“What one does realize is that when you try to stand up and look the
world in the face like you had a right to be here, without knowing that
this is the result of it, you have attacked the entire power structure
of the Western world.” -- James Baldwin
“Apathy gets you the government we have today.” – Gil Sery
When I was a kid, all the Southern black folk around me took their civic responsibilities very seriously. Election Day was a solemn moment, one fraught with a reckoning to the past and the full understanding that once upon a time, the simple act of casting your ballot in a local election could get you and perhaps your entire family killed, or at least run out of town on a rail. To vote was to stand shoulder to shoulder with those who couldn't -- and I figured if the powers that be were going to work this hard to keep me from doing something, I should do it. Voting became synonymous with adulthood. I would couldn't wait to grow up so I could move to New York City, live in Harlem, live the life of an artist (whatever that meant), and vote.
So far, so good.
I can't explain why white women voted for Trump in droves, many of them knowing full well that their vote would have elected Hillary -- and yet they showed up for a record-breaking women's march on Washington, DC the next day.
I suppose I could blame the electoral college. Still and all, I don't know why half the country didn't bother to vote in the last presidential election. I can't tell you why most people don't vote in mid-term elections. I can tell you this: Way too many people genuinely don't care -- and unfortunately, the first sign of bad nutrition is apathy.
I can also tell you that 2018 midterm elections will be fire.
If you want to stick your toe in the water, here's some tasty apps. I'm already at the other side of the pool -- eating clean, running and working on a new song cycle. It's 2018, folks. #GetYourLife!
* General election: November 6, 2018 * State primary: September 11, 2018 * Federal primary: June 26, 2018
Voter -- Matchmaking for Politics! Answer a few simple questions and find out which politicians truly have
your best interests at heart, and have a track record to back it up.
Because advertising is one thing -- but who your favorite politician really is? That's probably something else.
Countable An app that makes it easy to pester your Congress member.
If you'd like to know what your representative is up to in Congress, you can use this handy app to find out. And then you can use the app to contact them directly, tell them how you want them to vote on legislation and you can see their voting record -- so if they're half-baked, you can vote them out in the next election cycle.
"There are people who have money and people who are rich." -- Coco Chanel
In this post-election Christmas season of non-stop shopping, Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales and endless pop culture distractions, there are simple effective ways to use your money to make your voice heard politically. Because buying things -- whether you're shopping for a blouse at Lord & Taylor or eating a hamburger at McDonalds -- is a political act.
If you are anti alt-right, anti-white supremacy, anti white nationalism, anti-hate or anti-Trump, here are a few suggestions on how to put your money where your politics are.
This campaign, initiated by Shannon Coulter and Sue Atencio, has a pretty straightforward missive: If you'd like to hit the Trumps where it hurts them the most, boycott the retailers that carry their merchandise. Their comprehensive list includes contact information to retailers, so you can call and/or email the reasons why you won't be shopping there. Because if people won't buy, they won't sell.
Frankly, if I see something I really like at Nordstrom's, I can usually go online and find it someplace else at a fraction of the cost. This ain't the 80s. We have the internet. So there's that.
2. Donate to anti-hate groups in a hateful person's name.
Are you related to any Trump supporters who vote Republican no matter who's on the ticket? Do you know any bigots? Is your co-worker a racist? Take a tip from John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight and donate to an anti-hate group in their name. What a wonderful Christmas present for that uncle that hates gay people or that white supremacist cousin you grew up with that just joined the Klan.
I love this one. It takes quotes from Trump and matches it with the appropriate charity in a revolving, ever spinning, never-ending roulette of hate speech. With one click, you give $10 and your rage subsides -- until he makes another inflammatory racist remark.
This is an app that let's you vote with your wallet by scanning barcodes while you shop. With one swipe, you can trace a product's corporate family tree and make a more informed consumer decision. And yes, it's free.
Waiting for the supermoon was enough of a minor distraction to pull me out of my post-election doldrums. Then I saw this.
Former
Reaganite and Trump anger translator Jeffrey Lord says Democrats started
the Klu Klux Klan. Understanding the truth behind this statement requires
much more nuance than a
hamfisted shill for Donald Trump is capable of, at least on camera. I
followed the breadcrumbs to where this line originated. As usual, I expected
nothing and I was completely disappointed.
When Bishop E.W. Jackson --
lawyer, staunch Republican, conservative political pundit, former radio talk show host
and ex-marine, amongst other things -- was a nominee for lieutenant governor in
Virginia in 2012, he released a video through his organization S.T.A.N.D.
(Staying True to America's National Destiny) to push an agenda called Exodus
Now.
Bishop Jackson says that
Black people should leave the Democratic party because Democrats are the ones
who started the KKK. In the wake of this claim, Virginia
State Senator Stephen Martin repeated it -- adding that Democrats also
created Planned Parenthood. When Senator Martin realized that there is no
evidence to support his claim regarding Planned Parenthood (or the Klan), he said he
misspoke. By then, the misinformation was out there, parading itself as the truth, and the alt-right was off to the races, embracing this statement
as a call to action.
During the most recent
election cycle, the ads imploring an ethnic mass exodus from the Democratic
party have been nonstop -- from Republicans who declare themselves "the
party of Lincoln", no less. Now, making a statement like "The
Democratic party started the Klan!" is the gigantic turdbomb of epic
proportions that any neo-con can use to dead-end a political discussion. And no
one wants to dismantle it.
A simple fact check and a
brief history lesson proves that this statement is not entirely
true.
Political parties evolve over
time. In the 19th century, they simply didn't exist as we know them
today. Instead of identifying everything and everyone as Republican or
Democrat, it's much more helpful to see where the shift in white supremacy
takes place, and take it from there. Why? Because each party is made up of
people who think a certain way and that's what shapes the party's beliefs and
defines its platform -- not the name of the party itself. Over
time, the white supremacists, racists and bigots have shifted from one party to
another. That's the American way.
As a Southerner and an
African-American woman that's two generations removed from slavery, the
question I ask constantly is this: Which one of you are white supremacists and
what party are you affiliated with now? Political parties are not
stagnant, fixed, immovable. As white supremacists change directions and
affiliations, the parties are redefined. What was liberal is now conservative,
and vice versa.
Yes -- during the 19th
century, Democrats were much more racist than Republicans. Were Klan members
Democrats? In all likelihood, yes -- but the Democratic party didn't start the
KKK. Then the Civil Rights Movement happened, polarizing Southern
Christians against the Democratic party. When African-Americans gained the
right to vote and became Democrats, those white supremacist Southern Christian
became Republicans. In this regard, Republicans weren't a force for civil
rights. For the Dixie-crats who joined their ranks, they were a refuge from
it. Those KKK Democrats are Republicans now -- and celebrating their win
in The White House.
For days after the election, I fielded phone calls and texts and DMs and IMs from friends near and far, offering support, asylum and solid advice. I got a text from my German sibling in Berlin that made me very happy. I've chatted with lots of musicians who say they're not working or associating with anyone who voted for Trump. One friend couldn't stop crying. Another didn't know what to do about her Republican relatives. Because Thanksgiving.
No one wants to spend the holidays with parents who voted for a bigoted, racist white supremacist. No one wants to buy Christmas presents for anyone who put the alt-right in The White House. No one wants to spend any quality time with someone who refuses to acknowledge that by campaigning on hate and fear, Trump created this climate of violence and open hostility against people of color, women, the disabled and LGBTQs. This is what we're left with: everyone getting bullied, even children (it's become a disturbing trend); women getting groped when they least expect it; African-American college students, harassed; and yes, murder.
Like a monkey gleefully flinging it's own excrement, way too many white people are spewing all kinds of racial epithets in every direction and smearing their ignorance all over everything with a fervor that is nothing short of stultifying. A friend in his 50s told me that he didn't recognize his high school friends anymore. He couldn't believe the things they were saying. When I hung up the phone, I remembered that his ex-wife was Jewish. His daughters -- both in college -- were at risk. One of them was in a march somewhere on the west coast and some guy hit her in the head with a rock. He felt helpless, scared. "How do you know who the good guys are?" he asked me. Welcome to my black world, I must have said. Or something like that. And then I laughed. "But she's my Mom," a gay friend whispered tearfully.
"Does she know who Mike Pence is? Does she realize what she's done?" I said flatly.
"Yeah," he said weakly. "She keeps going on about how Trump is going to bring morality back..." And then his voice trailed off. He's a musical theater performer. His husband is a musician. They've got Obamacare. They've got a great life. And it's over. The moon hasn't been this close to the earth since 1948 -- when African-Americans were at the mercy of home-grown terrorism by the Klan (all over the country, not just the South) and the federal government did nothing to stop them. There'll be other supermoons that will make you press pause and look up and wax poetic, but it won't be this close again until 2034 -- and God only knows what this country will be like when that happens. We won't be where we were in 1948 -- but where are we going?
Hopefully, you did something momentous on Sunday night. (If you didn't, tonight is your night.) MPB and I had a mutton chop at Keen's and ate like it's 1889. Then we went for a walk in the moonlight and this depression rose and floated away from me like smoke. By the time I got home, something had shifted. As this new reality sets in and the climate of hate refuses to go away, it'll be interesting to see and hear what your favorite artist has to say about any of this in 2017.
The need to celebrate Columbus Day seems to hinge somewhat precariously
on your (emotional/physical/spiritual) proximity to Italian-American culture. Not surprisingly, San
Francisco has the oldest Columbus Day celebration and New York City has
the biggest. Once I read what he actually did -- from his own journals, no less! -- I had no more of an urge to celebrate Columbus' life or "accomplishments" than Adolph Hitler.
If you think that Columbus deserves a holiday, then so does Stalin. So does Atilla the Hun. Can you imagine? A parade and a paid day off to celebrate Hitler?
Here's some must read stuff.
7 Myths and Atrocities of Christopher Columbus That Will Make You Cringe Here's the one that freaked me out: After several voyages and raping and pillaging, Columbus and his men
grew increasingly depraved. When he was replaced as governor of
Hispaniola and recalled back to Spain in 1500, he wrote in a casual tone of how he provided sex slaves to his men, some of whom were small children as young as 9, for a high price. Death and Taxes called Columbus “the pimp of the New World.”
Spanish accounts describe how they
preferred raping the 10 year olds because they were "tighter."
Women
and girls to rape were handed out as rewards to soldiers for a job well
done. Columbus also ordered the rape of females in front of family
members, daughters in front of the father for example, to break
resistance and spread trauma.
Columbus in his own accounts described how he personally raped a "cannibal girl." In his accounts, he convinced himself the girl enjoyed being raped.
You Are Still Being Lied To: Howard Zinn's "Columbus and Western Civilization" Here's an exerpt: In the standard accounts of Columbus what is emphasized again and again
is his religious feeling, his desire to convert the natives to
Christianity, his reverence for the Bible. Yes, he was concerned about
God. But more about Gold. Just one additional letter. His was a limited
alphabet. Yes, all over the island of Hispaniola, where he, his
brothers, his men, spent most of their time, he erected crosses. But
also, all over the island, they built gallows—340 of them by the year
1500. Crosses and gallows—that deadly historic juxtaposition.
Here's the good news: there are 16 states and counting!) that don't celebrate Columbus Day unofficially. The states Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon, Vermont and South Dakota do not celebrate it at all. Iowa and Nebraska proclaim the day but don't celebrate it as an official holiday (paid day off, post office closed).
Eventually, this holiday will be phased out, state by state -- and just
as it took years to create a national holiday for Martin Luther King Jr,
it will be way too easy to look back and see who will remain forever on on the
wrong side of history.
Our little road trip turned out to be a pretty fun adventure. We got to see Forever Gershwin, which included selections from Porgy and Bess, and later we noshed on sushi with that indefatigable showstopper Norm Lewis as well as the conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra, whose enthusiasm while gliding the orchestra and the 168 person chorale through It Ain't Necessarily So was nothing short of contagious. I must say, it took the top of my head clean off to hear that many people scatting simultaneously. Thrilling, inspiring gut-wrenchingly brilliant stuff. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.
I miss singing in a chorale. More on that some other time.
I had to post this video to give you an idea of what I saw and heard. So lush! I don't know if I could ever get sick of this song...!
A photo posted by Queen Esther (@thisisqueenesther) on
I'd say this newest addition worked out just fine, wouldn't you? I'm just relieved that it fits. There's nothing quite like buying something you can't try on before that point of purchase.
This timely informative nugget is brought to you by MTV Decoded, hosted by the irrepressible Franchesca Ramsey -- and as usual, the hate spewed in the comments section is even more entertaining than the actual video.
"I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves." -- Harriet Tubman
I LOVE Drunk History. This episode describes The Combahee River Raid that freed more than 700 slaves, thanks to Harriet Tubman's brilliant strategies. This show used to be a guilty pleasure but when they're telling the history that's usually ignored -- that is, when the drunk people are giving a more nuanced interpretation of what happened than what's usually taught in schools -- it should give everyone reason to pause, and tune in. This should be required viewing for high school students. Whatever it takes to reach one and teach one, I'm all for it.
In a perfect world, there would be no Black History Month because if you tell the whole story, everyone is in it. The problem is that, like Ben Affleck not facing his slave owning ancestry on PBS' Finding Your Roots by forcing the producers to erase it, Americans can't handle the ugly truth of how this country came to be. Instead, they tell their sanitized version, something they're comfortable with -- and ignore what actually happened. Because white fragility.
You're not supposed to erase history or reimagine it because it makes you uncomfortable.
Until everyone can own their history -- Texas textbooks, anyone? -- Black History Month will be mandatory, for all of us.
If it's one name that gets thrown up in the air whenever it's time to teach black history, it's Harriet Tubman. The sanitized version of her story is nothing in comparison to what actually happened. Context is everything -- especially when its historical.
Here's a few fun facts that offer a glimpse of the real Harriet Tubman.
Her first name is Araminta. Everybody called her Minty.
Click here to read about how white people rented her out as a house slave from the age of five (her first job: winding yarn!) and how, amongst other things, she had to sleep on the kitchen floor at night and share leftover food with the dogs.
Minty was only five feet tall.
When she was an adolescent, Minty was inadvertently hit in the head by a 2 pound weight by her white master for not helping him restrain a runaway slave. It took her years to recover. This caused epileptic seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes that she endured for the rest of her life.
In Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero, Kate Clifford Larson writes: Bleeding and unconscious, she was returned to her owner's house and laid
on the seat of a loom, where she remained without medical care for two
days. She was sent back into the fields, "with blood and sweat rolling
down my face until I couldn't see." Her boss said she was "not worth a sixpence" and returned her to her owner Brodess, who tried unsuccessfully to sell her.
She began having seizures and would seemingly fall unconscious,
although she claimed to be aware of her surroundings while appearing to
be asleep. These episodes were alarming to her family, who were unable
to wake her when she fell asleep suddenly and without warning.
Minty says that knock on the head made her hallucinate and gave her visions from God.
Of course, she couldn't read or write. The Slave Codes forbade it. Teaching black slaves -- as well as mulattoes, Native Americans and indentured servants, by the way -- was punishable by severe fines, multiple lashes and more for the teacher, and much worse than that for the student.
A part of the reason why her master didn't pursue her or her family when they escaped to the North could have been because legally, they were free. In their former master's will, her parents were manumitted at the age of 45 and so were their children. Their present owners simply didn't tell them and kept them working as slaves.
Minty's first husband, John Tubman, was a free man. The mother's slave status determined whether any offspring would be slaves, which may be why they never had children. She changed her name to Harriet when they got married, probably in preparation for her escape.
Who hasn't seen this? It's John Coltrane's Giant Steps, animated and somewhat illuminated. Because sometimes you have to see it to believe it.
I need a momentary distraction from a sea of paperwork -- rewrites, bits of song ideas and lyrics, applications for workshops and residencies, graduate school and my parlor guitar -- and this Star Wars trailer isn't enough to tip me over in another direction.
One song escapes me, slowly. I can't chase it down with food or a heady conversation or a butterfly net. A long walk shakes something else loose, some other idea. Another song to distract me, maybe. I sing into a voice recorder on my phone and sing it to myself all the way home as it swings back and forth in my head. Eventually, I unravel it on my sofa. Sometimes, I write it all the way down. And somewhere in there, there are phone calls and errands and money to be chased down and tea and solace and sleep and sunshine and work to be had and worry and much prayer and fasting. Somewhere in there, there are rewrites and emails and all kinds of funk and deliberation. But mostly, there are those songs that escape me slowly and more often than not, they drift off right as I'm going to sleep. Whenever I feel a song coming on, I hold still in spite of whatever else I'm doing. And I realize whatever else I'm doing is making way for the song to (re)surface. Kind of like the technique that makes way for "inspiration" as Stanislavski explains it.
Songwriting is always the momentary distraction. Like a tightly wound bud that is sure to bloom into a gigantic peony, there is always a song somewhere in me, waiting to come out. All I have to do is wait it out. And in the immortal words of Tom Petty, the waiting is the hardest part.
Make no mistake. With way more than 140 characters at the ready, it's no
surprise that Black Tumblr will, on occasion, drag someone more thoroughly
than Black Twitter. And Black Twitter, as Paula Deen knows very well by now, will go in on you. Relentlessly.
With that in mind, it was no surprise that while traipsing through Black Tumblr, a righteous black woman posted something she found that was especially obtuse. It was yet another example of cultural appropriation at its finest, masquerading as some form of ethnic fun, wherein some white girl with what can only be described as generic Midwestern good looks gets to use my blackness yet again to augment her bland, cultureless existence. This time, it's my natural hair that's up for grabs. With a few products and very little effort, an Afro -- the symbol of the Black Power Movement, if you will -- is hers for the taking. Not surprisingly, this gem of an article comes to us from Allure, a magazine that has made a point of habitually not including black women in their beauty articles.
Is this how they make up for their lack of diversity? By blackening up white women with an African-American hairstyle that essentially epitomizes our struggle and oppression?
This is a transformation of Rachel Dolezal proportions. And that's beyond epic. She paved the way for black womanhood for all and Allure is handing out the road map.
I must admit: she looks a lot less ordinary and milquetoast with this "Afro", now doesn't she. And isn't that the point? Take whatever we've got, even if its the kink on our heads, appropriate it to amuse yourself and discard it at your leisure when it's no longer fashionable or it no longer suits you. And why not? Cultural appropriation is, after all, the American way.
The phrase literally means one culture taking parts from another culture. And yes, this happens all the time. It's damaging when a dominant culture (white people, for example) takes things from another culture that it has oppressed (or in the case of Native Americans, obliterated) without understanding them fully, in context if you will (white people at Coachella wearing gigantic Native American feather headdresses, for example) and using those things that they have taken in ways that they were not originally intended.
No, it's not cultural exchange. If it were, the sharing between cultures would be mutual. And again -- no, it's not cultural assimilation,
where the oppressed culture (people of color) adopt aspects of the
dominant culture (white people) to survive (discarding their
language/culture/traditions in order to survive).
Consider this.
The fun-lovin' white boy in the picture above is wearing a Native American feathered headdress -- originating in the Plains -- an item that has great political and spiritual significance. They were usually worn into battle, hence the name war bonnet, but now they are worn ceremonially. Because the eagle is sacred to their tribe (the greatest of all birds), these headdresses were made from them.
Each eagle feather had to be earned from some great act of courage or bravery and was inserted into the headdress in a traditional way. Needless to say, you'd have to live a long noble life to get a feathered headdress that would even remotely resemble what this, our Coachella reveler, is drunkenly sporting, which is why you never see young people or children running around in them.
This guy is not alone.
Apparently, you can't get into Coachella unless you wear one of these. Surprised?
The bottom line is, everything isn't for everyone. This should be respected but in the age of entitlement, it's flatly ignored. Believe it or not, there are certain things from any culture that no one should say, do or wear. It is offensive to say the "n" word with abandon unless you are black. It is forbidden for anyone to touch the Torah -- the holiest book in the Judiasm -- with bare hands. A yad (usually made of silver) is used when reading it instead of fingers. It's against the law for anyone to have eagle feathers (and other endangered migratory birds) unless they are Native American. Context, as it turns out, is everything.
See? You, the dominant culture, really can't do whatever you want. Unfortunately, the dominant culture does it anyway and this -- not fully understanding the thing that you are taking from a culture that you dominate -- is what nurtures and informs lots of stereotypes, misunderstandings and hate.
(If you're at all curious as to what a Native American of the Plains thinks of this hot mess, click here.)
Not surprisingly, white people are shifting their attention from Native American headdresses to African-American Afros. My natural hair has always been a point of contention (more on that some other time) but this is especially insidious, in part because of that oh-so-ignorant counter argument: black women straighten their hair so why can't white women kink theirs up?
I'll tell you why.
White people have made laws that deny black women the right to wear their hair naturally. Black women are systematically fired, because Blackness. You are openly considered unprofessional and yes, downright filthy, if you have an Afro. You are hounded, you are threatened with flat-out expulsion, if you have an Afro. Black women can't even wear their hair in its natural state in the military. Think about that: if a black woman wants a career in the military -- if she is willing to die for her country -- she has to straighten her hair. Make no mistake: this means painful chemical treatments, expensive weaves, whatever it takes. Anything but an Afro.
At the other end of the table, there are no laws against white women wearing their hair in its natural state. No one is governing their hair or controlling their hair. Likening their hair to that of a farm animal or some wild beast isn't a part of the lexicon of our culture. No one is telling them that the texture of their natural hair makes them patently unattractive. They can do whatever they like -- even if whatever they like is my Afro.
Don't get it twisted. So many of us have learned the hard way to love our natural hair. But white people don't love our natural hair. Unless it's on their heads. And then they love it a lot. How ironic is that?
Allure should apologize profusely, retract that article immediately and hire a jillion black women to contribute op-eds, beautiy tips and the like, to tilt this situation in the other direction until it levels off. At the very least, they should keep a black friend on hand, someone that isn't afraid to tell them when they're completely off base. Unfortunately -- like those drunken (white) party people at Coachella -- they're way too ignorant, way too out of touch with reality and way too high on their own sense of entitlement and privilege for anything that sensible. Or empathetic.
Mercury is in retrograde (in Gemini!) from May 18th to June 11th. What does this mean, exactly? Retrograde happens when a planet slows down in its usual orbit, appears to move backwards and is in a resting state, thus leaving all the areas it rules to run amok.
Here's the thing: I don't "believe" in astrology as much as I
acknowledge the truth within it. Case in point? I know how to cut my hair by the moon. (Yes, it works.)
According to Susan Miller of AstrologyZone, Mercury rules communication of every kind. That means listening, talking, learning, reading, editing, researching, negotiating, buying and selling. It doesn't stop there. That list includes formal contracts
and agreements as well as any other important papers like leases, wills,
deeds, book manuscripts and such. This planet also rules travel,
transportation, shipping and all kinds of code. So when your cell phone is constantly going in and out, when Skype won't work, when the email you carefully composed disappears from your screen all of a sudden, you know it's in full effect. The kicker is that because it's in Gemini and this is the sign that governs the same areas as Mercury, the effect could be twice as powerful.
Fun stuff.
When this stitch in time happens, I try to make myself scarce and stick to a routine to keep my equilibrium: morning workouts, practice sessions, low key evenings. I declutter like crazy. I eat clean. I double check everything. I'll send a text and follow up with an email, to make sure my message went through. I'm painfully aware of everything I do and say. Blah, blah, blah.
Time to watch an episode or two of Hoarders for motivation, roll up my sleeves and clean house.
This month, I'm starting with my closets. I'd like to refresh my wardrobe but I don't have the money to fling at every cute outfit I see when I window shop -- and frankly, I've got way too many items that I never wear.
My solution? Swaps! Who knew that you could swap your clean, gently used/not broken stuff -- including housewares and whatnot -- all over Gotham for free? (I didn't!)
Here's a short list to get you started.
Stop 'N Swap! Sponsored by grownyc.com, you can show up with that blender you never use -- or come empty-handed and take whatever you need. (Sounds like hippies to me...!)
Although meetup.com features over a dozen swaps in the New York area (including one for single parents with small kids), Five Boroughs Clothing Swap looks promising. It's members only -- hopefully with others who are as thrifty and fashion-conscious as you are -- it happens six times a year and it's free.
My solution? A few times a year, there's an extremely private swap amongst maybe a dozen friends that involves a lavish meal, lots of wine and clothes galore. Whatever gets picked over is donated to a great cause, like a women's shelter. (My favorite donation spot: The Bottomless Closet.) And because I know which girlfriend has that pencil skirt I used to love, I can always get it back if I miss it too much. That's the beauty of swapping with a closed circle of friends: we're all up in some small part of each other's closets.
There's also another seasonal swap amongst friends -- a tea party! with cocktails! and delicious tea cakes and whatnot! wheeeee! -- that's strictly vintage. All this with regular donations to the Salvation Army means that my closets are actually in pretty good shape these days. And here's a happy bonus: losing this pesky winter weight means that I get to wear all the clothes in my closet, not just the stuff that fits me this week.
Next month: Zen and The Art of Clearing My Junk Room...!
Of course, there are certain things that live in anyone's carry on bag when traveling internationally -- passport, wallet, a very smartphone, housekeys. And there's the well-stocked girly bag that always lives in just about any purse -- hand cream, hand sanitizer, lip balm, tissue, etc. These are a few of the other things that are coming with me when I fly the friendly skies next week.
A fully loaded iPad Air 2 -- With this handy ultra lightweight tablet, I'll be able to make videos, write and record songs, watch movies, practice the piano and work on my music theory, Skype my pals and a lot of other things I haven't even thought of yet.
A Satechi bottle top portable humidifier -- Nothing has the capacity to minimize my vocal mojo quite like a dry hotel room. If nothing's wrong, that dryness can make things problematic. And if there's a problem, it can make things worse. The steam from a hot shower helps in a small room -- but not for long. This portable device is a great solution. Its simple, fits on just about any water bottle and will last up to 8 hours.
I hate to sound like Howard Hughes but the tap water on airplanes is notoriously filthy and everything else is suspect. Thanks to Britta, I've fallen out of the habit of buying a bottle of water whenever I'm thirsty. And when it's this easy to drink water, I tend to avoid everything else.
...and because I'm turning into a boy scout, I'll need a portable charger.
If you missed it, here it is -- President Obama takes what can only be described as a victory lap as he outlines his two year plan for the nation. Jump to 21:53 for the start of the speech. To read along, click here.
The response from Republican Senator Joni Ernst -- proud Iowan, wife, mom, military veteran, pig farmer and former child hog castrator -- is not to be missed. That bread bag remark alone launched a jillion well-aimed memes.
Who is Senator Joni Ernst? Five minutes ago, she was a rural county auditor. Once she landed in the Iowa legislature, the Koch brothers came along -- and yes, so did several other billionaires -- to bankroll her political rise. A scant three years later, she's a senator -- the first woman to represent Iowa and the first female veteran in the Senate. A week after being sworn in, she's tapped to give the Republican response. Coincidence? Not according to Senator Ernst, who (along with several other Republican politicians) credited the Koch brothers for their success.
When you realize Senator Ernst is working hard to strengthen the agenda of a few very powerful billionaires who, like Simon Bar-Sinister, would like
to take over the world, it really puts all that folksy, homespun, rural, (lower) middle-class talk in a different
light. To my ears, it sounded sardonic. They don't call her Exxon Ernst for nothing.
Here's the must-see political ad that put Senator Ernst on the map. Because going on and on about liberals and government waste of our hard-earned tax dollars and such is more than enough to distract people from the fact that you're basically an ambitious tool.
At 1:02pm Eastern Standard Time on October 4th, Mercury goes retrograde in Scorpio. It'll go retrograde in Libra on October 10th until it things go back to normal on October 25th. Whenever this backward spin somehow drags everything forward, I usually get a sudden ah-ha moment when my hard drive stops working or a phone call won't connect *or something!* that makes me feel like a gigantic hippie. And then everyone in my world lets out this collective groan as they brace themselves for the inevitable -- miscommunications, missed connections, problems with electronics of any kind, having to hurry up and wait for the most basic things, and so on.
Like the pull of the moon on the water, it seems that the planets are always yanking hard in some way or another. When Mercury is in retrograde -- having the appearance of traveling
backwards in the sky -- it takes on aspects of the planet in whose house
it resides. Every planet has its own attributes. Scorpio is emotional intensity. Libra is balance.
You've heard all this before, haven't you: don't get married, don't sign any contracts, don't start a new business, don't spend any money, don't make any important decisions, don't buy anything new. I don't pay any attention to any of that stuff until I'm looking for an explanation as to why something weird happened. When all else fails, I hibernate -- especially when it's cold. Aside from slathering myself with gobs of patience, crawling through a 7 day cleanse along with 21 days of eating clean and a fairly steady diet of bikram yoga should be enough of a calming distraction.
The thing to do is redo, renew, review -- and, for me at least, rehearse. I'll be singing and playing at Lincoln Center on November 15th as a finalist in the Mountain Stage NewSong Contest, so this month is prep time. I dug through my hard drive and found three songs I forgot I had. What's especially annoying is that one of them is really good.
The largest climate march in history happened this week, with 2,808 events in 166 countries -- some guesstimate that well over 400, 000 people took to the streets in New York City alone -- and it was virtually ignored by every major news outlet in this country. And then the next day, like a proper right cross that should follow any decent left hook, Flood Wall Street happened.
This murder broke me from the inside out: a young black woman (a teenager!) with a dead cell phone wrecks her car in an unfamiliar (white) neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning, knocks on a random door for assistance and gets shot in the face with a 12 gauge shotgun by none other than a middle aged white man who -- irony of ironies! -- "didn't want to be a victim".
It could have been me.
We've seen this scemario before, haven't we. The media roasts the victim while the "victim" awaits their inevitable "not guilty" plea. And I must say, they've got their routine down pat. As if on cue, Fox News went in on Renisha's character, her background, her past -- whatever they could sensationalize with the usual white (male) conservative malaise. In the meantime, Mr. Wafer told the cops the gun discharged accidentally. During the trial, he said he shot her in self-defense. After about a month of the pomp and formality of a trial, expert testimonies and a river of tears from Mr. Wafer himself, something inside of me began to numb out a little. I remember thinking that if he went free, that would mean that violence against black women would be condoned, sanctioned even. But it already is, in a myriad of ways.
Why should anyone expect justice for Renisha? They had video on Rodney King and none of those cops saw the inside of a jail cell. After his latest misadventure -- brandishing a loaded gun at his pregnant girlfriend -- even Florida cops think George Zimmerman should be in jail before he "accidentally" murders someone else. And then there's Marissa Alexander. She stood her ground -- and now she's facing 60 years for firing a warning shot.
And then, out of nowhere, the unthinkable happened: the jury returns with a guilty verdict on the second day of deliberations for all three counts. Michigan, you have done the nation proud. This is the one place in this country where you can't shoot first and ask questions later. Now let's wrap this up and send him to jail for the rest of his natural life. Selah.
My question is, why didn't he call 911 when he heard a suspicious noise on his porch? If you are safely tucked behind two locked doors, why would you open them to shoot someone? Why did he find his 12 gauge shotgun quicker than he found his cellphone? That he has the brass to breeze past that last one -- and in tears, no less -- was nuts. He just knew he'd walk.
In a world where more white people believe in ghosts than racism, where the military enacts regulations and strict codes against black women's hair in its natural state, where those who are privileged and entitled are convinced they are not, where the past is rewritten or forgotten at random, willful ignorance flourishes and we are rendered invisible by the media, by the entertainment industry, by the government, by gentrification -- in a world where there is no justice and very little peace, the unthinkable has happened. We won. In Detroit!
To see Mr. Wafer's testimony, watch the video below.
A mnemonic is a device -- any device, tangible or intangible -- that assists in remembering something. As an actor that's had to ingest iambic pentameter whole and spit it out at will, I'm well acquainted with this idea. Strangely, I've never given it a name. Yeesh -- I never knew this had a name.
And what is bullet journaling, anyway? Sounds like a gigantic, well-organized to-do list.
Gee, I'd love to delete Facebook. (Really.) This SuperGeek has more than a few excellent points. Unfortunately, everybody's in there. It's too easy to reach out to the world. And as an unsigned musician, I can't afford to make it difficult for anyone to find me.
Still and all, I can't deny the truth in what he's saying and how much it creeps me out.
It's Sly Stone and Richard Pryor -- easily at the apex of their respective careers at this point -- overwhelming Mike Douglas on his show with pure star wattage and verve and yes, blackness. The premise is that Richard will accompany Sly on drums. (Huh?) Ultimately, they completely upend the interview with stops and starts of what seems to be their own private conversation that started elsewhere and spilled onto this situation. Surprisingly, it's not drug induced. What's apparent is that they have a great deal of love and respect for each other. Even when they're figuring out what's going on with whatever they're going to do ("Richard, are you going to play drums?") in front of an audience of millions with chunks of blank space idling between them, you can glimpse their genius. And their friendship.
Who does this? When things go awry on a talk show nowadays, it's (somewhat) scripted. This wasn't planned or improvised. They were just goofing off.
It's more than wonderful, to watch Sly change clothes onstage behind a folding screen with the help of a female assistant -- onstage! -- and hear not only the audience gasp audibly as he presents himself transformed, but Mike Douglas' reaction as he glances behind the screen. Like a superhero in full regalia, Sly is a shiny gleaming silver glitterbomb, ready for action. Then and now (remember his blonde mohawk at the 2006 Grammys?) Sly understands performance, the importance of fantasy and the power of a strong visual.
Were performers more brilliant then -- or were they simply more commonplace because they were on television every day?
Harlem is looking more and more like an outpost for stranded, overly educated Midwestern fashion victims who ought to be background talent for HBO's Girls. Then again, so does the rest of New York City. I moved uptown to get away from all that. To (sort of) paraphrase Michael Jackson, I don't want to be where they are -- for a myriad of reasons which should be fairly obvious to anyone that's actually paying attention -- yet for some strange reason, they won't stop following me. As a slightly intoxicated hipster blurted to me in a Brooklyn bar recently after a breezy chat about everything and nothing, "You're so interesting!" Hearing him say that made me feel like I just got slimed. More on that some other time.
My favorite moment so far (and yes, I have many) is the one that won't stop happening. At this point, I suppose that makes it a revolving nightmare. It begins simply enough: I hear about some Harlem hotspot, I show up to check it out and when I walk through the door, the place is filled with white people who look at me as if to say, what the hell are you doing here? To be honest, yes -- that's what happens just about everywhere I go. Harlem was the one place where that whole staring-at you like-you're-the-one-that's-nuts-while-you-eat-your-roasted-beet-and-goat-cheese-salad thing didn't happen. Well. Not anymore.
That's right. You heard me. Harlem, an iconic black neighborhood, is no longer a place where a black person can get away from white privilege and entitlement. And that's just one reason of many as to why this place is going straight to hell.
Here's a short segment from therealnews.com about the systematic ethnic cleansing of Harlem by Columbia University's massive expansion and gentrification, and how the city failed the neighborhood.
