2011 Blizzard Musings

Whereas Mother Nature might be the great equalizer, the clean-up after reminds of the inequities we still face in our society. Forecasts for a blizzard to hit Chicago were projected far in advance thanks to the wonders of modern technology, so people were able to prepare as much as humanly possible for a date with Mother Nature, and a date it was—strong winds, knee deep snow and dropping temperatures.
The morning after the storm I stepped out on my porch to visually drink the raw beauty of nature. The houses, treetops, bushes cars and sidewalks were all gently blanketed by the purity of whiteness. Then later as the sun yawned and stretched across the noon sky, life emerged from the stillness people started coming out--to shovel, dig out, talk and laugh—all while marveling at the mass accumulation of snow.

I live in Roseland, a neighborhood best known in the last decade or so for murder and mayhem. Who can forget the beating death of Darion Albert when it was caught on tape and went viral for the world to see? But on Wednesday morning, we were a group of neighbors, many of whom have known each other for years outside clearing away the residual of the storm that engulfed our city and I wondered where the news crews were on a day like to today when something good was happening in the ‘hood.
After two days of peace and quiet, lazing around and catching up, it was it was back to work on Friday. People had shoveled out and left piles of snow in the street, and there were no signs of city trucks coming our way. So, I had to get my Honda Accord SE that sits low to the ground over a mountain of snow. It was not working, but my neighbors came out and assisted. As I drove to work I saw that the inequities that we face daily had returned as Mother Nature retreated.

On the Southside of Chicago, streets are not shoveled and snow is not as readily picked up as it is on the north side and in the suburbs. Even in areas where people do shovel their walkways, our blocks our plagued by so many abandoned buildings that for every house that has a clean sidewalk, there is a house or two buried in snow.
Mother Nature may not discriminate, but city services do.

OMG! A Lesson Learned from Steve Harvey

I am not a Steve Harvey fan. I didn't watch The Steve Harvey television show when it was on, I didn't listen to him when he was on the radio the first time around, and I turn my radio station away from The Steve Harvey Morning Show. When I saw the Kings of Comedy, I chuckled a time or two, but the gut busting laughter came from Bernie Mac's comedy routine. He just doesn't do it for me, and truth be told, he sometimes irritates me which is why I tune him out.

I know people that love his show and swear by his advice; I am not one of them. Somebody sent me a copy of his book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man via email and I perused it not because I thought I needed dating advice, but because everyone else was talking about it and I wanted to know what was the big deal?

What I know is that celebrities have become brands, and they can put their name on almost anything and it will sell. People love Steve Harvey, but his books don't say anything that hasn't already been said, but people will accept it better coming from him. And I am not hating on a brother for striking while the fire is hot. His first book did so well that he has now written a sequel, Straight No Chaser. He's been on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Ellen and Good Morning America--not bad for a man who's been married three times.

So, after I finished rolling my eyes and sucking my teeth about the phenomenon that is Steve Harvey, I sat back and thought that there is something for me to learn. In the world of celebrities at 53 his star is on the rise when others are fading. That's an amazing feat for someone in the public eye. We mostly like those that we think are young and fresh. We are also fickled because we can love someone in one moment and hate them in the next watching many shining stars crash and burn.

So, while I may not be a Steve Harvey fan, I have respect and admiration for a man that can push himself to achieve his wildest dreams and beyond. Havey has two books under his belt, both written in his 50s. He's the host of Family Feud and he's gives monthly relationship advice in Essence magazine.

I have always wanted to write a book, but I let other things get in my way, and sometimes I feel like my 40s is too old to be trying to write a book. But I look at Steve Harvey and think, I can write book, too.

So,I have to admit that lessons can come from the unlikeliest sources, and when I've learned what I need to learn I should be grateful. So, thank you Mr. Harvey.

The Elephant in the Room

I know people who look at the world through a colorless prism; I am not one of them. Good or bad I’m honest enough to admit race looms large in the world and in my life. In this new millennium where hip-hop reigns and multiculturalism is King, people will have you believe race no longer matters: we are a nation plagued by classism not racism. But in America race and class are the Siamese twins of the lower socioeconomic class of whom a large percentage are African American.

Race is the heavy coat I slip on through all four seasons. Sometimes it’s warm and comforting: being able to witness Barack Obama become the first African-American President of the United States and see a Black first family inhabit the White House which was built by African-American slave labor.

Other times, it’s hot and stifling: Why do we need to have one Black mayoral candidate running in Chicago. What if I don’t want to vote for him or her? Is the Reverend Jesse Jackson going to revoke my Black card? I’m tired of someone else telling me what I need to do for me.

Being Black doesn’t make me an expert on Blackness anymore than being a woman makes me understand everything about being female. They’re both critical aspects of who I am and they do shape the way I view the world, but there’s more to me than race and gender. I don’t owe the world an explanation as to who I am and what I believe in, and I’m never going to apologize for the person that I am.

Some days I am obsessed with race, and I used to feel guilty, but since the Presidential election I found that I am not alone. At least I’m honest about mine, and don’t try to couch it in politically correct language.

Most days race matters, even with an African-American sitting in the Oval Office, but sometimes it doesn’t. When I’m engaged in a good book or film which makes me empathetic to a universal tragedy. I’ve tried to ignore the proverbial elephant in the room, but it’s still there. So, the question is, is that a bad thing? Is race in the room the same thing as racism being in the room? My Blackness shouldn’t take away from my humanness should it?

Seating Arrangements

As we move through the remainder of the holiday season, many of us look back at the year for lessons learned and plan for the year ahead. What do we need to do to make the new year better than the current one? As we reflect, now is a good time to think about the seating arrangement in this stage of our lives.

Is it time to rearrange some seats in our life? Are there people front and center who might need to be moved a few rows back? Are there people on the main floor who need to take their place in the balcony? Are there people on the sides who need move up and in a few rows? Do you need a few fold able chairs for the people who come and go? Who needs to be in the nosebleed seats? Who doesn't deserve a seat at all? Are you still reserving seats for people who fail to show up?

The seating arrangements in our lives will change; very few chairs (if any) should be permanently assigned because we need to assign seats as needed in order to evolve into the people we are meant to be.

What seats need to be changed in your life?

Just say Ho. . .I mean No!

A ho is still a ho even in designer clothes is what I wanted to tell my girls this week when we were talking, and I did, in a roundabout sort of way but I dropped the ball in my efforts to engage them in a real conversation about how the adults in their lives fail them; how we tell them to do as we say but not as we do; how we don’t sit down and talk to them about what’s really going on in the world and arm them with knowledge to make better decisions.

I have listened to the girls being lectured and just verbally beat down about some of their promiscuous behavior. It seems that some of the students are sexing each other regularly and they are only in 7th and 8th grade. We have two boys (one in each grade) that are fathers, and just recently it was discovered that there was a plan in place to train some girls after school, and the girls voluntarily signed up for the ride; they had the condoms. Should they be commended for at least considering safer sex practices or condemned for just “being nasty”? (The latter of which they’ve been told countless times)

What do I say when the world tells them otherwise. A cover story of one of the magazines said Kim Kardashian is dating Halle Berry’s baby daddy, and everyone knows that Kim’s trajectory to fame came about as a result of a “leaked” sex tape with Ray J and now she’s being pushed in the public’s face as some sort of celebrity socialite. Chelsea Handler, who called Angelina Jolie a home wrecker, wrote a book on sexual exploits, My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands. The list goes on. Look at the John Edwards mess. But it doesn’t stop with wanna-be celebrities, I heard stories on the radio about a youth minister whose social networking moniker was Big Daddy or something twisted like that, and a man who asked his daughter to show him how to use some of the features on his phone and while trying to send a picture of his penis to the woman he was cheating on his wife with, he mistakenly sent the picture to his daughter. Let’s not forget about Bishop Long’s predatory practice of targeting and luring vulnerable young men into his bed. Bristol Palin has a baby and ends up on Dancing with the Stars and we wonder why are children are wilding out?

These young people live and breathe sex and we allow it because the needle on our adult moral compass is awry. How can I tell them to do the “right thing” and refrain from sex when far too many of us are leading by poor example? We do everything under the sun and share our exploits with the world via call-ins to the radio stations, Face book status, tweets or just talking on the cell phone for everyone to hear. We are in a sexual free fall.

Growing up, there was a line between adulthood and childhood and the teen years were the time to try and cross that line, but we had to sneak. Over the years I have watched that line retreat and finally disappear, and now our children are thrust into an adult world that they’re not equipped to handle. So, in the midst of a societal sexual orgy, we want children to just say no, and we wonder what’s wrong with them?

Hurt People, Hurt People

My plan was to write a different blog post today, but a trip to the barber shop changed all that. The shop is on 110th and Longwood near the site of yesterday’s triple homicide of a mother and her two daughters. I am in this place again, trying to make sense out of the senseless.
Jade Hannah, 17, her 11 year-old sister and her mother were brutally stabbed to death by Jade’s 18 year-old boyfriend, Denzel Pittman. A young man in the shop who was in Jade’s senior division was saying that Pittman was the kind of guy who felt that if he couldn’t have her, nobody could.
The conversation swirled around how he could do something like that. Was it rage? Was he crazy? Was he trying not to leave any witnesses? “That’s something white people do,” one of the barbers remarked. I shook my head because it brought back a flood of memories of how many times I’ve heard the same sentiment spoken among people in the black community. We had a perverse pride in believing that the crazy stuff: kidnapping, killing the whole family, shooting sprees was “stuff that white people did.” It seemed like we got blamed for so many things that we took solace in saying there were some things that not even we would do.
We can’t say that anymore. But more than that, race aside, what these growing number of incidents show is that there a great deal of pain and mental anguish going untreated in our communities. According to an African-American Community Mental Health Fact Sheet available on www.nami.org African-Americans in the United States are less likely to receive diagnoses and treatment for their mental illnesses than Caucasian Americans. Here are some of the facts:
 African Americans tend to rely on family, religious and social communities for emotional support, rather than turning to health care professions. . .
 Mental illness is frequently stigmatized and misunderstood in the African American community
 African Americans are often at a socioeconomic disadvantage in terms of accessing both medical and mental health
 Across a recent 15 year span, suicide rates increase 233% among African Americans aged 10 to 14. . .
 People experiencing homelessness are at greater risk for developing mental illness. African Americans comprise 40% of the homeless population
 Children in foster care and the child welfare system are more likely to develop mental illness. African American children comprise 45% of the public foster care population

First, we have to acknowledge that given our horrific history in this country, we are probably suffering disproportionately from mental illness. Secondly, we have to move beyond the stigma of persons with mental illness as “crazy” and seek the help that we need. While I recognize that in spite of our history, we are a resilient people, the truth is that we did not come through unscathed. Many of us are hurting, and we need to take the necessary steps toward healing.

Death of a Daughter

What do you say to a woman’s whose daughter has been murdered? Three times I’ve been faced with this question, and three times I didn’t know what say.
Today I looked down into a casket into the face a young woman, 19 years-old strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend who refused to let go. Her mother was my neighbor growing up and I still see her when she comes back on the block. Today words escape me as my sister and I both hug her inside the funeral home where her daughter lay in state.

Earlier this week, I am driving down Halsted and as I stop for the light at 111th, I roll down the window to a familiar face—the mother of a former student killed in a fight over the summer. Because I didn’t make it to the funeral this is the first time I’ve seen her since her daughter died.
“You know Marquita got killed,” she says to me.

I nod first giving myself time to look for the words. “Yes. And I was very hurt and saddened when I heard about it. How are the girls?”

“They’re ok,” her lips say, but her eyes and the so-so gesture with her hands say otherwise.

“How are you, I ask?
“I’m ok.”

“How’s my girl? She still reading?”

She smiles. “Yes, she is. I’m about to go get them now.”

I nod and make my turn. What else is there for me to say? Twice in the same week near the anniversary of a friend’s death who also died at the hands of another. I remember like it was yesterday as it plays out vividly in my mind.

It is a breezy, over cast November morning. The screams of children running around on the playground punctuate the air. My school bag thrown across one arm, my purse in the other hand as I walk into the building, and head to the office to start my day passing out per functionary “Good mornings,” It is no different than any other day. Punch in, retrieve my mail and my keys from my mailbox and turn to look directly into the face of my dead friend’s mother. My world—in that moment—stops as I try to digest what is happening. Almost four years to the date when the police found Traci Todd’s dismembered body in the Beaubien Woods forest preserve, I am looking in to the face of her mother.

“I know you,” I say. “I used to be friends with your daughter Traci. We used to work together at Newsclip”.

A smile of recognition replaces the question that had just marked her face. She doesn’t remember me, but she knows I must have known Traci because I mentioned Newsclip. It was the last job Traci had before she became a flight attendant, and it was the last job in my other life before becoming a teacher.

“How are you I asked?” not knowing if it is the right thing to say. If there is such a thing as the right thing. Her daughter made headlines after being brutally murdered. It was nearly four years to the date. What else could I say?

“I’m doing ok,” she says nodding. “You know this is a bad time of the year for me. Thanksgiving is always bad because that’s when they found her.
It’s my turn to nod.

“How’s your other daughter?” I said steering the conversation away from Traci.
“Lisa’s fine.”

“And her boys, she has two boys right?”

She nods again, that same painful smile glued to her face. “You know Toddy’s little girl goes here. She’s in Mrs. Carol’s kindergarten class.”

What do you say to a woman’s whose daughter has been murdered? Pray that you never have to know.