Monthly Archives: March 2014

What do we see? It all depends on where we’re looking

31 Monday Mar 2014

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“Look, Nana! It’s a ball!”

“Where, Christian?  I don’t see a ball.” I said, cursorily looking up from my iPhone email check.

“it’s right there! See?!”

Try as I might, all I saw was the usual doctor’s office detritus: counter, forms, pens, clipboards, phones, computers, pharmacy company giveaways, and so on.

Then, I spied it.  There actually was a ball there behind the counter at the doctor’s office!

“Christian!  You’re right!  There is a ball there!  How did you see that?!”

I thought to myself, “How did I miss it?!”

“I just sawed it.  I was looking and I just sawed it.”

A few moments later…

“There’s queen, Nana!”

“What queen, Christian?  What sort of queen?  I don’t see anything that looks like a queen,” I said as he pointed to the wall where there was only a doctor’s office generic painting.

“Right there!  It’s queen!”

There was absolutely no royalty on the wall.  Not even close.  I looked past the wall, and on the side was the receptionist counter where, evidently one of the staff had put up their kid’s drawing of the Disney Car’s movie character, Lightning McQueen.

I’ll be darn.  Lightning McQueen, right there hanging on the cork board on the wall behind the counter, big as day.

“Christian!  How did you find that?!” I asked.

“I just sawed it, Nana. I just looked at it and there was ‘Queen’!” (his name for Lightning McQueen)

I thought about how different my and Christian’s perspective was.  The ball and the drawing of his all-time favorite cartoon character  were right there and I never saw them.

I was at the doctor’s office with him because his leg had been hurting over the weekend and his teacher- Mom couldn’t take off by the time she figured it needed to be checked on Monday.  I was sitting there thinking/worrying about all the papers I had to grade and how I had carved out this day to do it, not knowing I’d get a call at my office asking if I could take him to the doctor.

To me, the doctor’s office was simply a place I’d brought him to to have his leg checked.  I’m a grown up and I think about grown up things.  It was, to me, simply a doctor’s office and I saw only doctor’s office things.

But Christian didn’t have those preconceived notions about what it was.  He is a 3-year old and to him the whole world is simply a potential playground because playing is what he does.

He saw it through his eyes, and found the things he cared about. I saw it through mine and saw what I expected to see in a doctor’s office.

No doubt he missed the things I saw and gave credence to, and I certainly did the same for what he saw.  Both of us were in the same place with the same things in our view, but we saw totally different things, shaped entirely by our perspective.

Neither of us was (were?) wrong.  We just saw things based on what we were used to or interested in.

Wow.  Deep.  How much does that happen in our lives, with much greater consequences….?

I closed my iPhone and just sat staring at that precious, awesome little gift in my life.  What lessons Christian and all kids have for us if we just let them give them to us.

 

Si, se puede!

30 Sunday Mar 2014

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I went to see the movie Cesar Chavez today.  I wanted to see it on its opening weekend because those are the numbers that count for the movie moguls, and I want to encourage more movies like this.  It matters. Go see it. They were showing it in both English and Spanish (with no English subtitles) at different times.  I went to see it in Spanish.  I preferred the time.  My Spanish is negligible, but I knew I would still be able to appreciate it.  Is there anything we love more than a story of triumph over adversity? Rising up, and through our collective efforts, righting a wrong?  To the extent I thought about it at all, I suspected I was there with only Hispanics.  My suspicions were confirmed when  they all started singing the obviously meaningful song at the end.  🙂

In case you don’t know, Chavez was the leader of the move to organize (primarily Hispanic) farmworkers in California in the 1970s so that they would be able to get decent wages and treatment. They were shamefully treated and Chavez was a courageous and tireless fighter for better wages and conditions.  As you can imagine, since it was considered to be against the economic interest of the farm owners, he had a long and dangerous fight on his hands.  Dolores Huerta was also working beside him to create the Farmworkers of America.  Their movement was responsible for the California grape boycott that swept across the world. It truly brought attention to the issue of the treatment of farmworkers who brought food to our tables and made us think about what happens in the process of how goods come to us and what we get as consumer goods, including who is exploited in the process and how. It also resulted in the United Farm Workers union.  Chavez’s birthday is a holiday in ten states and in 2008, as a Senator, Obama called for it to be a national holiday. Chavez’s movement’s “Si, se puede!” slogan was the inspiration for Obama’s presidential campaign slogan, “Yes we can!” As president, on 3/27/2014, Obama traveled to California to open the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument.

I love it that movies like this are finally being made.  It’s about time.  They are so important.  All of us need to know and appreciate the struggles that got us to where we are as a country. They are so inspiring. And they make us more deeply appreciate how privilege we are to live in a country where we can engage in such actions and they can bring about real change.

There is so very much we don’t know.  History is generally written by the victors and, of course, like any of us would do, they tell their story their way.  Believe me, if the Native Americans wrote the story of their history of what is now the U.S., it would not have been the same as what passed for their history for far too long.

Ultimately, all anyone in marginalized groups wants is to feel like they matter; that you see their humanity; that you recognize and treat them as a member of the human family; and that this is more important than what divides us.

As I spoke about in an earlier post, I think we are reaching a stage where enough people are willing to turn around and look back at where we came from and appreciate it through the lens of where we are now in better valuing others not like ourselves. Movies are a great vehicle since many people do not want to (or cannot afford to) take the time to seek out the information but will watch a film.  A well-done movie is a great, easy, entertaining way to give the masses some idea of what happened. It’s better than nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum and will proceed to fill it with any garbage around. Giving well done movies is better than this.  “Lee Daniels, The Butler,” “12 Years a Slave,” and “The Dallas Buyer’s Club,” are recent examples.

Such movies also help, in ways both small and large, to break down barriers between us.  They make us see those who are like the actors on the screen, in a more realistic way; as people rather than as groups; as human beings who struggled to live for the same values we hold dear.

I am sure that the Hispanics in the theater with me noted my presence and the fact that I did not look like them, and appreciated that I cared enough to come.  A simple genuine smile at them as I passed by them singing along with the song at the end was, I’m sure, also noted, felt, and appreciated. I felt and appreciated what the song and struggle must have meant to them for them to stand up and sing it at the end.  My being there helps form their idea of how they feel about the world and country they inhabit.  A simple smile can work wonders.  Opening yourself up to the idea of this makes you see even more you can do to help make things better in your everyday life.

It is in engaging in small, simple things like this, and more, that we begin to break down the barriers that separate us.  It is no huge, grand gesture.  But simply by being present at the movie, it showed that even though I was not the same national origin as they are, I was interested, I respected them, I cared, and I actually saw them as members of the human family just like I am.

By no stretch of the imagination do I mean to say that what I did was a great thing or that things like this solve everything.

But it beats doing nothing.

It also puts the responsibility on us to help make the world a better place by doing what we can.  Sitting around wanting diversity and saying we should have it, won’t make it happen.  Even if we have it in numbers, it can still feel to the marginalized like mere tolerance rather than an embracing and true acceptance of others different from ourselves as being a valued part of humanity.

Love is universal.

You can’t pass laws to make that happen.  We’re going to have to do it on our own.  It will take each of us doing whatever it is we can when the occasion presents itself, to make it happen.

It is my most fervent wish that we are willing to.  We can do this.

Si! Se puede!

Simple

30 Sunday Mar 2014

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My granddaughter had a party today to celebrate her 8th birthday.  It was a grand affair with 5 little girls who brought their American Dolls with them.  My daughter and granddaughter had planned and gathered the goodies for months ahead of time.  The table decorations matched the invitations that matched the balloons, etc.  The maraschino cherried punch had enough cherries for all.  My daughter had organized the crafts to be done (straw hats to be decorated with spangles, glitter, “jewels”, etc. for the dolls, and masks to be decorated for the girls)  down to the last stick-on jewel and someone to use the hair dryer to dry the decorated masks.  There was cake, ice cream, croissant sandwiches and crudités to eat,  candles to blow out and presents to open.  Fun was had by all and after the last guest left, my daughter collapsed, drained, before starting on the next task on her endless list.

At the end of the day, as she was going off to bed, I asked my granddaughter if she had enjoyed her day.  “Thoroughly,” she said.  

I asked what her favorite part had been.  Since my daughter works full time as an elementary school teacher, time is precious; since she is saving for a house, so is money.  She had spent a lot of both in trying to make the party memorable for her daughter.

“The dancing,” my granddaughter said firmly, with a huge smile that seemed borne of feeling wonderful about it all over again at the very thought.  

“The dancing?,” I said, surprised. 

“Yep!  That was my favorite part!  It was such fun to dance all around with my friends!!”

My daughter had set the cable TV music station to the Family Road Trip station, so there had been a steady stream of oldies playing, and when not doing crafts or eating or opening gifts, the girls had danced with abandon in the family room.  

“Well,” I said, “Your Mama could have certainly saved herself a lot of time and money if she had known that!”

Of course, it would not have been the same if there had been no decorations, crafts, etc., but it just goes to show you: sometimes we spend all of our energy on the big stuff, when, in the end, it really is the simplest  little things that really count…. 

Double thumbs up for TEDx

29 Saturday Mar 2014

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My daughter (who is an alumna) and I just returned from the 2014 TEDx at the university where I teach.  It was so incredible until I feel like my head is about to explode because it is so full of awesome new knowledge.  It lasted from 1-6, and at the end you were tired, but wanted it to go on and on.  

Humanity is just incredible.  People are so absolutely, unbelievably creative.  I love, love, love it.  How could anyone ever want to repress that?  It is so earth-shatteringly great.

Where else, in that span of time could you see:

* a NASA scientist in charge of the Keplar Mission’s hunt for other earth-like planets in our solar system explain why we need to do so (Roger Hunter)

* a female African American neuroscience psychologist (now a teacher of young kids in a school that teaches by allowing kids to pursue their natural interests) that used deciding to wear her hair naturally as both a lesson in being natural and as a metaphor for allowing children to learn naturally (Lora Smothers)

* a black lawyer/head of the NAACP/minister passionately and eloquently advocate for speaking about race rather than ignoring it (Francys Johnson)

* a young, African American lesbian poet who blasted every one of our hearts wide open with her unbelievably powerful spoken-word poems (Megan Pendleton)

* a young woman extol the virtues of a new  you-do-you approach to feminism (Lindsey Cook)

* a dreadlocked college professor explain in the most professional, compelling and impressive terms the power of hip hop in education for children who use it as a cultural context (Dr. Bettina Love)

* a musician who went back and forth from the music scenes of Indonesia to the music scene of Athens, GA to create a way for musicians in each of those places to avoid the prism through which their music was filtered and create beautiful music that spoke a pure message of acceptance despite difference for each and despite the fact that music was being created by many people who would never see each other (Kai Riedl)

* an extremely impressive black male college student who, as a living example, convinced us of the value of pursuing the oft-avoided activity of debate (Narke Norton)

* a female faculty member who went into all-male mechanical engineering, use her love of sky-diving as one of several examples of reasons not to live your life based on the expectations of others (Nadia Kellam)

* a lively woman urging us to play more in life (Elizabeth Brantley)

* a personable singer/guitar player music therapist who, after immediately bringing her full presence to the stage and putting the audience at ease, brought down the house with her full-throated lively and robust original renditions (Kyshona Armstrong)

* a young corporate America golden-haired boy-turned entrepreneur who urged us to live for Monday rather than TGIF by doing a job we love (Barrett Brooks)

* a graphic artist who designed a touching map of human activity that is now digital (Sarah Lawrence)

* a microbiologist who actually made us understand why improving vaccines for water buffalo makes imminent sense (Farah Samli)

* and a music business faculty member who made us understand why  it is important to allow people to do what they naturally love (David Barbe)?  

All this and a performance by the university’s ballroom performance group, and comestibles, to boot!  

It was beyond awesome.  Each and every one of the presentations was top notch.  Well-executed, informative, innovative, and mind-expanding.   Definitely time well spent.

It is going to take me a while to process this.  I’m sure that 1) it will be reverberating with me for days, and 2)  I will have more to say as I do.  

But, for now, let me just say that the whole idea behind TED Talks, and their tagline, is that they are “ideas worth spreading.”  

That was certainly the case with the talks today.

 

Gravity/ the power of not allowing yourself to think/finding what works for you

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

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I’m still always slightly surprised each time someone is shocked upon discovering that I wake up at 3:30 a.m. Mon-Fri and am at the gym when it opens at 5.  It’s not something I usually think about.  For the most part, the only time it comes into my head is when there is an evening event and I have to decide whether it’s worth staying up for.  Otherwise, I just arrange my day with 3:30 a.m. as a given and plan the rest of day accordingly.

I understand people’s surprise.  It’s just that I’m so far from that now that I don’t even think about it.  It is not until someone mentions it and I stand outside myself and think about it that I remember feeling the same way when I heard the absolutely fabulous Ernestine Shepard (if you don’t know who she is, you should definitely click on the link!) say that this was her wake up time and I, too, was shocked (at 74 years old, looking like 22, Ernestine is my gym muse).  Given the world we live in, it sounds crazy when I think about it.  But, I rarely do.

But, I don’t get up so early because I want to or because I don’t want to sleep.  I do it because after a lifetime of coming at it from many different angles, I finally understand what I need in order for working out to work for me.

The truth is, I am a closet workaholic (more like in the closet with the light on…). I can sit at a project and work from the moment I wake up till my body screams for me to go to bed.  Once I get started, it takes on a life of its own and as Robert Frost says in his poem, “The Road Not Taken,”  as “way leads on to way” I know I am not going to stop to put working out in my day.  One time I wrote a 600-page book in 4 days.  If I hadn’t dated it, I wouldn’t have believed it myself.  So, since I know I can’t get up and begin working at any project or I won’t stop, I have to get up and head out.  I have to sneak up on the gym and do it before I get my day started.  That way, it’s done, out of the way, and before I can protest, it’s over by the time most people are just beginning their day.

Protest? Sure, I protest.  Sort of.  I only do it sometimes and then, I don’t dwell on it. I tell myself to shut up and be glad I am strong and healthy and blessed enough to be able to work out.  So many people can’t and wish they could.

In Steven Pressfield and Shawn Coyne’s 2012 book, The War of Art, they talk about our natural reticence to try to talk ourselves out of doing something we may otherwise want to do.  Like wanting to, and being able to create art but, for some reason, not doing it.  Or wanting to work out and not doing it because we talk ourselves out of it.  They say us not letting ourselves do or talking ourselves out of it is like gravity.  It is a natural, normal force that is simply there.  We deal with gravity every minute of every day.  But, the fact that gravity exists and wants to pull everything down to the ground doesn’t mean we don’t keep putting one foot in front of the other and walking.

I always think of this when I’m protesting and it brings me back to reality.  The protest isn’t real.  It’s just noise.  Just because I think it doesn’t make it real.  I do not give myself the luxury (and you need to know that it is truly a luxury) to think about what I am doing when the alarm goes off at 3:30.  If I stop and think about it for even a moment, I’d snuggle back under the delicious quilts I made by hand and go right back to sleep.

Instead, I simply get up and get my day started.  I don’t defeat myself by working out on an empty stomach, so breakfast is first.  It’s usually my biggest meal of the day. I cook (yep, cook–I just realized that it’s about the only meal I do cook!) while I get ready for the hot tub. My outdoor hot tub is where I begin exercising to warm up myself and my body. It is a gift I give myself each day. Rain or shine, freezing or sizzling, I’m there.  There is little more delicious than climbing into it on a freezing day like today, at 4.a.m., and feeling that warm water wash over me as I watch the stars twinkle overhead.  Once I get in there, I know there will be no turning back from the gym.  I’m there for nearly half and hour exercising, then I get dressed and go to the gym.  Once there, I walk at least 10,000 steps (if you don’t have a performance band–mine is the UP24 band, make the investment.  It is worth it—but that’s another post…), do floor exercises and rowing and meet my trainer at 7 three days a week.  By the time I get to office hours at 7 on class days, I’ve been up for hours.  On non class days, I’m at the gym longer, till nearly 8.  When I feel like quitting, I remind myself that it’s just gravity talking, so ignore it and keep going.  Works for me.

The lesson here is making it work for you.  Whatever “it” is.  Listen to yourself.  Figure out what works for you and do that.  Do that, and no matter how weird it seems to others, it becomes second nature to you.

I don’t recall one day of ever really protesting the getting up part.  I just get up without giving myself the luxury (and potential defeat) of thinking about it. It’s the working out part I mainly protest.  That makes sense since I have never in my life been a really physical person.  Dodge ball and jump rope, maybe.  But, I preferred to play house.  🙂 I was the last one anyone would want to pick for their junior high gym class team.  Stick me in the outfield in softball and I’m checking out the flowers rather than remembering a ball may come my way; I’d be off in la-la land and forget to run to the next base till my classmates’ screaming penetrated my thoughts.  I’m in my head too much to think about physical activity.  So, it is unnatural for me, but I’ve been doing well for the past 7 months.  I started out small and worked up to 6 days a week at the gym.  I was doing 7, but my trainer insisted I needed to let my body rest for at least one day a week, darn it.  I’m mad the gym doesn’t open till 7 on Saturdays and I hate not working out at all on Sundays.  I still get in my 10,000 steps, tho.  I try really hard to keep my eyes on the prize of feeling better by working out.

When I planned to retire and knew I would, among other things, be doing sedentary things like writing and quilting all day (which I at least had the sense to know would not be good for me) I gave myself a year to get my body ready for that.  I’m 7 months in.  I decided not to retire, but I am keeping my commitment to the year.  I may cut back some after that to maintenance, but once you’ve done it for a year and see that it works just fine, it may be hard to justify doing it differently.  At the very least, the 10,000 steps and weights will be in my plan.

When I wonder if it’s worth it, I think about the Christmas parade of 2013.  I needed to get across campus to meet up with my daughter and my two grandchildren to watch it.  As usual, I stayed too long at my desk and had to really hustle to make our meeting time and place.  The last part of the way was up a hill. It was a pretty good trek across campus and one I had not made since beginning at the gym three months earlier. At some point, nearing the top of the hill, I kept thinking something seemed weird, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.  Then it hit me.  I had hustled all the way across campus and up a hill and I wasn’t winded.  Amazing.  That working out stuff actually works.  Duh! But real insight for a non-physical like me.

Get out of my way gravity.

 

 

What Ricky Simone the hip hop artist can teach us

25 Tuesday Mar 2014

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One of the reasons I love academia so much is the opportunity it provides for expanding your horizons in all sorts of ways, both expected and unexpected. I never tire of doing that.

Within the next few days, we will be visited by Morris Dees, chief litigator for the Southern Poverty Law Center and the only one I know of who bankrupted the KKK by winning a lawsuit against them (there may be others who did it, but I don’t know of them), Donna Brazile, the CNN political commentator and political strategist, feminist extraordinaire Robin Morgan, as well as the world famous journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the first black female undergraduate for whom one of our buildings is named. Absolute Nirvana for me.

On Friday I had the distinct pleasure of going to a Women’s Studies Friday Lecture Series performance by none other than hip hop artist Ricky Simone.  In addition to working full-time in student affairs, and being a PhD student, Ricky Simone is also an incredibly prolific and courageous hip hop artist and a tireless social justice activist who works for peace and understanding for all.  Not only were we treated to her great PowerPoint presentation on “Hip Hop’s Side B: Social Activism,” but she performed.  Wow.  I had tears in my eyes.  Her piece, “Homos” was profound.  Homos as in homo sapiens.  She’s worth taking a look.

She will never own this (I know her), but just by living her life, Ricky Simone teaches us that you don’t have to be confined to one category/box/label.  You can be a PhD student at a prestigious university and do hip hop.  You can be a serious activist, and a clever poet.  You can have dread locks and be a professional.  You can wear sneakers and be serious.  You can be shy about public speaking and break out and dance and perform your hip hop.

Ricky Simone’s life example, incredibly clever and insightful lyrics to her hip hop beats, and her courageous, passionate, quest for social justice has lessons for us all.

So, here’s to you, Ricky Simone.  Keep up the GREAT work of making the world a better place for us all in whatever way you choose.

Thanks for teaching us there’s no need for labels.

Happy-I Figured it Out

24 Monday Mar 2014

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the Rep. John Lewis dancing to Pharell’s “Happy” video I mentioned yesterday that CNN says has gone viral. I have found that every time I think about it—and I keep thinking about it— it makes me feel good.  Happy.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, tho. It keeps coming to mind and I find myself wanting to watch it again.  I watched it before going to the gym at 5 a.m., and, in fact, was a bit late because I did (something that *never* happens.  Nothing comes before the gym.).  I watched it at the gym.  I listened to Pharell’s song over and over on my iPhone while working out.  I showed the video to my personal trainer who had not seen it and we laughed together (it says a lot that it could make his serious face break into a smile on a Monday morning!). I knew how it made me feel, but I couldn’t quite account for why.  Of course, seeing the Congressman do his little jig–especially at age 74, was precious, but really shouldn’t have accounted for how I felt.

Then it hit me as I was ironing (yes, I still iron.  I wear mostly cotton African outfits, so I have no choice…).  I know why that video makes me feel good.  I mentioned the tip of it in my previous post, but finally realized that this was truly the meat of it for me.

Maybe I finally figured it out because of the screening of the Sadoff Productions video “Standing on My Sisters’ Shoulders: A Civil Rights Documentary,” that I made it a point to see at our local library yesterday.  It was about the sharecropping women who were responsible for challenging the system to gain the right to vote in Mississippi in the 1960s (it sounds so whack to even say that.  Can you imagine someone just out-and-out denying folks the right to vote in America and expecting that to be ok?  I say “out-and-out because we realize that disenfranchisement is still going on today, but it tends to be more subtle).  Absolutely amazingly courageous women who felt that they had nothing to lose and everything to gain in the desperate and totally dangerous fight to be able to do what is guaranteed to every U.S. citizen but was denied in them in the state of Mississippi until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I finally realized that the John Lewis “Happy” video makes me feel good because of this video.  Rep. John Lewis has a long and deep history with civil rights.  He began getting into what he called in an incredibly inspiring talk he did at my university a few years ago, “necessary trouble,” in the early 1960s when he was a college student member of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), a student civil rights group.  He has never given up the civil rights fight; the fight for human dignity for everyone. He has even taken it up for freedom of marriage here.  If he could be (literally) beat down by the forces of segregation on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama while marching for voting rights (watch the video above), go on to become a long-standing member of Congress, and still manage to find the genuine happiness he seems to possess in the YouTube video, then certainly we can.  Knowing it all is what makes me smile when I see him as he is in the “Happy” dancing video.

I am firmly convinced that once the smoke finally clears (we’re a society, it takes a while…), the Civil Rights Movement will be regarded by the country as truly one of the best things that America has ever experienced.  For Congressman Lewis to go from an idealistic college kid fighting for dignity for black folks, to be a well respected long-term member of Congress known for championing human dignity for all, is nothing less than astonishing.  For the country to accomplish this without violence on the part of the challengers of the system is beyond incredible.

We are just now getting to a place where we as a society are beginning to truly realize the awesomeness of this.  There are so many truly courageous and inspiring stories yet to be told.  The video yesterday about the women in Mississippi was one of them. I deal with this area all the time for my classes and had never heard that story and it’s 50 years later.

Every other society in the world who has challenged oppressive forces has looked to our own Civil Rights Movement for inspiration.  I have spoken with people in far flung places like New Zealand (the Maori), Australia (the Aboriginals), Egypt and sub-Saharan African countries like Ghana, Senegal, The Gambia and Kenya, and all have mentioned the inspiration of our civil rights struggle in our conversation (I’m not quite sure exactly how I’m just visiting their country but the folks always manage to get around to this topic with me.  Maybe they feel my vibe…).

As a society, we are just now getting to the place where we are ready to hear and appreciate what the Civil Rights Movement truly was.  I know it’s been decades, but again, we are a society.  Things take a while.  The Civil Rights Movement changed life as America had always known it.  That’s *huge*.  It makes sense that it would take some time to process it.

As we think about it, we should do so, as with slavery, with pride.  We ABHOR that the situation happened, but what I choose to concentrate on is the incredible fortitude, strength, courage, perseverance, intelligence and determination that it took for us to overcome it.  We are still standing.  And we thrive. That is truly, truly awesome and worthy of praise and should be a source of immeasurable inspiration.  It should be a source of pride not only for black folks who were a part of it (As a 12-year-old I attended the March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have A Dream” speech) or whose ancestors, like mine, were a part of it (the Census took on a whole new meaning for me when I read my great-grandfather’s entry in 1910 and saw that his 84-year-old mother, who lived with him, had birthed 13 children, but 11 had been sold away), but for everyone.  Get rid of the guilt, white folks.  It wasn’t your fault.  Guilt is useless except to keep us stuck.  No one wants that.

Yes, slavery and Jim Crow (the system of U.S. racial segregation from after slavery to the Civil Rights Act of 1964)  happened.  We can’t change that.  But, where do we choose to go from here?  I choose to use what happened as a source of never-ending strength and inspiration that reminds me that if those who came before me could get through what they did, then I need to shut the hell up and carry on with whatever it is I am whining about that isn’t nearly so arduous. When I stand up to speak before a group, I understand that those folks who came before me and persevered paved the way for me and are with me.  How can I not shine?

I am as impatient as anyone and want it all to be understood and appreciated now, but that’s simply not how things work.  It’s no different than your friend slapping the crap out of you, then expecting that you’ll be ok and ready to be their friend in five minutes.  No, it’s going to take a while.  A long while.  You need time to process it, think about it, figure out what it means for moving forward, etc.  Maybe one day the two of you will be able to turn around and look back at it and laugh, but it won’t be five minutes later.  And just think, we weren’t even white America’s friend. They had always rejected that from us.  So, processing takes a while–on both sides.

With the Civil Rights Movement, like with the slapping friends,  when America does finally turn around and look back at it, it will marvel at how we managed to get through it and get to a new place on the other side.  And it will feel so much stronger and richer for it.

If John Lewis can do it with what he went through (that we owe him big time for), and feel happy, then surely we can.

Works for me.

Oxford Round Table Aftermath

23 Sunday Mar 2014

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Sun. 3/23/2014-I just returned from delivering a paper at Oxford University for the Oxford Round Table conference on Women in Academia.  My paper was extremely well received and, for some reason, everyone asked if I blogged.  I said no, and they couldn’t believe it and urged me to do so.  I have no idea why.  I tried to remember what I’d said in my presentation that would lead them to think I should, but I really don’t understand the connection between my paper and a blog.  Maybe it’s because I don’t blog and am not familiar enough with what blogs do to make the connection.  But, the attendees were so insistent, that here I am.

However, I am *totally* new to this, so forgive any faux pas.  I know what a blog is, but really find it hard to believe that I would just write something and a complete stranger would find it and have thoughts about it they would want to share.  Of course, the other thing is how in the world I would fit it on my plate.  I already rise at 3:30 a.m. each day to get to the gym by 5, then I’m busy until I turn in somewhere (on a good day) around 8:30 or so.  So, how this fits in, I’m not sure.  We’ll see.

Of course, the other biggie is why in the world I would write something that could lead to making me a public target of the crazies I see responding to things on the Web.  Most of us spend our days trying to avoid trouble.  This seems like it is asking for it.  But, I guess if something I said could be of help, it might be worth it.  Again, we’ll see.

Since I teach, and do so at a public university, I must be mindful of that in my postings.  It is important to me that I not do anything to lead my students (or colleagues, I guess) to feel I am not totally there with them as I do what we do together, whether it is my lectures or a private conversation.  I wouldn’t want my public musings to get in the way and interfere with how we intersect.  I’ll have to see how that works out.  It’s probably not an issue I have to worry about, since I can’t imagine them even finding this.  But weirder things have happened…

I do know enough about myself that I should warn you up front that if writing is involved, I tend to be wordy.  Not injudicious wordiness, but wordy nonetheless.  I am a lawyer, a professor, and a legal textbook author, so I am used to speaking and writing for a wide audience that has varied ethnicities, national origins, genders, languages, backgrounds and understandings.  As such, I try to be as clear as possible, and that tends to take more words.  A blog communicates.  The whole purpose of communication is to get what is in my head over to your head with as little distortion as possible, is it not?  The usual shortcuts we take in conversation can end up leading to miscommunication and I want to avoid that as much as possible, and that takes words.  At least I warned you up front.  🙂

Two things: 1) If you haven’t seen Rep. John Lewis (D-GA)’s “Happiness” video on YouTube yet, you should.  I heard about it on CNN while driving and viewed it when I got home.  It has really stayed with me. He’s 74 and dancing to Pharell’s Oscar-award-nominated “Happiness” song.  The YouTube video is actually in two parts, and my favorite is the second one where he goes to his office and, at the door, talks about Congress needing to get it together so they can make everyone happy.  Click here for the link. Well worth watching.  With the life he has led in public service trying to make the world a better place for all of us, Congressman Lewis deserves a bit of fun.

2) If you haven’t yet read anything by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (pron AH-dee-chee-yay), you should. She is a phenomenal writer.  I read her “Americanah” on my trip to Oxford and on the way back began “Half Of A Yellow Sun” (a 2013 Nigerian movie starring familiar American audience favorites Thandie Newton,  Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Anika Noni Rose).  She is a phenomenal writer and I am so glad she is getting a lot of press.  I will tell you that she deals with issues involving the intersection of her Nigerian background and American living, but that SO does not tell the story of her worth.  She is just an awfully good storyteller.  I can’t believe what comes out of her head.  I happen to be interested in the intersection of those things as one who cares about being inclusive and understanding that this first means we must have some understanding of what/who we are including, but her writing goes so far beyond that.  I almost didn’t even want to tell what she writes about because just reading what I wrote will have some people exclude her from their reading list simply because that is not something they are interested in (I’m making , just stating a fact).  But, you would be depriving yourself of a great writer for such a wrong reason.  When you see her writing, you will understand what I mean.  It’s like telling you that Citizen Kane was about a man who owned a newspaper.  Though that’s true, it simply is the least of what it is about.

Adichie is a great, great writer and I believe her writing brings so very much to the table.  The breadth of her writing is breathtaking.  She is simply pure, unadulterated genius.  I have so much to do, but knowing I have one of her books to dig into every time I get a spare minute (usually on the way to sleep) reminds me of why I have loved reading all of my life.

I’ve gotta stop here.  I have absolutely GOT to go walking!

P.S. My Oxford Round Table paper was “The Impact of Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation in the Academy: A Retrospective Approaching Retirement As Much Celebration as Cautionary Tale.”

P.P.S.  I decided not to retire after all.