National Voter Registration Day - September 23rd

I considered registering to vote to be a part of an important rite of passage and because of the stories my Southern, Depression-era father somberly told whenever the mood struck him, I took the entire process a little too seriously.  I knew it was a drop in the bucket of electoral votes but I wanted to believe that my drop somehow mattered, that I mattered.  I wanted to be a part of the process. I didn't think I had any right to bitch about the system if I didn't vote.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that for the powers that be to fight this hard to disenfranchise so many, voting must count for something.  This is the epitome of institutional racism: that the white people who are in power would create laws that would make it as difficult as possible for the poor, the marginalized and people who are of color to vote.  Every state is its own little kingdom, creating its own set of hoops and hurdles that everyone must unravel and traverse.  It's extremely difficult have a voter registration drive in Texas.  I have to show a birth certificate to register to vote in Kansas.  If I lose my house in Florida -- and let's face it, everyone is losing their house in Florida! -- I lose my right to vote. Lots of people -- the elderly, for example -- don't have government issued photo IDs or a driver's license.  And if I'm an ex-felon that's paid my debt to society and if I'm in Iowa, I am permanently disenfranchised.  Is it a surprise that only 70% of those who are eligible have  registered?

As an African-American that's two generations removed from slavery, I'm not big on state's rights.  As far as I'm concerned, this is the part where the federal government should step in and regulate most of this stuff -- and that's not bloodly likely. 

They're making it hard for us. Don't make it easy for them.  Know your rights. Register to vote.  And then, yes -- vote.

To register to vote online, click here.

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How To Deal With The Police -- A Cheat Sheet

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. ” -- James Baldwin

I have been stopped by the police on numerous occasions for absolutely no reason whatsoever.  Usually they back off when they realize I'm not the black woman they were looking for. Or expecting. Or something. Jedi mind tricks don't always work, though. The last time this happened to me was in the subway at Times Square awhile ago. I had walked through an open exit door with a herd of midwestern tourists at rush hour because the turnstiles were faulty.  I was repeatedly told that the condition of the turnstiles didn't matter. What I did was wrong. None of those tourists were detained, of course.  When I pointed this out, they ignored me. 

The first thing they did was put my name in the system.  The disappointment they felt when nothing came up was nearly tangible.  They gave me a summons, anyway -- with the hope that I'd pay the fine and be done with it. Problem is, I refused to pay the fine and I wanted the whole thing expunged. I contested it and spent the next 6 months unraveling gobs of red tape in one Waiting for Godot take-a-number-and-wait situation after another until finally a random person behind a desk turns off the tape recorder in the middle of The Interview That Settled This Whole Thing and tells me off the record that I was right, the cops were wrong and they were probably hoping I wouldn't follow through so I'd be in the system. That's the kicker: if my name came up at all in the system, that would have meant that the cops could cuff me and take me downtown immediately -- no questions asked.

Apparently, once you're in the system, you're screwed.

Any cop that stops me had better have a bloody fantastic reason for doing so because if he doesn't, I will roast him whole. Here's my super-short list of what you should know if they stop you:

1. If the police stop you in New York, you don't have to show them your ID -- unless you're driving.
2. If you're being detained by a cop, he can't hold you for more than 20 minutes and he can't search through your stuff.
3. You can film the police as long as you don't interfere with what they're doing. And yes, EVERYONE should film the police. 

I'm fairly certain that Marlene Pinnock is grateful to David Diaz for shooting the video of that California Highway Patrol officer straddling her MMA style and pounding her in the face with his fists. Even Fox News couldn't justify this one -- and you know they tried. I hope they sue that cop into oblivion. Or at least an early retirement.

Drinking Junk Food: No More Soft Drinks!

I gave up soft drinks for Lent, which wasn't difficult. Those extra cans of Coke (from the Chinese delivery guy! Yay!) are stocked up in the back of the fridge, waiting for visitors to drink them.  I'd pretty much signed off on sodas awhile ago, once I started eating clean and reading labels habitually. I stopped drinking Kool-Aid and flavored drinks when I was a kid. Thankfully, diet sodas never did it for me. There's no real sweet tea up here, either. Thank God. I love sweet tea.

It's bigger than any of that, though. I don't live in a part of the country where it's understood that I will get free refills of the soda of my choosing in my gigantic quart container of a Big Gulp from places like 7-11 -- and keep it within easy reach, whether I'm at my desk or in my car. 

This sounds excessive but it's true: Americans drink roughly 50 gallons of soda per person per year.  That's a LOT of sugar -- and/or high fructose corn syrup, which is basically the devil. The soft drink industry knows that people are drinking less soda these days, which is probably why they're all manufacturing bottled water now.  Shockingly, it's just purified tap water. (Brita water bottle, anyone?)

Old habits die hard, though. I'd have a Coke if a bacon cheeseburger was an option. And although burgers haven't been on my menu for awhile, I wouldn't rule them out if I were flying the Japanese flag.

I don't know why I've become so curious about what happens to the body when certain things are consumed.  Maybe I'm turning into a kind of Howard Hughes, of sorts.  If my great-grandparents didn't eat it, neither do I.  The truth is, I've been a pretty good egg, so far -- I don't smoke (never did), I wear sunscreen (always have) and I exercise (I love boxing).  At this point, I  don't want to consume any toxins or carcinogens, if I can help it.  Not eating anything that contains cancer-causing chemicals, contaminants, GMOs or preservatives is a pretty good start -- but that's kind of huge because they're in everything.  If you eat bread from Subway, you're eating a yoga mat. And it's not just Subway, either. Check this list of over 500 products and 130 brands to see if you've been eating azodicarbonamide -- otherwise known as ADA -- the same chemical that makes flip flops. Needless to say, this chemical is banned in Europe and Australia.  No wonder the food tastes so good in other countries.

Do I love baked Chee-tos? Of course.  Do I want to try to drive a car with my feet? Absolutely. At the end of the day, it's just not a good idea. Old habits die hard but they are dying.  None of this is easy for me. Every bite of food is a struggle. 

I wasn't down with Bloomberg's ban on large sodas. The bottom line is, we all make our own choices -- and after a certain age, you work hard to get your great body and your good health, period. You probably shouldn't blame God for your lousy health and whatever diseases come with that when you've spent most of your entire adult life drinking, smoking, not exercising and/or eating garbage.

FLOTUS is right. Drink more water!

Over the past few weeks, I've made it a habit to drink a quart of water to wake myself up every day.  I can definitely feel a difference. (Then again, it could be this stuff.)  

The First Lady's initiative seems to be working and it's nice that everyone's making an effort to get hydrated. Still and all, did we push for water consumption before it was bottled and sold by all the major soft drink retailers? When I was a kid, wearing myself out playing with my siblings/cousins/neighbors kids and whatnot, the water from the hose in the backyard was good enough.  Or the kitchen sink.  Now everyone's got their favorite bottled brand or they've got a filtered pitcher in the fridge. When I was a kid, I thought water was free -- until my Daddy got the water bill, and then I knew that everything has a price.

Hardly any of us are getting all the water we need.  The $64,000 question is, how much water is that? 

The truth is, we're healthier without sodas and sugary drinks. Want to lose weight?  Drinking water every day instead of everything else you've been having -- Diet Coke, cocktails, lemonade, juices and the like -- will knock off several pounds a week.  It's nice to know that when it's time to reach for a bottle of water, we'll still be keeping those soft drink retailers in business. 

Black History: Pause and Reflect

This is a beautiful way to make historical facts into art. Jess Bachman created this meditative work as a means to pause and reflect on our history. It's not meant to cover everything by any far stretch of the imagination, but it touches on quite a few hotspots. 

My first thought was that slavery really didn't happen that long ago.  We weren't supposed to survive the trauma of the middle passage.  Slavery should have wiped us out. Reconstruction decimated us from the inside out -- and somehow we survived it all, miraculously...

Alive in the Dead of Winter

 

"Pride of race is the antidote to prejudice." -- Arthur Schomburg

Happy Black History Month -- for whatever its worth.  There's almost always a ton of activities, exhibits, workshops, family outings, concerts and goings-on in any African-American community to celebrate who we are. On second thought, I don't know any black folk who don't do this every day in every way, on their own terms.  Every day is Black History Month in my world.  No blurbs in the media, though.  I'm not so sure Black History Month is for us, nowadays. Perspective is a funny thing. But that's a whole other conversation.

There's a great deal of beauty and safety in all this snow and cold.  It's a great time for unbridled productivity and quiet reflection and solace. What with all these layers I'm wearing, I can hide in plain sight, get things done, finish up old business, work on fresh ideas and let something new take root, and oversleep when the mood overtakes me.  The good news at the moment is, my (years-long!) makeover  has almost reached some sort of glorious end.  (Yes, that's right -- years long. Extensive dental work takes time, folks.  And it ain't cheap.) I'm losing weight, my hair is growing like crazy and I'm getting my teeth fixed.  The more progress I see, the more patience I have.  The banjo isn't getting any easier but thankfully, fingerpicking is.  One thing is glaringly obvious -- It's time for me to get on my grind, while it's still the dead of winter.

Now that I'm starting to see the light at the end of at least one of the tunnels I'll have to run through to get to where I'm going, it's time. It's time to start working out like a straight beast. It's time to release my Black Americana album.  It's time to get more gigs, book a European tour, do a residency and yes, another showcase.  It's time to edit my closets and declutter this apartment and do a severe amount of spring cleaning.  It's time to learn my intervals. 

Joan Crawford was right. Life is discipline.

When it's time to do anything, you have to do your homework.  I really like this infographic, in part because when you're working on a corporate plantation, every interview question has a well-curated answer if you dig carefully enough.  Then again, I suppose that's any question.  

Here's to a year of straight answers.

Food = Medicine

I call myself a meat-eating vegetarian because once upon a time, I used to eat the world and truth be told, that was a fun way to live. Nowadays, I realize that my stomach has quite literally turned on me. If I want to stay lean and strong and have a lot of physical energy, and if I want to sing like a bird, I simply can't eat whatever I want, whenever I want.  I came to a fork in the road: either I could eat healthfully and mindfully or I could let myself go and eat with abandon. I've chosen the former but I'm certainly not immune to the latter, especially if I'm traipsing through the Southland.

I had to rethink my relationship with food -- and because of this country's propensity towards genetically engineered foods and the industry's refusal to label them, I've had to relearn the basics. I've made a lot of mistakes along the way. I've definitely had plenty of teachable moments that had me slowing down and listening to my body and readjusting when things didn't work. Learning to eat clean is a process. It took a few times to grow good habits and make them stick, and thankfully, they are sticking. The easiest things to let go of are corn, soy, breads, white rice and junk food. The hardest things to give up are salt and sugar -- because basically, they're in everything.

I'm starting to do bits of research here and there on the free radical theory of aging -- that is, we age because free radicals damage cells over time.  Free radicals are everywhere and they damage everything. Your body produces free radicals when it breaks down food, for example.  As the theory goes, antioxidants can combat and defeat free radicals. Where do you get those? In the food you eat! There are some foods that have more antioxidants than others. They are called superfoods. Eating clean forces me to eat nothing but superfoods -- which contain everything you need for optimum health and weight loss.

Like I said, this is an ongoing process for me. I never went whole hog with fast food so it hasn't been that much of a struggle -- it's not like I had to lose 100 lbs -- but still, it's taken a great deal of effort for me to stop eating anything that's processed.  There are moments when I fall off but for the most part, I've created good habits for myself and radically changed my relationship to food and how I eat.

Onward and upward, folks.

Happy Columbus Day? Really?

Why anyone would openly celebrate Cristopher Columbus -- a money-grubbing pedophile, a rapist and the absolute definition of a genocidal maniac -- is beyond me.  So much misinformation has been dumped into the our educational DNA about him for so long that his "accomplishments" are some of the first bits of history that are collectively learned by rote (kind of like George Washington and that cherry tree) and hardly ever considered.  And then one day, you open a well-researched biography and are shocked beyond reason that Columbus is anyone's hero.

How can our leaders think that this country embodies freedom and justice and anything that's good when genocide is openly celebrated?  I know, I know -- there's a bad side to every historical figure. But this is pure evil. 

Can you imagine Germans celebrating Adolph Hitler with parades and festivals and whatnot? Unthinkable, right? Yet I've had conversations with Germans who have declared privately that Adolph wasn't all bad. He fixed the economy which was in ruins after World War I, he rebuilt the military, he united a nation, he built the Autobahn...

But I digress.

I don't think they're going to cancel on Columbus Day because it's a federal holiday and that would involve way too much hoopla and paperwork and whatnot.  I mean, have they ever undone a federal holiday? Is there a precedent for that?  If they did pull it off, it would go over like a lead balloon. Columbus Day is celebrated in South America, too. I wonder how Columbus Day celebrations are going in the Dominican Republic right about now.

Should Cortez the Killer have his own holiday, too?

I'm hopeful that in time, it'll turn into a holiday with no absolutely no participants. No parade attendees. No celebrations.  We'll all take the day off and stay in and watch Fellini movies. And Italians can throw themselves a party over something else.

In the meantime, get thee to a bookstore or a library if you're really broke (no excuses, folks) and dig into something on this reading list:

1. They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America by Ivan van Sertima That's right, Italian white folks -- Africans were here way before the Vikings. (Ka-BOOM.)
2. 1493: Uncovering The New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann
3. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (This one is a basic.)
4. A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle (This is a very accessible, beautiful and ultracool graphic novel, an absolute must-read.)
5. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen

...and in the spirit of a perpetual visual education for all, here's a video from howcast that sums up the Columbus Controversy neatly and a comic from The Oatmeal that breaks Columbus all the way down to some ugly truths.

Black Don't Crack, Part Four -- A Parting Thought: Eat (and topically apply) Your Antioxiants!

 "There are no ugly women -- only lazy ones." - Coco Chanel

Let's review, shall we?

With Black Don't Crack Part One, I told you to wear sunscreen if you want beautiful, wrinkle-free skin. In Black Don't Crack Part Two, I told you not to smoke.  (Anything!)  And in Black Don't Crack Part Three, I told you not to drink alcohol. There's more stuff I could have mentioned -- like how chronic stress ages you like crazy and so does ghetto miasma for that matter -- but I wanted to cut to the chase and hit the highlights.  Correct me if I'm wrong but I think I've done just that.

With a minimal amount of toxins and carcinogens actively damaging your system and a daily intake of antioxidants improving your overall health by leaps and bounds, you're on your way to agelessness -- the point at which you (subconsciously) pick a year (35, let's say), hit your stride, stop the clock and maintain that ageless equilibrium for the rest of your life.  The choice is entirely yours.

I don't believe that I have to get a heart attack when I reach a certain age or that I have to slow down when I get old.  I don't think that cancer is inevitable.  I don't think wrinkles are inevitable, either.  There are moments when I feel as though I'm fighting against my physical self -- like when I'm learning something new in boxing class and my arms just won't obey me -- but the truth is, my body is not my enemy.  Or at least, it doesn't have to be. If I take care of it, it will take care of itself and ultimately, it will take care of me.

This is the level of discipline as a way of life that Eartha Kitt lived with such conviction. She wasn't about getting it together when she got cast in a role. She was every inch the star and she lived it every day -- but then again, she smoked cigarettes and drank socially.  Joan Crawford was another star whose self-discipline was legendary, and who also smoked cigarettes and enjoyed her martinis. For me, there's Annette Larkins -- my number one eat clean inspiration. I am in awe of her.

My skin doesn't look this good because I'm black. It looks this good because I work at it.

I've spent my whole life not drinking, not smoking, staying out of the sun and steering clear of eating fast food and garbage. Don't get me wrong -- I love to eat all that stuff, but it doesn't love me. I have taken care of my skin religiously since college -- with excellent products, monthly facials and gobs of sunscreen. I have fought the good fight and hit the gym on a daily basis so I wouldn't all of a sudden turn into a giant lard ass.  Every season, if I can't get back into the clothes I've got in my closet, I pretty much work out obsessively until I can wear all of it. I'm getting restless, though. Time to find another hobby to physically exhaust me. (Hm. Maybe gymnastics!)

The bottom line is, I want a great quality of life. For some people, that means drinking, smoking, sunbathing and doing some pretty fun drugs. For me, that means that I'll give up those things to have a healthy, lean, strong body to run around in -- and someday when I'm 60, the world will assume that I couldn't possibly be any older than 32.  Apparently, I'm off to a great start.

Now stop wondering how old that black woman is -- you know, the one whose body is so lean and fit, and whose wrinkle-free skin looks so incredible whenever you see her --  and get to work.

 

Black Don't Crack, Part Three: Yes, it does -- if you drink alcohol!

Wrinkles! There isn't a soul on the planet that's looking forward to getting those creases all over their bodies  -- but there are very few of us who are willing to do the work that it takes to make sure they don't show up in the first place.  Doing the work means ridding your life of all toxins and carcinogens and taking exercise seriously enough to do it every day.

You're probably thinking, sure -- everybody drinks and gets trashed once in awhile. Everybody smokes cigarettes, smokes pot, smokes all kinds of stuff. Everybody eats fast food. Everybody has a personal list of vegetables that they just don't like -- and even if you don't, it's not that easy to eat healthfully or organically.  Except that's not true -- everybody doesn't do those things.  Some people never do. If you happen to be one of those people and if you exercise and slather yourself with sunscreen and antioxidants -- and eat your antioxidants, too -- congratulations are definitely in order. You have stopped the clock.

In Black Don't Crack: Part One, I emphatically declared that the world should wear sunscreen. In Black Don't Crack: Part Two, I stated the obvious and said don't smoke.  Here I go again, stating the obvious: DON'T DRINK ALCOHOL.

Surprise! Alcohol -- even in moderate amounts -- isn't good for your skin or the rest of your body, either. You probably already knew that but look at it this way: your skin is your largest organ, so if there's something wrong with you, its probably going to show up on your skin first. Alcohol -- in moderate amounts, believe it or not -- depletes your body of essential nutrients, like vitamin A for example, which helps to make collagen and new skin cells.  A lack of vitamin A means less collagen -- the stuff that makes your skin beautiful -- and that means your skin will look older and age faster.

And while you're at it, you might want to lay off the soda and sugary drinks, too.

I don't drink. When I was in high school, it wasn't an option.  When I was in college, I never got trashed every weekend. I just wasn't that girl. When I first got to New York City, I had a drink -- and I didn't like it.  Last fall, I had my first beer after a gig in Stuttgart. I didn't like that, either -- but that didn't keep me from taking the glass home as a souvenir.

Yeah, and MPB is an ex-bartender. Go figure.

Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.

Next? Antioxidants and why you need them in my last blogpost in this series Black Don't Crack, Part Four: A Parting Thought -- Eat (and topically apply) Your Antioxidants!

Obamacare vs The Affordable Care Act

It's not surprising that so many people in that video clip don't know that Obamacare is a nickname for the Affordable Care Act.  Most of the people that they catch off guard on camera with this man on the street schtick don't know who their representatives are in Congress, either.  Or who Louis Armstrong is, or what Cinco de Mayo means, or lots of other stuff that's fairly basic and slap-your-forehead ridiculous and yes, embarassing.  That's the joke, right? Stupid people say the craziest things! You watch it and think, no wonder the rest of the world thinks Americans are idiots and then you move on to whatever is next.

What's especially disturbing -- and yes, cringe-worthy -- about this video is that clearly, the subjects express a dislike for Obamacare because of their patent dislike of Obama, yet they fully support the Affordable Care Act.  One of them even went so far as to say that Obamacare is socialism. (Impressive, right?) All of it smells racist to me, but then again, I suppose this is what happens when most of the country gets their misinformation from Fox News or some other neo-conservative Republican aggregate.  Unfortunately, fear-mongering is big business and simply flat-out believing what you're told never goes out of style.

Once in the not to distant future when everyone in this country has healthcare, once wellness becomes a part of the fabric of our ordinary lives and seeing a doctor for a serious illness isn't something that has to bankrupt you, once everyone realizes that Obamacare is the Affordable Care Act, we will all collectively wonder how we ever went this long without this plan -- and why anyone would think to oppose it.

Think of it -- getting ongoing medical attention for a potentially serious illness won't mean financial ruin.  Its almost inconceivable, really.  And then you look at healthcare in places like Europe and Scandanavia, and realize it's a first world dream come true.

I was a sick American in Dresden recently.  It was wonderful. If you'd like to read all about it, click here.

Black Don't Crack, Part One: Yes it does -- if you don't use sunscreen!

There are some who desperately need to believe that the saying black don't crack! is true.  I can't even begin to tell you how many white women have gushed over my skin and told me their age in an effort to get me to tell mine (and of course i don't tell them any such thing) -- all while declaring emphatically that age doesn't matter, and demanding to know my secret: Why does my skin look so good?

After all, there should be a very simple reason as to why none of us are that old -- and yet some of us have way too many wrinkles and some of us don't have any.

The truth is, black really doesn't crack -- but actually, yes it does.

As it turns out, if those with black skin aren't careful, that skin will most definitely cave in on you.  There are a garden variety of relatively young, scabbed over, rachet-faced black drug addicts all over creation that prove my point -- like the gentleman below.

As this picture clearly shows, t doesn't matter how much melanin you have if you don't take care of what you've got. So what's the deal? 

My secret is, there is no secret.  If you want wrinkle free skin, you must eat clean, live clean and find some form of excercise you love and let it wear you out every single day.  That's right: you have to get all -- and I mean ALL -- toxins and carcinogens out of your life and you have to work that body on a daily basis, hard. And that's pretty much it.


Everybody can pull it off when they're young for the most part but after a certain age, I realized that if I wanted to look a certain way, I'd have to work for it.  This commitment to my physical well-being has required a great deal of sacrifice, effort and discipline. Thankfully, my COGIC upbringing gave me a great foundation for clean living. That, combined with the necessary maintenance and upkeep of a performing artist and voila!  Solid results.

And another thing...

Everyone has melanin. It gives your hair and your eyes their color and it protects human beings from the sun's harmful UV rays. The more melanin you have in your skin, the more protection from the sun you get.  If you don't have any and if you need it, your skin will supply it for you. That's basically what a tan is: your skin in panic mode, struggling to create melanin to protect you from the sun.  Believe it or not, a tan is a sign of damaged skin.  The deeper your tan, the more protection you needed in that sun-drenched moment of panic, the more damage you've got. If you're in the George Hamilton camp and enjoy a deep, dark tan year-round, don't be surprised when your skin takes on the look of a well-worn leather handbag before you hit 40.

My first rule of thumb is, I WEAR SUNSCREEN.

The sun causes 90% of skin damage. The other 10% is due to aging. That's right -- skin cancers, fine lines, coarse wrinkles, brown spots, freckles, loss of elasticity, dullness, sallowness, that leathery texture -- all of that comes from sun exposure. Spending time in the sun with no protection from UV rays is just plain toxic. So are tanning beds.  And don't let those fancy skin cream companies fool you.  Once the sun damages your skin, it cannot be undone.

 Yes, you need sunlight to process vitamin D in your body -- but according to experts, only 20 to 30 minutes a day will do the trick.

The best way to prevent sun damage? Sunscreen.  I started wearing sunscreen fastidiously in the oppressive Texas heat as an undergrad in Austin.  Truth is, I was probably the only black girl on campus that did so, and black folk made sure they gave me hell for it.  I didn't care. I knew the benefits and I stuck to my routine.

I still slather it on all the time -- whether it's summer or winter, whether it's sunny outside or completely overcast.

Knowing basic facts about how the sun could age me made me take care of my skin religiously and fight to stay out of the sun. Starting early and being ultra-disciplined about skin care is key. After all, its the human body's largest organ -- and if something is wrong with you, that's usually the place where it shows up. 

The photo on the left displays the subject under normal lighting. The photo on the right is using ultraviolet lighting, revealing subsurface spots and skin damage.

If you haven't seen this picture, take a good long look: A 69-year-old man presented with a 25-year history of gradual, asymptomatic thickening and wrinkling of the skin on the left side of his face. The physical examination showed hyperkeratosis with accentuated ridging, multiple open comedones, and areas of nodular elastosis... The patient reported that he had driven a delivery truck for 28 years. Ultraviolet A (UVA) rays transmit through window glass, penetrating the epidermis and upper layers of dermis. Chronic UVA exposure can result in thickening of the epidermis and stratum corneum, as well as destruction of elastic fibers. This photoaging effect of UVA is contrasted with photocarcinogenesis.

Of course, the other part of this is that I use excellent moisturizers, creams and anti-aging products on my skin that contain plenty of antioxidants. I also eat my antioxidants, too -- and high-octane vitamins.  (More on that in my next post.)

30 Days of Birthday: Day 8 - Carcinogens and Toxins, Part 1

i don't know what happened to me. all of a sudden, i want to get all of the toxins and carcinogens out of my life, toot sweet. the thing is, i'm not sure what has to go. i didn't wallow in alcohol, i never smoked cigarettes and recreational drugs didn't become this ritualistic habit that everyone else has embraced. i maintained that stance in my post-college adult life because as an actor and vocalist, my body is my instrument and it's maintenance and upkeep is a full time job -- especially as i transition to on-camera work. (for more on that process, click here.)

in my perpetual search for the best sunscreen i can get my hands on (yes, it's european), i began to do research on toxins and carcinogens -- the things that poison so many of us on a daily basis, a little bit at a time, from the inside out. what i discovered was more than a little disturbing.

the one ingredient that really freaked me out was sulfates - and yes, there are hundreds of varieties. once upon a time, everyone made their own soap. then in the 1930s, someone put sulfates in soap (and lots of other products we use on our bodies, like toothpaste) to make them sudsier. and it worked - but it also tended to dry out the skin and hair.  nowadays, more than 90 percent of shampoos and body washes contain sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) -- widely known as a skin irritant -- or sodium laureth sulfate (SLES).  this stuff is linked to premature baldness, enviornmental cancers, cataract formation, contact dermatitis and more. it's in baby products, too. (yeesh.)

this infographic sums up quite a lot. in the meantime, i'm going to go through all the products i use on my body to make sure that they're sulfate, silicone and surfactant free.

happy chinese new year!

Gong Hey Fat Choy!

this is the year of the snake. in china, snakes are also known as little dragons, so it seems more than appropriate that 2012 was the year of the dragon -- the yin to this year's yang. this is the year of the black water snake to be exact, according to the chinese five element astrology calendar -- more specifically, the black water snake of the wetlands. the literal translation is, the year of the snake in the grass. because calling it the year of the snake doesn't sound nearly as menacing or morose as it should, now does it.

actually, it's a little deeper than that.

chinese astronomy has a 60 year cycle that contains five 12 year cycles, with a different animal assigned to each year and a 5 element astrology calendar that seamlessly dovetails with each animal. these are two separate cycles that interact with each other. that's why you'll see every animal once every 12 years -- but you won't see that specific combination of animal and element for 60 years. not since 1953 have water and snake combined.

in china, black is the color of water (and heaven!), the element that corresponds this year with the snake, which contains mostly fire.  (hm. sounds volatile. should be an interesting year.)  in western culture, snakes are considered to be fairly malevolent and to some they are the epitome of evil. not surprisingly, in many asian nations, snakes are considered to be good luck.  luck is a funny thing, culturally. for example, the number 13 is lucky in china, too. the digit 1 when positioned in tens sounds like the word definite (shi) in mandarin and dialects like cantonese, while the digit 3 sounds like life or giving birth. so the number 13 can mean definitely living or vibrant, or assured growth.

see? it's all a mattter of context, now isn't it.

As everyone weighs in on what kind of a year this will be -- the annual feng shui index is remarkably accurate, they say --  and everyone else overeats their way into oblivion (hi, jane!), here's a handy visual aide for the rest of us.

            
          

                What Will The Year Of The Water Snake Mean For You? infographic

(Source!)             

            
            
            
        

student loans and debt slavery: is it worth it?

if you're anything like me, you need more than a flow chart to get through this mess called the student loan industry.  you need a financial aid expert, a compass, a seeing eye dog. whatever it takes. and yes, it is an industry. hard to believe -- astonishing, actually -- that education is free in much of europe and the rest of the world. it would be easy to have a beautiful life if you didn't have to live through most of it as a debt slave.

frankly, taking out a student loan sounds like modern day sharecropping to me. the real question: is the degree i'll earn worth the debt i may find myself in when i graduate?