:)
I think the sexiest thing on earth is intellect. Words create fantasies that I lose myself in The stimulation of your words as they caress my ears scintillate my mind. My body arches and my knees get weak as polysyllabic words sends vibrations down my spine. This conversation began with a good morning and ended in multiple eargasms.
Proposition 8
Anyone can tell you that on Election Night, I was walking on sunshine. I was so excited and joyous, so proud and amazed that I called my family and just screamed things like "We Did it!" "Oh my God!" "I Can't Believe it!!" I hugged strangers, I danced in the streets of downtown Atlanta, I went to a club and danced to Live Your Life by T.I. I rejoiced in a moment that I know we can never forget. Victory was ours. I went to sleep and had happy dreams, a nice peaceful slumber because I had laid my burdens down.
I woke up early Wednesday morning, simply because I was excited to be alive, and remembered that Obama was not the only thing on the ballot on Election Day. I went to the NYTimes website and after smiling at a picture of the 44th president, our first Black president, I scrolled down only for my heart to sink. Proposition 8 was passed in California, passing a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in the state, overturning the Supreme Court ruling that has led to thousands of same sex couples exchanging legally protected vows.
Prop. 8 won with a margin of 52.5 percent in support to 47.5 percent against the measure. Not a landslide, but it doesn't really make a difference. Same sex couples in California have been stripped of their equal rights, which helps to close the door to similar measures passing in other states. Maybe the most troubling part to me is that exit polls show that 70 per cent of African Americans were in favor of the proposition to ban same sex marriage.
Many of the supporters claim that this amendment is necessary to protect traditional marriage. African Americans have the lowest marriage rates of any race in the United States and the highest rate of families headed by a single parent. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/healthymarriage/about/aami_marriage_statistics.htm, but I imagine that by allowing same-sex couples to legally marry this would plummet even further and reak more havok in the fragile family structure of African American families. I understand the church's right to do as they please, and I guarantee, I don't want to marry in your church. But just like other little girls, I dreamed of getting married, and I don't think that the populace should have a say in its legitimacy.
I am always confounded by how African Americans so easily use religion as a tool for bigotry, forgetting the way it was used against us for centuries. Understanding that we were a threat to the family structure of whites, to the morality of their communities because we were beasts and less than human. We were 3/5 of a person for goodness sakes, and now we stand proudly in discriminating not against some other group but against each other. I simply hope that one day my Black family and friends will recognize that I am no less Black that you are, I am no less human than you are and my love is no less real that yours. When you support injustice aimed at the LGBT community, or maybe fags and dykes are the words you prefer, you are disenfranchising me.
And if you strongly disagree, I am more than willing to listen to why I deserve less rights than you...
I woke up early Wednesday morning, simply because I was excited to be alive, and remembered that Obama was not the only thing on the ballot on Election Day. I went to the NYTimes website and after smiling at a picture of the 44th president, our first Black president, I scrolled down only for my heart to sink. Proposition 8 was passed in California, passing a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in the state, overturning the Supreme Court ruling that has led to thousands of same sex couples exchanging legally protected vows.
Prop. 8 won with a margin of 52.5 percent in support to 47.5 percent against the measure. Not a landslide, but it doesn't really make a difference. Same sex couples in California have been stripped of their equal rights, which helps to close the door to similar measures passing in other states. Maybe the most troubling part to me is that exit polls show that 70 per cent of African Americans were in favor of the proposition to ban same sex marriage.
Many of the supporters claim that this amendment is necessary to protect traditional marriage. African Americans have the lowest marriage rates of any race in the United States and the highest rate of families headed by a single parent. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/healthymarriage/about/aami_marriage_statistics.htm, but I imagine that by allowing same-sex couples to legally marry this would plummet even further and reak more havok in the fragile family structure of African American families. I understand the church's right to do as they please, and I guarantee, I don't want to marry in your church. But just like other little girls, I dreamed of getting married, and I don't think that the populace should have a say in its legitimacy.
I am always confounded by how African Americans so easily use religion as a tool for bigotry, forgetting the way it was used against us for centuries. Understanding that we were a threat to the family structure of whites, to the morality of their communities because we were beasts and less than human. We were 3/5 of a person for goodness sakes, and now we stand proudly in discriminating not against some other group but against each other. I simply hope that one day my Black family and friends will recognize that I am no less Black that you are, I am no less human than you are and my love is no less real that yours. When you support injustice aimed at the LGBT community, or maybe fags and dykes are the words you prefer, you are disenfranchising me.
And if you strongly disagree, I am more than willing to listen to why I deserve less rights than you...
Humanity
Today, I woke up super early (for a Saturday) and drove out to the airport to a Habitat for Humanity build. When I got there, I realized the house was already built, and they just needed us for landscaping.. It rained yesterday so, I got up close and personal with the mud. Mud is really heavy.. but we were there for a reason. I don't have my own house and I think the former me would have been a little jealous, or at least wishing I had a house too.. but today at the dedication of the house, with the family and friends gather of the three new homeowners I was so happy to be a small part in their American dream..
One woman was an administrative assistant who had a 9 month old daughter and I teared up as she said how happy she was to be able to have her daughter's first Christmas in their first home. Another woman was a dental assistant who was moving in with her fiance and was so overwhelmed that she could not make it through her words. And the last man was a man from the Sudan, who had just received word that his wife and daughter would get their visas on Tuesday so they can join him here from Kenya.
A church in Cascade sponsored the project, and they gave each family four tokens towards their future. First they received a loaf of bread to symbolize that no one in the home will ever go hungry. Second, they each got salt, so that they lives will be filled with flavor. Third, they got sparkling wine (non-alcoholic womp) so that they would always have joy and levity. Lastly, they got a dollar, so that no one in the home would ever be without money. I felt the joy and wished those things for them too. I envisioned them all moved in with furniture, enjoying the peace of the woods behind them, and the security of a home of their own. In a time of economic frailty, it felt really good to help someone grow their roots and achieve their dreams. I know that I am getting one step closer to mine.
Being Thankful for Nothing.
I must say, this whole financial madness has been quite confusing for me. We are in a repression, going to another Great Depression, The Dow is up, the NASDAQ is down. Asian markets plummet. I don't know what any of this really means. but I do know that for once, not having much is turning out to be a good thing! I have no stocks rising or falling, no dollars lost in the Dow or the NASDAQ, the closest I have been to the stock market is the Stock Market Game in 8th grade, where we won, but had our victory taken away because we didnt actually invest all of our money.... Well my grandma grew up in the Depression, my mother still hoards canned goods, so I didn't want to take a chance at losing all of my money in any gambling..
I haven't checked to see if my retirement benefits have been affected, but either way I am not going to be touching that for another 20 years. It is simply a relief to not have to worry about this. I am so sincerely sorry for those people, especially retirees who have no idea what to do without the dividends they have been living on for 10 years. I find it shameful that so many people have been laid off from companies large and small, because of a mess that they did not have a hand in creating. And for once I am grateful just to have a job that I know is not going anywhere... I am sincerely grateful that it is one that I love... and even if we don't get our 2.5% raise in January as expected.. I'll be glad to trade it off so that no one else finds themselves unemployed...
PS I am also grateful that gas is under 2.50!! Woohoo.
What's on your mind?
Change we can believe in - 1st draft
Obama brought us hope. I guess it something we lost along the way. I watched the movie Hairspray and it reminded me of yesterday. A yesterday I wasn’t privileged to know where we as Black folks lived, worked, prayed and learned together.
Yet prosperity brought a disconnect. Desegregation brought disintegration of our sense of community and sense of pride that made sure we all had each others back. But now the American dream has changed working together into crabs in a barrel. And I can’t point the finger anywhere until I point it at myself first. Those same streets that seemed and felt familiar 15 years ago, now feel like foreign land. You know the precautions you take when you travel abroad, knowing that they prey on tourists. I feel the same way in many streets in black neighborhoods. Places that used to be haven, sacred ground for my mother and her family, now feel like a danger zone.
So I’m looking for a change of heart that I can believe. One that doesn’t have me looking over my shoulder every time I walk down a black street. I feel my pulse quicken when I see some black men walking towards me. Not suited Black men, like Barack, who scream the success of the Great Black Hope. I try to stop my anxiety from rising because I know that this may be that same black man, he just changed into his play clothes.
Knowing that my brother, father, cousins and friends are the same kind of Black men, still flashes me back to the terror of have a gun pointed at me and a friend. The audacity of getting stuck up for our purses by some of our kin.
But I still can’t shake it. I’ve lost that hope and I’m not sure how much change I believe in. I see little black boys and girls everyday that are at the bottom of the bell curve, up against the wall of high stakes testing and promotional requirements. I wonder how many of them will leave school without the skills they need, and how many people will care if they don’t succeed? Would I care if that girl who got stuck up wasn’t me and if I wasn’t paid to teach these kids 13 year olds how to read?
But even if NCLB is repealed what will really change? Will these kids gain the critical thinking skills they need to be the leaders we dream of them becoming? Or more importantly, will they begin believing in themselves for a change? Or do they cling to their labels as Level Ones- the bottom of the bunch- because they have heard them for so long? Somehow that change feels so strange, because we are raising a generation that feels estranged, lost from the goal of the American dream, boys calling themselves goons in one breath, the next whining about childish nonsense to me.
The change I believe in starts outside the White House and off the campaign trail. It doesn’t include urban professionals hosting fundraising parties so we can get drunk for a good cause every once in a while. The change I believe in starts in every home, in every family and in every one. Everyone who has letters to put behind our names, making it our duty to help someone forge that path for themselves. It begins by volunteering in your community and outside of it too. That change is the hard change, the change that requires more than putting a check in the mail or waiting in line on a Tuesday to vote.
This is the change we must not just believe in, this is the change we must be. We must be change agents, not for the next 4 or 8, but for the next four hundred and eighty years so that we are just as outraged by a person going hungry in the land of milk and honey, as we are about the cover of The New Yorker or any other BS they do or do not on TV. Every step is important and so is every choice that we make, so make sure you make sure that everyone you know is register to vote. Are you?
Obama brought us hope. I guess it something we lost along the way. I watched the movie Hairspray and it reminded me of yesterday. A yesterday I wasn’t privileged to know where we as Black folks lived, worked, prayed and learned together.
Yet prosperity brought a disconnect. Desegregation brought disintegration of our sense of community and sense of pride that made sure we all had each others back. But now the American dream has changed working together into crabs in a barrel. And I can’t point the finger anywhere until I point it at myself first. Those same streets that seemed and felt familiar 15 years ago, now feel like foreign land. You know the precautions you take when you travel abroad, knowing that they prey on tourists. I feel the same way in many streets in black neighborhoods. Places that used to be haven, sacred ground for my mother and her family, now feel like a danger zone.
So I’m looking for a change of heart that I can believe. One that doesn’t have me looking over my shoulder every time I walk down a black street. I feel my pulse quicken when I see some black men walking towards me. Not suited Black men, like Barack, who scream the success of the Great Black Hope. I try to stop my anxiety from rising because I know that this may be that same black man, he just changed into his play clothes.
Knowing that my brother, father, cousins and friends are the same kind of Black men, still flashes me back to the terror of have a gun pointed at me and a friend. The audacity of getting stuck up for our purses by some of our kin.
But I still can’t shake it. I’ve lost that hope and I’m not sure how much change I believe in. I see little black boys and girls everyday that are at the bottom of the bell curve, up against the wall of high stakes testing and promotional requirements. I wonder how many of them will leave school without the skills they need, and how many people will care if they don’t succeed? Would I care if that girl who got stuck up wasn’t me and if I wasn’t paid to teach these kids 13 year olds how to read?
But even if NCLB is repealed what will really change? Will these kids gain the critical thinking skills they need to be the leaders we dream of them becoming? Or more importantly, will they begin believing in themselves for a change? Or do they cling to their labels as Level Ones- the bottom of the bunch- because they have heard them for so long? Somehow that change feels so strange, because we are raising a generation that feels estranged, lost from the goal of the American dream, boys calling themselves goons in one breath, the next whining about childish nonsense to me.
The change I believe in starts outside the White House and off the campaign trail. It doesn’t include urban professionals hosting fundraising parties so we can get drunk for a good cause every once in a while. The change I believe in starts in every home, in every family and in every one. Everyone who has letters to put behind our names, making it our duty to help someone forge that path for themselves. It begins by volunteering in your community and outside of it too. That change is the hard change, the change that requires more than putting a check in the mail or waiting in line on a Tuesday to vote.
This is the change we must not just believe in, this is the change we must be. We must be change agents, not for the next 4 or 8, but for the next four hundred and eighty years so that we are just as outraged by a person going hungry in the land of milk and honey, as we are about the cover of The New Yorker or any other BS they do or do not on TV. Every step is important and so is every choice that we make, so make sure you make sure that everyone you know is register to vote. Are you?
For the Seafood Lover in Me.
I watch a lot of TV, and most commercials I am able to watch for a little entertainment and keep it moving.. in fact a lot of commercials I do not even watch, because I always have 2 or 3 shows on deck. Except for those evil advertisements that begin with an ocean and then phase to a cracking crab leg, with butter drizzling off the juicy crab meat.. then fades to sizzling scallops sliding onto a plate with the juiciest tender rock lobster tail you've ever seen in your life.. They continue to show you perfectly blackened fish and shrimp and buttery garlicy scampi that pulls me close to the commercial.. because I think that somehow I will be able to taste the food if I get close enough, the same way I thought that if I looked hard enough at the bottom of the TV I would be rewarded with a small peak below the waist during the D'Angelo video. These sinfully delectable commercials make me not even consider my account balance and search frantically for my keys and purse so I can rush out to the nearest Red Lobster because Lobsterfest, ShrimpFest and SummerFest are always for a limited time only and can I live with myself if I live without the taste of those scallops and crablegs on the tip of my tongue... I dont think so.
Back to my roots
This summer I decided to take on the task of researching my family tree, because my family is kind of old. My mother had me when she was 30, her mother had her when she was 42, and so funerals are not so much a rarity in my life. I've seen both grandmothers pass, an aunt and two uncles and in a much more unexpected way, my father as well. So I knew names, and I have childhood memories of these people, but unfortunately time didn't give me the blessing to really pay attention to those stories of where we came from. I heard Rome, GA and Mississippi, but never had those huge family reunions that a lot of black folk have that give them that link to the past.
Drawing more branches on the family tree was both a thrilling and devastating experience. I found names and places, aunts and uncles that I've never heard of and people who worked hard and went to school. I found out that my great great grandfather knew how to read after slavery. In fact, looking back to 1837, I did not find anyone on my family tree who didn't learn how to read and write and that was a joyous surprise. I found fun names like Lula, Jones, Anna Belle and Wallace, they worked as farm hands, tilemen, coal workers and students. I found myself searching through the census and finding the places they lived and googling them today... calling my mother to plan trips down South.
After I hung up the phone with my mother, I sat and looked at the tree, looked through names and documents and soon found myself devastated. Devastated that this history had been hidden from me. Not just the history of my family, I could forgive the repression of my individual limbs. I was sad and angry that those thousands of people who were freed from slavery are not remembered as hardworking men and women who valued education and hard work. Those survivors of slavery who became free and then worked hard to leave their children in a better place than they were. I think of my grandparents who during the Great Migration came to Chicago and became coal miners and tile workers, my grandmother who became a nurse. That is the legacy I wish we all remembered of the Freedmen.
We hear historic stories of individual African Americans who were educated and made great strides at the beginning of the 20th century, but unfortunately we see what the did as out of the ordinary, as if the rest of the Black families were shucking and jiving and eating watermelon. Or maybe we dont take the time to think about them at all, because they have been successfully erased.
And maybe we are lucky because ignorance is bliss, if you don't know how great your legacy is, then you dont have to live up to anything and if you attain mediocrity, then you have done better than half of the images you see of African Americans. In a world focused on material wealth, we understand the disadvantage African Americans have because due to oppression and discrimination, we have not been able to amass enough wealth to pass it down from one generation to the next. But we unfortunately have allowed other to dismiss what we do have, and that is a sense of determination, pride and purpose. The determination of our ancestors to do better, to put on step in front of the other and make a way for our families when every obstacle was against them. And they did it! If our individual history was not stolen from us, I think that for us to succeed would not be an aberration, it would simply be expected, because throughout the years, we always have.
Drawing more branches on the family tree was both a thrilling and devastating experience. I found names and places, aunts and uncles that I've never heard of and people who worked hard and went to school. I found out that my great great grandfather knew how to read after slavery. In fact, looking back to 1837, I did not find anyone on my family tree who didn't learn how to read and write and that was a joyous surprise. I found fun names like Lula, Jones, Anna Belle and Wallace, they worked as farm hands, tilemen, coal workers and students. I found myself searching through the census and finding the places they lived and googling them today... calling my mother to plan trips down South.
After I hung up the phone with my mother, I sat and looked at the tree, looked through names and documents and soon found myself devastated. Devastated that this history had been hidden from me. Not just the history of my family, I could forgive the repression of my individual limbs. I was sad and angry that those thousands of people who were freed from slavery are not remembered as hardworking men and women who valued education and hard work. Those survivors of slavery who became free and then worked hard to leave their children in a better place than they were. I think of my grandparents who during the Great Migration came to Chicago and became coal miners and tile workers, my grandmother who became a nurse. That is the legacy I wish we all remembered of the Freedmen.
We hear historic stories of individual African Americans who were educated and made great strides at the beginning of the 20th century, but unfortunately we see what the did as out of the ordinary, as if the rest of the Black families were shucking and jiving and eating watermelon. Or maybe we dont take the time to think about them at all, because they have been successfully erased.
And maybe we are lucky because ignorance is bliss, if you don't know how great your legacy is, then you dont have to live up to anything and if you attain mediocrity, then you have done better than half of the images you see of African Americans. In a world focused on material wealth, we understand the disadvantage African Americans have because due to oppression and discrimination, we have not been able to amass enough wealth to pass it down from one generation to the next. But we unfortunately have allowed other to dismiss what we do have, and that is a sense of determination, pride and purpose. The determination of our ancestors to do better, to put on step in front of the other and make a way for our families when every obstacle was against them. And they did it! If our individual history was not stolen from us, I think that for us to succeed would not be an aberration, it would simply be expected, because throughout the years, we always have.
Antiquities
Yesterday, I was at Office Depot. Trying to run in quickly so I could make it home in time of American Idol (Mariah Carey night you know... and you know MC can SANG) So I pop in, scour the aisles for what I need and, after weighing my options... I scurry to the line. There are 3 people in front of me, and one person working. So this is not going to be a jiffy, but it shouldn't be long.. great 8 mins to Idol, I can JUST make it home.. By the time I did the minutes math on my cell phone, the person in front of me is walking to the register...
YES!! I am not going to miss ONE second of Mariah Carey BLISS!!!
YES!! I am not going to miss ONE second of Mariah Carey BLISS!!!
Aside: Okay everyone who knows me KNOWS that I am an official Janet Jackson fan... everyday all day.. but I also have a huge infatuation with MC.. for 2 reasons..
1) Senior year in high school, my friends and I cut 2 days of school to meet her at the now defunct Virgin Megastore downtown.. One day to get the Bracelet, another day to get the CD signed.. and I MUST admit.. Mariah Carey is one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen in person.. She actually does glow.. there is a kind of golden aura around her that just makes pulls you in, and
2) I saw Mariah on the Rainbow tour and when I tell you she puts on the best show ever.. not so much the dancing or the performance. but she sings better than the CD, better than anything...
So I HAVE to get home to see MC...
And I'm going to make it... One more person.. Her ink and paper are all rung up.. we are outta her.. I'm inching a bit closer to the register when BAM!!! Out of nowhere... she pulls out a .....
CHECKBOOK
Surely, she must have pulled this out just to keep track of her account when she uses her debit card..
But to my shock and dismay, she begins writing a check.. I was in utter disbelief, like when I saw someone listening to a Discman in the airport, or when I used a disposable camera and my little cousin was in awe that she couldnt see her picture NOW, or if I was to open a box of Always and find a sanitary belt (For more info.... http://www.mum.org/belts.htm). There are just some things whose time has come and gone... and then randomly you see a checkbook, or a portable CD player, or a rotary phone, an answering machine or a closeline.. and think
what century are we in ANYWAY!!!
Then to make matters worse, I hear her ask the cashier, "Wait, what store is this??" She had the nerve to not even write out the check while she is waiting in line so she can just write in the price at the register... This woman's refusal to step into the new millenium is making me late to Bask in the Glow that is Mariah Carey... and then next register opens... and I make my purchase....
a brand new phone for my land line and 25 feet of phone cord...
Because you know there are some things that never go out of style :-)