of confusion
Oh yeah, that’s what the world is today
Woo, hey, hey

Fear in the air, tension everywhere
Unemployment rising fast, the Beatles new record’s a gas
And the only safe place to live is on an Indian reservation
And the band played on

Eve of destruction, tax deduction, city inspectors, bill collectors
Mod clothes in demand, population out of hand, suicide, too many bills
Hippies moving to the hills, people all over the world are shouting
‘End the war’ and the band played on

Great Googamooga
Can’t you hear me talking to you?

It’s a ball of confusion
That’s what the world is today, hey, hey
Let me hear ya, let me hear ya, let me hear ya

Sayin’ ball of confusion
That’s what the world is today, hey, hey
Let me hear ya, let me hear ya
Let me hear ya, let me hear ya, let me hear ya
Sayin’ ball of confusion

© STONE AGATE MUSIC

Lyrics provided by Gracenote

Hey!  Sound familiar?

And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going

And I am telling you I’m not going!
You’re the best man I’ll ever know.
There’s no way I can ever, ever go,
No, no, no, no way,
No, no, no, no way I’m livin’ without you.
Oh, I’m not livin’ without you,
I’m not livin’ without you.
I don’t wanna be free.
I’m stayin’,
I’m stayin’,
And you, and you,
You’re gonna love me.

Did anyone with half a brain really believe Hillary was going to graciously concede the nomination to Barack Obama, or (as has been her usual MO), would she continue to scratch and claw a bloody trail into the wall of her temple of broken dreams?  

In her combative, defiant, passive aggressive, shrill and confrontational speech last night (a speech devoid of even a scintilla of conciliation or genuine charity) Hillary Clinton all but begged her supporters (all 18 million of them) to go to her website.  Why? To help her decide if she should stay in the race and continue to fight for those 18 million (hard working white people) who have been made to feel invisible saying:    

“Now the question is where do we go from here and given how far we’ve come and where we need to go as a party, it’s a question I don’t take lightly.  This has been a long campaign and I will be making no decisions tonight.”

Hillary continues to play the “I have the popular vote” card.  This was a legitimate argument in 2000 when, in the general, two-party election, Al Gore lost to George Bush even though he’d won the popular vote.  But this is the Democratic nomination process.  The argument and Hillary’s stubborn insistance on pointing this out every chance she gets is as polarizing as it is desperate.

What does she hope to gain by showing this decidedly unappealing aspect of her character? Is this a person who will restore the country’s reputation abroad?  Does she imagine she will bully Obama into choosing her as his running mate?  Six months ago, I thought that would be a dream ticket. Now…  Oh, the horror. I believe she would work covertly to undermine President Obama and establish herself as some sort of co-president.  I hope Senator Obama does not allow himself to be pressured into putting her on the ticket.

“This is our moment.  This is our time”  the presumptive Democratic nominee declared.  Not even Hillary Clinton could put the cabash on Barack Obama’s moment because it was not only his historic moment, but also the nation’s.  This was a moment Hillary should have shared, but for reasons that are entirely her own right now, she chose not to.

Nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which declared:  

“all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

I did experience a pang of emotion that I was utterly taken aback by.   This was big. Obama was right.  It really was our moment.  In stark contrast to Hillary, whose speech was all about her and what she has done and the 18 million who voted for her (Is she planning to hold these voters out as pawns in order to negotiate some political position for herself?  Shame on you, Hillary), Obama’s speech articulated and embraced all our hopes for the country and affirmed our collective belief in our “highest ideals and our highest aspirations.”

In spite of Hillary’s unfortunate and jaundiced performance, last night was a special and historic night.  Nothing anyone could do or say will ever diminish that. Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for the office of President of the United States of America.  Say it loud!

Say It Loud!

I am Black.  I am an American. I am a descendent of slaves. I am not African American.

I will never know which of the 150 countries that comprises the African continent my ancestors were imported from. I will never be able to perk up with recognition and joy whenever I hear an immigrant from Africa speaking their native tongue. The only information I have about my family and my history comes from my experiences with my maternal grandparents. Neither of them were immigrants. Both were born in this country. I suspect their parents were as well. There are no records and there was never any discussion, not even after Roots.  I have no information about my father or his family, but I suspect his parents  and his parent’s parents were all born in this country.

The search for an identity and an identifying moniker has become something of a pop culture joke over these past twenty-five years. For Blacks, so much confusion, and for hundreds of years, because we as a people were forced to endure being called whatever derogatory name White people wanted. Negro, Niggra, Darkie, Coon. Nigger.

Fredrick Douglas and W.E.B Du Bois and others of their contemporary thinkers reasoned starched white collars and an education would mitigate the predominate social climate of hate, derision and physical disgust directed toward us. If we could just look, act, and sound like them, then they will like us.  The NAACP was so named to “uplift the race,” increase awareness and respect for colored people,  and elevate the public perception of the Negro.

My maternal grandmother was born in 1908. The NAACP was founded the following year in 1909.  Since its inception, the philosophical imperative of the NAACP has been challenged on several fronts, including by one of the pre-eminent co-founders: W.E.B Du Bois. It’s a philosophical debate that continues to this day: Integration or African nationalism? People who continue to poke fun at the various name changes that have been put forward over the years appear neither to fully appreciate nor understand this fundamental divide within our culture.

Those of us who remember when we were Colored recall those times with a mixture of emotions and nostalgia. Colored people endured and lived through the reign of terror in this country known as Jim Crow (the system of legalized segregation and disfranchisement from 1865 to 1954). My grandparents lived in Charleston, South Carolina all their lives in a segregated section called Charleston Heights. There Colored people established an infrastructure of schools, banks and businesses and built strong, vibrant, stable, family oriented communities with the Church at its center.

I grew up among Pentecostals, Baptists and Methodists. There was a juke joint, a beauty parlor and a grocery store on just about every corner. My grandparents home, which they owned, was across the street from the community funeral home.

In the late fifties and early sixties, when Blacks began to appear sporadically on TV, people used to rush to their windows and doors calling out “Colored on TV! Colored on TV!” A Colored person appearing on TV was a cause for excitement. People stopped whatever they were doing to see who it was:   Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carroll, Ivan Dixon, Harry Belafonte, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis, Jr.

When we were Colored we were self actualized and self sufficient. We cooperated with each other. Young people respected their elders. We looked out for one another, protected one another and supported each other materially, economically, socially, and spiritually. By the time James Brown* released his anthem and clarion call for Black pride, Colored people were already Black and Proud. I recall that period as the most moving, self affirming period of my life. I still get emotional just thinking about it. I am proud I am Black.

Which makes all that has gone on in the political arena over the past eight months, and in my life as it stands right now, all the more poignant and sad. This country is poised to nominate the first Black man for the highest elected office in our land. This should be a cause for national celebration, introspection– an affirmation of a collective national pride unprecedented in the history of our nation. That many support Hillary or McCain should not detract from what’s happening here. We have gone from 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow to witnessing the first Black person not only aspiring to the nation’s highest office, but having a real and credible chance of actually achieving it.  At the risk of channeling Oprah:  This is big.

My grandmother was born in 1908. Her daughter, now age 77, still lives. Now her daughter’s daughter and her great-grandson, age 24– three generations– together are witnessing the triumph of the resolute and resilient, ever hopeful Black American spirit. Hell, yeah, I’m saying it loud. I’m shouting it from the roof tops. I’m Black. And I’m proud.  I am an American.

*Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)

Uh! Your bad self!

Say it loud! I’m black and I’m proud
Say it louder! I’m black and I’m proud
Look a-here!

Some people say we got a lot of malice, some say it’s a lotta nerve
But I say we won’t quit movin’ until we get what we deserve
We’ve been buked and we’ve been scourned
We’ve been treated bad, talked about as sure as you’re born
But just as sure as it take two eyes to make a pair, huh!
Brother we can’t quit until we get our share

Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud
Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud
One more time, say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud, huh!

I’ve worked on jobs with my feet and my hands
But all the work I did was for the other man
And now we demands a chance to do things for ourselves
We tired of beatin’ our head against the wall
An’ workin’ for someone else

Say it loud! I’m black and I’m proud
Say it loud! I’m black and I’m proud
Say it loud! I’m black and I’m proud
Say it loud! I’m black and I’m proud, oh!

Ooh-wee, you’re killin’ me
Alright, uh, you’re out of sight!
Alright, so tough you’re tough enough!
Ooh-wee uh! you’re killin’ me! oow!

Say it loud! I’m black and I’m proud
Say it louder! I’m black and I’m proud

Now we demand a chance to do things for ourselves
We tired of beatin’ our heads against the wall
And workin’ for someone else look a-here
There’s one thing more I got to say right here
Now, now we’re people, we’re like the birds and the bees
We rather die on our feet than keep livin’ on our knees

Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud huh!
Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud huh!
Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud Lord-a, Lord-a, Lord-a
Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud, ooh!

Uh! alright now, good God
You know we can do the boogaloo

© DYNATONE PUBLISHING CO

Lyrics provided by Gracenote

Craig Kilborn

I guess this is what you’d call a turn down day. Nothing’s on my mind. I expected my first unemployment check but it did not arrive. I expected it to be for two weeks but it’s only going to be for one. I’m encouraging myself and keeping busy even as the specter of Job’s wife (…curse God and die!!!)* is beginning to loom,  but I say No.., No.., No!

Another bother– I have been sitting and sitting in front of this computer and I realize I have a block. Could it be I’m not unhappy enough? Are there more words to express sorrow and pain than joy and happiness? I gave this some thought and now I have a theory. Sad and painful feelings need release and so these unleash a torrent of words, while happiness is its own release. Kind of like how the human body’s immune system gets rid of foreign matter it encounters.

Obviously, I am concerned about many things at this time, yet I don’t feel down hearted. In fact my thoughts have been sort of nonsensical. I thought about Craig Kilborn today. Craig Kilborn. Why? But since he has come inexplicably into mind, it begs the obvious question: Where in the world is Craig Kilborn? Anybody remember him?

Once upon a time he was the host of The Late, Late Show. He was sooo funny and not in that sophomoric, (well, ok, maybe just a tad sophomoric),  sorta sight gag, noisy, slap stick, pleading-for-a-laugh kinda way. His show was hip, his material and delivery fresh and caustic, and at 6ft 4′ he was a tall, lean, cool drink-a-water. Not to mention funny. I mentioned he was funny, right?

I went online and googled him. I was surprised there’s not that much out there on the Craiger. I didn’t expand my search to YouTube, though. I found out one thing I did not know: Jon Stewart was not the first and only host of The Daily Show. Craig Kilborn was. He left The Daily Show when David Letterman hired him for The Late, Late Show gig.

Now, I watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He’s all right. I dislike his silly, annoying, girly giggle and his sorta mug-for-the camera approach to comedy. He’s sorta one note. It’s the peripheral cast members of the show who really bring it like Rob Riggle and that guy who also does the Apple commercials, and the guy with the British accent, and the adorable and funny Samantha Bee.

On a scale of 1-10, his turn as host of the Oscar telecast this year was a three. He was too in awe of the audience, not relaxed and irreverent like Ellen. He’s a good interviewer, though. Sharp.  Observant.  Smart.  I think he’s stronger as a political pundit. But I digress…

I figured out why I’m OK. Again. Even this trivial discovery was a learning experience. I experienced the same spike of exhilaration over this as I do anytime l learn something new. As long as you’re learning new things you never feel overwhelmed by self-doubt which leads to uncertainty which leads to insecurity, which leads to preoccupation with self, which leads to depression which leads to botox, pilates and an unhealthy attitude towards food. Or too many shoes.

Concern yourself more with the wrinkles on your brain, not your face.  Make that change.  Decide to become a lifelong learner and you’ll never feel let down. Oh, and a nice, brisk, daily forty minute walk doesn’t hurt either.  Yep, I’m back in the walking groove!

I heard Joel Osteen say “Even if you’re on the right track, if you sit down long enough, you will get run over.” Get it?  I say a change will do you good**.

*Job 2:9

**A Change (Will Do You Good)/Sheryl Crow

Summer And The City

Well it’s June. Kids are counting down the days to summer vacation. You’re looking forward to the heat, the sun, the sand, the surf. Not me. The bugs, the humidity, the sweating, the traffic, the crowds. Ughh. I was never a sun worshipper. I tend to soak in sun and get really dark in the summer. I don’t look quite like myself to me.

I prefer it cold. I’m physically more comfortable when it’s cold. More active, more energetic, more attractive. My mood is better. I like to pile on clothes, not take them off.  I also love weather.  Rain and snow; the marvelous diversity of the change in seasons.  

What on earth am I doing here in Southern California? My son has found his niche and is thriving. I feel unsettled and lost. I can go for months without ever seeing another Black person. Since I have been here, I have never worked or been in an office where I was not the only black person there. At my last assignment, a company that boasts its having been in business since 1911, I was the only Black person there. I was not a staff employee so the company actually employs, in 2008, not one Black American descendant of slaves. 

I can go to almost any public place here and count on one hand how many Blacks I see alternatively enjoying the space as much as everyone present there is. On Thursday, I decided I was going to start these two business, but today I began to worry about the racial “climate” here. Where are all the Black people in North County, California? Or is North County the region of San Diego time and experience has taught Blacks to avoid?

My son lives and works in San Diego. I live 40 miles north in North County. In New York, Blacks know what sections of the city are comfortable and safe and what sections of the city it’s best to avoid. It’s like that everywhere you go in this country, but I have never encountered the level of resistance I experience now so thinly veiled and so close to the surface it cannot be disguised. I can feel it.

I knew I was in trouble at my last assignment whenever I found myself in the same room as the owner and company namesake. A customer service rep who had worked for the company ten years had tendered his resignation. Company employees gathered in a common area for an afternoon send off for him. Whenever I caught the owner staring at me, he would quickly divert his eyes. I experienced the same behavior at the Halloween gathering and again at the Christmas gathering. The familiar internal flashing red lights and alarm bells immediately went off at each occurrence. In December I notified the placement agency of my fears but I allowed myself to stay there and endure. Gas is $3.98 a gallon here. I prayed time would work its usual healing magic, but I was wrong as you all well know.

I am always stunned when I hear stuff like this:

“I want to believe that the subtle racism that comes from ignorance and a lack of human contact with black people is the most common form of racism in America. That is not so bad, relatively speaking. Once people like that actually get to know some people of different races, they tend to change their tune real quick.

But, if it’s more sinister than that, and it seems to be (at least in some places), then it makes me (at least on this issue) ashamed of my country. We haven’t done enough. I don’t know what else to do, exactly, but something is wrong.”

http://saij.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/obama-virginia-and-racism-in-america

I actually have to glance at the calendar to make sure it’s still 2008 not 1978.

I like the home I have made for myself here. I like this neighborhood and this community. I like my rituals and routines. I don’t want to move. The problem is most insidious because it specifically targets employment practices here and the lack of opportunities extended toward Blacks. I have not experienced any problems in any other essential area of life.

Well it’s June and it’s official.  I have been out of work a solid month.  Summer is almost officially here. For many, it means rest, relaxation and fun in the sun. It means a week or two respite from a job. As for me it looks like it’s going to be another long hot summer in America’s Finest City.  That’s just the way it is*.

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