Busy Black Woman

Sister-Girl Prayer Circle, Activate!

2025-09-17T15:00:00.000-04:00

It was not on my BINGO card to put this sister's name at the top of the prayer list this month, but Kelly Price?

Sis. On Blue Ivy's internet in the eighth month of the second Trumpocalypse. YOU went there?

I don't even remember what I was trying to find when I saw your name and face trending on the front page of the Bing search engine last week, but there you were. The headline was provocative (they all are these days), but I decided to click anyway and Lawd, I so wish I hadn't. Because now I gotta write this even though the last thing I want to do is go on the offensive and attack a fellow Black woman. But you said what you said, and now I'm gonna say what I need to say.

First of all, I rebuke your rant in the names of Harriet Tubman, Anna Murray Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer, Aretha Franklin, and every other Black woman who ever faced the circular firing squad of slings and arrows from so-called friendly fire. Because I get that you were hurt and needed to unleash that anger. Sometimes, it be your own people who say the darndest and meanest things.

Starting with our own children. The homemade shank that is the sharp tongue of your own child stabbing you in the chest with some brutal truth you didn't ask to hear hurts like nothing you could ever imagine. My daughter took one look at my new hair cut last Fall and said that I should go back to the salon to have it glued back on. And while I knew better than to allow the words of a nine-year old to penetrate any deeper than a superficial flesh wound, I got a look at myself from an awkward angle and saw Bert from Sesame Street looking back at me.

Then there are the sharp-witted barbs that come flying from the mouths of our own mothers and/or passive aggressive aunts. I cannot begin to count the number of times my late Mom and her BFF, my Auntie, would gang up to offer some "constructive criticism" that had me questioning whether I preferred being bullied at school or at home.

So Kelly, Girl...I over-stand.

Secondly, we all know that social media has given people truckloads of audacity to say the kind of shit that they would never verbalize to someone's face. As you so aptly called out their keyboard courage, folks are really bold when they don't have to face the consequences of their words once they hit send. Particularly when engaging with some celebrity, most of the trolls assume that their audience consists of other like-minded serfs and TERFs.

One of the hidden blessings of not having a lot of followers on these platforms is that I've barely got a handful of haters. And most of those people don't even follow me, so it is an occasional aberration in the algorithm that enables any kind of toxic engagement. In order to provoke the slightest reaction, I've got to say something rather incendiary, which rarely happens. It isn't in my nature to be petty or cruel.

However, as a public figure, you are wide open to all kinds of criticism. Folks who have nothing better to do than post toxic and hateful messages subsist just to call you names, critique your looks, slam your outfits/costumes, and generally spew hate at you in the comment section. So whatever was said must have been really savage to prompt you to post a live video right after you finished your nighttime routine...

Third (and this is the part that got me all twisted), did you think this through before you went on that tirade against your fan base? Black women are the very people who pay to see you: the ones who get their praise on to your music, claim you as their honored Soror, and didn't abandon you in spite of your messiness on that reality show. Black women have been riding with you since your eRR Kelly and Mr. Big days. You really meant to blow up your career by calling Black women out like that on Al Gore's internet?

Look, I could dissect and analyze the content of what you said, but that's for the raw-meat eaters on the Clock app. As you can tell from my approach, I come in peace. I'm not adding any more kindling to this fire; in fact, all I have is a little glass of water that won't even quench your thirst in this heat. Because it is obvious to me that someone was looking for attention. If the goal was to get folks talking about you in advance of some upcoming project, that part worked. But then what Sis? After you go on a couple of radio interviews and podcasts, what happens once the tour is over and the hype dies down?

Who's coming to see you then, Kelly Price?

Let's keep it real--it won't be the tech bros who create and broadcast stereotypical Aunt Jemima memes of plus-size Black women on the Gram, the Book of Faces, or the Buzzard apps. It won't be the Konservative Kathie Lee Karens who prefer Chrisian contemporary worship music with their morning chardonnay. And it certainly won't be the ashy hoteps whose raison d'etre is day-trading insults with the tech bros against Black women. We're all we got.

I am very clear that hurt people lash out and hurt others, so the issue here isn't that you were wrong to be pissed. But let's keep it real...Black women aren't the most disrespectful, we are the most disrespected. In spite of being highly educated, dedicated to our families and communities, and advocates for justice and democracy, we're still human. We're imperfect and messy just like anybody else. And the same way that everyone is quick to disclaim being part of a monolith of all this or that, it is peculiar to me that you would stand in a mirror to point fingers and then act like you're blind to who and what is reflected back at you.

Since I am neither a PR nor a crisis communications professional, I don't have any advice or counsel. This might be the proverbial bridge too far. We're both smart and old enough to know how difficult it is for Black women in the entertainment industry once the tide turns against us. Mo'Nique is still looking for some R-E-S-P-E-C-T from Tyler Perry and the Oprah. Before your video rant, I'm sure Chrisette Michele would've happily traded places with you, just to be on the roster with a bunch of other R&B ladies performing at arenas as opposed to touring city wineries.

Now, I don't believe that you ought to allow disrespect to go unchecked, I just wish you had chosen some other way to set boundaries and expectations for what shalt not be tolerated by an R&B diva of your caliber. I'm curious to know how this kind of clapback hasn't gone viral before now, because you can't be the first Black performer to confront online vitriol. I'm guessing the others have people to hide or delete those kinds of comments in real time. Or in some cases, comments are disabled or restricted to limit that kind of negativity. Whatever it takes to protect your peace, I urge you to implement practices and procedures immediately. Based on the snippet of your response that I saw, you've been reading the comments before bedtime as a nightly ritual, so it is no wonder that you snapped (again)!

Although I don't have any answers, I can offer a word or two of encouragement. As this is a job that is too big for one Busy Black Woman to handle alone, I am assembling a prayer circle.

To do that, we start by invoking the ancestors already mentioned who knew a little something about being talked about, lied on, betrayed, abused, and ridiculed for being their authentic, full-figured, brown-skinned selves. You're not the first, nor will you be the last Black woman to be hurt by the words of our skinfolks. Each of those women endured both physical and emotional wounds and were called everything but a child of God; nevertheless, none of that suffering is what we celebrate about their lives. It is their perseverance and resolve to rise above the envy, pettiness, etc...

Can you imagine what would have happened if Harriet Tubman had listened to the doubters who wanted to turn back when they heard the slave catcher dogs? What if Anna Murray Douglass had decided that it would be safer to marry some free man of color instead of risking her own status to secure freedom for her beloved Frederick? You don't think there were Black people who believed Fannie Lou Hamer deserved that beating for registering to vote in Mississippi? And what about the woman we knew and revered as the Queen of Soul? You know good and dang well that Auntie Re-Re didn't lose any sleep over comments written about her on these interwebs.

Next, I am calling in the ladies dressed in white who carry scarves to drape over their knees when they sit so that no one can get an accidental peek at their girdles. The ladies who keep a stash of peppermint, butterscotch, or strawberry candies in plastic baggies to dispense to restless children; sugar-free cough drops for the older folks. If that ain't enough, I am calling on the women of your sorority to gather their poodles and to form an outer ring around those church ladies--a hedge of protection, if you will. If we need more reinforcements, maybe some of your fellow R&B sistren and queen mothers will lend their voices in support.

Finally, because I do want to end on a high note, I sincerely hope that this gathering of Black women ancestors, prayer warriors, sorority sisters, and divas can penetrate the defensive walls you have built around yourself. By and large, Black women are not your haters. From where I sit way back in the cheap seats, ain't nobody who is paying good money to see you deserves to be taunted or belittled. We get enough of that for free on our jobs, in our homes, and whenever we log onto these same social media sites. We may not all be in the same arena, but I assure you that there are more of us here cheering you on than over there casting stones. At the end of the day, we all need the same thing...Healing.

Remembrance: Our Brother Malcolm

2025-07-29T13:42:00.004-04:00

I was writing a different kind of piece last Monday morning...ironically on the other male star of The Cosby Show. Based on a series of coincidences, I thought the stars had aligned in such a way that it was timely for me to finally return to some other pieces I began writing months ago on the issue of watching the show anew (in middle age). So when I saw a picture of Malcolm-Jamal Warner on my phone, I initially thought, ah another sign. He must be making news for saying something newsworthy on his podcast or maybe he has a new endeavor? Then I scrolled down...

JUST the previous week my Niece sent me a picture (the one that I posted here) from that iconic Gordon Gartrell shirt episode. JUST this past weekend I happened to see a clip of that unforgettable Grandparents' 49th Anniversary performance that we all adore. JUST a month or so ago, I read about an interview where Warner talked about having made peace with being Theo after years of resenting the character. JUST before he died, he reunited with his TV baby sister Keisha Knight Pulliam on his podcast.

This tragic news JUST stirs up every complicated and devastating emotion imaginable.

To be honest, there is no way to make sense of this tragedy or to separate in my mind (for the moment) that there is/was any difference between Theodore Huxtable and Malcolm-Jamal Warner. I mean, I know that they were two distinct people--one a fictional creation and the other was the actor who brought that character to life. There was no Theo without Malcolm, so we find ourselves mourning Sondra, Denise, Vanessa, and Rudy's brother. Best friend to Cockroach, on/off again boyfriend of Justine. Cliff and Clair's only son.

Because Theo was the only other man in a house full of women, it was probably intended that his character would bring a fair number of laughs. That was clearly the tone throughout most of the pilot, with him acting as the family antagonist, punctuated by a shrug and "no problem" as his potential catchphrase, consistent with typical sitcom formula. Right when that contrived lesson on "regular people" and budgeting with play money reached its peak, we all thought the emotional pay-off was Theo's big speech about acceptance. It got the expected live studio audience response; however, it was Dr. Huxtable's irritated retort that delivered the punchline. From this literal flip-the-script moment that abandoned every sitcom trope we had seen in the 20 minutes prior, a different kind of family sitcom was born.

In this new iteration, this urban Black family, different than any other that had been depicted on-screen, made us laugh about a lot of regular and random stuff. Instead of weekly problems caused by the end of the money arriving before the end of the month, there was a funeral for a goldfish and a Father's Day do-over for better presents. There were only a handful of topical "very special" episodes. Every Huxtable kid got to shine and evolve in unique ways: Rudy was bossy, Vanessa was boy-crazy, Denise was flaky, Sondra was the eldest, and Theo was their brother. It was a multi-generational family, so there were grandparents, in-laws, grandchildren, cousins, neighbors, and a lot of friends. They ate dinner together, had family meetings, and the worst fight we saw between the siblings was over an ugly sweater.

That's the extent of the critical analysis I will offer on the show at this time. Instead, I want to make the bold declaration that in spite of what I just wrote about each Huxtable sharing the privilege of making us laugh, most of our favorite episodes either focused on Theo or consisted of him stealing the scene: getting his ear pierced; the Shakespearean rap-sody assignment; the running joke about his voracious appetite; not making it onto Dance Mania; that helicopter to the prom fiasco; the wild party with the broken furniture that almost landed him in the Army; and those two performances for the Huxtable Grandparents' anniversaries (this was for the 50th). In lieu of developing a signature line (e.g., Dyn-o-mite, watchu talkin' bout Willis, or Did I do that), we got a series of Theo-isms. For example, that Stevie Wonder episode was one of the corniest, yet I dare you not to smile as you read jammin' on the one, a classic Theo-ism. For the past few days, nearly every remembrance of Theo has made a reference to this infamous shirt.

Given Theo's growth and evolution throughout the run of the show, it was fitting that the series finale culminated in a "family" reunion for his graduation from NYU. Included in that emotional farewell to the show was a flashback to that pivotal scene from the pilot. Thanks to syndication, we were blessed to revisit the Huxtables often through the years...until.

In a perverse way, the fallout from Cosby's sexual assault allegations forced Warner and the other actors to forge alternative identities for themselves beyond the show. That proved to be more of a challenge for some cast members, but not for Warner who had begun eyeing various career options and expansion before The Cosby Show ended. In addition to a few cameo appearances in music videos and on other sitcoms, Warner also tried his hand at directing. I found out last year that he was one of the co-directors of Off to See the Wretched (1990)--an episode that has become equally as iconic as that lopsided shirt. He appeared in an HBO TV movie on the Tuskegee Airmen in 1995; starred in a few more sitcoms and TV dramas; made a cameo in a memorable Key & Peele skit; and just kept working. While none of those characters would have the same enduring pop cultural impact as Theo, at least Warner wasn't typecast like so many other child actors.

On social media, several of my friends have posted personal remembrances of encounters with Warner, and I have my own fame-adjacent story to share from more than a decade ago. He appeared in a local stage adaptation of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in 2013. I attended a stage talk with my Mom and got my parents tickets to see the production as a Christmas present. Until that moment, I had never looked at Malcolm-Jamal Warner as anything other than a play cousin. Suddenly, here was this handsome man, taller than I realized striding to center stage, and for the first time my head tilted to the side and my Mom sat up straight in her seat. And I thought to myself okay I see you Malcolm, looking like a burger...deluxe with the works (cue Theo-ism at 0:59).

Mind you, at this point he hadn't been Theo for 20 years. And the point of recalling that wasn't to admit to ogling but about taking notice of just how far we'd all come since his first TV role. It was his confidence and graciousness that got our attention, his openness about tackling new challenges as an artist, and his accessibility. It was like reuniting with a childhood friend, picking up where we last left things, and realizing just how much we've missed their presence. It was so refreshing to see Malcolm on his own terms.

Warner's untimely death means that I need to rethink the other concurrent pieces on The Cosby Show I have waiting to be completed in the drafts. I started writing about the show last Fall after I began to watch it again, as well as the other piece I alluded to about Cosby that I started writing this past weekend. While I try to sort out how to proceed, I want to do so with sensitivity to the emotions that are swirling around everyone who knew and worked with Warner, including Bill Cosby. Ironically, in the immediate aftermath of learning of Warner's death, my thoughts went to his TV Dad.

I vividly remember when Cosby's son Ennis was killed in 1997. We were all aware that the fictional Theo had been modeled on real-life Ennis Cosby, and at the time, Cosby was still regarded as America's Dad. Until he spoke out about Warner's death, it was unclear if they had remained in touch or how their relationship had been impacted by Cosby's dramatic fall from grace. It wasn't surprising to learn that Warner remained in contact with his mentor because in spite of what we know now, what we saw on camera for all of those years wasn't just a working relationship.

Thus is the nature of life and death--it's complicated. Contrary to what I wrote initially about feeling like we've lost Theo, the truth is that we haven't. Theo Huxtable lives on, forever suspended in youthful, syndicated immortality. For those of us who have access to The Cosby Show in reruns, we can pretty much enjoy his antics on a regular basis. We can cycle through the seasons and watch Theo grow up and graduate in perpetuity.

However, we have lost Malcolm, our brother, best friend, on and off again teenage crush, and for some, our son. We lost our homie and what he embodied: a very smart, intentional, deep thinking and thoughtful, strong yet vulnerable brother. We lost that mad cool dude who vibed with us like smooth jazz on a Sunday afternoon. We lost the voice of a poet, an artist who had so much to say. His family lost a man who had taken on what he believed to be (and was) the most important role of his life as a husband and father. In recognition of his namesake, we lost one of the best examples of our living Black manhood, a shining Black prince. And in spite of his 40-year career, it still seems unfair that we lost him too soon.

Our Brother from Another Mother

2025-07-21T15:13:00.004-04:00

I cannot believe I am writing this piece in this moment, but I could not just go on with my day and not acknowledge just how heartbroken I am upon learning of Malcolm-Jamal Warner's untimely death by drowning.

This is literally me writing in the moment, while I have a brief window of time before I have to snap out of this and get back to life, back to reality. Errands, getting my daughter from camp, thinking about what to fix for dinner...and trying to write, finish, and publish several other drafts for this blog. Including the one on Warner's fictional father that I started yesterday.

Talk about timing.

My Teen Niece just sent me this text last week --->

I just happened to have had a conversation with someone wherein we agreed that Malcolm and Eddie (1996-2000) was a terrible show.

In one of those random Facebook timeline recommendations, someone just posted a video about secret Hollywood couples which included Warner in two. I actually knew about one but was reminded about the other.

There are so many coincidental reasons why Malcolm-Jamal Warner had been popping up all over the place, mostly Cosby Show related, but also just not too long ago because of an interview he gave wherein he addressed not wanting to be remembered only as Theo Huxtable.

So I just don't know how else to feel, because as far as I am concerned, we just lost Theo for real and it sucks because it is more appropriate and accurate to say that we just lost Malcolm.

We lost Malcolm, our brother from another mother.

If you understand what that means, we're not mourning like we lost a sitcom character or the actor who portrayed that character as if we didn't know him. Most of us didn't know him. But we knew him because we saw him grow up on television, and if you are of a certain age, we all grew up together.

And he was one of the key members of a fictional family that we loved. There is so much to say about that character, but now isn't the right time because I need to go in 5 minutes and I just need to keep the focus on Malcolm...

Because Malcolm was more than Theo and maybe it isn't fair that contrary to everything else he did, we will primarily remember him for that singular character. Sure, he had other roles, tried his hand at directing, and like many of us, has a family that is similarly reeling in shock.

So I will try to figure out how to come back to this and say something more meaningful. For Malcolm.

Other People's Business

2025-07-17T21:06:00.001-04:00

It never ceases to amaze me how some people can see a row of red flags flapping in the breeze, ignore what they see with their own eyes, and then act surprised when the very thing they were being warned about happens.

Yes America, I am talking about you and this Regime of fascists that 77 million of you elected...but not yet. Before we get political, I am referring to a particular individual who chose to reconcile with her ex after a decade of being apart. They now have a baby, a reality show, and probably other big plans for their future together. And in all sincerity, I hope that we're wrong because Lord knows there ain't nothing worse than making a mistake that everyone else saw coming.

But come on Ashanti, what made you decide to accept this Kobayashi Maru?

I won't delve too deeply into matters that are none of my business, except to say that if you don't want people all up in the mix, then don't give out tasting spoons! I would have been content to just shake my head, even after your man agreed to perform for the Abomination, but y'all decided that we needed to know why he did so by dragging out the explanation over eight episodes.

I won't be watching this reality show for all of the same reasons why I stopped watching these shows years ago. I do not enjoy car crashes. I just had one in May, and I would not recommend it. Having done a stint of time as a church trustee and as a family law attorney, it isn't that I can't take knowing people's business. It is that I adhere to that old adage that when you know better, you do better. And Sis, it's been 20 years, so what is it that you don't know better by now?

Y'all been see-sawing back and forth in and out of each other's lives for 20 years. During that time, you had a complicated situationship with the late producer Irv Gotti. Your man made headlines for some sexual assault allegations that we ain't forgot about (and shouldn't in the wake of what we learned about Diddy, but let's not linger on that for now). At some point after being coy for years, y'all admitted what we had suspected when you had a very painful break-up. So whatever lessons should have been gleaned from your previous relationship, hopefully were taken to heart. While I'm watching all of this from the cheap seat and minding my Busy Black business, YOU know.

After 20 years of watching reality television relationships implode, you also know that your chances of living happily ever after get bleaker with each episode. I can't cite exact statistics, but most of those Housewives have divorced. Given that reality, I'm mad that you still agreed to do this, as if we are owed some explanation about the inner workings of your lives. Why? That whole part about "repaying fans" sounds like you owe refunds on defective merchandise, a whack performance, or having been party to a massive scam (wrong dude, that was Ja Rule). So again, why?

Unless...somebody's check is still in the mail, or it bounced. As we know, a certain person, himself a perpetual reality TV presence, has been known to stiff folks or to delay having to pay them. Therefore, if the reason why you're leaving your blinds and shades wide open is to earn a little extra money, I'm still not understanding. I thought you owned your masters, and I could've sworn that Hot in Herre gets sampled for a new ad campaign every summer.

But get this, Imma stop asking why and get to the point because honestly, I don't really care to know about your finances. I'm more fascinated by your response to the declaration your man made on camera that he's not waking up in the middle of the night with you to tend to his child, and how that sent a bunch of folks to pull out their phones to take sides on Blue Ivy's internet. Did anybody expect him to be a more enlightened or evolved kind of man? This same dude who swiped a credit card between a woman's buttocks in a music video? Granted, that was 20 years ago...back when you were dating him the first time around.

However, he is the same dude, when asked to explain the sexism and objectification of women in that video to the very audience of college students whom he was hoping to use as props, who refused. Because how dare they not be flattered by the attention and publicity of his altruism? I don't know what role you had in that decision, and again I don't care because I'm not interested in revisiting that incident in detail. You stood by your man, which was your right and choice. Just as it is his choice to roll over at 3am, ignoring you and the cries of his son.

Given that you have known this man for the better part of 20+ years, and he's been a father that entire time, surely you had some idea how that would look and play out for your child. You observed him with his other children and must have been privy to some of his family drama. He starred in another reality show premised on his particular brand of fatherhood! That you seemed taken aback that a man who was on tour for 93 dates in 2024, including the day you reportedly gave birth...(I'm not making this up, here's some video from his DC date with Janet Jackson on July 12, 2024, six days earlier). According to that schedule, he was traveling and performing while you were recovering and going through those first few hazy days/nights of new parenthood. So no, my dear sister in Christ, he's not going to be there for much else unless there is a camera crew involved.

As for that quip about not wanting to be a 50-something running after a toddler, quite a few of us can relate to that sentiment in theory. In practice, I've seen plenty of older and/or second time around Dads out here trying to prove that they can keep up (even if reality is the opposite). For his part, the Hub is revving up a rigorous fitness regimen to get out on the basketball court with our Tween; I might secretly return to yoga class so that I can show this girl how flexible I used to be. Where there is a will, there's a way. However, what your man articulated a will to do was to wait for this baby boy child to reach the age and mobility level where he could hang out with Dad and his crew. I would be curious to know if the same intent would have been expressed if this child had been a girl, but let's not speculate.

Instead, let me widen my lens from focusing on the minutia of your life choices to addressing the larger picture here which is the pendulum swing back towards this Detached Dad ethos that defines parenting along gender roles. Actually, it goes a lot deeper than that as it began with this push for a return to the old nuclear family ideal. As opposed to embracing the "modern" family in its myriad combinations: inter-generational, blended, matriarchal, or composed of a chosen village versus everyone related by blood or marriage, we have gone retro to the Father Knows Best era. While it has been framed as a reaffirmation of traditional values, it's just misogyny broadcasted in reruns and on-demand.

Which suggests that this is more than a reactionary moment of backlash, but a pervasive movement that doesn't just yearn for the nostalgia of the past, but which actively seeks to restore patriarchal "order". It demonizes childless women, single mothers, and any other woman who doesn't stay in the lanes that men have chalk-lined to contain our ambitions. For example, I recall thinking that when Keke Palmer got called out by her then-partner for enjoying her Mom's night out a little too much two years ago, y'all were just taking sides. Mind you, there would have been no outcry or controversy if her man had been photographed getting a lap dance. Some of your men blow their half of the rent money at the strip club; yet she was called out, became fodder for the podcast bros, and now she's just another baby mama.

Not a wife.

That's the ultimate punishment--not getting to be any man's wife, even if he does the bare minimum or the most harm. The message to women is not to complain, just comply and maybe he will put a ring on it and help you pay half the bills. As for any expectations for him to take an active role in parenting, he's the man of the house, and with so many of you eager to uplift and amplify traditional notions of fatherhood as more manly, he gets to decree and declare what he's not going to do.

Once upon a time, men were defined by the things they did, not by the things they wouldn't do. In the past few years I've seen that notion turned inside out, with men asserting their manhood by not drinking from straws on the shallow end to boasting about the things they won't do for their children on the deeper end. I've seen men record videos of themselves attacking mannequins and destroying store displays over their rainbow decorations. The number of grown men who can't figure out how to put food on their plates and brag about that level of willful ineptitude is astonishing. I believe the ATIA genre is mostly a collection of scenarios where men go to whine upon learning that their happiness and satisfaction isn't the Holy Grail of existence for the women in their lives.

The absurdity of it all is summed up in the re-elevation of a certain person as the avatar of true manhood--the world's greatest cosplaying showman! A man who only exerts himself to scribble his name to a bunch of cruel edicts resulting in wrist cramps. A so-called man's man who looks real tough in his ill-fitting suit, bad comb-over, and clown makeup. A cad who cannot stand to be challenged by confident women, yet he always ends up having to pay for sex (either to procure it, as part of the prenup, or as punishment).

The man for whom your man felt honored to have been invited to perform. Maybe they have a lot in common 🚩🚩🚩

To be clear, I would never criticize a man for working hard to provide for his family. I heard your man reveal in an interview that he didn't have the same kind of traditional nuclear family unit that you were blessed with, so I applaud that he has sought to provide the structure that he believes is best for his children. For that, in addition to adopting his late sister's children, your man is to be commended. Full stop.

Therefore, I'm just going to wrap this up in a bow because you know who you married and unlike the rest of us bitter bitches, Ashanti's got a man...on tour.

And that's what y'all claim to want, according to the tweets--the kind of man who works hard so that he can afford a nanny on call for those 3am feedings. It took Ashanti and her man 20 years to get to this point, so we ought to be happy for them. No more struggle love, because now she's been promoted to wifey, and there are worse fates (like doing bad all by herself).

There's An App for That

2025-07-02T12:31:00.004-04:00

I had another menopausal meltdown recently, this time in public...but that's not the main impetus for this overshare. I've been toying with the idea of introducing 'Menopause Memoirs' as a new blog label, so the test run is recounting a recent encounter I had with automation and "efficiency" and how those twin illusions have done more to ruin, instead of enhance my overall quality of life.

If you are rolling your eyes and thinking, OK Boomer, first let me remind you that I am Generation X, and you need to watch your tone. Second, I am not a child, but that doesn't mean I want to be called Ma'am or urged to calm down. You can see I'm agitated; so be helpful, not patronizing! Third, I rather like being feared like the mutant Storm whenever one of my rants is doing the most. So if you can't assist me without resorting to condescension, then find somebody who can and just take cover...

Perhaps the word ruin is an exaggeration, but you tell me, how has automating everything made life so much better? From where I sit, y'all have been steadily gaslighting us because every six months there's a new and "improved" version of some system that just makes life more complicated. I didn't ask for any of this. But when I need to ask someone to explain it to me, no one knows how it works or why it was implemented. And after ten minutes or more of going in circles, I am annoyed about that lost time and the realization that this could have been avoided if you had paid somebody to do their old job!

For example, why must I download a new mobile app for every different parking garage within a ten-mile radius? Can we all agree that is the opposite of efficient? Because what if I don't want to set up another account and have my information stored in a database somewhere, only to get a letter in the mail a year from now informing me of a data breach? I just want to park my doggone car while I conduct my Busy Black business at this establishment. Why can't these building management companies work together and agree on a universal system in the same jurisdiction? Or better yet, do not overcharge me an arm and a leg to leave my car unattended in a parking garage where no one bears responsibility for loss or theft even as there are cameras everywhere?

Yep, the fuse for this parking app rant was lit by the Hub because he thinks he knows EVERYTHING, and that was the reason for my meltdown. Mind you, he's wrong 50% of the time, but he's a man and Donald Trump is President again, so that's all I have to say on that. So in my best Sophia Petrillo voice: Picture it, suburban Maryland in the middle of a weekday afternoon, and we're heading to lunch at a hotel on a rare childless outing. He chose this place because it was close to where the Kid was in camp for the day, and they were familiar with this particular restaurant.

He also recommended this place because it had validated parking. Folks who know me in the real world know that the quest for free parking is kind of my personal hunt for Moby Dick because I refuse to pay more for parking than I would for a meal. (We all have our quirks, and I have been known to park up to half a mile away from my destination). Anywho, upon this reassurance, we drove to the hotel, but as we approached the mechanical arm to access the lot, there was a sign instructing us to scan a QR code. The Hub confidently declared that this sign was inapplicable to us since the restaurant validated parking. Though dubious of his claims, I drove around looking for a space but misread another sign which led us to the facility exit. There was no way to back up or to turn around, nor was there an attendant or booth to provide assistance, so we were forced drive towards the arm in hopes that we would be released. We were able to exit and re-enter the lot, but it was unclear if we would be charged for this mistake.

We found a space on our third rotation located near another sign with the QR code. The Hub continued to insist that scanning the code was unnecessary, but I scanned it anyway. However, I must have unchecked or clicked something inadvertently that kicked me out of the main menu. I kept trying to undo or return, but it kept routing me to a different set of options. Once we got to the restaurant, there was a sign that confirmed the Hub's claim about free validation which required scanning a second code. I will spare you the intricate details of how I wasted the next ten minutes attempting to navigate this app while the Hub chatted and perused the menu. Just know that he placed his order while I remained stuck in an endless loop on my phone with no insight into how the parking was supposed to work or what I wanted to eat. The waiter informed me that I did need to download the app (which I had tried to do several times at this point) and that's when the Hub said flippantly: geeze, it's just an app.

Dearly Beloved, the fact that he still has his head is a miracle of restraint, but he still got quite a few neck chops. And days later, he still hasn't acknowledged that he was halfway WRONG about the parking app! But don't worry; the Busy Black Woman remembers...

Exasperated, I stormed out of the restaurant to make my way back to the garage in order to let off some steam and to re-scan the QR code. Before I reached the escalator, I decided to inquire at the front desk about how to access the app. The two women were kind enough to explain that this new parking system had been in place for about two weeks and still had a few kinks to work through. Then I was blessed with some in-person, old-fashioned customer service that enabled me to return to the restaurant with a plan to troubleshoot in case there was a problem in a few weeks (because deferring resolution of a pending problem is another fallacy of modern-day efficiency).

Hence the question that keeps loading and re-loading like a 404 error--what do we gain in exchange for making life so transactional and efficient? To save time for what and for whom? Everything requires an app, a new password, and no way to get assistance or clarity from a human being. None of these innovations make my life easier if it shifts the burden of labor and I have to resolve my own problems. For example, have you noticed how 800 numbers rarely exist nowadays? If you haven't, try finding a phone number to call a company about an issue or inquiry about an order. Nine times out of ten, you won't find one. You'll find a contact form or a generic address to send an email and then wait for up to 24 hours for some kind of response (if you're lucky).

Case in point: I placed an order with a small business in mid-January that hadn't arrived within two weeks. I received a follow-up email from a third-party survey site asking me to rate my purchase, to which I responded that my order had not been received. No response or acknowledgment that my complaint had been received or was under investigation by the vendor. Weeks later, the same order was still missing and after several attempts to contact the seller through that third party site and directly on their website contact form, I sent one final email wherein I threatened to dispute the charge with my credit card company if there was no communication by a specific date. And I kid you not, my order mysteriously arrived two days later...still with no acknowledgement or even an apology for the weeks of delay. Since I haven't received any subsequent solicitations, I must have been dropped from their mailing list. If everything is automated and efficient, who's virtual feelings got hurt?

In the rare cases when you are able to call customer service, you probably aren't speaking to anyone physically working at the company. You end up routed to a call center with someone who may or may not be able to process your request/complaint without putting you on hold while they contact someone at the actual company to resolve your issue. It is not your imagination that many of the people who answer those calls have foreign accents. I saw an ad on my X timeline for this company in the Spring that promotes below American minimum wage remote work abroad. Efficient ain't the e-word to best describe what that really is...

But this is the new world order. Folks get on Al Gore's internet to opine that no one wants to work anymore, while failing to notice how variations on "efficiency" have made a lot of what used to be considered work obsolete. I'm bagging my own groceries at both the self-checkout and with a cashier because they won't assist me in packing my bags if I'm trying to be environmentally conscious by bringing my own reusable ones. I can get some assistance at the post office if I'm mailing a package, or I can fumble around on my own and hope that I filled out the correct forms. I can deposit a check from my phone, manage my accounts online, and withdraw cash from a machine so that I never have to venture into a bank to talk to a bank teller. There are no more record or video stores because we can stream music and movies (for a brief time, bookstores almost went extinct as well). Malls are dying because we shop online, watch movies at home, and get our meals delivered by Door Dash and Uber Eats.

A bunch of headlines and podcasts warn of a loneliness epidemic among young men, and it makes sense if there aren't many reasons for them to leave the house. Where are they going to hang out and not get harassed since half the places where we used to socialize regard teenagers with suspicion? Between lax gun storage laws and sex offender registries, who can we trust? So we keep them inside, plugged into their video game consoles or computers (apps) and then wonder why no one has any manners or social skills. As the mother of Tween (yep, time to upgrade her status), this is equally applicable to young women, not to mention the rest of us.

How do we stay connected, interact with each other, and organize events? Through social media apps. We conduct many of our meetings, job interviews, and trainings on platforms like Zoom. Singles meet through online dating apps and if it proceeds to the IRL stage, they film the experience for their TikTok followers. If there isn't a love connection, there's online porn...and from the looks of some of those female avatars, you might want to check in and make them keep the door open. EVERYTHING is available on an app.

Much of this isolationism was necessitated by the pandemic; however, a movie released a decade before predicted this current movement towards social detachment via technology. It has become clear that a significant segment of the population prefers that kind of solitary existence to living in a society where we need to interact and engage with others. It fuels these broader questions that are driving all kinds of decisions--why we don't need to want to feed other people's children, why we don't want foreigners living in our country, why we don't care about anyone or anything...

But all of that deep contemplation takes this discussion to the existential realm, and I just wanted to vent about how I don't want to download another effing app!

Because I don't want all of my bodily functions measured and recorded on my phone. Yes, I did like your video; no, I am not subscribing to your YouTube channel. I'm not donating to any reputable charity through cashapp. I didn't open the e-card you sent me from my phone because the print is too small. I don't want to keep my credit card numbers on file in a virtual wallet. If I cannot remember the previous 6 passwords I made up, then I am unlikely to remember some encrypted computer-generated gibberish as an alternative. No, I don't want to give you my email address to receive special offers because I have over 100,000 unread emails from every other retailer where I've made previous purchases. All I did was Google a random symptom, so why am I receiving spam about erectile dysfunction?

Unless somebody invents an app to keep my moods from swinging and democracy from ending, I'm not downloading, upgrading, or scanning another blessed thing.

Off With His Head (A Change of Life Story)

2025-06-10T06:31:00.000-04:00

The Hub used my bath towel again. I have told him 50-11 times that I don't like that, each and every time after he claims to have "forgotten" that I don't like it because I have observed that he's used my towel. So I snapped, and that's why he's walking around without a head your Honor.

Disclaimer: No husbands were harmed by the writing of this piece (not yet), but the next time he uses my towel...so help me!

On Sunday morning, the Kid had to be at church early, so the Hub made her breakfast and left the kitchen a grease-spattered un-wiped wreck because he wanted to make sure that she arrived on time. He made himself coffee in the French press, left out the agave sweetener that only he uses, and didn't throw out his eggshells from the breakfast he made himself that he left in the sink. I'm sure he pissed me off in a number of other ways, but it doesn't matter because he'll play dumb and accuse me of nagging. And if I grumble to any of my so-called girlfriends (all of whom have come to his defense for the past 23+ years), they will excuse his bad habits because none of them live with his messy azz! That's part of the reason why I need to tell my side of the story so that everyone knows how to react when they cart me away for accidentally/on purpose taking off his head.

For the last year, I have not been my normal self. I haven't become some other woman; I've just decided that I have had enough of the bullshit I've been putting up with to keep the peace. I'm done letting it slide and quietly tolerating what might be classified as the "small stuff". All of the isht that has always irritated me that I have chosen not to mention is now fair game for a knock-down, drag-out fight because dangnabit, at your big age you should know how to fold a paper bag since the folds are literally imprinted on the gotdamned bag! This ain't origami, so what the hell?

Since the piece I started to write for my 50th birthday that declared how I would approach life after the half century point is buried under a year and a half of other drafts, and distraction has become my constant companion on the road of good intentions, let me cut to the point--perimenopause. I have no idea where I am in the process, but the change is a-coming and I am not happy. I already expressed my feelings about that here, but I feel the need to really unload because I get crankier and less tolerant by the day. We are only a week into the 2025 hurricane season, and though there is no chance that a storm will officially bear my name (because of biases against ethnic names, no doubt) it's just as well. As long as this category 1 Hurricane Ayanna doesn't destroy too much property, you might survive, but you still need to be prepared. Because if things continue on present trajectories and gain more strength, my warning is for these meaux faux to evacuate or hunker down.

I am not playing.

And because God is a woman with a wicked sense of irony, puberty is also forming a tropical depression to cause her own wave of destruction and nonsense. This girl-child of mine is nearly as tall as my 5'10" self and wears a woman's size 6.5 shoe! Y'all already know that she's only just 10 years old, so how much more growth do you expect from this particular spurt before she's wearing my clothes? She still believes in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus...

Before you judge me, judge yo' mamma! Because as long as my Kid is repulsed by the kissing scenes in the live action versions of Beauty and the Beast (2017) and The Little Mermaid (2023), yes, she absolutely can still believe in whatever imaginary friends and fairy dust magic that exists in the world. Borrowing the title from one of my generation's coming-of-age movies, reality bites. So don't spoil anything unless you're a man with six fingers preparing to die.

I said what I said.

I don't know if I get any sleep because I am always tired. That could be the rainy weather, but my knee isn't aching. I'm craving salty foods, but also chocolate. I need to go grocery shopping, and I made a list, but I know I am forgetting something that I want and probably need but won't remember until after I'm in the self check-out line with my 20 plus 2-4 extra items and I can't remember which phone number might be in the system for the discounts. At least I always remember to bring my reusable bags, because as much as I resent bagging my own groceries, the cashiers won't use my bags, and I hate having to pay .05¢ each for the plastic bags they will use. It's like asking me to tip the hostess at the restaurant for pronouncing my name correctly as she hands over my takeout order that I am picking up myself. I always add the tip though, because I don't want to be thought of as cheap (but just know that I don't appreciate feeling guilty).

Yeah, I hate a lot more things now. I hate that all of these plastic bags kill aquatic animals and cause unsightly litter. I hate how bike lanes have increased my commute time between points A and B by at least 10 extra minutes and how no one ever uses them! I get stuck driving behind some dude casually joy-riding an electric scooter when I'm trying to get somewhere. Like seriously, walk or take the damn bus! You look like an overgrown child--scooters are for kids to ride on the sidewalk while their parents walk them to school.

Stuff that I used to find mildly annoying or inconvenient, I hate. Like commercials. I'm trying to understand why every other commercial is for weight loss drugs or these obscure conditions that no one I know has ever been diagnosed with, like the treatment for eyelash mites. Why does that need its own ad campaign? Are y'all just making up ailments in anticipation of some massive outbreak of dust? And look, I'm definitely not against more advanced treatments for diabetes that have the beneficial side effect of aiding weight loss. I'm just wondering why all of those commercials look like those Carnival Cruise Ship promotions with Richard Simmons. Or when the marketplace for car insurance got so competitive.

Speaking of, you wanna know what commercials really annoy me more than anything? Those radio ads for Top Dog Law. They are inescapable if you listen to urban radio anywhere on the East Coast (apparently, they are all produced by this guy). First of all, does Mr. Top Dog, Esq. have a real name? And if he is licensed in several states, he's not going to represent you both in Richmond and Philly. You're getting one of his Scrappy Doo associates, and they're going to take a third of your settlement to pay for more of those annoying commercials.

I almost forgot what I was here to complain about--that I am surrounded by eediots who do things to annoy me and act shocked when I get mad about it. Like dude, do you know how to turn off any lights when you leave a room? Nobody shits roses, so use the Lysol and close the bathroom door! If you aren't losing your hearing, why is the TV up on sonic blast levels? Little precocious child, why are you playing in my expensive skin care products? This is not Dexter's Laboratory and you are not getting extra credit for these ridiculous science experiments. Do you people think I live only to clean up after you?

As I try to accept the things I cannot change, and given that menopause is inevitable, I feel like it should have come with better warnings. All we were told during middle school health class was that our periods would stop, but there was a LOT of other information that was withheld, and I demand to know why! Why not offer us another updated health class at 40 since we now know that our mothers didn't tell us anything. There's a long list of things they didn't warn us about us about but let me stay focused...the point is that it ought to be mandatory that we get some coming-of-age movie that explains what the hell is going on because Steel Magnolias (1989) barely scratches the surface.

I hate feeling blind-sided.

I hate that every attempt to address menopause in pop culture leaves out all of the real scary shit like heart palpitations, facial hair, and the litany of chronic health issues that all have the same symptoms. That one episode of The Golden Girls where Blanche thought she was pregnant only addressed her one missed period, yet no one ever mentions about how misleading that was? She got a definitive answer from a gynecologist after one visit, then continued to have the same libido for the next five seasons? In a house with three women in their 50s living in Miami, did I miss the episode when they compared the severity of their hot flashes? What the heck did they discuss every week over cheesecake???

To be fair, the show actually did address some of the various health issues that accompany menopause, they just didn't make it obvious. At least now I understand why Dorothy was in a perpetually bad mood. The Cosby Show also addressed the issue outright once, and a few other times as well, but we weren't paying close enough attention. Now seen from the perspective of a 50-something year old woman, the anger Clair unleashed in that Wretched episode was about more than Vanessa's stupidity and getting entangled in her lies. However, the most accurate depiction of what life has become is the episode when Clair comes home exhausted from work and after the family gets on her last nerve, she goes off to some cabin in the woods where she is met with more chaos and calamity. If I were writing that episode today, it wouldn't have mattered if she had retreated to that cabin or a 5-star hotel in Manhattan...the punchline would have been that she never went back home.

I am serious.

There is one Law & Order episode that mentioned more symptoms and ways of coping, but it did so by leaning into many of the stereotypes society has of powerful women. In essence, if nothing else can knock a bitch down, menopause surely will. And I hate that, because all it did was cement a litany of tropes that demonize women for not always being sweet and lovable. As if some of you aren't the most self-centered, inconsiderate, and helpless bunch of babies who can't handle simple dilemmas, like where you left your stuff that you need right now so I have to stop whatever else I am doing to find it for you or else your life is over. Yeah, it's definitely my hormones that are causing all of my irritation...

I'm not advocating or justifying violence; I'm just not ruling it out. Because now I empathize with the women in fairy tales who got fed up with those trespassing children eating the candy off their houses. Where is all the righteous disgust for their cowardly Daddy who abandoned them in the woods? (Don't even get me started on how whack the full story is or how the Brothers Grimm obviously hated women.) If you saw Wicked, then you should be reconsidering whether the real villain in Oz was the woman who lost her beloved sister and her magic designer shoes in a freak accident involving a falling house. Because if you recoil at the sight of the lady with the green skin instead of being disturbed by the lies of the con man game show grifter and the bubblegum fairy who pulls the levers of chaos behind the scenes, you've missed my entire point.

All I know is if the Hub uses my towel one more time, Imma go Red Queen on him and I don't want to hear nothing other than plans to help me hide the evidence or reassurance that you've got enough money to pay for my defense. And for the love of all humanity, it better not be that Top Dog Law dude.

Mother of the Dance

2025-06-01T08:44:00.005-04:00

Last July, I received a phone call that quite literally took my breath away. It came amidst a period of upheaval and chaos, not personal but national--it was the Monday of that same week that would upend the Presidential election. Imagine me thinking that the worst thing that could possibly happen in a year was the death of my Mom. Sadly, one of the ironies of life is it's hold my beer or glass of sweet white wine¹ way of reminding us that things can always get worse. So, I instinctively dreaded that when I got a call from an old friend (her daughter-in-law) in the middle of the afternoon, the reason why she was calling was not just to check in. It was to inform me that my long-time dance teacher, Mrs. Rosetta A. Brooks (Mrs. B) had passed unexpectedly.

I had intended to publish this tribute back in September. I wrote a version of the second half (after the jump) in August and had hoped to have it read at her memorial service. But for a variety of reasons, things didn't work out, so Plan B was to post it here right before the implosion of the election. Then came the holidays, more distractions, and the realization that maybe it isn't my imagination that I'm finding it a lot harder to focus or finish anything lately.

Instead of lamenting that particular downside of aging, I figured that at the right time I would eventually make my way back to finishing what I started. Eight months later, we were driving back from New Jersey and while listening to a late afternoon gospel music program out of Baltimore, I heard a song² that I thought I knew but couldn't place how or why. Normally, that kind of disconnect would have caused me to fixate until solving the riddle; however, by the second verse I recognized it as part of a suite of familiar dance pieces.

According to the calendar, it has been a year since the last time I saw Mrs. B at my daughter's dance recital, June 1, 2024. Each week, I sit in my car not far from the very spot where we had our last conversation. To think that interaction almost did not happen...but God. In a seemingly random series of ways, everything divinely aligned. Instead of leaving immediately after the show, I had my daughter pose for pictures in both of her costumes, which took time. I'm sure that I got to chatting with some folks whom I hadn't seen in a while as that is the nature of these kinds of event. When I made it outside, I saw my Dad's priest wandering past, so I stopped to talk with him. Then finally, on my way to my car, I saw Mrs. B slowly trudging her way across the courtyard to her car. Although I was used to seeing her walk with a cane, she seemed to be moving a lot more cautiously, almost dragging her body alongside a much taller walking stick that was twice her height. As always, she was toting more than one bag including one that held several bouquets of flowers she had received in honor of her being named director emerita of the studio.

My daughter had given her one of those bouquets, which turned out to be another one of those random impulses that God must have whispered into my spirit. I had dropped the Kid off to get ready for the show, and with a little time to fill before it began, I made a quick side trip to Trader Joe's to buy wine and flowers. I snapped up a few bouquets for my dancer, her teachers, and since I knew that Mrs. B was expected to attend, I grabbed one for her as well. Until the previous October, she had been one of the Kid's teachers too.

Until that previous October, it would have been inconceivable to think of St. Mark's Dance Studio and not have a simultaneous thought or memory of the ubiquitous Rosie Brooks. The very suggestion of her retiring was taboo, even if she was the person floating that trial balloon. Thus, when she had to take medical leave unexpectedly, we all hoped it would be temporary. In 40 years, I had never known her to get sick or injured enough to miss teaching classes. Paradoxically, it should have occurred to me that if she needed to take a medical leave of absence, then whatever the cause was a lot more serious than we wanted to believe. Therefore, I never imagined that our catch-up in the parking lot that day would be our last. Or that as we chatted about my Mom and she reassured me that I should take all of the time I needed to grieve, I would need to apply that same advice to my feelings about losing her.

In life, we aren't always given opportunities to let our loved ones know how much they mean to us. Sure, we have special holidays, formal observances, greeting cards, etc., but transitions don't tend to coincide with those moments. We become aware in hindsight or once we've missed the moment and promised to do better the next time. What happens if there is no next time? How to cope with the reality that you didn't make good on that promise to stop by one afternoon while she was teaching? Nor get to drop in to take a class for the first time since the pandemic? Nor just come to sit and chat like we used to in that big gap of time she had midday before her afternoon classes? How do you accept that you really never told her how much she meant to you because you had all of these ideas about how that should be communicated in some grand fashion, but she died before you got to formalize the proposal, let alone implement any plans?

Maybe that's why the church folks always tell us that we have to give people their flowers when they are able to smell them. Because six weeks later, I got that phone call and that meant I would not get to make good on any of my promises to visit. Instead of the retirement celebration I had envisioned to include testimonials and revival performances of some of her classic pieces, there was a memorial service.

That I had to watch online from the road because of a scheduling conflict...

Presuming that eight months of procrastination can indeed be blamed on brain fog and aging, it could also be that I felt a bit ashamed and a heap of guilt that this would be the only way I would ever get to express any appreciation for this relationship that spanned 40 years. Had I known that I wouldn't get another chance to do anything meaningful, what more could I possibly have said in that parking lot? Thank you? For not dismissing me as some gangly limbed freak when I showed up to start ballet classes at the ripe old age of 10? Thank you for seeing whatever it was you saw in me that kept me dancing all of those years. Thank you for being tough and honest and pushy because I needed to be challenged, disciplined, and encouraged. Thank you for loving my daughter. Thank you for being more than a dance teacher because you were also a confidant, a mentor, a life coach, and most of all, a friend.

It hasn't taken me all this time just to say thanks. It has taken me almost a year to confront my guilt and release my regrets for not being able to show up as I would have wanted. If writing this was the least I could do, then leaving it unfinished to languish in the drafts has been the worst. So it was not mere happenstance that something as subtle as a song inspired me to return to this piece. It was a nudge and a reminder that this was never supposed to be about me...but about her.

A year ago, some of her former students, my daughter among them, got to dance for her. Instead of being worried about the behind-the-scenes technical stuff, Mrs. B got to sit and watch the show. For all I know, this might have been the first time in 40 years that she wasn't running everything. In that unscripted, serendipitous encounter in the parking lot, she praised how well everything had been managed in her absence. It must have filled Mrs. B with pride upon seeing what she had built, with confidence that we could carry on, and with reassurance that she had trained us so well. In essence, she had received something far more substantial than bunches of grocery store flowers--she got to bear witness to all she had done at and for SMDS all these years. Assurance that her legacy would endure and flourish is the kind of gratification that is priceless and beautiful beyond words.

My daughter in costume from
Mrs. B's recital piece in 2023

The next part is what I wrote for the memorial service on behalf of the disbanded dance company/former students/current parents, but for the sake of expediency in the planning process, it got dropped from the program. Then because I couldn't be there in person, it seemed appropriate to convert my remembrance into a reflection to be read privately by her family. However, there was no way I could allow 800 words to suffice as my final farewell given the nature of our 40-year relationship. The version published after the jump is longer than what was submitted to the family...one of the perks/pitfalls of editing my own blog.

-- ADH

I am one of the many dancers who is proud to say that I was taught by Rosetta Brooks (Mrs. B) at the St. Mark’s Dance Studio (SMDS). I have been a part of the SMDS family for 40 years. If you can imagine, one of the most challenging assignments to take on (and spend weeks procrastinating in getting done) is to attempt to write a concise and poignant reflection about someone who has been your mentor for most of your life. It has taken me nearly two months to jot down these few thoughts, primarily because it has taken two months for all of this finally to sink in.

I came to SMDS when I was about the same age as my daughter Zuri is now (10). It was the early 80s and everywhere in popular culture people were dancing, so I wanted to do what they were doing. I begged my Mom to enroll me in classes so that I could move like a Solid Gold dancer or like one of the fictional students on the TV show Fame. Call it a coincidence, or just the way that God aligns things to bring us the desires of our hearts, because the summer before I started the sixth grade, a postcard came to our house in the mail. It was for a dance studio located not far from where we lived, addressed for the serious dancer.

As the saying goes, first impressions are lasting. I remember several things about that fateful initial visit to the studio: two staircases, a massive one that led to studio and the smaller one that led to the dressing room; the huge German shepherd dog that was stretched out in front of the mirror; the petite chain-smoking woman who didn’t smile (the late Mary Craighill, the founder and artistic director); and finally, a short lady dressed in black who wore blue eye shadow and her hair in pigtails.

If I had any reservations about whether this was the right place for me then (which I did), you would never know that now, given that with only a handful of exceptions, I never trained anywhere else.

The petite chain-smoker who didn't smile only glared at me while the other lady with the pigtails made notes to determine my assignment. Whether it was an actual audition, or just me standing there, who remembers that now? Until that day, I had no formal dance training, so if I am recalling events accurately, this was a pro-forma evaluation to determine if I was either too old or clumsy to begin lessons at my age since most girls began ballet much younger. Apparently, I made the cut and breathed a sigh of relief to learn that neither of those two women was to be my teacher.

Instead, I would start my dance career in a Saturday morning beginner class taught by Dorothy "Dot" Walker. It is important to point out that both Dot and Jessica Sloane, who was a dance company member at the time, are still here. That's because SMDS is, and always has been a family...

My second impression of Mrs. Brooks came from those Saturday mornings when I got to observe her in her own ballet classes. Remember how my first impression felt like I had to make the cut? Well, that's because there weren't many beginner ballet classes for anyone older than 10 at most places, so once our class ended, all traces of amateurism or that children had even been learning in that space completely vanished. At the end of our révérance, we were whisked out of the studio to make way for the company class and were instructed to wait outside or on that large staircase for our late pickups. We were not to be seen or heard, a rule that was posted on the studio doors, etched in the visage of the petite chain-smoking artistic director who taught the class, and reinforced by the presence of her German shepherd.

The mere presence of Mrs. Brooks, who was also a dancer in the company, ensured that we would remain silent. If the studio tagline, for the serious dancer, was embodied in a particular person, then back in those days, the avatar would have been Rosetta Brooks. Everyone else around here could be similarly solemn in demeanor; however, unlike the others, there was a different intensity to her that was intimidating--quite a feat for a woman who barely stood five feet tall. Although she didn't teach that Saturday class, if she had to glance over at us for being too giggly or restless, it felt like being struck by lightning.

Thus, being promoted to Mrs. Brooks's Intermediate B class the next year was simultaneously an honor and akin to being sentenced. Mrs. Craighill only taught adults, Mrs. Walker only taught young children, and Mrs. Brooks taught most of the youth ballet classes, so taking a class with her was inevitable. I imagine her objective had been to personally oversee the training of every teenager until we were released into whatever dance world existed beyond the church. Perhaps it was fitting that it was through Mrs. Brooks that the studio tagline was tested and refined--St. Mark's was indeed for the serious student who could survive her demanding and disciplined old-school Russian style training.

I took her Thursday technique class until my junior year of high school and began her teen pointe class on Fridays beginning in the ninth grade. That was twice a week for four years until she "promoted" me to the tutelage of someone else. When I returned to DC after being away for school, I took a few classes off and on, depending on my schedule. In 2003 she invited me to join the dance company, and I was an active member until my daughter was born in 2015.

I often joked that she had gone soft in recent years. When I was younger, Mrs. Brooks demanded that we arrive early (not merely on time) so that we could be at our assigned place at the barre for the start of class. During that tight window between classes, she would conduct a quick visual inspection for cowlicks, holes or runs in our tights, forgotten ballet shoes, etc. Any infraction received a stern rebuke (to us and also to our parents and guardians). Arrival more than five minutes after she had begun our barre could result in being sidelined to watch the entire class from the corner, so it was wise to never let that happen more than once. If there was such a concept as a pop quiz in ballet, it would occur every time she brought out her drum to drill our ability to execute certain beats. In those days, everyone at St. Mark's jumped at the boom of her voice.

Subsequent generations of dancers, my daughter included, were taught by the more easy-going, mellower "Mrs. B", the moniker she adopted in recent years (because I could never bring myself to call her Rosie like the other adults). I observed her evolution from stern ballet drill sergeant to jovial stage Mom with amusement. She still ran a tight ship and could be a taskmistress, but with a velvet glove as opposed to an iron fist. The dress code remained, but it was not as strictly enforced. A student running late to class was more likely to be greeted with concern and then comforted by a hug as opposed to being exiled to observe class from the sidelines. My daughter doesn't remember if Mrs. B ever brought out her drum during class. Now, everyone at St. Mark's will miss the echo of her laugh.

For the most part, everyone who has ever danced at SMDS has found their way back here. This studio functions as both a learning environment and communal gathering space for a large extended family for which Mrs. B served as the de facto matriarch for decades. It never mattered how many years passed since your last dance class, if you showed up in that doorway and peeked your head around the corner, chances are, you saw Rosie Brooks sitting in that wooden chair, barely held together by duct tape, underneath that analog clock. And nine times out of ten, she immediately recognized you! She would invite you back to take a class or to attend the annual recital. If you had a family, she made her expectation clear that your child(ren) were to be enrolled as soon as possible!

Mrs. B remembered everything about everybody. She knew all of our parents and inquired about them. She sent birthday and holiday cards in both the old school and new school ways, so if you are the kind of person who keeps things, you probably have a stack of physical and virtual greeting cards from her. Like every attentive matriarch, she celebrated the various milestones and the transitions in our lives—birthday parties, wedding and baby showers, holiday socials, graduations, and bon voyages. Because she had been such a steadfast and abiding presence here for so long, I often joked that we were all devoted to the Cult of Rosie, a group of loyalists who would do anything for her, because we all knew that we could count on her to do anything for us.

While I am heartbroken not to be physically present to dance in today’s tribute (September 21, 2024), perhaps it is more fitting that my daughter is there to represent and perform. Allegedly, I ‘retired’ from the Dance Company in 2020 to focus my energy on being a Dance Mom, and Zuri was blessed to join that distinguished company of young dancers lucky to have been taught by Mrs. B. Hence, one of the enduring legacies of her tenure is that St. Mark’s remains a truly multi-generational studio. It is not uncommon or unusual to have been patronized by students of all ages/abilities AND to have had two to three generations of dancers trained under her tutelage.

The magnitude of our loss finally struck me the night I found an old recital program. If you can believe that I vividly remember everything about that recital as if it happened yesterday. One of pieces included on that program was the Senior Company's performance of Jubilation³, the dance that will conclude this service. In spite of whatever emotions we might be individually feeling, Jubilation truly embodies the spirit that Mrs. B infused in this community for these 60+ years. By her own account, she choreographed this piece to fill space; ironically, it became the anchor of a gospel suite of songs the Senior and Junior Company members performed and passed down to subsequent generations of dancers through these many years.

Today, I urge you to you join in the recessional, because in celebration of Mrs. B, it is a time to dance, not to cry or mourn. Perhaps it seems inconceivable to embrace this concept of jubilation at the loss of such a formidable woman, but if you knew Rosie Brooks for any length of time, you know that for her, dance was everything—healing, restorative, calming, inspiring, expressive, transformative, sacred…triumphant!

In celebration of her, always DANCE!

¹ Mrs. B loved this stuff, so even if you can't keep the beat, have a glass of sweet wine and try dancing again :)

² The song, Mine All Mine (1970) by the Edwin Hawkins Singers was one of several songs that made up a gospel suite that Mrs. B choreographed in the 1970s.

³ This would be the second time we've honored Mrs. B with a performance of Jubilation (1973). I recently found this video from 15 years ago when we surprised her with a revival of the piece and brought back several former students to participate. She had been honored in 2009 by a local community foundation and we wanted to acknowledge that achievement.

Re-Markle-Bull $#*!

2025-05-17T08:29:00.003-04:00

This is a post that I started over a month ago, but got distracted by life so it didn't finish in the intended time frame. The recent verdict that went against Prince Harry and this subsequent statement issued by his office, along with a few other developments with the Royal Family convinced me to revisit and finally publish this piece.

I haven't written about Meghan Markle in a minute. I was content to let that woman live her best life in peace because other than a few concert sightings and public appearances at the Invictus Games with her Prince, she wasn't doing anything to draw unnecessary attention to herself. That includes starring in a new show on Netflix that premiered in March. I was all set to ignore it until y'all started complaining.

So I accept the challenge, because dagnabbit, I need to know why y'all can't leave well enough alone! Then I realized that since January and the return of the Troll King, there haven't been any Black women in the public eye other than Rep. Jasmine Crockett to draw your ire, so it looks like Duchess Meghan is the volunteer tribute...

Y'all are upset that she has a job?

Or is it that she's getting paid to do what so many of us do every day for free, and that just doesn't seem right because she's a princess...duchess...still married to a Royal? Because stay at homemaking has always been a thankless, under-appreciated form of devalued labor; however, now that affluent women are embracing it as a form of "soft living" they can brag about, it has become a glamorous trend that they get paid for...

For the sake of argument, yes, it is crazy once you realize that an actual princess is being paid big money to appear to be happily doing the kind of work she could have had servants perform. Isn't the dream of becoming a princess to have somebody else do all of your chores? Alas, she left that life behind in merry olde England, so instead of having servants, here in America she has staff and their job is to make it look like she enjoys doing all of her own cooking and bee-keeping. It's like code-switching accents: potāyto-potăhto...

When you really think about it, her show is just another celebrity cooking show. Singer Trisha Yearwood had a show for 16 seasons as did actress Valerie Bertinelli for 14 seasons. Other celebrities who had shorter runs include Tia Mowry, Haylie Duff, Tiffani Theissen, and Rev. Run (of Run DMC). Heck, not too long ago, Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart hosted a potluck dinner party show on Vh1. Other than being shocked that Snoop and Martha weren't pranking us, I don't recall any of those other efforts getting this much negative attention. Therefore, if you were ever bored/sick/curious enough to watch any of those other shows, then it doesn't make sense to dissect Markle's show for its lack of authenticity, unless you're a bona fide hater.

On a whim, I googled Gwyneth Paltrow because I couldn't remember if the name of her lifestyle website, Goop, was the same as the skincare company, and yes the same entity. I guess others responded to a similar vibe because the comparison searches popped up immediately. Only, I was initially looking for that infamous vagina candle to point out how celebrities are always selling unattainable lifestyle "luxury" items, such as handbags, jewelry, and other symbols of conspicuous consumption. Look at any glossy magazine photo spread to see what I mean (e.g. Paltrow featured throughout this Vanity Fair piece). I was amazed to learn that not only have y'all been actively comparing these two women, but Lady Gwyneth Kate Paltrow was declared more relatable?!

Can we take a moment (but not ten minutes like this video I watched, so you needn't bother), to state for the record that someone actually posted on Blue Ivy's internet that Lady Gwyneth Kate Paltrow, in her wrinkled Ralph Lauren jammies baking $14 biscuits in her "own" kitchen sans makeup a few doors down from Meghan in the hills of Montecito was throwing shade?! If you sat through any of that in spite being forewarned (and to be honest, I clocked out at 5 mins), then you, like me, are at a loss in understanding this irrational hate for the Duchess. Because it is literally the same, bland, let them eat scones with expensive pots of jam (beginning at :33) schtick!

Her haters really want us to believe that Markle is some massive phony and a failure, so that leaves me wondering who bought up every pot of jam on her website last month? IDK, what do you call people who will probably plan an entire garden tea party in a few weeks just so that they can show and tell you all about the keepsake packaging that came with their runny fruit spread?

What does it say about the people who have time to hate-watch and comment on every move this Meghan makes but have no smoke for the other infamous Megs...like the one who capitalizes on her Daddy's name and reputation or the former journalist who once claimed Jesus is white and Santa too. There's Meghan Trainor who used to sing about her booty, but now that she's lost all of that baby phat, she's selling laundry detergent. There are other Megans/Meagans and so many other more pressing issues to complain about, so many injustices that should have us in these streets...

But y'all would rather take time to rail against somebody who isn't destroying the world with every stroke of her pen. She's not doing anything different than the rest of us in sharing photos of her family or of herself on IG. She's spreading sunshine and joy, sprinkling edible flowers and hanging out with her celebrity BFFs...so what is the deal?

Like WTF, Bethenny Frankel (whose video I juxtaposed on the FB page with Kamie Crawford's, formerly of MTV's Catfish a few weeks ago)! What's with the green-eyed envy? You do realize how petty and bitter you seem with your constant snipping and sniping at Markle? Rich coming from someone who rose to fame on other people's coattails--first, as a reality show runner-up and then as the unmarried wannabe on a show about NY society housewives. You had your shot, made millions selling watered-down cocktails, but now you have the nerve to opine and stew in your feelings about someone else's life? If you want a Netflix show, get a better agent!

A few weeks back when it was announced that the Duchess would get a second season to regale us with more bread baking and butter churning, I saw an avalanche of reactions, most along the themes highlighted in this article that panned the show and offered up a bunch of reasons why she's so polarizing. Perhaps it is as simple as people not liking her, which is how it goes sometimes--she's not everybody's spot of tea. My problem with these formal pronouncements is that we're constantly being told how unlikeable she is by people who are paid to write negatively about her, and that stacks the deck. It isn't my imagination that every critic writing for The Hollywood Reporter, the New York Post, Screen Rant, and Variety had the exact same reaction.

Doesn't it seem rather coincidental that there are anti-Meghan stories pumped out by the tabloids at the same time there are waves of stories written in support of various members of the British Royal family? Like Queen Camilla deciding to repurpose her wedding suit on an official state visit...it is newsworthy and laudable for the Queen Consort to repeat a 20-year old outfit, giving the impression of being budget-conscious (for once, the Frugal Queen). How about those adorable official birthday portraits being released to celebrate the Wales' spares Prince Louis and Princess Charlotte (better enjoy all of that positive attention now kids). With all of their good news and noble deeds, why was it necessary to pan the roll out of the Duchess' product line in the Daily Mail, The Sun, and the NY Post unless the entire goal was to undermine her efforts?

Furthermore, whenever someone suggests that there is something more sinister behind the immense hatred aimed at the Duchess, we're accused of being woke or ultra-sensitive. Awake to the double-standards or ultra-sensitive because we recognize the abusive cycle of seeing Black women getting built up and then strategically and methodically torn down as some kind of perverse entertainment? The Duchess is hardly the first Black woman to face this; some of her best friends, supporters, and peers have braved the same firing squad of shifting public opinion. Right now, some of y'all are Red-State mad on Blue Ivy's internet that her Momma has the audacity to insist that Black Southern culture is a thing, and not just the fear and complacency y'all would prefer people to believe.

So let's take a moment to address the irony of this backlash to a Black woman occupying a space to which we were once relegated--why is it so hard to accept the notion of an accomplished Black woman knowing her way around the kitchen? Is it more offensive that she does so while dressed in her designer duds and making use of that good Le Creuset cookware or did y'all expect for her to be sweating over a cheap frying pan from the Dollar Store wearing a red head hanky and a gingham apron?

Lawd...that can't be it, can it?

Surely, it can't be that scandalous that she opted to film her series in a rented kitchen as opposed to her own. Did you honestly expect that a woman whose husband is the son of the King of England, brother to the future King, uncle of the future-future King, and still 6th or 7th in line to the throne himself, who also happens to be fighting several high-profile battles in court to protect his family from tabloid gossip and other nefarious actors--surely she wouldn't be that reckless as to allow cameras into their personal residence to film a cooking show? Other than reality TV Housewives or the late Julia Child, who else is willing to allow a film crew all up in their personal space like that?

To be clear, the aforementioned Lady Gwyneth Kate was filming herself (or perhaps, she was being filmed by an assistant) in a home video that she posted to her IG account. I shouldn't have to explain any of this, but you do know that most of those TV cooking shows are filmed on sets because there are strict safety protocols for food handling that are difficult to follow in one's own kitchen. If you watch any of those cooking competition shows, they are filmed in spacious studios with fully stocked pantries, farm-fresh ingredients, and state-of-the-art appliances. Do you know anybody who has butcher-block counters or a walk-in freezer?

Speaking of the incomparable Julia Child, most of us who grew up watching her didn't take much notice of her expensive cookware. But if you did, then you rarely, if ever saw her reach for any of those copper pots she had adorning her wall. So why is it unreasonable for Markle to make use of those expensive wedding gifts she amassed when she wed Prince Harry as opposed to letting them collect dust in storage?

In Meghan's own words, this is a thing, in 2025? Really, because women have been buying discounted enameled cookware from Marshall's for years. Our pieces might not match, but most of the items in our kitchens are a hodge podge of stuff we bought or inherited. I have an enamel Dutch oven that my parents bought me during a post-Christmas clearance sale at Macy's years ago from the Martha Stewart collection. I also happily use my Circulon pots as well as my mother's 50-year old stainless steel cookware. My Mom also had a collection of decorative copper pots adorning the walls of her kitchen. So where is it written that we can't have nice things too?

So what is the big deal? It's a doggone cooking show. On Netflix. Which means, you have to intentionally decide to watch it, unlike the shows that you leave on as background from the Food Network or the Cooking Channel during the holidays. In order to find Markle's show, I had to use the search function because it didn't come up automatically as a recommendation even though every season of Bridgerton, The Crown, and the Downton Abby (2019) movie did.

By the way, I watched one episode. But I'm not here to offer a review...

I'm here to question why this woman is more polarizing than a Kardashian (whose nonstop attention-hawking we've been subjected to for 20 seasons). Most of us American commoners couldn't care less about the lives of European royalty, yet we know more about the British royals because their family drama is inescapable. Thus, when a Black woman married into the family, more of us got invested and have taken keen notice of how she has been treated. And she has been accused of everything from contributing to global climate change and drought to worrying her husband's nonagenarian Grandparents to death. Since I don't know her personally, I can't tell if she is as terrible as Wallis Simpson...or any more of a phony than this guy.

You would think that she had falsely accused a member of the Royal Family of sexual abuse or that she was a long-lost descendant of one of the rabble-rousers at the Boston Tea Party. As it turns out, it was her naiveté in assuming that in exchange for becoming a mascot for the British Empire, she was entitled to some measure of respect. That she would prove to be as valuable and beloved as one of the Queen's corgis. Upon realizing that the household staff at Buckingham Palace was better regarded, she did what every self-respecting American has done since 1776. And they act like she stole the Crown jewels the way the Brits ransacked everybody else's treasures and antiquities as their own.

I've been trying to wrap my head around this for years, and other than the visceral hate some people seem to have for Black women (and I've got receipts), Meghan hasn't done anything to deserve this. And that's exactly how most of her haters see it too--what makes her so special as to think that she can abscond with our spare prince, keep that title while refusing to allow us to use and abuse her, and live her life on her own terms? Who does she think she is?

As Ever, and With Love...she's HRH Meghan the Remarkable Duchess of Sussex.

Grounded in the Stars

2025-05-17T07:34:00.001-04:00

Emotionally, the week leading up to Mother's Day was fine...until the night before when I found myself gnarled up in an emotional heap over asshole comments on the internet. Triggered, bothered, agitated by online reactions I read to the installation of this statue, Grounded in the Stars, by artist Thomas J Price in New York City's Times Square.

I like it. I wish that I could get to New York to see it up close and in person before the exhibition ends in June, but the way life has been lately, that might not be in the stars...

As for reading the comments, I know better. I've been on Al Gore's internet since the beginning, and I know that people shitpost and troll and get away with being awful because that is the nature of unmoderated free expression. People are going to post their innermost asinine unfiltered thoughts because there are no other places in polite society where one can go around and say whatever nonsense pops into one's head about other people unless they are Donald Trump holding a rally for his cult of deplorables. Not unless they want to get beat down...

So trust, I didn't go looking for negativity. It was dumped onto my timeline by the geniuses who manage the Meta algorithm. Apparently, they get bored once a week and decide to flood the zone with crap that I would never interact with from all kinds of random pages. Or they throw out red herrings since I did happen to like a post that highlighted this very statue; perhaps they thought that meant I would appreciate seeing some alternative viewpoints.

Hell to the naw!

Which brings us to this unprecedented Busy Black content move: I erased a post I had previously shared to my Facebook page. When I saw some of those nasty comments, I was compelled to write on impulse, and even after I allowed my thoughts to marinate overnight before posting, I ultimately changed my mind. I was uneasy about what had triggered my anger though I remain steadfast in my admiration of the work itself. However, once I sat with my discomfort and deconstructed it, I figured I would write about my change of heart.

My initial reaction to the piece was to shrug and think, huh, as in is this a newsworthy distraction given everything else that is going on in the world? In the same week that we got an American Pope from the Southside of Chicago by way of the 7th Ward in New Orleans with Haitian Creole ancestry, does a 12-foot statue of a Black woman dropped in the middle of Times Square really need all of this attention? Of course, I shared Grounded to the FB page as it had become clear that the reactions appeared to be divided between the like and laugh FB emojis. Hardly scientific, but random enough to take notice that while some pages celebrated the installation, others deemed it "woke"--the new buzz word to indicate that something is unnecessarily polarizing. Nevertheless, I posted a quick looky here and moved on...until a post in one of my groups directed my attention to the comments section. Curiouser and curiouser the farther I fell down that rabbit hole...

There I saw numerous cruel and mean-spirited memes attacking the work and Black women, including this re-imagining of the Statue of Liberty as a heavy-set Black woman checking her phone (inspired by this other Price exhibition in Florence, Italy perhaps). Accompanying their laugh and hate emoji reactions were images depicting morbidly obese Black women scantily dressed with exaggerated breasts, protruding stomachs, and thick hips. One meme depicted a woman pushing a shopping cart from the "EBT" store; another picture juxtaposed the image of a woman "mocking" the statue by posting a picture of herself striking the same pose. The most offensive meme contrasted this statue to a "preferred" mock-up to immortalize the recent racist encounter on the playground with the woman from Minnesota.

Having made a trip to see the iconic Lady Liberty colossus in person just last year for the first time since high school, I decided to share this meme since I deemed it the least problematic. My visit to Liberty Island had been so uplifting and empowering, especially as I learned that this beloved American symbol had been a gift from France in celebration of the abolition of slavery. Over the years, her symbolism evolved to serve as a welcoming beacon to immigrants from abroad (and despite what anyone else says, those dual purposes are not in conflict).

My knee-jerk reaction to this and those other aforementioned memes? An emotional fuck y'all. Fuck y'all racist, sexist, homophobic, fat-shaming, Trump-voting fascist asses! This was the day before Mother's Day, so fuck your Momma (since she raised you to be this special kind of asshole); fuck your Daddy next month when Father's Day rolls around; and whomever else agrees with your fucked up worldview! But instead of all those f-bombs, this is the more thoughtful reaction I initially posted:

Moment of emotional transparency: I really effing hate how *free speech* on social media has turned this country into a nation of rude assholes.

Really. If I could cuss people out and be convinced that it would matter for them to know that I see their racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. And while it may just be words that aren't supposed to permeate or hurt, the truth is that taken individually, no, you don't hurt me. But the accumulated impact of your cruelty and meanness, yes...it's like pouring lemon juice on a thousand paper cuts. Salted wounds.

I've been writing about the small indignities and micro-aggressions endured by Black women on this page (and other platforms) for YEARS. I know only a handful of people care or are moved. I write anyway because I think that maybe, one day, someone's heart will be pricked, pained by seeing the impact of the hurt that is so easily heaped on others. But I know better. No one who knowingly and casually inflicts pain recognizes or cares about how exhausting it is to wake up EVERYDAY as the object of their insatiable cruelty.

I know who and what I am, as well as what I am NOT. I am NOT the ugly, stupid, classless, undesirable, useless, (fill in the blank with whatever adjectives/insults you've been taught that are supposed to describe Black women and girls)... I am not a mule, nor a beast. I am a woman of flesh and blood, who knows better, even as I foolishly and vainly hope otherwise.

We are taught to let them...Laugh. Joke. Think the worst. Believe the lies of their superiority and our inherent inferiority. Prove their weaknesses and insecurities by highlighting our ability to endure, survive, and sometimes thrive in spite of their best efforts to destroy us.

I should mention that I did not (will not) post any of those memes but chose this one that spoke directly to how I feel. I also did not wish to attract the wrong kind of attention to engage with my page (I have better ways to waste my time than to argue with morons). A few hours later, my anger wasn't as raw or as intense, but much like seeing a taunt from this DEPOTUS posted on his official social media account, it had numbed. Stings at first, then I get used to the pain of the daily indignities and humiliations because he can, so he does...and the futility of accepting that there is nothing I will ever say in retaliation that can penetrate or appeal to any semblance of decency.

As far as I am concerned, everyone who sees this Grounded statue as an object of mockery or scorn, that is how they see me, my nieces, my daughter, my sorors, my aunties...my late mother. My dilemma is whether to accept their judgment or to subvert it. I will admit that it isn't always easy to ignore the noise. The attacks began to feel personal upon seeing the fourth, then the fifth, and later the subsequent posts that took aim at this composite of a random, non-famous Black woman. The comments assumed that she's on welfare, that she speaks in her outside voice, that she barges her way into exclusive spaces where she doesn't fit in or was not invited. That she has multiple children by different men. That she doesn't work a full-time job. That she expresses herself in vernacular colloquialisms. That she twerks when her favorite songs play. That she eats at McDonald's and so do her children. That she complains about injustice.

That she exists.

All she did was stop for a moment to survey the sights in Times Square, just like everybody else visiting for the first or even the 50th time, because you try navigating an amusement park without a map to indicate where things are? Doesn't everyone need to take a moment to get oriented to the utter chaos and confusion that is New York's Time Square?

So let's do just that--take a moment to fully establish what Times Square is and what is surely ain't. Like it ain't the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Not the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) nor the Whitney Museum, where I took the Kid on a special trip to see an exhibition on Alvin Ailey last December. It also ain't the Guggenheim. So the idea that any kind of art installation in Times Square is supposed to evoke fantasies of taking a leisurely stroll through some tranquil sculpture garden is insanity.

The most accurate way of describing Times Square to someone who has never been there is to compare it to a large open air, overpriced food court located in the middle of the most crowded and loudest set of city blocks in America. I've never been to the Mall of America, but I imagine that is the same kind of chaos. Thousands of tourists; folks trying to sell you same-day show tickets; the stench of burnt hot dogs and roasted peanut wafting from the carts on every corner; Sirijul and Mujibur; bootleg merchants; overpriced chain restaurants; and ginormous neon billboards with blinking lights. There is a Naked Cowboy and his wife. There are also people walking around dressed as cartoon characters, so if you've ever wanted your picture taken with a Disney character but cannot afford a trip to the other most expensive amusement trap on Earth, then Times Square is a viable alternative. That is, if no one will notice that the Times Square Mickey Mouse always looks like he just lost a bar fight in the alley with Elmo (also on hand in case you get lost on your way to finding Sesame Street, which as it turns out, is within 2 miles, not that far away).

The only reason to make an effort to go to Times Square is to see a Broadway play. I was there a year ago to see The Wiz. The only other reason to be there is to kill time on your way out of town by bus at the Port Authority or by train at Grand Central Station. Otherwise, you're only there to get robbed--by spending too much money at one of the multi-level concept stores (like we did on M&Ms), or by one of those shady looking dudes posing as the Mario Brothers.

As the resident of another city that is full of statues and monuments, I appreciate when something new comes along to break up the monotony of generals, presidents, and historical figures as decorative sculpture. Nothing wrong with a little whimsy here and there, such as past public art installations that featured painted pandas, donkeys and elephants, and now all kinds of vibrant murals. There have been varying responses to these kinds of works. They can be polarizing. They stoke derision. There is no such thing as a universally beloved piece of art that appeals to everybody, so it isn't surprising that some works are more controversial than others. However, as long as people understand that not all pieces are intended to appeal to everyone, then the easiest thing to do is move along until there is something that does appeal to you.

For example, a local favorite piece of public art here in DC wasn't initially an art installation but an advertisement for a furniture store. The Big Chair of Anacostia was erected in 1959 and is located in a strip mall in Southeast DC, across the Anacostia River--a world away from most of the city's other more famous monuments. For years, it was known primarily to those of us who grew up in the neighborhood, but as our population has grown and changed, the chair has become a more recognizable city landmark. It is still mostly significant to those of us who live in the SE quadrant; I doubt that anyone who doesn't have a reason to drive into Anacostia would go out of their way to see an oversized piece of furniture. Nor do people who have only become residents of the city in the last 20 years know that this isn't even the original chair.

In response to Grounded, I had no visceral reaction other than curiosity for why a 12-foot tall figure? Assuming the same question was asked when it was an installation of 10-foot tall Balloon Dogs or the 8-foot tall LOVE sculptures, then part of that answer becomes why not? If public art is meant to be seen, discussed, engaged, debated, then it has to make some kind of bold statement. Perhaps the next logical question is why now, given these tumultuous times we've entered with the return of Donald Trump. Because once the default complaint that this statue was "woke", that became a bat signal for MAGA to come out swinging. To which, my retort: if not now, then when?

For such a time as this, why not celebrate an unassuming Black woman standing in her own skin? Why not look upon that Mama Liberty meme as an affirmation of our power, instead of the insult to our appearance as was intended? Black women worked hard to preserve American democracy and its ideals in the 2024 election. One of us was handed the baton at the 11th hour and still got 75 million votes. No need to cringe as Mama Liberty holds that torch aloft while also busy organizing and handling her business!

To be clear, one can dislike Price's statue and not be a racist. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My problem is that people were intentional and comfortable in bashing the work through the lenses of racism, sexism, classism, and body-shaming. We've already acknowledged how the term woke functions as a dog whistle; others sought to express their anti-Blackness in more subtle forms. For example, conservative provocateur Matt Walsh penned this pseudo-intellectual opinion piece to proclaim his disdain for Price's oeuvre of public art. Then there is the use of the historically loaded term Mammy which somehow becomes the default description of any full-figured Black woman...

Mind you, Grounded could just as easily have been someone's impression of me during the pandemic. Me, or any one of my friends whose struggles with menopause, stress, and the weight of the world have manifested on our bodies, settled into our curves. Once upon a time, full-bodied women were symbols of fertility and abundance. Isn't there a proposal floating around about paying women to have more children? When did our society become so repulsed by the sight of fleshy, Rubenesque women? Especially since many of our mothers, grandmothers, and your Trump-loving aunties have that same body type...when did we become so intolerant and shallow?

Instead of being distracted by superficial concerns, we ought to be more offended that our society has become immune to the ways that racism and sexism compound to harm the psyche of Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous women. Or that we're too proud to admit that the daily drip-drip of undeserved mean-spiritedness, insults to our intelligence and competence, and the outright hostility and disrespect exact a heavy physical, emotional, and psychological toll? Women of color disproportionately suffer from higher incidences of infant and maternal mortality, more diagnoses of autoimmune disorders, and greater tendencies to develop aggressive and debilitating chronic diseases.

Why is it so triggering that a temporary art installation in the most garish public plaza in the most crowded city in America happens to be statue of a Black woman? If you aren't in Times Square right now, nor will be at any point before June 17, then why do you care? Everything you see in her is a reflection of you: your assumptions, your insinuations, your discomfort, your anxieties, your prejudices and biases, your insecurities. It is incredible to see how much fear and loathing she's inspired just by standing there, taking up space without saying or doing anything remarkable!

Stand tall among the stars and stay grounded.

Ten Years to Life

2025-05-03T11:35:00.000-04:00

My daughter just celebrated her tenth birthday. I had wanted to write a long dedication in the days leading up to the big leap from single to double digits, but I got all caught up in my feelings. I am ecstatic. I am in disbelief. I am overwhelmed by a list of things to do for this "surprise" birthday party that I'm sure she'll be smart enough to figure out is really happening in spite of what I told her. (That it was cancelled because she got out of line, but how can I be expected to keep that kind of promise in anticipation of this particular birthday???)

And now, when I should be packing for a family trip, I am procrastinating to write about this pending major milestone, because this is a moment that deserves to be preserved and celebrated!

So let's start at the beginning: ten years ago in March 2015, I returned to this blog after a hiatus of two years. The last post I wrote in 2012 was on my 39th birthday. The first post I wrote in 2015 was to announce my pregnancy with just little less than a month remaining. At the time, I was still very unsure and uncertain of what was to come, including the gender of the child I was carrying. That was an intentional choice for reasons that I can only summarize as a delayed delusional denial--I was scared but unwilling to unpack those fears. Not knowing was a way of maintaining control, managing expectations, and like I said, delusional!

You can read between the lines I wrote in the few weeks before the Kid was born, including two pieces that were published hours before I went into labor. I had NO idea. Then the Babe was born, and I got caught up in those sleepless and seemingly endless post-partum days and nights. After a few months, it took more time to find both my motivation and rhythm to write. For example, when I wrote at the end of that year about Mommy-blogging, it was with the explicit intention of avoiding that lane and label. I was ambivalent about identifying myself as a "Mom" in the political sense, because I believed (and still feel) that it was necessary to embody many identities as a woman.

Before I take you down that road, let's talk about my evolution over the past decade.

First, let's acknowledge the transition from being pregnant (and still fertile) ten years ago to entering this new season of life called menopause. It is jarring. Literally, just a year ago, I still felt halfway normal, and now I don't. I have weird sleeping patterns, night sweats, and I am perpetually unfocused and cranky. As someone who never dealt with major PMS until after I had a baby, it is unnerving to undergo such drastic changes after so many years of knowing my body and how it worked. Now, I have no idea what to expect from one day to the next. Given my "advanced maternal age" when I finally got pregnant, I knew that I was on Team One and Done, but this change effectively ends the game.

Which brings me to the significance of this past year since the death of my Mom. Because if losing a parent forces a formidable life adjustment, letting go of the ability to have more children has me mourning another substantial loss. And for lack of a better way to describe this, it just feels cosmically unfair. My life isn't over, but this change puts the matter of my mortality on the horizon. I know, referring to menopause as the start of a death march is overly dramatic, but I can't help but to think that I am now counting down as opposed to gearing up. And that sucks.

Especially when your ten-year old is going through puberty. Because it suddenly registers what that all entails.

She's still my baby, but no longer a baby. She's still very much a kid, but she wants to engage in pre-teen things. Soon, that will become teen things, and before long, I will have a young lady making decisions about her future. So while I adjust to my own changes, I have to mentally prepare myself for hers. I know I've joked about that once or twice, but now that the time has come, and we are both in transition I'm not laughing. No, I'm not curled up in a ball, but I am trying to come to terms with this season of growth for her while trying to resist the fatalist tendency to regard this as a season of decline for me.

Ten years ago when my daughter was born, I had a dogwood tree planted in our front yard. I was following the example of my mother who had planted a dogwood tree in the front yard of our family home when we were kids. The tree at my parents' home started off small, but it grew and spread over the course of nearly 40 years to become a focal point of the yard. We took our annual Easter pictures in front of it and continued the tradition with younger cousins and grandchildren.

Then about three years ago, I noticed that the tree seemed to be struggling, especially in the summers through successive years of drought. Since the tree had been resilient in previous years, we assumed it would recover, as it had each spring. Unfortunately, in the summer of 2023, only half of the leaves came back and one weekend, they all just dried up and died. I initially fretted this was an omen...

I had a tree specialist come by to conduct a post-mortem and we learned that the tree wasn't supposed to have been planted in full sun. It had survived a lot longer than it should have in the wrong location, so it wasn't neglect, but a combination of factors that had killed it. (Incidentally, two dogwood trees planted by a neighbor are also dying under similar conditions.) For a replacement, we opted for a sun-loving cherry blossom and planted another dogwood in a more temperate location. The new trees were planted in November 2023; my Mom passed three months later.

It didn't escape my notice that the cherry blossom tree bloomed the week of her funeral, followed by the new dogwood tree a few weeks later. Instead of regarding the death of that older tree as an omen, I have chosen to interpret my observations of all these trees as messages. The end of one life and the flourishing of another is the how this world turns. As painful as it was to accept that my mother's time was coming to an end, like the dogwood, she had lived a lot longer than expected under unsustainable conditions. Alzheimer's had taken so much from her and us...

I chose to have my daughter and niece read When Great Trees Fall, by Maya Angelou at her funeral. I knew they were too young to grasp the significance, but I knew that it was important for two of her saplings to have a prominent role in saying goodbye. It was important for people to see life flourishing, planted firmly in temperate locations and blossoming.

Ten years of motherhood. At times it seems surreal to recall that I had a very different life prior to the birth of my daughter. I had different dreams and aspirations. It was by random chance that I ended up on the path toward motherhood after I had determined that it would only happen by some divine intervention...and I guess, that is how I would define the sequence of events I shared in this post. If I didn't believe in miracles before, I sure do now.

It's been a few weeks since I began writing this piece and at the risk of having it languish until next year, I wanted to make sure that I brought us back into the future by tying up a few of the loose ends. It's now a few weeks since the family trip I had been procrasti-packing for; we did have the "surprise" Easter/birthday celebration that she wasn't expecting; and yeah, I'm still overwhelmed by life, only now it is preparing for another busy summer of camp and other assorted activities.

And Mother's Day is coming soon. That adds a few more layers of emotions to what I set out to write about initially, but we'll save that for another post.

While on our trip, we visited a local children's museum in Durham. I have lost count, but I am sure that we have been to most of those kinds of places along with every aquarium and planetarium on the East Coast! In a FB post, I shared how seeing all of the parents with their strollers and snacks made me a little sentimental and nostalgic. Sure, that era of our lives was both hectic and exhausting, and now we are entering a new era that brings a different kind of chaos. For it is absolutely true what they say about the days being long, and the years being short.

Luckily, I can account for almost every day of my daughter's life because I have been here--the irony is that my constant presence has been due to the choice to embrace being a caregiver for my Mom. I was told that it would be next to impossible to keep up with both caregiving and parenting because something would come up short...(and yeah, we'll address that another time). The point is, I have been blessed to witness this transformation, and somehow it isn't just my daughter who has grown over the course of ten years.

They Sleep Fine...

2025-04-06T12:42:00.001-04:00

On a mattress, in their McMansions, on the leafy side of town where you need an access code to enter their gated communities. And they are lulled to that aforementioned restful slumber by the dulcet voice of Lionel Richie.

They sleep fine.

I don't know who needs to be convinced of this now that we are two months and counting into the re-booted American Apprentice reality nightmare starring Donald Trump, hosted by Elon Musk. Or maybe only one of them sleeps just fine (we'll see how those weekly doses of ketamine for "depression" work out for Musk sooner or later).

Nevertheless, I think their decisions to unleash daily calamities and chaos are the stuff their dreams are made of: how many lives can I ruin today, just because I can (click here for evil laugh)? Let's fire half the people who work for the federal government, even those who own Teslas! Let's take over the Kennedy Center and revamp the programming to feature a series of dramatic readings performed by Sylvester Stallone and Scott Baio! Let's start World War III by invading Canada, Panama, and Greenland! Because any and everything is on the table, no matter how absurd, obscene, or unprecedented.

They sleep like newborn babies.

And just like cranky newborns who can't communicate what they need except through crying, if we the peasants get any ideas about trying to catch a few winks, there will be some outrageous tantrum or a ketchup-stained wall some minion has to clean.

About a month or so ago, I saw a video on Al Gore's internet featuring an interview with one of America's favorite drunk Aunties Kathie Lee Gifford explaining why her 'good friend' Donald doesn't need any of this; however, because he cares enough to put himself through this in order to fulfill his promises, we should trust his benevolence in choosing to systematically dismantle the lives of millions of people...

As soon as the thought bubble that contained et tu, Kathie Lee dissipated, there was Lionel Richie singing in my head. I looked up and just as we believe our smart phones are probing our thoughts, it was one of those Mattress Firm commercials. I had to laugh at the irony and the timing. Initially, I was just going to call her out in a Facebook post, but there's so much to unpack, so much smug, sanctimonious entitlement that she deserves more than just a quick passing rant.

However, when I went back to replay the video after weeks of leaving the tab open, it had been disabled. Was that some kind of sign that the moment had passed or was it just a matter of reloading a different page to see that, yes, Gifford is still among the millions who believe their own lies because that's how she sleeps at night. Content with the knowledge that so long as she is safe from persecution, she don't care about the havoc being wrought on the rest of us.

To be honest, there isn't much else to say. It isn't a difficult or highly nuanced concept to grasp that these people watch the news every day and only pay attention to how the stock market performs to ensure that their wealth is secure. They see the video that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi "I shot that dog" Noem filmed in front of El Salvadorian prison bars flanked by half naked men, but they hone in on her expensive jewelry and perfectly coifed hair. Taking notice of the dehumanizing way those people are stacked and packed like cans on a shelf is a bit too compassionate. While some on the MAGA fringes might be expressing some remorse or regret, the vast majority have been happily enjoying the slaughter because they DON'T CARE.

Therefore, to my FB friends who keep posting daily rhetorical queries to their remaining Trumplogyte acquaintances, stop waiting for a response. The only people who are reading and reacting to your posts are the same 25-40 people the FB algorithm allows to interact and engage with your posts. The majority of those other folks never get to see what see what you have taken time to eloquently write, not even at random. The Trumpists are too busy liking and re-posting their own anti-democracy content. So to answer your question, yes, this is what they wanted.

Do I know this for sure or is this an educated guess? Well, call it my Busy Black Woman's intuition based on the fact that I never deactivated my X-bird app accounts. While not as active on that site as I used to be, I still peek in on those accounts to see what the tweets are saying, and as we predicted, it is inundated by bots, pro-Trump ads, and assorted propaganda. Since every account that pays for a blue check is verified, their thoughts and musings are what gets amplified. The same is true for the content on Meta, where the algorithm boosts the pro-Trump and pro-Musk posts. Dare I say it, not only do they ooze with glee at each new executive order, but they are downright orgasmic in their anticipation of more to come.

I suspect then, that like Parker Posey's character on this season of The White Lotus, after several rapturous hours spent in paradise, they'll pop a special little pill, and sleep just fine.

I propose that instead of waiting for their humanity to reset, that in lieu of praying for changed hearts and minds, we accept what is and plan our next moves. And please don't start by suggesting that we find common ground.

There isn't any.

If you have seen any of the aforementioned Mattress Firm commercials, you will note that right before they pump the Lionel Richie, the previous scene features someone engaged in some disgusting, vile, or unconscionable behavior. Imma need everyone to linger on that part whenever someone suggests that we can find "common ground" with the Trumpers. Really? Take a moment and consider whether you can join in when you see someone heckling a child during an elementary school basketball game. Or if you are eager to eat some of that guacamole after everyone sticks their grubby unwashed hands in it. Go on and try to remain unbothered in the seat in front of this dude because the stench from his feet will override your fear of the plane being flown by a DEI pilot. Better yet, let's all follow the lead of the impatient driver who is late for her dog's grooming appointment, because surely there is no good reason to have an emergency lane or an unoccupied shoulder during rush hour when she has places to be and things to do.

If you can find common ground that you would be willing to share with those people, more power to you. There isn't an inch in that gutter that I find appealing.

The irony of how they appropriated the term woke and made it a pejorative is that they actually celebrate being the opposite--unenlightened, intolerant, but proud and patriotic assholes who prefer to sleepwalk through life, unconscious, unaware, and unconcerned about anyone or anything but themselves.

A few hours before I went back to revisit that video of Kathie Lee, I heard a segment on NPR about the lack of empathy that seems to be more pervasive in our society. We have clearly entered an era of not giving a good damn about hardship or suffering. As long as chaos and calamity are contained way over there, why should that keep me awake at night? Why should I lose any sleep over matters that don't directly impact me?

I'm too old to contract measles, (besides, I got my vaccinations years ago). For the time being, my husband's good government job is not in the line of fire. I don't live in California, Oregon, Hawaii, or anywhere else where wildfires have burned entire communities to the ground. I'm not a student on a visa who wrote an editorial in the student newspaper in support of Palestine. I'm not a purported gang member with a questionable tattoo. I'm on the other side of childbearing, so abortion restrictions don't endanger my health. I could keep listing examples that distance my life from the realities that impact others, yet in spite of my relative comfort and safety, I can visualize the faces of those who are not exempt.

One unvaccinated child might not be my problem or my business, but a community of unvaccinated children quickly becomes catastrophic for an over-stressed public health system. Knowing a handful of people who lost their jobs is unfortunate, until those job losses reverberate to impact others whose livelihoods depend on folks patronizing their businesses. We live in a society, not in individual pods. Eventually, all of this harm being unleashed will accumulate, and the effects won't be as easy to ignore.

So forgive me, Kathie Lee, for not giving one-tenth of a hoot that your good friend Donald intends to keep his promises, because all that communicates to me is that you are just as horrible and shitty a person as he is. The fact that you are more concerned about him keeping his word to inflict maximum pain and pursue retribution against those who didn't support him (as opposed to appealing to him not to engage in this vendetta) is just proof of your true character. I wish I could unleash the right combination of expletives to articulate what I think of you and your façade of faith and dubious morality...but FUCK YOU Kathie Lee sums it up succinctly.

If you're wondering why it took all of this just to flip Kathie Lee the bird, please understand that I know she won't ever read any of this. Nor will anyone in her orbit. As far as I am concerned, they are a lost cause, so I'm not writing in hopes there will be some massive national change of heart that reshapes how she and a third of this country view the world. Beloved, I am writing to appeal to YOU, my tribe, to warn you of the depravity of the dark side. It is tempting to see how they live, how they sleep and want some of what they have to ease our suffering and pain.

Be ye not deceived by false prophets and promises, perverted faith, and the allure of community with those who celebrate the triumph of evil. Too many people have already been fooled. How many years did Kathie Lee sell viewers various delusions of perfection--whether as a carefree passenger on a cruise ship or as a happy traditional wife and mother on a talk show? This isn't about judging her faith or her life, but how people like her love to flaunt their privilege as evidence of their virtue and as vindication for their political beliefs. She claims that Trump is a changed man since getting ~~nicked~~ shot last summer, that he doesn't need any of this...and by this, it's hard to parse whether she meant he doesn't need to be this cruel and maniacal or if he doesn't need history to remember him as the man who destroyed America.

Either way, I'm sure that as long as the fires rage far, far away from her, she and the others in the cult will sleep just fine.

In their leafy green subdivisions across town, in their McMansions at the far end of the cul-de-sac, under heavy surveillance, armed guards, and with a loaded gun on the nightstand. I hope their apathy and indifference causes them such agitation and distress that the only way they can get to sleep is by taking whatever special pills with a chaser of whatever expensive liquor they keep locked away in their expensive liquor cabinets. I hope that even if sleep comes easy, rest doesn't.

Sleep fine...but with one eye open.

Judging Amy

2025-03-31T12:25:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. It got an unusual amount of attention as I have come to believe that the FB algorithms are being manipulated to promote engagement among MAGA-leaning folks who generally wouldn't see my content. I said something nice about her, and talk about fireworks! I got two angry emoji reactions from folks who don't follow me. YAY!

The premise of my post was that Barrett had gone from being the Belle of the Right-Wing Cotillion to becoming the target of right-wing ire for not carrying water for the Trump Regime. Then I predicted that these folks were going to abandon all pretense of preserving diversity on the Court when the next vacancy occurs. (So if there are any Black MAGA who were hoping to get that "black" job Clearance Thomas has been holding onto for 30+ years, keep dreaming. Yes, I know I spelled his name incorrectly.) That seat will be reclaimed and filled by another good ole boy who got his law degree from Trump University. My bitcoins are on the Interim US Attorney for DC because, what a tool...

In case it hasn't become clear by now, women in the Trumposphere are expected to serve very specific functions. Melania Antoinette is still the mermaid-Medusa on the mast of the Titanic. The Chief of Staff is one of those post-menopausal mean mother figures. The Press Secretary is probably some runner-up pageant contestant who is auditioning for her next gig on FOX or Newsmax. Attorney General Pam Bondi is destined to be the Ann Boleyn of this Administration, first to get her head chopped if the court losses continue to pile up. Laura Loomer, conspicuously sidelined from the campaign once we all figured out that she was a wannabe mistress, has been reduced to harping against Elon Musk, her nemesis, on his platform. Expect her to provide a Stormi Daniels-y plot twist of some kind to keep the ratings afloat. Linda McMahon is giving us Lovey Howell vibes--another rich socialite with no friends so she commits herself to charitable destruction.

Kristi "I shot that dog" Noem is starring in a series of commercials that showcase her habitual cruelty in mistreating God's creatures to the taxpayer tune of $200 million (at least $50 million is covering the cost of her botox injections, hair weave, and makeup). The ambassadorship that is allowing Kimberly Guilfoyle to detox on the other side of the world is an interesting consolation prize for having kept Don Jr. from breaking things in the Oval. It is also proof that it was always a projection to accuse VP Harris of getting ahead through sleeping around with powerful men. I won't bother making dishonorable mention of any of the others unless they do or say something worth noting.

My guess is that if MAGA is truly pissed at Amy Coney Barrett, it is because they underestimated her. They expected a mannequin, a female dress-form to drape in a black robe, to pose and put on display as needed. Barrett was conveniently in the right place at the right time when Fate intervened and sent Death to finally pry the dissent pen from Ruth Bader Ginsburg's cold left hand. This vacancy was the answer to their prayers for ideological dominance--a sixth vote. So they lied and bent the "rules", rushed her confirmation through the Senate, and then promptly appealed every precedent they wanted overturned to their newly fortified Supreme Court. Since they had jerry-rigged the process on the front end to install Neil Gorsuch as the intellectual heavyweight and North Star, the debutante Justice need only follow his lead and sign her name to his opinions.

That's what they expected, and at first, she dutifully played along. She kept her head down, helped to dismantle a few major precedents, and waited a respectable amount of time before seeking to build her own legacy. See, it's been almost five years since her trip to the Emerald City, and like everybody else, she left there disillusioned upon discovering that the Wizard is just a useless, failed con man standing behind a frayed curtain. She never needed anything from him--she was born with a spine and a brain, and that lifetime appointment came from Mitch McConnell's bag of tricks. All Trump did was pick her name out of a hat and give her a big coming out party where everybody got COVID.

Although I am no fan of Justice Barrett's, the Court is a co-equal branch of our government. I don't have to agree with her ideologically to understand why she's in the line of fire. MAGA thought they were getting another pretty blond stereotypical Barbie fresh out of the box; who woulda thought she would go all Sandra Day O'Connor on their asses?

One of the angry troll visitors to my page expressed exasperation that Justice Barrett could vote for wasting taxpayer dollars on foreign-born transgender mice...an intriguing head-scratching claim until I understood the context. I offered her a quick refresher on reading comprehension and the three branches of government. She didn't return to thank me, which was rude, but also on brand for folks who have time to shit post on social media, yet can't figure out how to use Google. Another angry troll complained that Barrett must have been threatened and unduly influenced, so my reaction--by what, her own conscience? She's still a Karen like the rest of you, only she's not content to play a supporting role in the Shakespearean tragedy of America's downfall. Amy has always been a leading lady, so she's seizing her moment and commanding the stage.

Let's break down the absurdity of the suggestion (once again) that a woman born with a fully functioning brain that she used to earn a law degree is somehow unable to think for herself. Y'all tried that with Ketanji Brown Jackson, and I wasn't having it then, so I won't allow it now even as I'm clear how Amy Coney Barrett voted on Election Day. She's brilliant though not always, but nobody is perfect. Not even an Amy.

Yeah, we all saw that face she made at the Joint Session, but that doesn't reveal anything other than Trump probably has bad breath. The fact that she showed up and sat there for two hours on a school night should tell you that she hasn't suddenly switched sides. So going all Red Queen on her over one or a handful of decisions is pointless unless she does something more substantial and defiant to indicate that this wasn't just another example of a broken clock being right twice a day.

In other words, she may lunch with the other ladies of the Court periodically, but she's not joining their coffee club nor is she inviting herself to catch up over drinks with them after a grueling day. Don't get it twisted--they may work in the same building, but they aren't girlfriends. Doña Sonia and Soror Ketanji may personally like Amy, but they ain't about to taste any of her Cajun potato salad with raisins. They just started to let Elena Kagan bring the bagels...

If Barrett is receiving threats, it ain't from the sister Supremes. They're too busy writing children's books and personal memoirs; issuing dire warnings about the end of our democracy; receiving alumni honors; or moonlighting on Broadway to worry about what Amy is doing. I could be wrong, and I will retract if proven otherwise, but again, she's not their friend. The very notion of the law school class valedictorian being hazed by a wise Latina, an awkward Black girl, and a Jewish yenta--a trio of nerdy feminists--is beyond laughable.

We're all decades removed from law school, but trust me, those dynamics persist and follow us throughout our lives. Lawyers are not normal people--we're all weird, quirky, brilliant, self-deprecating, arrogant, and exactly who we've always been since high school. Every person pictured here represents the different "types" of people one encounters in law school (starting from the bottom row on the left): the older student who always wanted to be a lawyer; the self-loathing Black guy; the president of the College Republicans; the boot-strapping conservative son of immigrants; the Betty Friedan/Bella Azbug feminist; (top row from the right) the quasi-militant busy Black woman; the guy who thinks he is the life of the party; the most imperious man in the room; and Amy, the fairest one of all.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a letter to my daughter that contrasted how the world regards us as opposed to Amys, and after rereading it, I was amazed at how visceral and raw my anger was. I recall my righteous indignation at the various microaggressions and outright racist taunts directed at Ketanji Brown Jackson, and by extension, every Black woman I knew. It stirred up so much of the resentment I thought I had let go of; instead, I had buried it in a vacuum-sealed time capsule. As triggering as looking back on all of that was, unearthing my resentment and bitterness was also quite liberating.

You see, having been a quasi-militant Busy Black Woman for all of these years, I know that no matter how well groomed, prepared, and appropriately packaged I arrive, I won't be judged on any of that. I will be judged on how much I remind them of Amy, or maybe on how long they can tolerate and settle for me in lieu of an Amy. Even when we're not in competition against each other, somebody has got to be Jan Brady feeling some kind of way about Marsha (or is it Marcia? Marsha? Marcia.) Of course, the fact that I want to be seen in my own light, on my own merits doesn't matter. My presence there is meant to compliment Amy since I'm not supposed to outshine the galaxy's brightest star.

Just so that we're clear: I'm not coming for Justice Barrett. She's definitely one of yours, so if you're feeling any remorse or regret that your cult leader didn't take the time to vet her properly, then tough noogies. Y'all are out here railing against DEI (an acronym most of you cannot explain) and admitting that you didn't expect her to be capable of putting in the work required. You thought she'd be too inundated with homework and laundry to draft her own opinions. Now you know that she's not the pretty smart girl whom you voted most likely to end up with a job as a FOX News spokesmodel; she's the pretty and smart girl who got all of the awards at the high school honors assembly. Ione Sky's character in Say Anything.

At the same time that I assure you that I am not piling on, I must admit to taking some perverse glee at seeing the high school burn book levels of betrayal MAGA world has unleashed on one of their own. It's brutal and ugly. Because their sexism and misogyny reduces women to utility as opposed to appreciating us as fully formed and complex human beings. When I look at our life stories and realize how much Amy Coney Barrett and I have in common, I can find some empathy for her current predicament. Quasi-militant busy Black women can be just as polarizing as an Amy. Too smart for our own good.

However, if you know anything about the pecking order of classmates we don't hang with because of high school or college (and definitely not after law school), there is a reason why Amy is at the top of that list. We've been burned by women who seem nice and friendly at first, only to the extent that their kindness is convenient and comfortable for them. Lest we forget those women who were demanding that the world re-open in the midst of COVID so that they could get their spa treatments (while they continued to work from home). Sure, we can relate to an Amy's perpetual Type-A struggle for perfection, but unlike her, we can't just hire more help. There aren't enough of us to outsource the work of dismantling the systems of oppression. Our reasons for seeking access to those exclusive spaces don't include serving or preserving the patriarchy; therefore, we know better than to trust Miss Amy to be any kind of ally.

We have never forgotten how Missy Anne Reynolds treated Kizzy in Roots...

Finally, it isn't as if Amy Coney Barrett is personally hurt, offended, or intimidated by any of this backlash. She knows exactly what it takes to survive as a woman in conservative legal circles. Amy set her sights on the Supreme Court back when President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor. Every move she's made since we were in elementary school has been intentional and executed with the sole purpose of earning that seat. So trust, her problem isn't that she doesn't fit the bill ideologically as a conservative, because res ipsa loquitur. Her problem is that these MAGA folks forget that Amy has been teased and taunted by their kind all of her life, which only motivates her to work harder and smarter.

She spent those high school weekends at home hitting the books instead of hanging out at their sporting events and getting drunk at their parties. She was never a cheerleader, on the pep squad, nor even an extra in the school play. Her extra-curriculars were debate team and the school newspaper--she's the Amy who wrote those editorials on obscure political topics that no one read except the faculty moderators. Since she didn't rush the popular sorority in college, she found her tribe among the College Republicans, most times as the only woman at the mixers not looking to land a rich husband (but she's an Amy, so she married one anyway). She excelled in law school, clerked for Antonin Scalia, adopted Haitian refugee children, sorts her garbage, shops at Talbots, never misses Mass, and is otherwise practically perfect in every way.

Y'all got the exact Justice you thought you wanted, except Amy Coney Barrett ain't no Mary Poppins. The political winds may shift, but thanks to lifetime tenure and a strict exercise regimen, she's not going anywhere anytime soon. She didn't work this hard for all of these years to get to the Court just to watch Donald Trump destroy this country like a Golden Bull run amok in a china shop...thus, to the extent that she has any power to stop him, she will. She's the mother of seven, not the governess, so it is not in her job description to clean up after unruly children. That's for Congress and the voters to sort out. You should have read the fine print, caveat emptor. Case dismissed.

Daddy's Home

2025-01-20T10:12:00.004-05:00

The DNC definitely feels like a lifetime ago in dog years, and this is one of those times when I wish I hadn't let myself get so caught up in my head. This piece was supposed to have been a homage to all of that Good Dad energy we saw back in August and as a September birthday tribute to my Dad. Welp...

Yesterday I saw a snippet of a Sunday news roundtable and one of the participants, Rep. Byron 'not Brian' Donalds exclaimed "Daddy's home" as part of his comments on the return of Trump. In addition to losing my appetite, his statement prompted me to revisit and post this piece. I will post the bulk of what I initially wrote with minimal edits, then provide my updated commentary after the jump. --ADH

I watched Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff's address to the Democratic National Convention and came away with all of the warm and fuzzies. I like him, a lot. I have had something of a soft spot for him ever since I saw a clip of a campaign event back in 2019 where someone tried to rush the stage at then-Sen. Kamala Harris. And with the speed of Clark Kent changing into Superman, Emhoff was up on that stage and standing in between his wife and her would-be assailant in the kind of 'oh snap' moment that could only endear him to women everywhere as that dude.

A few weeks ago, right before Madam VP Harris announced her choice of running mate, I happened to see an interview with a burly white-haired guy who referred to the former DESPOTUS and his newly appointed running mate, James David Vance as weird. And I liked him, a lot. Because there was something about the way he tagged these men as uncool, in spite of their delusions, that definitely made sense. Later when the Hub and I discussed potential running mates, our mutual favorite was that same burly guy from Minnesota, so I was absolutely ecstatic he was her choice.

The week prior to the Convention, I received an email that invited me to attend a town hall with President Biden (and Madam VP), and I jumped at the chance. I tried to convince my Dad to attend with me because I thought, how many times does he get to go to political events? He initially agreed to tag along, then declined in order to attend Mass...and until the moment when I realized I would be close enough to take a picture of the President, Vice President, and the Governor of Maryland in a crowd where there were only four to six people between us, I figured Dad had made the right call. My insistence on staying at this event was pure obstinance; I imagine my Dad, who is a tolerant man, still would not have wagered on that kind of patience paying off. But I like Biden, a lot. And this was my way of counteracting the FOMO I felt by not being able to go to Chicago for the convention.

I waited up late to hear former President Barack Obama even though we've all heard him speak a thousand times (but we still miss him). I was in the car and happened upon former President Bill Clinton's speech, fully remembering that he has a tendency to just talk and talk (and talk). I still need to go back to listed to the entirety of President Biden's convention speech because that started and went on way past my bedtime. I really appreciate that Governor Tim Walz, the burly football Coach chosen to be her running mate, understood the assignment to give us the perfect win-one-for-the-Gipper keynote/pep talk in 15 minutes or less.

I don't know about you, but I ~~liked~~ LOVED all of the positive Dad energy that was being spread by these Democratic men. It's all very soothing, in a retro yet very modern kind of way. On the one hand, it seems contradictory to feel so reassured by their presence in a year when we are looking to elect a woman to be the Leader of the Free World; yet on the other hand, also radical to feel so elated that they are happily standing in-formation beside some formidable, badass women!

And they LOVE it too!

For half a second, I was ready to offer a similar complimentary nod to James David for his full-throated, you don't want none of this smoke response in defense of his wife, Usha. Almost...but, I can't because of every other toxic attack he has made against childless women or against the military service of the Coach in the past couple of weeks. The vibe I get from him is that of a guy who talks really big and tough, until forced into a corner. Thus, even in defense of his wife, if he had to actually stand up for her, I think he would make up some distraction to give him cover to cut and run. It's giving Ted Cruz blaming his wife for booking a vacation to Cancun during an ice storm. Or that clip of Josh Hawley running to hide under his desk that never gets old.

I am just learning about these new Greek-letter categories of men--alphas, betas, sigmas, etc., so I'm not quite clear on the distinctions but to be honest, I don't care. I know that the so-called alphas are on top of the food chain, but that's if your diet consists of Cheetos, protein bars, and energy drinks. Their patron saint is the former DESPOTUS, which is kinda yikes if we're supposed to look at him as some exemplar of virile masculinity and strength...

But that's not where I'm going with this. Because they're the ones who poke fun of those other men who are different, sensitive, married to women they actually like. They are the guys who enforce the high school caste system of jocks, nerds, goths, stoners, etc., and can't readjust to redefine themselves beyond adolescence. They are forever frozen in a world where Hulk Hogan is the still WWF Champion...

All of that positive Dad energy emanating from Emhoff, Walz, Obama, Clinton, and Biden contrasts with the retro projections of Father Knows Best the other side has been promoting for decades. For years they have attempted to paint the Democrats as the Mommy party of feelings and participation trophies while presenting themselves as the Daddy party of hunting and golfing. And for the life of me, I don't get why we're supposed to believe that a bunch of Dads dressed in company logo shirts and Dockers have a better handle on things than a bunch of Dads driving minivans to carpool their kids to soccer games. Because hello, the Moms were the ones holding it ALL down anyway. Who made sure Dad didn't forget the snacks and water? Who did his laundry because the last time he forgot to sort everything came out pink?

(Before anybody hits back with a whatabout single Dads, don't worry, I am not forgetting about nor short-changing them.)

Consider the ways the Alphabots have attempted to define the manhood of their opponents in feminine terms: Tampon Tim (too attentive) and Sleepy Old Joe (too old and feeble), for example. Their attempts to make Obama look like a menacing urban thug never took hold, (and they didn't see the endless potential in calling him Urkel) so they attack his wife to imply that he's gay. And because the only thing worse than being happily married to a Black woman is being a gay man, they poke fun of Pete Buttigieg for taking paternity leave after the birth of his twins.

Take a second to really think about that: they ridiculed a man for being the kind of Dad who wants to do more than just empty the diaper genie when he gets home from work. Imagine being so rigid in your idea of gender roles as to be intimidated by the sight of a baby's poop.

Their disdain for what they perceive as weakness in men is really a hard-wired hatred for women they cannot control. We've been telling you that for decades, but some of you remain unconvinced that the man who goes on the attack against every woman who stands up to him is a thin-skinned unrepentant misogynist. His current running mate, James David the Toady...let's just say that I have my theories, or that he's been doing all of this non-stop campaigning so that he doesn't have to keep sleeping on the couch in his Senate office.

Those man-babies saw all of that joy and fun at the DNC and responded with full tilt mantrums. They can't fathom a world where a man would take to the stage and speak glowingly about a woman he admires for qualities other than her looks. They can't believe that half this country looks upon Madam VP as a beacon of hope and light, and that her supporters aren't just a bunch of childless cat ladies, but also a bunch of happy warrior Dads in flannel shirts who aren't afraid of strong, independent women.

These people hate that our Dads love us for exactly who we are. Our Dads love our tattoos, un-plucked eyebrows, and general weirdness because we're their daughters. Our Dads don't try to shame our brothers when they get overcome with emotion because they have taught them that it's okay for real men to cry if they have to. Our Dads aren't ashamed to say that they love us and that they are proud of who we are.

Mind you, all of this gushing over the Democratic Dads doesn't assume that these qualities are ideological. Because Real Dads come in every political flavor. Good fathers are the kind of men who teach values to their children. They teach their sons how to look a person straight in the eye, give a firm handshake, and reassure their daughters that their ambitions can be infinite and unlimited. Good fathers sometimes have to work multiple jobs in order to keep the lights on and the food on the table, but they do it because they see it as their responsibility. Good fathers don't make manhood a thing they put on display for Christmas greeting cards, but in daily acts of setting positive examples in their homes. Real Dads respect and honor the women they have children with, even if they aren't married to them. They don't get on social media to complain about child support ruining their credit rating or wealth building because they recognize that the money spent on raising their children is an investment.

For all of the talk about how feminists hate men, I bet some of y'all are surprised to read all of this praise from me...but you shouldn't be. Instead of finding fault with a movement that seeks to give women the same rights of self-determination and choice, you should find fault with a hierarchal mindset that teaches men that gender equality is an existential threat. Freedom for women doesn't displace men, it liberates us all.

As I gush on about these other men, I can't help but to look at the men in my family. My Hub is totally that guy when it comes to our daughter. He's going to be that Dad in the feminine hygiene aisle asking some random woman if she can help him figure out wings and absorbencies because I'm going to be off Busy Black Womaning somewhere and our Niece won't be answering her phone. I can totally see my Brother K as the carpool Dad, easily alternating between sports and dance recitals. Brother O is the girl Dad MVP around here, so you already know that man is battle-tested and ain't scared.

My Dad, well...he's the reason why I'm not the kind of feminist who hates men. He has been and continues to be the best example of all the traits I admire and applaud--compassionate, considerate, respectful, responsible, and unapologetic in his love for his family. Not that I didn't see all of this in him throughout my life, but especially since my Mom's transition, I see my Dad with more clarity. He's the same age as Trump, so they were raised in the same era and witnessed the evolution of women's rights.

Here is where I kind of lost control of all my stray thoughts and couldn't pull the narrative together. Then as the campaign got more intense and my efforts pulled me away from writing, this piece stayed in the drafts...

Since I have been going back to revisit and resurrect pieces from the drafts and as we find ourselves on this precipice where seemingly every point I had intended to make with this piece seems moot and contradictory, I remain defiant that I was/AM right. They may have won the election and successfully conned a lot of people into thinking that their illusion of bravado is somehow more manly, but in a few years, we'll see how that works out for the country.

I could be petty and offer a crass assessment of why Byron 'not Brian' Donalds called Trump 'Daddy'...but I will keep it classy and pray that he gets therapy for that. Because the couch is eventually where the toadies of narcissists turn to recover from years of self-loathing brought on by trying to please negligent and selfish idols. Ultimately, how he copes with any of that ain't none of my business.

In the meantime, I am emphatic that Doug Emhoff would have been a phenomenal First Dude and Tim Walz would have been a fantastic wing man. Barack Obama remains that cool Uncle and Bill Clinton is definitely the wise Uncle with endless escapades and wisdom to share. In the last month when we had to say goodbye to the Grand Patriarch of statesmanship in President Jimmy Carter, we now turn to the emotional task of wishing Grandpa Joe Biden well in his retirement from public life.

However, we are not conceding that our loss of this election is a vindication of toxic masculinity. It is a lesson from which we learn: sometimes we fall short. We can be trained, prepared, in the best shape, have the will to win, but sometimes the odds are not in our favor. Plenty of Dads have to give this pep talk to their children after some heart-breaking disappointment. My Dad offered his version to me the day after the election. I got back to DC the day after the election just in time to view Kamala Harris' concession speech. My Dad had returned from an errand, so after we listened to her address, he muted the formal post-speech analysis and offered this assessment: You did what you could, Ayanna. I'm proud of you. We will carry on.

In the end, that is/was my entire point. In spite of my bitterness and despair, the images we saw on display at the DNC weren't illusions. The Good Dads of this world are still supporting, encouraging, and inspiring us, so we are not without hope.

Hate On Me Hater

2025-01-19T09:48:00.001-05:00

In just a few hours (depending on when you read this), Scar and his hyenas will take over the country again. As you might imagine, I am one of many people for whom this will be a most dreadful state of affairs. No need to elaborate on just how unpleasant since we will have four more years to watch it all unravel...

As a native and resident of DC, having grown up literally just a few miles away from where this hostile takeover will occur, I have witnessed the much hallowed "peaceful" transfer of power quite a few times, with both anticipation and dread. The first time was 44 years ago when President Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. I distinctly recall being excited because there was to be a parade that we could walk to from my Grandmother's Capitol Hill home. My parents and most of the other adults in my orbit were decidedly unenthusiastic, but in my childish naiveté, I was undeterred and cheered along with the rest of the adoring crowd.

Fast forward to 1997 when the Hub and I were dating and were given tickets to attend one of the second Clinton Inaugural Balls. The excitement I felt then was genuine and informed since not only had I voted for him, but I had flown in from New Orleans to take part in the festivities. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to guess how I felt at each subsequent Inauguration, including eight years ago. Suffice it to say, it was only out of a morbid sense of curiosity (and because I let my travel anxiety get the best of me), that we happened to still be at home to watch the preliminary formalities. Instead of packing the car or driving to New York, I just had to get one last glimpse of the Obamas as the historic outgoing First Family. Then I saw Michelle Obama's WTF-how-long-do-I-have-to-sit-here-and-not-vomit face...

So, it comes as NO surprise to anybody who knows better when former First Lady Michelle Obama announced that she wouldn't be attending Abomination 2.0. She really didn't need to tell us, but perhaps she felt that she owed us some advance warning since she passed on sitting next to Trump for the 90 minutes it took to formally eulogize President Jimmy Carter at the National Cathedral last week. She must have determined that it was better to get ahead of the news cycle, lest any outlets spend too much time speculating on her whereabouts.

There should be nothing controversial about her decision, except that the people who make it their business to talk shit about Black women have made it their business to opine for several days on the appropriateness and etiquette of declining an invitation. Petty and classless, they have deemed it, because it breaks with "tradition" that an able-bodied former First Lady would decide that she would rather stay home in her pajamas binging Bridgerton on Netflix than to sit out in the snow on a dais to witness the inauguration of a man whose racist and xenophobic rhetoric endangered the lives of her family.

I'm mad that y'all expected her to forgive all of that.

But let's not even dignify their imitation clutched pearls and offended pretense of decorum because more than half the population of this city has decided not to attend or tune in to watch the Trumpocalypse. Folks are fleeing this city like it's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Anybody who doesn't have to be here for work or who didn't pay the million-dollar access fee will be rearranging their sock drawers or otherwise preoccupied. Second, Mrs. Obama attended the Inauguration when she passed the keys to the gilded walk-in ~~cage~~ closet to her successor. That was her last official act as First Lady, a role that is undefined. It's not even a job in the traditional sense, just a title. Much like the First Lady at most of our churches, the most important thing she does is not wear the same outfit twice in a month, so why are we even discussing what the former former FLOTUS does or doesn't do in the grand scheme of things? Isn't the focus supposed to be on the incoming DESPOTUS? Y'all should be more concerned if Melania or her decoy will be there...

Truth be told, we really need to channel all of our good vibes and positive energy towards Madame Vice President Kamala Harris, the only Black woman who has to be there in order to perform an actual constitutional duty. We need to pray for her poker face at that crucial moment when her historic role comes to an end, and she has to act like she's not pissed and ready to blow the roof off the joint. We all know that she would rather be sitting next to Michelle Obama in matching pajamas drowning her sorrows with a box of wine. I suspect that as soon as James David finishes his oath and doesn't immediately combust into flames, Madame VP and 2G Doug E. will quietly exit the scene stage left. (Where they go from there is anyone's guess, but let's hope that it won't be the last we'll see of them.)

Since we're on the subject of Kamala Harris and the optics of decorum, let me say it loud and clear for anyone who needs to hear this: I ain't mad at all that she hasn't offered to give the Vances a tour of the official residence before they move in. It's a big ass house, but they are smart people who went to Yale, so there is no need to point out where the bathrooms are located. I get that there was a tradition there as well, but naw, that man called her trash, and it wasn't just meaningless campaign rhetoric. She doesn't owe him or his wife anything more than the keys.

In the weeks since it became clear that we are doing this again (and stuck in a Groundhog Day nightmare), I have been paying attention and contemplating the state of things. I've been reading the tea leaves and slowly becoming more accepting of the things I cannot change. Malcolm X once said that the most disrespected, unprotected, and neglected person in America is the Black woman, and I have come to the conclusion that he was 100% correct in that assessment.

I could pull out a CVS length receipt of names and situations as proof...I have done so in the past, but it won't matter. I could mention how folks are blaming Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for wildfires she didn't start; how Rep. Jasmine Crockett gets criticized for keeping it too real even though she's 100% right; how some of you have been way too silent and accepting of how Atty. Fani Willis was effectively stripped of power; how some of you will downplay every example I cite just because. I bet most of you haven't listened to Chrisette Michelle in a couple of forevers--not since she performed at the first Trump Inauguration, but you won't rid your playlists of Snoop Dog, Nelly, or Rick Ross after this one.

Therefore, once I realized that I too am just another disrespected, unprotected, and neglected Busy Black Woman, it dawned on me that I need to stop worrying so much about what I say and how I am perceived. Damned if I do and damned if I don't, right? Y'all are going to find fault, pick me apart, and toss my bones out to be picked clean by Scar's hyenas, the vultures, and other scavengers. So it don't matter (yeah, I'm intentionally using AAVE), because what does it matter? I can be Mary freaking Poppins, practically perfect in every way, but if I fail to pronounce the -ing with the appropriate inflection or slip into a regional accent that reveals my hood adjacency, I'm just another Eliza Doolittle at the races. Another DEI Sheniqua that y'all would dismiss as unworthy of being allowed in civilized company without an apron and duster...

Ask me how I know.

The irony for me is the expectation that Black women ought to be grateful that the insults hurled at us and the roadblocks intended to stop us today aren't as bad as what was said and done to the generations of women who preceded us. Once upon a time, when our great grandmothers and great aunties had to take on domestic work that kept them from raising their own children while caring for the children of others, they were mistreated, called lazy and incompetent, and were blamed for the destruction of the "traditional" Black family because they were the primary breadwinners. The difference in these modern times? Apparently not as much as we were led to believe. In spite of our higher rates of education and expanded access to opportunity, we were hoodwinked into believing that all we had to do was work twice as hard to become half as successful. We didn't factor in how deeply entrenched misogynoir always sets us up for failure in the end.

Take the very accomplished, poised, and fabulous former FLOTUS Michelle Obama as the prime example. If anyone embodies the narrative of the great American meritocracy, surely it would be the Black woman whose path took her from the Southside of Chicago to Princeton University and ultimately to the White House. Instead of finding inspiration by such an improbable trajectory, MAGA was appalled and offended. They called her everything but a child of God for the unforgiveable sin of being proud of her country for seemingly moving past its racism!

When she became First Lady, she rarely stumbled or misspoke. She never had a bad hair day nor committed any fashion faux pas. She took up the worthy crusade of encouraging children to become more active. She installed an environmentally conscious kitchen and butterfly garden on the White House grounds. She raised her daughters out of the glare of the public and they are now college-educated young women. Since leaving the White House, Mrs. Obama has written a couple of books, produced a few movies, lent her name to worthy causes, and generally stood by her man.

But haters gonna hate no matter what. Because if performing for the Abomination is the highlight of Kid Rock's birthday weekend, then what makes Michelle Obama so special as to refuse to cancel her plans for brunch?

I can't speak for all Black women, but I can aver on behalf of the 92% of us who swallowed the bitter pill of defeat on November 5 that we are simply following through on our promise that we are done! No more Mammying America. No more missionary work to convert people who don't want salvation. Y'all booked this trip on the Titanic II, so go on and enjoy every doomed minute of the voyage. Maybe there will be enough lifeboats and jackets this time...if not, thoughts and prayers.

You can't force us, bully us, shame us, nor blame us for anything that happens from now on. We didn't choose this, so we're not acquiescing to any demands that we smile and grin for the cameras. We're going to lean into the disappointment we feel, and more than anyone Michelle Obama deserves space to rest and recalibrate. She did her part. Weeks after losing her beloved mother, she channeled her grief into a pitch perfect motivational speech that included her recollection of the painful impact of Donald and Melania Trump's birther conspiracies on her family. Y'all weren't the least bit offended by what her daughters had to endure as children hearing and seeing those racist descriptions of their parents for years. Now there are lofty principles and ideals to uphold? Really???

If that were true, then the Black woman who dedicated her career to upholding and defending so-called American principles and ideals would be taking the Oath at noon on Monday. So miss me, Michelle Obama, and every other Black woman you know with ANY and ALL that bullshit!

We not coming.

Didn't We Almost Have It All?

2024-12-17T13:43:00.000-05:00

Not long ago, I saw this picture posted on social media of Madam Vice President Kamala Harris with her husband Doug Emhoff, captured in a light-hearted and loving pose. I don't know if this was a recent photo, but the caption was America fumbled so hard, an allusion to the reality that we could have elected someone decent to be our next President. Suddenly, as if there was a radio playing in the background, I began to hear the instrumental intro to Whitney Houston's song and got a little misty. A montage of scenes from the 107 days replayed in my head. I thought back to how upbeat and excited I was on Election Day and how I still believed we were going to win, despite the odds.

Then like an old school record scratch...

I can't even wrap my mind around the Return of the DESPOTUS 2.0: Four More Years of Daily Fuckery. The White House now an unmistakable Big Top Circus Tent, soon to be occupied by P.T. Barnum reincarnated, who will launch a second season of the Worst Shitshow on Earth.

When I knew I was finally ready to write about Kamala Harris' defeat, my intent was to compare her loss to the situation I describe here. Because I am clear that a major reason she lost was because she was so formidable--too much for people to feel comfortable with her, in spite of everything else that we knew about the Joker. But my thoughts got too bogged down and unfocused, so instead of wrestling with something unwieldy, thereby running the risk of succumbing to never making my point, I split the baby.

We could have had it all, America. But y'all gave it away for $1 rebate per gallon of gas.

Twice now, we have elected the worst possible example of humanity to be the American President. He and every Alpha boy he chooses to serve in his harem, from James David the Manchurian understudy to Master Robert the Bear-Eater to the guy whose own mother used to be ashamed of him--these are the people whom America believed were the better choices. The world will tolerate a rapist, a racist, a grifter, a conman, an adulterer, a liar, a cheat, and even a fascist, but it just cannot abide a woman who is unafraid to be her unapologetic, fearless self.

If you look back at various points throughout human history, women who refused to be minimized by what society deemed acceptable were denounced, rejected, ostracized, abused, called everything but a child of God, and sometimes killed. Centuries later and y'all still refer to Mary Magdeline a prostitute; yet, before his conversion and his name was still Saul how many Christians did he persecute and imprison as opposed to the number of men who allegedly paid her for sex? All manner of men are rewarded, revered, and redeemed in spite of a multitude of sins: feudal Lords, imperial plunderers and pirates, Founding Fathers, Confederate politicians, Gilded Age robber barons, Jim Crow philanderers, the tech bazillionaires, and now once again, Donald Effing Trump. As he infamously said, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with his crimes...and now 77 million voters have proven him right.

We could have had the country that we promote to the world as the beacon of light and hope. But in a democracy the voters get to make grave mistakes as well as inspired choices, so here we are, preparing for another dreary ride to the cemetery...

A month later, and I'm not much interested in the other post-election assessments of why we're here right now. Surely there were campaign mistakes and missteps (because she only had 107 days), but bottom line some voters were either ambivalent about the return of Trump or hellbent against seeing this Black woman just walk into the Oval Office without proving she deserved to be there. Never mind the fact that Kamala Harris had already earned that right when she was elected to be the Vice President in 2020, but apparently that wasn't enough. She should have gone through a bruising primary process at the 11th hour once the big money donors and political operatives lost faith in President Joe Biden. We should have repeated the very same mistake that was made in 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek the nomination.

Well, now we have a 1968 remix. Only this time, we have re-elected a person 10 times worse than Richard Nixon--a verifiable crook, all because some of you were determined to chasten women who have the temerity to declare that we can be anything, including Leaders of the Free World.

If you still want to argue that sexism and racism don't make one helluva team, just wait until Calamuary 2025 (yep, that term is here to stay). Anyone who is urging calm or to wait and see is probably not worried because they know they will be fine either way. Offended, upset, and maybe even a little more than annoyed, but definitely not endangered or under threat of the retribution. I hope you enjoyed the long-awaited Thanksgiving reconciliation with your estranged brother and family. I'm sure his trad wife's pumpkin pie was delicious.

I believed with my entire heart and soul that Kamala Harris could have won this election, even as I suspected that Trump had become way too confident in the final stretch. It was quixotic for sure, and I allowed myself to get caught up in the rapture of possibility. My bad for forgetting that this country will break your heart. However, I refuse to feel anything but pride for what Kamala Harris tried to do, because dammit, what else was she supposed to do? Just let y'all act like she was invisible, throw away everything she and Biden accomplished in the past four years, and NOT stand up for the rule of law she vowed to protect and defend her entire career??? GTFOOHWTBS!

Right before Eli Pope infamously reminds his daughter Olivia (and all of us) that she has to be twice as good to attain half as much, he admonishes her for pinning her hopes on becoming First Lady. Because why work that hard just to be photographed wearing nice clothes? Of course, the irony is that Kamala Harris did exactly the opposite--she set her sights on the ultimate prize and got punished for not settling.

She made the case that she was ready, and she inspired millions of people to get out in these streets to try to salvage some semblance of what this country purports to represent to the world. That a bunch of billionaire good ole boys had the mean$ to thwart our hopes wasn't entirely unforeseeable, just profoundly disappointing. And typical. I will never concede that that they won this election fair and square, because they spent enough money and effort at re-writing every rule to ensure that they won. Their victory, celebrated in the form of taunts and trolls and every single Cabinet pick, has been intended remind us that they had every advantage and exploited every vulnerability, on their dime but at our expense.

Exhibit A: Reneging at Spades

How was it even possible that a man whose documented history of racism and sexism was able to turn this election into a referendum on Blackness by using sexism??? From dredging up her past romantic entanglements to misrepresenting her record as a prosecutor to mispronouncing her name and even questioning whether she ever worked at McDonalds, he even had folks on Blue Ivy's internet arguing about how she cooks her collard greens...

Once he had folks fighting at the summer barbecue, his next great trick was to exude so much confidence that he could make inroads and gain the support of disaffected Black men, in spite of their historic loyalty to the Democratic Party. For the past several election cycles, Black women have been touted as the base of the party and rewarded as such with high profile and visible positions. The elevation of individual Black women in political discourse was then framed as yet another advance that has occurred at the expense of Black men overall, despite the fact that there are still more men in positions of influence and power such as James Clyburn, Hakeem Jeffries, Rev. Al Sharpton, Wes Moore, and Barack Obama.

We have always been clear about the ideological diversity within the Black community, so the shock isn't that there were Black men who supported a return of the Chaos King. It's that some of the most vocal Trumplogytes, like Mark Robinson (R-NC) and Royce White (R-MN), crapped out and have nothing to show for their loyalty, not even a Black job. The others who didn't go quite as far will likely see some personal reward, but at what expense to the rest of us? How much of the Trump prosperity hustle will trickle down to our communities? Enough to buy some sneakers, a Cybertruck, or just a carton of eggs?

Exhibit B: Cat-Fights Over Public Bathrooms

Can you imagine the kind of mental gymnastics it takes to consider a public restroom as a "sacred" space? The same place where you can get a communicable disease from washing your hands. Those 55 percent women are so smart as to allow a man who shits on his own private gold toilet...better yet, the man who bought a beauty pageant so that he could leer at underage girls to convince them that he will be their Protector, whether they like it or not.

If it wasn't clear before that we didn't pledge the same sorority, we sure know that now.

You've got to hand it to those smart Handmaidens of Patriarchy--the wives, mothers, and daughters who dutifully follow the roadmap of expectations and guidelines that allow some women (not all) to aspire just beyond the realm of what is acceptable. Women who may have jobs and careers, even as high as the rank of being a Governor or a Senator as long as they represent and articulate the values that men proscribe AND make sure dinner is on the table by 6pm every night.

Contrast their success with that of those smart-assed women who decide on their own, without male permission or approval, to make choices for themselves. Women who did not get married to their high school sweethearts or first college boyfriends, who don't prioritize motherhood over careers, or who have the nerve to call themselves feminists--they represent the kind of moxie that is too disruptive to the Old World order of things. What kind of world would we have if women keep demanding access to previously exclusive male enclaves, like the Supreme Court, church pulpits, C-Suites, and the Oval Office?

One with gender-neutral bathrooms.

Exhibit C: Knowing is Half the Battle

In spite of how much this loss still hurts, I want it to be known that I DO NOT have regrets. I have gripes and justified rage because we shouldn't be here licking our wounds and questioning who we are. I know who I am, what I believe, and why I voted the way I did. That shouldn't be in doubt--it's those other people whom we need to redefine and see more clearly.

Thus, let's take the advice Mother Maya Angelou gave us to heart--when people show you who they are, believe them the first time. That applies to Trump, but more importantly to the people who voted for him again, some for the third time. They knew what he was and voted for him in the hopes that he will do EVERYTHING he promised them. Let's accept that the people who proudly wave Confederate flags, who were willing to violently overthrow an election, and who are giving millions to celebrate the return Emperor Conmani Grifticus--they have shown us who and what they are, so we need not waste time or energy expecting anything better from them.

They will never be moved by the pain endured by others either because they profit from it or are shielded from its effects. What does it matter to them if police officers can harass Black and Latino men with impunity as long as their gated cul-de-sacs remain safe? We live in food deserts and have little to no economic investment in our communities, but they don't, never will and they are fine with that. If they don't want their children to go to school with ours, they can convene at the local coffee shop after morning drop-off to strategize about how to trick us into diverting our tax dollars into funding their private schools.

To that end, we need to stop lying to ourselves that all Americans want the same things. We don't. I don't want sundown towns, mass deportations, or laws that track our daughters' menstrual cycles. I wasn't looking for the annihilation of those with whom I disagree, just some compassion, empathy, justice, or a semblance of common decency. I wanted to dismantle the systems of oppression that have historically denied opportunities to the marginalized. I never expressed any desire that others should suffer, not even a fraction of what has been wished upon me...

Still reluctant to admit who and what we are facing? Still holding out hope that we can appeal to the better angels of people who claim that American greatness is best exhibited by cruelty? From the same people who heard the stories about dead mothers who were denied life-saving health care and didn't shed a single tear? By the fanatics who happily waved signs that read Mass Deportation Now and will cheer when people are rounded up and families ripped apart? Unity with the folks who felt more inconvenienced by a global COVID pandemic and ignored the AIDS epidemic because it wasn't their problem? Ditto for famine, climate change, lead water pipes, or the strategic placement of power lines near communities that result in childhood cancer clusters. Are you that blind to their depravity?

Before you launch into a self-righteous lecture on tolerance, don't. Take that nonsense to Twitter. These are not simple differences of opinion; they are irreconcilable--the kind that place people's lives in danger. Those people aren't looking to live together in perfect harmony. They want to make us feel demoralized, conquered...so any and every suggestion of appeasement or conciliation is bullshit. Some of these capitulators are the same folks who wanted a contested convention, so we need to be clear about them as well.

This wasn't an American Idol finale. Some of us just can't get over the result and move on as if everything will be fine. Until and unless you accept that there are clear lines between good and evil, then we cannot reassemble this fractured coalition. Because right now, if you are advocating a strategy of if you can't beat them, you will join them, then you have told me where you stand at times of challenge and controversy...on the sidelines waiting to see who emerges victorious.

Having spent a month in reflection and rest, I still lament what we could have had by electing Kamala Harris. But it's above me now. As another Whitney Houston song begins to play in my head, I have to focus on the future. I've spent nine months mourning my Mom. I don't plan to spend the rest of my life mourning this country. I can't guarantee that I won't get caught up in my feelings every now and then, but I've got shit to do.

Stay tuned.

Still Not Aspiring to Be Humble

2024-12-05T14:53:00.000-05:00

Last week, I went mean girl on someone, and instead of over-thinking whether I should have been more demure and mindful with my words, I leaned in. And in the most-Audrerific way (my new word for when I'm channeling my Mom), I essentially told him to cry harder. Not today, not tomorrow, and not ever again Satan!

If you light a match, you better be ready for this smoke! Now that I am a woman of a certain age, I am no longer measuring my words nor apologizing for being who and what I am, especially not when like Toyota, you asked for it.

Obviously, there is a backstory, and it starts with a Facebook post in a group. This is a mixed, intergenerational group of HBCU alumni, so there are posts that run the gamut from super serious to seriously stupid. And most folks know that, thus depending on the mood a post that is seriously stupid might be exactly what is needed to lighten the mood, while on other days it might cause someone to get their feelings hurt. The same is true for super serious posts--we may or may not be willing to engage in intellectual debates about why a grown man not getting his plate fixed at a family gathering is the reason why the Black family is in decline...so you gotta roll the dice and see what happens.

For whatever reason, there had been a series of sexist posts, including quite a few that IRL would result in somebody sleeping in his car or on his boy's couch. These seriously stupid posts started popping up right before Homecoming, which is usually when folks engage in all manner of tomfoolishness, and also why it didn't get called out and shut down sooner. Nevertheless, by late-November, weeks past Homecoming and with most of our group recuperating from the Election, the mood was definitely super serious.

The post at issue was a classic rate this woman, the same sort of foolywang that allegedly launched The Facebook in a Harvard dorm room (according to Aaron Sorkin's movie) or that was premise of Hot or Not--the grandfather of sexism on the Al Gore's internet. Some dude had the chutzpah to pose such a query, then logged off for the rest of the day--which only made the backlash in response to his post that more intense. His departure from the scene for hours led folks to question why this had slipped past our moderators and whether our group had been infiltrated. At some point, I happened upon his post, and as per the rules of engagement since the election have been that I am NOT in the mood for any fuckery, I pounced. I posted one sentence about how this post would have been more appropriate for a private group chat and then added this Audrerific: but you must not have any friends...and Lawd, it went viral!

Now, I know what I said was unkind. And I am not going to deny that I got a certain measure of satisfaction in seeing all of the likes and favorable comments from men and women alike. As a writer, I often hope that half of what I put into the universe has some impact on my readers. So yeah, my head got a little big.

Fast forward to the private message that the original poster sent me that evening, after he had ignored every other comment. Can you believe that man had the audacity to suggest that while his sexist bullshit post was bad, my response was worse!? And do you want to know what I did...

I rolled over and went to sleep.

The next morning, his message popped up on my computer, but it wouldn't load properly, so then I wondered if I had dreamt seeing his PM from the previous evening. Then I assumed that he had blocked me (like someone else did after a similar run-in last year), but after a quick reload, his message reappeared, and I decided that it warranted a reply. To ensure that I had accurately called him out for his cheekiness, I sought to refer back to the original post. Zounds, it had been deleted by the group moderators! Sadly, that means that there is no "official" record that I ever went viral other than my retelling of the events here.

Next time, I will be sure to get a screen shot! No worries though, since the point of this piece isn't to brag about landing an insult. Instead, I wanted to use that experience to proffer a few thoughts why dudes like him hate going toe-to-toe with out-spoken women like me. Furthermore, that is one of the reasons why I believe Kamala Harris isn't measuring the drapes in the Oval Office right now--because some of these mofos just can't stand a confident, undaunted, smart-ass woman!

Now before I open an entirely new can of worms, I will try to limit my post-election analysis to a few stray sentences here and there. I plan to fully unload in a separate piece. As you can imagine, I've got a LOT to say...

In response to the election results, I lashed out at a quite a few people, primarily folks like Brother Misogynoir because that is what happens when you can't meaningfully strike back at those who really got you twisted. I already posted a smart-ass mea culpa on my personal FB page after my initial round of friendly fire, but I guess I should have added a warning that I'm not done shooting from the hip. Therefore, I do NOT apologize for my annoyance at the assholery enabled by the very people who should have our backs; because in lieu of affirming and uplifting the spirits of the Black women in our shared, private space, that dude opted to engage in the same kind of SUPERFICIAL SEXISM that has made breaking the glass ceiling so elusive. Then he had the nerve to try to guilt ME into feeling some kind of way because no one co-signed on his nonsense? No sir!

As for the group moderators who chose to remove his post, in essence giving him a get out of jail free card, why the H-E-double hockey sticks did they let him off the hook? Why not mount his severed head on a wall as a caution to every future ashy mofo who might be inclined to forget that this ain't the boys' locker room at a private club or someone's wood-paneled mancave? If this reads like I'm taking it hard that my brilliant Audrerific clapback won't be preserved in cyber-posterity for future generations, trust I'm way more pissed that the decision to delete the entire thread only proves that some so-called safe spaces function to protect the wrong people.

I mentioned the fact that this wasn't the first time I've encountered a Cowardly Lion in that group or elsewhere on social media. Before the recent mass X-odus, I was down for a bird fight or two with friends and strangers. I had a friend on Facebook who was the kind of person whom I imagine would describe his interactions with people as part Michael Eric Dyson intellectual provocateur, part Chris Rock stand-up comic. Because I had known him in real life as well as online, I knew the best response to his pot-stirring was to add a grain of salt. So when he tagged me on a post to engage in a "debate" on a seriously stupid topic, I played along. That I happened to be sitting next to my Mom in the hospital was, at the time, part of the reason why I was willing to entertain this nonsense. I needed the distraction.

Then he made it personal, and I guess he resented that I didn't go high when he went low. After he pulled the mean girl card on me, he deleted the thread, then he took it up a few notches by blocking and de-friending me!

I kept a screenshot of the private message I attempted to send him, which had included an apology until shortly after my Mom passed. Call it a what would Audrey do impulse, but the fact that I ever acknowledged his hurt feelings or allowed him to take up any space in my life after what he did to me still pisses me off. He picked a fight, did a lot of trash-talking, got in the ring, danced around, then called the fight as soon as I landed a punch. He put me on blast, then tried to shame me because the tone of my response to his provocation was "mean". And in a moment of weakness, I actually thought that maybe I had gone too far.

Until I rewound the sequence of events as outlined above. He had engineered that entire fracas from start to finish, and as far as I know, he didn't stutter or think twice about anything he said that might have been insulting or hurtful to me. For me to even contemplate his feelings in the midst of what I was dealing with at my Mom's bedside is how I realized I was being played. It doesn't matter what he knew about my situation because he knew he was wrong. Why else would he delete the thread?

We use the delete button to correct mistakes, to erase the things we don't want people to see or find.

Which is why I did take a screen shot the private message Brother Misogynoir sent me last week, and I will save it for the next time he decides to forget he's in mixed company. I keeps receipts and I ain't scared of what these dudes think of me--I'm sure I've been called a bitch as much as any other woman. I said what I said, in true Audrerific fashion, without remorse. I won't be humble, ingratiating, soul-searching, or swallowing my pride. In the words of a few Chicks who know a little something about being gaslit by cruel intentions, carnival barkers, sociopaths, overcooked hams, and other people who engage in bad faith, I'm Not Ready to Make Nice.

Therefore, on this day when the good Lord saw fit to bring forth a daughter in Audrey's image, I hereby declare not today, nor ever again! I know who and what I am. Happy Birthday!

Life Goes On (and On)

2024-12-05T00:34:00.000-05:00

Scrolling through the drafts and I noticed this one that I had attempted to write during the summer. This was started a week before Father's Day. A lot of this was covered in this piece that was already published in October, so there are redundancies and/or details that might have been more present for me in the short-term as opposed to several months later. I will explain more after the jump. --ADH

It has been a little more than three months.

When I woke up on the morning of February 27, I'm sure that I had no idea that it would be her last day, even though I had been given ample advance warning that her time was coming. What I remember knowing for certain that morning when I dropped my daughter off at school and the Hub at work, was that I desperately needed to get a few uninterrupted hours of writing done. I had been struggling for weeks to publish anything, so my hope was to finish something (or make some progress on a few of the various pieces I had been writing), and then to see my Mom that later afternoon after my daughter's dance class.

I mentioned having had advanced warning because my Mom had been in hospice since last September. So I knew...but I had also been lulled into a false sense that she would defy the odds, be de-certified from receiving hospice care, and continue to carry on living in the background of the lives we had built for ourselves. It was a selfish wish. So I knew, but I just didn't want to believe.

There were signs. During the month of January, which I now call Calamuary, everything began to unravel. My Mom's long-time home health aide went out on extended medical leave for a double hip replacement, a procedure she put off for months or possibly years. My parents' long-term care insurance, which had been slow-walking reimbursement payments since the summer, reminded me that they are in the business of making money not paying it out. The home health care agency that recently went conglomerate by acquiring smaller agencies and changing its name to reflect the fact that it was not a conglomerate, informed me that it intended to increase their rates. This is also while they sent us an ever-limited rotation of aides who were certified to work in our jurisdiction. The hospice nurse, who had been jovial and upbeat for most of her weekly visits in 2023, began to look worried mere weeks after the start of the New Year. Then the furnace fucking stopped working.

We survived. I prayed that we could make it to her birthday, February 1, and then kept praying. On the night of her birthday when I finally made my way over to the house to see her, the indications that I had been warned would signal the end were more evident. She wasn't awake. If she ate, we had to be more careful to prevent aspiration. The pressure sore on her tailbone began to get worse. She looked frail and weak and was rapidly losing weight. I brought her a gourmet birthday cookie, which I think my daughter ended up eating a few days later.

For Valentine's Day, I bought candy and make little treat boxes for the home care aides, including her long-time aide. She had wanted to schedule a visit and a day of beauty for Mom, and had enlisted the services of her daughter, but I hesitated. Not on having her visit, but I was concerned that my Mom wasn't strong enough for anything taxing like getting her hair done. But I agreed in theory that something was needed to lift the heaviness that had begun to permeate the house since the furnace fiasco of the previous month. We still had Christmas decorations up which my brother hastily took down (but I have yet to put them away). So I bought a banner that I intended to hang in her room. We opted for the living room where the now empty Christmas stocking hooks were affixed to the fireplace mantle. My thinking was that she might see the banner along with the weekly bouquet of flowers I brought for her when she was seated in her wheelchair.

There had been signs. I would not say that I didn't notice, but that I was unwilling to fully acknowledge them. In other words, I definitely knew, but I had been operating under the childish wish that if I kept my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears and if I sang aloud, then I could pretend not to notice what was happening. I could fake ignore that my Mom was dying in some futile attempt to avoid it, as if that would have made a difference.

It didn't. At about 11am that morning, after I had settled into a groove of writing, I got the call from the hospice nurse. I took a shower and got dressed. I packed up my computer and my chargers. I called my brothers and then a few relatives. I honestly don't remember if that is the exact order of things, but I know that I was on the phone with my college roommate when I arrived at the house. My younger brother, who had been waiting for me, met me outside to let me know that he was leaving to pick up our kids from school. Inside, my Dad's priest was administering Last Rites and the home care aide (whose name I don't remember) was praying and crying. At some point, relatives began to arrive. One of my uncles sat in the living room with his head in his hands. Someone announced that there was food in the kitchen. Friends of mine arrived. At some point, I even received a phone call from Africa.

Then everyone left. My Mom was still breathing, but with difficultly it seemed, so we questioned whether the morphine would help. We decided that it would, and then we discussed what might happen the next morning...

The details of someone's last day mean more to the people who are able to remember them. Of this I am clear because I don't know what my Mom knew or felt. I can't ask her. I go into her empty room and while I feel her presence, it is not the same as it was when she was physically in that hospital bed, in my Dad's den that had been converted into an accessible first floor bedroom.

I am not okay.

So if you ask, I will lie and say that I am, not because I want to be deceptive, but because I have made the calculation that answering honestly in that moment will likely require me to elaborate or listen to some nicely intentioned, but tone-deaf speech. I know that my Mom is with me and that she is proud of me (at least I think she is). Yes, I will miss her forever, as I try to figure out how I got through these months without crumbling.

That was in June, this is now the first week of December, and my birthday is coming. I happened upon this piece when I was looking through my list of drafts to see if I could move some thoughts from another piece I am currently writing.

While some of my writing struggles remain, I am working through them. It helps to have a window of time without any chaos, which brings its own set of unique challenges. Because life can be chaotic, even in the quiet moments.

Anyway, I find myself a bit more reflective and in my feelings about this birthday. It marks the official end of what was to be my milestone year of new and exciting life experiences (something else I didn't finish writing about but will revisit soon). After this week, I'm just another 50-something Gen Xer who's trying to figure out how I got here in the blink of an eye...seeing as I just turned 21 thirty years ago! I anticipate that it will feel weird to celebrate this life without the person who made me possible.

I know I am not alone. This year has felt like a reckoning with destiny for a lot of us--losing a parent, sibling, partner or beloved elder and having to adjust to the hole that grief leaves in place of their physical presence. Grief was not on my BINGO card of life experiences I was eager to add to my bucket list, despite what I said above about seeing all the signs. It is one thing to acknowledge and accept the inevitability of fate for someone whom you've watched live with a chronic illness for several years. It is quite another realization once they have passed not to have to watch them suffer, feel relieved and immediately guilty that you were about to make a choice between their suffering (life) and yours (grief).

Because that is how it feels to miss my Mom right now, wishing she was still here while knowing that if she were still alive, she would be in agony dealing with all of those ailments. The selfish part of me would find meaning and purpose in fighting with her long-term care and the home care agency, instead of ~~putting off~~ avoiding dealing with them since I no longer have to. Death took my mother and my job as a caregiver, so now what am I supposed to do now?

That was the struggle I was living with in June, how to reimagine my life just before the start of summer and everything I wrote about here. Now in December, on the eve of my birthday and in the early days of this holiday season, I re-read what I wrote then and had to ask myself why so much of this still rings true. When did the point of my life become so narrow? Why does grief require so much energy--exhausting to keep it at bay, and overwhelming if I don't resist? Does anyone else go through this?

My Mom was just a year or so younger than I am now when my Grandmother died. As I tried to recall the impact of her mother's death on her, I only gave the matter serious thought recently. I knew how it affected the relationships among her siblings with repercussions that lingered for decades. It never occurred to me that her grief manifested in anger, much like mine. Whereas she fell out with family, I have been reckless and unapologetic in my dealings with strangers (that happens to be the topic of the other piece I'm currently writing).

So let me get back to that piece by ending this one on a more positive note. Life does go on. I am still here, still trying to figure things out, still writing. And now I'm a year older and wiser.

Service Without the Smile

2024-11-25T14:56:00.000-05:00

The hook here is that I decided to chop my hair off a whole year after I wrote the bulk of this, primarily for several of the reasons chronicled here, and another ill-fated faux loc misadventure. I'm not upset, nor was my decision to start over based on any ill-will, just needed a change. --ADH

Picture it, November 2023...

Initially, I was just planning to post a few pictures to the Facebook page and share a few thoughts about a recent ordeal. But once I got to remembering and realized that I had PARAGRAPHS of built-up frustration written out on the page, it made more sense to move this vent in this space where I could really expound. Because I have a lot to say...

This began when I wanted to write a quick note about alumni giving. HBCU Homecomings have finally received mainstream media attention, so I thought of that as an opportunity to preach my annual #HBCUJustGive sermonette to the masses. After a few paragraphs, I concluded with a shady reference to Atlanta restaurants (which people were talking about because of TikTok influencer Keith Lee, and we'll definitely address that here as well) and the complaints I've been seeing on social media about hair stylist pricing. I then thought, hmm, here's a chance for me to air out my gripes about my own experience of feeling price gouged at the hair salon, an experience that still has me feeling some kind of way weeks after the fact.

Because this isn't an anonymous business review posted to Yelp, no names are provided to protect identities. This is also not a stream of consciousness rant on X, nor a vengeful TikTok video because nobody has time for all of that. This is how I felt about an experience that is unique to me, and my goal here is not to destroy anyone's livelihood or tarnish their reputation. Of course, I could have opted not to say anything, but I came to the conclusion that I needed a catharsis after biting my tongue for so long. A wise person once told me some years ago that repression is bad for the soul (as a handy addendum to the adage that confession is good for the soul).

A little over a year ago, I decided to get my hair braided for the first time in a decade. I asked around, and by chance mentioned to my stylist (of many years) what I was looking to have done. She told me that she had braiders on staff at the salon, and that I just needed to make an appointment. Seemed easy enough, but then came the fine print disclaimers. I needed to decide if I was getting knotless braids or box braids, as if I knew what any of that meant since I hadn't gotten my hair braided in 10 years! She tried to explain it to me, and after we perused several pictures on Instagram, we determined that I was looking to get "old school" braids (a form of box braids). That would cost me $200.

Alright, bet, and I was all set to book an appointment. But more fine print--I would have to pay extra to have my hair washed and blow dried by one of these braid stylists. Mind you, this was a salon, not somebody's kitchen or garage. I don't even know if the blow dryer I've had for 20+ years even works, so I opted to schedule an appointment with my regular stylist so that she could prep my hair with a trim and deep condition as well. That ended up costing me $90, but I was optimistic that it was worth the expense. And the prospect of not having to go to a beauty supply store for hair did outweigh that initial cost. I came back two days later, the deed was done, I headed out of town a week later to protect democracy (October 2022), and all was right in my world for a few weeks. I took my braids out a few days after my birthday and thought ahead to my next hair adventure.

Fast forward to February (2023) when I decided to try faux locs. A good friend who gets them done regularly had me thinking I could be cute like her, and since we were heading to Puerto Rico for the Kid's Winter Break, I was looking forward to a boho-inspired look for the beach. In the lead-up to that appointment, I opted not to schedule a pre-wash and blow session with my stylist, thinking that I needed to save some money. However, I didn't learn until the day before my scheduled appointment that I needed to buy my own hair. So, as my Mom would have said, I stepped over a dime to pick up a quarter and didn't really save myself any money in the end. The braid stylist went with me to the beauty supply store to pick out the hair, which cost me $100, plus the actual service ($200+), and tip. When I asked how I would take the style down, she suggested that I could come back in and pay a take-down fee, or I could look it up on YouTube.

I didn't say anything, although I this exchange made me think of the various complaints I had seen over the years posted on social media. For years on Black Twitter, I had read increasingly absurd accounts of patrons being nickeled and dimed for every service, which must have inspired this hilarious skit on A Black Lady Sketch Show ("ABLSS")--which takes place in a nail salon, but the accuracy is uncanny. I mentioned my concerns to my regular stylist, who responded that she understood, but she was allowing these specialty stylists to establish their own practices because they offered services she did not.

Bet, I thought, but still resolved to "educate" myself to avoid any additional $urprise$ should I desire to get another specialty style. Having received a few videos worth of cosmetology training on YouTube Beauty U, I decided to go back to faux locs for the Beyonce show (August 2023) and to rock that look through to mid-Fall. To avoid the beauty supply store markup, I pre-ordered the hair on Amazon and scheduled an appointment in the early afternoon to give myself time to wash my own hair.

Let's skip ahead eight weeks to when it was time to take my hair down. We had family arriving in town, and because I didn't want to look crazy or schedule a hair appointment while they were here, I delayed the take down for a week. At nine weeks it was definitely time and I was uncomfortable with the weight of the added hair and the new growth, so I sat down with a movie and began the process that I had previously learned to take down the style. However, a different braid stylist had installed these locs and after 20 minutes of attempting to unravel one loc, I had no clear understanding of how it had been anchored to my hair. I sat there and fidgeted and uncoiled and then unbraided until one section of my hair was freed. It felt like I was drilling for oil. I repeated this process for over two hours and only got six more locs undone. The next day, attempt #2 yielded the same result, so with 4 hours gone and 12 locs undone, I sent an exasperated text to my regular stylist after 9pm on a Monday night.

I have never done that before, so when she called me back, I immediately felt ashamed for being so helpless. And reflecting back on that precise moment, instead of allowing Catholic guilt to temper my frustrations, I should have been prepared with a list of demands. This absolutely felt like a hostage situation, and I am convinced that I barely escaped with my dignity intact.

(I know, the hyperbole is thick, but stay with me.)

She asked me to come in that Wednesday, and I said that I would try, but I didn't make it because I had to take my Dad to an appointment. I texted her to say that I would try for the following day, but again, something else came up and I was unable to go by the salon. On Friday, I had a funeral to attend, so I had to wrap my head for a third day in order to venture out into the world and not scare any pets, men, or small children. I stopped by the salon on my way home, but none of the stylists familiar with my dilemma were on site. I ended up speaking to a fourth stylist who made it clear that I was on my own. My regular stylist was out of town, so his suggestion was for me to check back on Monday. By this point, I was miffed so I declared that I would figure it out on my own and left. Because in spite of everything else I had going on between my Kid, my parents, and my own isht, surely I had time to take another round of classes at YouTube Beauty U. Because no one else seemed to have any issues when taking their hair down, apparently, I was the problem...

Which was clearly the wrong way of looking at this because I was the one with the problem that dragged on through week 10 and threatened to linger on for another full week until I gave up and called my stylist back to schedule an appointment. Fuck the Catholic guilt; let go of the stigma of being the Black girl with no hair styling skills; get over having to go in for a service I shouldn't have needed; and just pay the damn ransom to get my life back. I was beyond pissed but had no interest in extending this fiasco into a 12th week, and I didn't want to cause any additional damage to my hair. I scheduled the appointment to get the locs taken down and to get my hair done. Of course, that process wasn't drama-free either, but at least the locs were gone. All of that peace of mind only cost me $185 (and tip), plus several unopened packages of hair from Amazon that I can no longer return because who knew this would be such an ordeal?!

What does any of this have to do with Keith Lee? Nothing. But if you've read this far, you might as well keep reading to see how I make the connection. Just indulge me for another paragraph or two...

Now that it has been three weeks since I was released from those faux locs (November 2023), I just happened to be scrolling Black Twitter the last week when I saw where a woman posted a complaint about her experience with a stylist in another state. I won't even link to her thread because I assure you, there are so many similar stories being told of the decline in providing what used to be basic service that I don't need to identify any particular person or locality. Just know that there are horror stories posted on Reddit and videos all over TikTok, as per the recommended route for receiving justice/vengeance due to one of these bad hair day experiences.

I'm not looking for either. And for now, I am sticking with my stylist because the alternative is to take my chances and roll the dice with one of these new school influencers who style hair. I don't know what passes for professional standards or licensure these days, and maybe that's the problem. If the assumption is that anybody who watches enough videos on YouTube can figure out how to style hair, then perhaps it no longer matters that the person who promotes themselves on social media as a professional actually has any credentials. Follower counts and likes are driving business these days, not quality of service, and that is no longer a factor to be shrugged off as regional.

Once upon a time, the Black beauty salon was a place of communal refuge, just like the barber shop for Black men. I won't take you on a nostalgia fantastical voyage because I don't want to give the false impression that a trip to the beauty salon was always a visit to Shangri-La. Some of us still bear the scars--physical, mental, and spiritual; however, most of us agree that the hair salon used to provide respite and service. Hence, another favorite skit from ABLSS Service offered a vision of what should be the norm...alas, it was just a dream.

I know that business owners have overhead and insurance and other assorted costs of doing business, so my complaint is not that I am paying more than I used to. It is that I am paying more and now having to pay extra for basic services that should already be included. Making me do half the work in advance, still charging full price, and expecting a tip is no different than having me shop, ring up and bag my purchases at the grocery store with the prices steadily increasing. What next, will I be charged for each squirt or spritz of product?

In effect, we are hostages, because the corporate mainstream hair care industrial complex still promotes the fallacy that products created for wash and go are suitable for all hair types. Most Black women can't just roll up to the mall Hair Cuttery or Dry Bar and expect to walk out before their lunch hour is over because nobody specializes in Black hair care other than Black people. Wash day is exactly that--a whole DAY, and nobody has time for that. Black women already pay a premium to look presentable to a world where legislation is needed to prevent discrimination against our natural hair texture in the workplace! It is beyond ironic that the BILLION-dollar Black beauty market that made Madame CJ Walker the first Black woman millionaire, precisely because there was a void in services and products provided to Black women, has come to this.

So here is where I pivot to Keith Lee and why his restaurant reviews ought to be regarded and received in a different spirit than the way y'all acted out this week. Because he's not out here destroying Black businesses if he's offering honest assessments of shitty treatment and/or bad food. He's demanding accountability, and to borrow an old-school phrase that seems appropriate, if you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen. If you are a musician who has entered the hospitality business to expand your brand, I get that but understand that folks aren't just coming to your establishment to take photos for the gram.

Now that it's a year later, November 2024, I am aware that this ended abruptly and that I forgot about whatever Keith Lee restaurant review prompted this rant. Nevertheless, a few updates and closing thoughts:

Interestingly, I've been to Atlanta twice this year, and we might need to discuss a few of the things that have changed in 30 years...
A word of advice to those in the service industry: Do better! Folks shouldn't spend their hard-earned money on a service and walk out upset or angry about the experience or the result without some kind of acknowledgment and/or a promise to improve. One of the lines in the original piece was about how the restaurant owners had referenced investing their life savings into this venture, so their hurt feelings are understandable. However, that is the cost of doing business, so instead of getting mad at Lee for a bad review, train your staff!
In weighing whether to leave this piece in the drafts or to publish it, I opted to post because I had some broader points to make. And while my relationship with my stylist is still somewhat complicated, I wanted to share the backstory of how finally said eff it and cut my hair.

OJ, Trojan Horses, and Other Magical Negroes We Shan't Discuss

2024-11-25T13:02:00.003-05:00

I began working on this piece in April 2024 in lieu of a long rant on the FB page. Well, since I'm going back in the drafts to see what can be revisited and published, albeit belatedly, there is no hook, but I did I finally see that really bad movie about Magical Negroes. --ADH

So let's not mince words here because you already know where this is going: not all skinfolks are kinfolks...

Let's not forget that as we contemplate whether to reinvite certain people back to the barbecue this summer. I don't care if those old ladies stayed up all night in the church kitchen, we not going anywhere near that funeral. We haven't forgotten. Some of y'all weren't even born yet, so don't allow any of these folks to rewrite history or act brand new. So yes, I am obviously referring to that Black lady at the Chick-fil-A in Georgia who went viral for fellating Trump after he bought her one of those homophobic milkshakes. And I am also referring to a certain sportswriter who got on Al Gore's internet with his version of small-b history--lacking not just the proper capitalization, but also any kernel of truth. There are a few other honorable mentions, such as those Podcast Bros who can't spell DEI, let alone define it, as well as a very specific and particular pick-me who is trying to act like she's always been down like the four flat tires on that LTD in her uncle's car port.

Yeah, okay Candy O. But first, let's start with a proper eulogy for the man we knew as 'The Juice'.

Orenthal James: When You Just Don't Stay Black and Die

A consistent mistake made by some Black people who want to be seen as 'transcending race' is to believe that such a feat is possible. Well, the last time I checked, this skin pigmentation does not fade with time, and no matter how articulate, clean, bright, and good-looking a person might be, in some places, ALL of those accomplishments can be derided as unearned exceptions in the blink of an eye. Just another example of 'DEI hiring' the minute you let the mask slip and someone spots a characteristic that confirms whatever misgivings they had. It happens to all of us at some point, and in June 1994, it happened to OJ Simpson.

Not only am I old enough to remember the trial, but I am old enough to remember when he was still playing professional football (although I am not old enough to remember which team he played for without consulting Al Gore's internet). But let the record show, I recall that he was prominently featured in a series of Hertz rental car commercials and that he was in the first episode of the original Roots miniseries. And because I was an avid and dedicated reader of JET Magazine, I remember that he, along with a few others were certified, bona fide Black football GODS (Jim Brown, Rosey Grier, Mean Joe Greene, and Tony Dorsett were his peers).

Thus, when he was accused of killing his second ex-wife in 1994, it was THEE most earth-shattering didn't-see-that-coming and who-knew-he-was-an-abusive-asshole...very much in line with the revelation that Bill Cosby had been drugging and raping women for decades and no one said anything. Because WTF??? But I'm not going to revisit history by offering my opinion on what might have happened or why the verdict remains controversial and contested to this day. Nor am I going to say anything that can be misinterpreted as sympathy because what is the point? Folks are going to believe what they want, and to some, OJ did it or he didn't. He's still dead.

However, what OJ did, inadvertently due to the intergalactic interest in the outcome of that trial was: (1) begat 24/7 news coverage; (2) cultivated the audience for tabloid "news" shows like TMZ, Inside Edition, and even The View; (3) redefined the 21st Century notion of housewifery via the career of one Kristen Mary Houghton Kardashian Jenner; and (4) disproved any illusion that America was close to becoming post-racial. The first three points require no further analysis because the fact is there was no 24-hour cable news coverage of anything other than the most serious of news events until OJ led the police on that low-speed highway "chase" in Al Cowlings' white Ford Bronco. Media personalities Harvey Levin, Star Jones, and Leo Terrell are just a few of the "legal analysts" who made big names for themselves because of that trial. And yes, we need to blame OJ for the ubiquity of all things Kardashian.

I know...this is not OJ

As to the fourth point, to all of the delusional Gen X frat boys who want to misremember the 80s and 90s as being post-racial on social media, the OJ Simpson Trial of the Century remains Exhibit A that there is a list of lies y'all need to stop telling yourselves. There is NO such thing as being post-racial. While there are Black people who get to leave the 'hood, experience great success, amass enormous wealth, and even happily marry someone white, none of those elements combine into some magic elixir that causes race to disappear. Allegedly, OJ infamously quipped that he wasn't Black because he was OJ Simpson; and until that fateful night in June 1994, his legend transcended what it meant to be Black. Mind you, there were police reports and documented accusations of his domestic abuse, but he wasn't demonized as dangerous, unmarketable, or unheroic until his blond ex-wife was found slaughtered in her home. Suddenly he reverted into King Kong, a beastly Black brute that had to be destroyed.

So yes, OJ was guilty of myriad sins and transgressions, and that ~~may have~~ probably included murder. The lingering dilemma these 30 years later isn't whether he killed his wife, but how his Blackness convinced people that he did it before any evidence was presented in court. How did he become the sole suspect, how did the police mishandle the investigation, or how might the world have reacted if the victim had been his first ex-wife? Do we pretend that none of those questions matter because it is more socially acceptable to insist that race was not a central reason why this case became such a BFD--that it was his celebrity and the gruesomeness of the crime?

Really? Because from where I sat and watched everything unfold, it was his race that allowed the LAPD to redirect attention from their misconduct (exposed and exploited by the defense team at trial), which ultimately that contributed to the acquittal. It matters that women still can't expect to receive any empathy when they are the victims of sexual violence, especially when their abuser is a famous man. It matters that there is and always has been a two-tiered system of justice that favors the affluent, in spite of the sanctimonious pronouncements that Justice is the great blind equalizer. It matters that some of y'all who are still mad about OJ Simpson being acquitted are going to boldly and unapologetically vote for another rich asshole who mistreats women to be President again...

Trojan Horses

If you studied any ancient folklore, computer science, or happened to see this Lunchables pretzel commercial, then you are probably familiar with the myth of the Trojan Horse. If not, then get thee to Google, and then come back here to read about these folks who think they we're too stupid to know who sent them and what manner of foolishness they plan to unleash if we let them into to the cookout. We see you, boo.

Therefore, young lady from Trump's early April campaign stop at the Vine City Chick-fil-A, nice try, but there's a reason why your milkshake stunt didn't bring more folks from the Yard. We all knew that you were a GOP operative, and not some random customer because you were just a little too eager. Everybody knows that these kinds of campaign stops/photo opportunities are staged by both sides. Given that Trump isn't known for his ability to ignore hecklers or take a joke, of course, the "customers" needed to be his supporters or willing to appear as such on camera, lest it turn into a Biden church rally. However, you made a couple of unforced errors, starting with the choice to go to a fast-food place that serves fried chicken on Fried Chicken Wednesday! No wonder you couldn't entice more than a handful of students to leave their campuses. And whose bright idea was it to promote the fantasy of Trump as some kind of rich-man-of-the-people by ordering 10 milkshakes he didn't even pay for?

Was that your entire paycheck for the month of April?

We can all see a blatant pander for votes coming from miles away, such as promising to cancel student loan debt or inviting the cast from A Different World to the White House. We aren't that naive, even though the Vice President happens to be an alum of Howard University, located a few subway stops uptown. And yeah, we'll concede that the announcement of President Biden giving the commencement address at Morehouse might be another stunt to secure the Black Mother of the Church vote. However, other than making a quick campaign drive by at a Chick-fil-A franchise near six HBCU campuses, what else has Trump done to cultivate Black voters? He touts his strong support of HBCU funding as an accomplishment of his Administration, yet his reluctance to actually visit one where he could have met with that same handful of College Republicans is...more authentic?

Presuming that someone who actually wants our votes (and not fighting tooth and nail to have them disqualified or suppressed) would make a more substantive or genuine effort that doesn't reinforce certain stereotypes, consider that the audience for this stunt was not undecided or ambivalent Black people. This Trojan Horse was sent to reassure Trump's base that he is still viable, especially if he was willing to go to the hood for a handful of votes. He just pulled off a similar visit to a bodega in Harlem, so expect more of these I'm-a-victim-like-just-like-you popups if they appear to help his poll numbers.

Candace Owens is another wolf in sheep's clothing, conveniently free to speak for herself now after being fired from The Daily Wire. She claims to have always been pro-black (lowercase b), and she might have gotten away with that lie if she had done her exit interview with Sherri Shepherd instead of Charlamayne tha Clown...

We see you too, gurl. And nobody is buying your belated Saul-to-Paul conversion on the road to Damascus act if you didn't know that God is good all the time and all the time God is good.

The Year of Magical Negroes

No, I hadn't seen that movie (at least not when I began writing this in the Spring*), but I understand the trope (thank you, Roy Wood, Jr.). Although some of you still seem confused...

Geordi LaForge,
not Levar Burton,
is the Magical Negro

So allow me to break it down like this: it might feel super special to be that all-knowing Negro translator/soothsayer that white folks turn to and trust, but your job is NOT to diminish and/or misrepresent the culture. For example, you don't go out of your way to agree that pumpkin pie is superior to sweet potato pie, because it ain't! Nor do you need to engage in that kind of debate--let them enjoy their overpriced pumpkin spice whatever and just carry on. We've got bigger issues.

Thus, when a certain sportswriter strayed way out of his lane to explain the history of Lift Ev'ry Voice and its designation as the Negro National Anthem to a bunch of trolls on El Muscato's internet platform even though Google is still free...

First of all, let me start by saying that I have been waiting for just the right moment to address Jason Whitlock's fuckery for quite a while. I was aware of him, but not being that rabid a sports fan, I never bothered to delve that deeply into his work. Then I happened upon this ridiculous movie review he gave for The Woman King (2022) and wondered what Black woman shanked him and left him for dead, because whet? Thereafter, I was further annoyed that by clicking on that foolywang, more of his nonsensical musings kept showing up in my TL (thanks to them allowing the elongated muskrat to play with the buttons at HQ unsupervised). I knew it was just a matter of time before Whitlock would resurface to make ashy grunts again (maga)--his way of being relevant so that I would have a legitimate reason to respond. And I've finally got some time...

Since we, the Blacks, don't get to vet these magical negroes, we're already suspicious of them and their motives. There is always something not quite right--like being goth or vegan, which might be part of their charm; nevertheless, it ain't none of our business unless that quirkiness ventures beyond its designated area of influence. Meaning, we don't mind that the weird Black dude speaks Klingon as long as he doesn't try to convince us to try potato salad tastes better with raisins.

Nobody asked for that, so (I repeat) in a world where Google is free, why would anybody decide that Jason Whitlock's self-loathing ass is a more credible resource on Black culture and history? Especially when several other learned and credentialed Black people had already provided factual information on the topic...unless the point was to stoke more faux outrage, sow discord, and seek engagement. The very idea that Whitlock sent out that white power-washed history of Lift Ev'ry Voice that received 3000 likes, as if he stayed up all night binging old Boondocks episodes to get that Uncle Ruckus impression just right, is a level of tomfuckery that requires new words <-- see what I did there?

Such is the problem with magical negroes. Working for the Black community doesn't offer the same amenities or benefits, so it is understandable why the promotion from regular to magical is so alluring. As I have observed from my visits to the other side, they got nice stuff over there...but they have made it clear that there is a quota. No redundancies or aspirations, so once a magical realizes how lucky they are, the rest of us can go straight to hell.

* And...months later, I'm back to tie this all up in a bow to publish because--yeah, I meant ALLOFDIS! Not sure why I got all caught up in my head and didn't post it sooner, but now I can share a few additional thoughts:

I did finally see that movie, and it was bad. The premise was promising, but halfway through it just got lost. David Alan Grier, while perfectly cast, was once again thrust into a role that really didn't serve him (and that's something that he might need to take up with his team, because in this interview, he clearly understood the assignment). It was a swing and a miss, but not because white people didn't get it and Black folks thought this was going to be a Harry Potter-esque undertaking. Sometimes good ideas get lost in over-thought execution, like a joke that once you realize you had to explain it, falls flat and just withers on the ground.

So now that Trump will be the DESPOTUS again, do I regret saying what I said? No. And I didn't edit or tone anything down, so you are reading it exactly as I wrote it back in April/May.

Is it risky to post something like this so soon after the election with the MAGA folks crowing all in our faces? Maybe. But I imagine that OJ's ghost, the handful of black Trump supporters who might get black jobs in his Administration, and anyone else who would be offended shouldn't really give a damn what I think.

In case you were wondering or were worried, I love LeVar Burton and am happy to see that his character in the Star Trek universe has evolved since his early days on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise. I could have chosen another example, but I didn't want to over-edit the original piece.

When the Words Don't Come

2024-11-25T11:54:00.002-05:00

This is one of the pieces I started but never got even halfway through because life kept on lifing (and yes, I have adopted that as my default reason for everything). The main reason why I am returning to publish now is because it captures a unique turning point in my grief journey from this summer--right before the world turned inside out. After the page break, I am writing in real time again, so hopefully that will make this come together. --ADH

It has been a LONG time since I posted anything to this blog. I am still here, trying to sort everything out, but it is taking me longer than expected. I have so many unfinished drafts, so many stray thoughts, so much chaos and crazy going on inside my head. I don't know where to begin.

This is not an excuse. I am just not sure if I can focus long enough to complete anything right now. I am distracted, I am grieving, I am overwhelmed...I am lost. And I don't know how else to express any of what I am feeling, so I will just freestyle and hit publish even if this is the worst, most vulnerable piece of crap I've ever written. Here goes...

I am not as okay as I think I am on most days. I don't know if that makes much sense, but in essence, I put on my big girl panties every day to face the world, and then night comes, and I can't tell you if I seized it or if I squandered it. I haven't begun to deal with all of the final stuff I am supposed to handle with respect to my Mom. I haven't sent off half the Thank You notes. I didn't send half of the Father's Day cards with Thank You Notes because I got caught up in trying to make it to the end of the school year. I still have unsold Girl Scout cookies. I haven't gone back to my house for more than a few hours because I don't have the mental energy to combat unnecessary chaos.

I cannot believe this is the first day of summer.

I did do laundry. I did label most of the Kid's stuff for her first sleepaway camp starting in ten days. I did order the Hub a nice Father's Day gift that he seemed to appreciate. I do manage to take a shower every day.

On Sunday, I was in the kitchen chopping veggies and prepping for an impromptu family gathering, and it dawned on me that I am now the de facto matriarch of this band of feral cats. And in this most thankless role, it means that I need to think about everyone in this family, while they get to decide whether to completely ignore me. I mean that in the most complimentary way because the one person who does notice is my Dad. And he is part of the reason why I haven't completely given up.

That is all I wrote before I got totally distracted and forgot all about this piece. Part of the struggle this year has been in the constant distractions--either I get called away to do something, someone who doesn't understand my process enters my space and disrupts my flow, or I get so bogged down in the minutia of over-thinking that I convince myself that putting a piece away for a few hours/days will help. Then of course, I look up and it is a few days before Thanksgiving!

In case you have been wondering what happened next, here's a quick rundown of how my summer went:

The Kid had her last week of school, then she (we) jumped right into what I will refer to as the Great Summer of 2024 Camp Marathon. It began with ballet intensive for a week; followed by two mini Girl Scout sleep-away camps during the week of Independence Day; a week of art camp at her school (to make up for the two weeks of the pottery-making camp for which we were wait-listed); a week of summer day camp; a week away at the beach; two weeks of tap dance/performing arts camp; and then the grand finale of two weeks back at the day camp. Whew, I think that's everything!

The week the Kid started at ballet camp (which was right around the time I sat down to pen this piece), it was the same week of the Great Debacle that turned the world inside out. At the beginning of that week, I was invited to attend a rally with the Vice President to mark two years since the Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case. Two days later, I was invited to the White House to meet with gun violence prevention advocates. It's safe to say that I thought this would make a great story to share at show and tell, but...

Fast forward to mid-July when I was preparing to leave to meet my Dad at the bank to handle some business. I was almost ready to walk out of the house when I got the second phone call in a matter of months that would totally shift the ground under my feet--my dance teacher of 40 years passed away suddenly. Obviously, it was the kind of unexpected news that can throw one's day off track, except it hasn't just been one day. Months later, I can't claim to feel that much acceptance or sense of peace. Maybe that will change once I publish my formal remembrance for her on this blog (because circumstances, which I will explain). I imagine that others who have had to hastily mourn their loved ones during the worst points of COVID can relate to how hollow it feels not to have formal closure.

Then there was the end of that same week when I learned that my first boss, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee died. I was not expecting that either, at least not to have occurred so soon after the announcement that she was gravely ill. I received the news literally as I had just sat down to write her a note of gratitude and encouragement, because well, that's how one should acknowledge the person who had such an impact on one's early professional life. Instead, I ended up having to send it as a note of condolence to her family and staff. I'm sure that I will have more to say about her at some point, but I will just link to what I wrote here and here for now.

And again, not much time to mourn since the BIG announcement of the summer the very next day was that President Biden decided to pass the torch to Kamala Harris. And within a week, I was standing at the end of a very long line on a another college campus with the improbable hope of seeing them in real life (and lucky me, I got blessed to see them in the overflow).

I have a few other pieces in draft that I will publish about that incredible Hail Mary pass that gave us so much hope and joy for 100+ days. And while I am heartbroken and pissed, I'm recuperating and strategizing. More on that soon as well.

As I scrolled through the list of unfinished drafts, I decided to revisit a few to see if there was anything useful or salvageable. Consistent with my irritation at the constant distractions and disruptions has been this routine of starting and stopping and then feeling stuck. Wash, rinse, and repeat. In reviewing this piece, I presume the essence of what I intended to share had been that sometimes, words can be difficult to organize in a coherent manner, even for someone who fancies herself a writer. Thus, how does a writer manage to live through a year as chaotic and unsettling as this one has been for me and have nothing to say about it? How many times can one sit down in front of their cracked computer screen with so many jumbled thoughts staring back at her and still believe in herself?

Right here is where I ought to insert a photo that captures the fine mess that symbolizes the state of my thoughts...instead, I'm opting for another cute Kid photo from the summer. Because I did succeed at something!

At one point, my lack of focus felt so debilitating that I mulled whether to just throw the whole blog away. It's no secret that we are our own worst critics, and this effort often feels like an accumulation of unrealized potential just staring back at me. More than likely, it was that train of thought that prompted me to start writing this piece as a gathering of all of my stray doubts to pile on some cosmic scale to determine if what I'm doing matters.

The response from the universe: just live. And if that means putting aside a draft piece about Sean Combs' running tab of sexual assault allegations even though that's what people were talking about last year and again in June, no worries because it's still in the drafts and is newsworthy again. I will have more to say about him once I finally get a chance to revisit that piece. Same for the piece about all of that good Dad energy on display at the DNC in August...someone is going to want to be reminded that we almost had a cool Jewish stepdad as First Dude instead of another four years of Melania Antoinette and her hellish Haunted Christmas aesthetic.

The nature of writing a blog is that I am always writing from a space of hindsight or reflection as opposed to the fast-paced contemporaneous world of breaking news. I am not a journalist. Whether I am weighing in on current events or admitting that a marathon of Cosby Show reruns is how I am dealing with my grief, it works that sometimes my pieces aren't timely. And it certainly works better for my audience that I am not rushing out a lot of mediocre musings to meet a quota.

Furthermore, that this has been a difficult year isn't an excuse, but a FACT. My mother died, my Kid is growing up too fast, and now life has become uncertain for my family and friends because of this election. These are not keep calm and carry on kind of circumstances...these are stand in the middle of a crowded highway and scream until someone runs you over or tases you kind of times. These are the kind of times that drive people to drink, shoot up, or plunge head-first into some self-destructive vice. For some of us, resilience is a mask drawn on a cheap paper plate, but no one notices because everyone else's paper plate mask has the same blank expression (because we all bought it from Amazon). Whether you are living from Sunday to Sunday, from paycheck to paycheck, renting month to month, or living on a prayer, I get it.

It took me five months to admit that I am not okay (even though I did say that back in June 🔝 and several times elsewhere, like here). So now what?

I don't have a clue. I just opened my laptop and tried again, for the umpteenth time to write myself out of the darkness, off the ledge. Whenever I come back to this space and take note that a few more people have stumbled across my musings because they may be curious, intrigued, provoked, or even inspired, I am reassured that maybe this isn't a waste of time or energy. The words haven't gone away; it is the motivation that waxes and wanes, or perhaps something as simple as just giving myself time to make sense of things. One of my Mom's high school classmates shared this poem Keep A-Pluggin' Away with me, and that is how I will end this, with that promise.

Death Un-Becomes Me

2024-10-04T17:02:00.000-04:00

I have been putting this off for the longest, although by now most of you already know. I just hadn't formally taken the time to share that my mother passed away at the end of February of this year.

I am unsure how this piece is going to unfold since it has taken me seven months to sit down to write about this new phase of my life on this blog. Call it my "Journey Through Grief" era (to borrow a popular overused refrain). I have written a few posts on social media about my Mom and my travels on this road so far, and I will link to those throughout in case anybody wants to know how I felt at any particular moment along the way.

I can tell you that I have probably experienced all five stages of grief, with varying degrees of intensity. And something about this change in seasons has me more disconsolate, unfocused, and in a state of inertia. I consulted Dr. Google, and my self-diagnosis is either seasonal affective disorder, a nervous breakdown, or perimenopause. (Side note: I am not making the subject of my mental health into punchline, just pointing out how symptoms overlap.)

Everything has become a contradiction--I feel like I have been avoiding life while also desiring to become more adventurous and daring. That isn't entirely uncharacteristic of me in normal times, but it does seem to be more pronounced. I thought that with this election coming fast and furious, I would jump right in, and I have to the point where I have probably over-extended myself. Somehow, immersing myself into the work of saving democracy seems to be a more worthwhile endeavor than cleaning out my Mom's closets.

A year ago, it was my prayer that my Mom would outlive the need for hospice care by continuing to defy the odds. At her last hospitalization in August, we were told to expect her not to live more than a year, but the early indications were that she might actually thrive instead of decline. So I didn't rush to make any of the final plans that were recommended because I figured that even if we were living on borrowed time, living was the operative understanding. Hell, we're all living on borrowed time for that matter...

However, at the end of September, I made mental notes that each of the pending holidays could be our last...I just never verbalized any of it to anyone. And while she didn't appear to visibly decline, she never really improved to the point of being de-certified from needing hospice; and in hindsight, I wasn't really seeing things as they were. That was until Calamuary January (my term for how every effing thing that could go wrong that month absolutely did). It began when her long-term home care aide went out for a double hip replacement. That same weekend, the furnace in the house went out. I had been fighting with the insurance company over their spending caps and the shortages for months, and that was draining her finances. In response to yet another rate increase (thanks to a corporate consolidation), I had begun to negotiate ways to reduce care hours and creatively fill in gaps. And in the midst of all of that, the hospice nurse alerted me to some ominous physical changes.

Thus, by my Mom's birthday, I had gotten used to receiving a daily update on the list of new catastrophes. A pressure sore that wouldn't heal. Only one partial meal. Weight loss. So when the hospice nurse gave us the definitive unwelcome assessment mid-month and then having my Dad task me with sharing that news with my brothers, the outcome was pretty unescapable. I made some of the necessary preparations on the financial end and went through a few of the motions of mental preparation. I prayed. I visited as often as I could to tell her the things one says when they aren't sure what else there is to say.

On that final Sunday before, it was by pure chance that I had a ticket to see a play at Arena Stage. It was about Anna Julia Cooper, a historical icon who had been a principal at the turn of the century at the high school my Mom attended in the 1960s. And pretty much as soon as I found my seat, I knew that this was all some kind of divine message to prepare myself--that I just happened to be at one of her favorite theatre venues to see a play about her high school alma mater to learn about the life of a celebrated educator (just like my her) on the same day that the alumni had chosen to attend? As soon as the play ended, I rushed to the house to tell her about it. I don't remember if she was awake or know if she heard any of what I said or if she even knew I had been there.

That Tuesday morning, I planned to get a few hours of writing done before making my way over to the house. It was the routine to visit in between the end of the school day and the start of Kid's dance class. But an hour after I settled into my groove, the hospice nurse called, and let me just say how I wish the rest of the day was a total blur, but...

It wasn't. And honestly, I'm glad I remember every minute because I don't know how I would feel if I had to admit that on the very last day of my mother's life, I was operating in a daze or a fog. I'm glad that I remember every visitor (and there were a LOT), every person who prayed with us, and the fact that wherever three or more Black people are gathered, somebody is going to bring enough fried chicken to feed the multitude. When I tell you that I am grateful for every second of that day, even its agonizing and traumatic conclusion, I mean that.

I was there, right up until just before the end. After all of the visitors had left, we were transitioning from the afternoon caregiver to the overnight person. My Mom's breathing had become more labored, so she was given morphine. We discussed the plan for the following day, and I sat in the room with her for a few minutes just holding her hand. Then my brother came into the room, so I gave him my seat and went into the living room. It happened in the blink of an eye--my brother noticed that her breathing had stopped and after a few seconds of uncertainty about detecting a heartbeat, my Dad instructed me to call the ambulance. Within minutes, there were red lights, EMTs, and then this enormous suspension of reality between life, death, and procedures...

Life. She was gone. We all knew it, but in the same stubborn refusal that had been her way of barreling through and fighting back, we went through all of the motions of doing everything humanly possible not to accept reality. When the EMT arrived, I told them that she was end-stage Alzheimer's and was about to mention hospice when my Dad interrupted me. Do all you can, he told them, so I deferred.

Death. After 15 minutes, one of the EMTs told me that they would continue, but not to expect a change. By this point, my younger brother had returned with his daughter and the afternoon caregiver. I had exiled my Dad to the living room because it was too much to expect for him to watch. The day had been excruciating enough, so I stood there in the doorway--equal parts sentinel/supervisor/witness to the futility of trying to resuscitate her. Not because I had lost faith in miracles; on the contrary, it was my hope was that her ordeal would finally be over.

Procedures. The EMTs made the call and respectfully left. Unbeknownst to us, the police were on the scene to determine if any foul play had been involved, but the officer conducted his investigation with the understanding that there was nothing untoward. The hospice nurse called, and then informed us to expect another nurse to certify the post-mortem. As that nurse went about her examination, disposing of and reclaiming the medications, completing paperwork, I asked if giving my Mom morphine was the right call. She told me what I needed to hear, because in that moment that must have been routine for her, I was in a state of reassessing every single decision and choice that had been made that day. Not to assign blame or liability, but for reassurance. Once she left, my Dad, our neighbor, and I sat in the room to wait for the funeral home.

I remember wondering how we were supposed to fill the silence, with idle conversation or nervous housework? Depleted of energy, I nodded off in the chair at her bedside while my brothers waited in the living room. My Dad opted for idle conversation with our neighbor, who politely obliged. It was after 2am when the people from the funeral home finally arrived. I noticed that the gentleman who handled everything was dressed in a three-piece suit. I wondered if that's why it took them so long to arrive--was this dude getting dressed? How much time did he spend searching for a matching tie and pocket square? Why did that annoy me so much?

(Now that I've recollected and reflected on that particular detail, I realize my resentment was misdirected. I should have been mindful that this young man took the time to look presentable because he was coming to our home to remove our heart...so instead of looking like he rolled out of bed in pajamas or dirty sweats, he got dressed in a suit. I don't know how many of these transfers he's done from private homes in the middle of the night, and I can't imagine what it must be like to have that job to perform at the most vulnerable moment in a family's pain. So, my apologies and gratitude, sir.)

My first real meltdown took place a day or so later at the Marshall's. I shed a few tears the morning after, in the still quiet of being the only person awake in the house. But that felt like a normal reaction, especially as I stood in the doorway of the empty room where my Mom had been alive hours earlier. There was no need to get emotional during the meeting with the funeral home nor during the flurry of phone calls and visits. However that night (or maybe the next), one of the deacons at my church called to offer condolences, and her words loosened the faucet. Immediately after that call ended, I left to get some gas from the Costco, where there was a Marshall's nearby that was still open. I decided to pop inside to purchase the undergarments the funeral home had requested--just another errand that made sense to get done.

Except this was not just another errand, and I barely made it through the purchase before I was overcome by a torrent of ugly tears and hyper-ventilating. I don't know if I audibly screamed or if it was the echo of the thoughts in my head, but all I kept thinking was Dear Jesus why is this happening? Something told me to find my phone and call for help. Whether it was in response to a text she may have sent me, or because of the alphabetical arrangement of my contacts, I called one of my cousins. And though at the time, it felt like it was some random out of the blue choice, she was the exact person I needed to listen, calm my hurt, and provide me with assistance.

It would be weeks before I would cry again (though not at the funeral), and months before another uncontrollable gusher of grief hit. Typically, my emotional collapses coincide with the date--each successive month on the day of or in proximity to the date of my mother's transition. But it could accompany any sentimental memory trigger as well. In March, it was taking the girls to see The Wiz on Broadway for Easter. In April, it was walking up the hill on Howard's campus towards Crampton Auditorium...and then almost getting shot the following weekend by some chick in a parking lot over some bullshit. In May, it was being back on Spelman's campus. The June episode was over my frustration with ageism after that Presidential debate debacle. Mid-July hit me with the double whammy of losing my dance teacher and first professional boss in the same week, punctuated by Joe Biden's bombshell exit from the Presidential race. In August, I just decided to lean into the fact that it had been six months, but also a year since my Mom had entered hospice.

Which brings me up to date. And the confession that it hasn't always been depression or fury, but a complicated range of everything, everywhere, all at once. In April it was the irrationality of standing my ground against the unknown, and then having to admit the absurdity of my recklessness in endangering the lives of my family. In July, it was taking an unexpected detour into the cemetery to locate my Mom's grave (which I did, easily) compelled by the anxiety and dread that I don't feel safe to confide my emotions with anyone but her. Last week, it was this profound sense that I am a fraud, a self-declared "Busy" Black Woman in name only as opposed to everyone else who can seemingly rebound after the death of their loved ones by throwing themselves into some meaningful distraction.

So what the jobu tupaki is wrong with me?

Let's revisit the meltdown at the Marshall's, the memory of which I failed to suppress (in spite of my best efforts). I stood in front of a display of discounted panties and bras and had a panic attack as I attempted to figure out sizing, color, and if you can believe this even crossed my mind, COMFORT! My brain pondered the quandary of my Mom being buried in comfortable underwear, and that dear readers, is what caused me to nearly pass out in the dang parking lot before I found my way to the car. Then there was a similar experience at Target the following month. While lollygagging through the aisles, I was dismayed to learn that Target sold full Jockey brand slips superior in quality to whatever store brand camisole I found at JC Penny's. If only I had walked to the opposite end of our ghetto mall...but now it was too late. The hysteria of being haunted by my mother for the rest of my life over hasty shopping choices was real.

Before the funeral, I was irritated that the morticians chose the dark purple designer suit instead of one of the white dresses I indicated were my preferred options. Since I didn't expect for her to be wearing the suit, I didn't think to bring a shell (and my Mom always wore her suits with a shell). There was a scarf, but that was to accent one of the dresses. And instead of wearing the necklace I gave them, it was placed in her hand like a rosary even though she wasn't Catholic. I had to insist that they reapply her lipstick because there was NO WAY that I would have been content with her wearing pale pink gloss! In the end, my Mom was buried in her good suit, a scarf in place of a shell, some crappy slip I bought on sale from Pennys, and discounted underwear that may or may not have been the most comfortable option.

If you are questioning why any of this matters, it is because if I didn't obsess and overthink things, who else would? I inherited her tendency to notice e-v-e-r-y-thing, and as my mother's only daughter, attention to her final details became the last meaningful act of caregiving I could render.

It dawned on me that as I considered the length of time since my grandparents passed, I hope to remain alive for some unknown amount of time. One day, this could be my daughter. She could be mulling decisions about what to do with me since I'm not organized or morbid enough to leave instructions. I will have to trust her judgment knowing that this is the same child who likes to wear mixed matched shoes and clothes. Hopefully she doesn't get bogged down in the existential crisis of my ghost outfit the same way I got all twisted about my Mom's purple suit...

The comedian Kevin Fredericks posted this video about his grief at the loss of his brother, and I felt every word. Every one. Because death undoes. It takes reality and turns everything inside out. It makes you question the point of life. Why does it matter if I drink too much if I'm going to die anyway? Why do I need to make healthy life choices if some random chronic illness can come along and it won't matter that I exercised daily to prevent that very illness? What does it mean to be a woman of great intelligence and many talents, only to lose it all? Why accumulate all of this stuff, only to have it all given or thrown away by people who don't appreciate what it meant to me? What does it mean to be gone, forever? How long is forever?

Death takes an entire life and reduces it to a pile of fucking paperwork.

I am so over this. I am ready for this era to end. Mind you, I'm not wishing for a resurrection like The Monkey's Paw scenario; instead, I would like to wake up one day like Pamela Ewing to find my Mom in the kitchen. Or maybe in a different dream, I will wake up at my Grandmother W's house and she's in her kitchen or my Grandfather is driving his station wagon while my other Grandmother is pruning the bushes in her yard. The fact that I got used to not seeing them for all of these years makes it that much more painful to imagine what the next few years without my mother might feel like. I hope not as hard as watching dementia slowly chip away at her for the last 15 years.

This is supposed to be cathartic...and in a way, it is since I hadn't verbalized any of this until now. I don't know if I would have the courage to reveal these thoughts to a therapist and I don't dare breathe a word of this to anyone else (no worries, they won't read it). When asked, I've been evasive. I've deflected. I've focused my energy on everything else but my feelings. I go into the room where she died every day to open the blinds, and I replace the flowers on the dresser at regular intervals. I haven't donated any of her belongings yet, but I have worn some of her clothes (and I imagine her snarky oh so you can wear a size 8 now, in response). To the extent that I haven't gotten on with my life, I have re-positioned it around my grief. She isn't gone, she just isn't here. She's no longer rendered mute or physically incapacitated by that terrible disease. And so long as I remain open and receptive to the idea of her presence in this more ethereal existence, then we can have the kind of conversations and interactions that were impossible those last years of her life. Maybe that's how I keep on living.

I suspect that this won't be the last time I write about this topic. Just a few months ago, I wasn't sure if I could ever return to writing, but here I am rediscovering my voice (it wavers and cracks, but I still hear it). I have watched several of my friends navigate this same journey through the years, and we all take different paths in learning how to readjust or realign with life after the death of a loved one. A large part of this process will be to redefine myself in the aftermath of 15 years of caregiving. That's longer than I've held any job. I don't regret that I took on the responsibility of caring for my Mom, as I would do it again. It was integral to my identity, part of what made my life so busy. Now I have rewrite, revise, and reimagine what it means to be someone other than Audrey's only daughter.

It Takes a Village

2024-09-09T10:20:00.000-04:00

Nearly 30 years ago, Hillary Clinton wrote a book It Takes a Village (1995), a phrase she borrowed from an African proverb. Because it was an idea being promoted by Hillary Clinton, the most polarizing woman in America at the time, there was partisan derision and a lot of noise about traditional family structures.

So the phrase and the sentiment were written off as a call for government overreach, and per usual, the inherent value of extended and more communal family structures were not celebrated until recently. Apparently, when conservative-minded men realize that it was a good thing that their Mamaws and South Asian mothers-in-law took an active role in raising their grandchildren, they get to take credit for articulating a role for post-menopausal women that no one quite knew how to previously define.

Initially when I saw James David's suggestion about enlisting the assistance of grandparents in childcare, I tweeted from a space of grief and frustration for my own situation. I don't regret sending this out, because it was/is my truth--I didn't get to rely on the support of grandparents in helping to raise my child in her formative years. In fact, due to a combination of factors, my Dad is only just now available to provide some support to us, which we appreciate and definitely do NOT take for granted as a given.

I want to provide some context and offer an expanded analysis of what he suggested by sharing more about my situation as both the beneficiary of grandparents who were very much involved in my upbringing, as well as from the perspective of a parent who did not have able-bodied caregivers at my beck and call. For me, and I suspect for a lot of my peers, this is a very complicated and sensitive issue. And what we need from policy makers, regardless of their politics and regardless of what kinds of family structures they articulate as ideal, is a lot more than suggestions based on nostalgia for a bygone era.

First, some perspective as this topic comes along at an interesting time for me. I hope to write more about this before the end of the year, but obviously, this has already been quite a year. As such, I find myself looking back and reminiscing, particularly on life as it was for me 40 years ago in 1984. That year was pivotal for me in so many ways, and for the purpose of setting the scene for this piece, it was sometime in the fall of that year when my paternal grandparents both developed chronic illnesses: my Grandmother had Parkinson's disease that progressed to a more disabling point and my Grandfather suffered a massive paralyzing stroke. Suddenly, our caregivers needed us to provide support and care for them.

Earlier that year, I graduated from elementary school, so there were already several changes underway for me. I was to start a new school without most of the friends I had known for the past six. The previous summer, our family moved into a new home and my youngest brother was ready to start school. To ensure that they were in school together, both brothers transferred to a closer elementary school. And if memory serves, my Mom was also reassigned to a new school, so everything was in flux. I recall that the school year began with promise, but things quickly unraveled by Thanksgiving.

Because life comes at you fast.

My paternal grandparents had absolutely been integral caregivers to us in our formative years. Both were retired by the time I was born, so they had time to dote on us. I was enrolled at the elementary school two blocks from where they lived because pre-kindergarten was half day and someone needed to be available once my day was done. At the time, of course I had no idea that was the reason, but looking back I realize the dynamics of having a younger brother, a working mother, and a father who was living out-of-state to complete graduate school meant that we had to be in the care of hired or family help.

I recall early on that my Grandmother would walk me home from school, but eventually, my Grandfather would park his blue station wagon directly in front of the building every day at 2:45pm to wait for us. It became something of a running joke among the school staff that no one else could park in Old Man Hawkins' spot. After he drove those two blocks, we headed straight to the kitchen where we got dessert for snack (I am not making this up) and it was glorious!

It was the beginning of second grade when the first series of major life changes began. My Dad graduated and moved back to DC; we moved into our own place; and my Mom announced that she was expecting another baby. My Grandmother seemed happy, but I overheard a conversation between my Mom and Aunt about how Grandma had expressed reservations about her ability to care for another baby. Years later I learned the reason was that she had been recently diagnosed with Parkinson's. So when my brother was born, Grandma helped out until he got to the mobility stage, then he went to nursery school. Granddaddy would get two of us from elementary school and then got my youngest brother from a nearby church. On off days, half days, and sick days, we were at Grandma and Granddaddy's house.

Our maternal grandmother still worked a few days a week, but we also spent a good deal of time with her as part of an even larger extended family. Her house stayed full of extended family, and whenever the three of us were in the mix with the five to six cousins who lived with her, plus two of her grown sons, and a cat--you do the math! Of course, we grew up like siblings, so I recognize and appreciate the communal family concept James David alluded to in suggesting the participation of relatives in providing childcare.

But...and this is where my emotional tweet thread becomes relevant--not all families can rely on that kind of arrangement. A lot of people don't live near their families. For example, the Hub lives 250 miles away from his four siblings and I know plenty of people who come from families that are scattered across the country. Once upon a time, families used to live in closer proximity, but that is no longer a reality to be taken for granted. As you know, I went to college in Atlanta and at least half of my peers stayed down there for school, job opportunities, and the lower cost of living. Here in DC, most of the people I meet are transplants while many of the native-born Washingtonians (and yes, we exist) live throughout the DMV (District, Maryland, and Virginia area...pronounced urreyah). Which could mean that someone still owns and maintains Big Mama's house, but the various grandchildren, nieces and nephews, etc. could live just as many as 250 miles (4 hours) apart.

And as much as I LOVED growing up with all of those cousins, in hindsight that was a LOT on my long-widowed Grandmother! She raised eight children of her own, so perhaps she was used to that level of chaos, but to look back and realize she was in her 70s, and on any given day her home was inundated with half a dozen grandchildren. Now I'm convinced that is one of the main reasons why she worked until she was 80--so that she could get some peace and quiet!

But let's return to the point 40 years ago where my idyllic childhood memories took a dramatic turn. My paternal Grandmother had an operation from which her health never fully rebounded. My Grandfather was caring for her when he had his stroke. My Dad, an only child, had to figure out caregiving for two parents while raising three school-aged children. For a time, he stayed with his parents on the weekends. It was determined that we all needed to live under one roof, so we had an addition built onto our house. My grandparents moved in the year I started high school.

The reality about depending on family is that circumstances change. What works in one year might not be feasible the next year. Before we moved into our own house, we lived with extended family, but that became unsustainable as everyone got older. Even in ideal situations, life happens and there have to be reasonable alternatives to fill in the gaps. For my parents, it meant needing afterschool care and transportation for my brothers while I became the classic Generation X latchkey kid.

James David and his incoherent running mate can make off-handed suggestions about childcare costs that minimize the real-life struggles that so many people face because they have advantages that they take for granted. Donald Trump was, at best, an absentee father who never concerned himself with childcare because paying the nanny, the cook, assorted mistresses, while stiffing small business owners is just one of the perks of being a rich asshole. Usha Vance's mother, Lakshmi Chilukuri, took a leave of absence from her job for a year, and then she went back to work. I presume that when their subsequent children were born, the combined proceeds from his book sales, his Silicon Valley earnings, and his wife's law firm salary meant they could afford a nanny. And that's perfect if it worked for them. It's great that his mother-in-law had the kind of job that allowed her to return to it, unlike so many working mothers who barely get three months of unpaid leave. It's great when parents earn decent middle-class wages or higher.

It's great when everybody lives nearby and stays healthy. My late mother-in-law lived in New York and as much as I would love to believe otherwise, there is no way she could have packed up her entire life to move here to DC. My Mom only got to assist with my Mean Teen Niece for a short time before we noticed things that revealed concerns about her health. The same way Parkinson's caused noticeable issues for my Grandmother, early-onset Alzheimer's had an immediate impact on my Mom. Like his father, my Dad doesn't seem to mind being Grand-Uber to his granddaughters because that's the extent of his childcare duties.

It's great when every piece comes together seamlessly. Everyone gets along and there are no differing parenting philosophies. Boundaries are healthy and no one oversteps. Cultural differences are manageable and respected. No one is toxic or manipulative or duplicitous. Family gatherings are a lot like this iconic commercial:

Yeah...

For everyone else who lives in the alternative multiverse where monthly day care costs are equal to mortgage payments and relatives do not live close by, the village is where we must look for solutions. That might mean that the local church provides the day care because that is the most affordable option. Your kid might need to depend on the carpool driven by the parent still working from home who can provide drop off and pick up because their hours are more flexible. I read about 24-hour child care centers and on-site day care at certain jobs I think that makes a lot of sense for those parents who work shift jobs like essential health care workers. This notion that we can't afford to pay people living wages or that day care personnel shouldn't have to be certified when we are entrusting our children to their care is offensive. The kind of money we are willing to pay to keep our children ~~distracted~~ entertained as opposed to being educated, or kept alive...

Some of you know how this childcare issue impacted me, since I've written about it from time to time on this blog. I was a stay-at-home mother (SAHM), but not entirely by choice. I was assisting with the care of my Mom when I got pregnant. Even though I was already "working" from home, we added our names to the waiting list for the daycare center at the Hub's job anyway, just in case. Well, after two years (2 YEARS), there was finally an opening. We went in for the tour but balked at the strain it would put on our family budget. In the end, it made more sense for us to maintain the status quo and wait a few months for the Kid to become eligible for PreK-3 (which is universally available in our jurisdiction).

Hint, universal access to early childhood education is a policy solution. Proposing a tax credit for day care expenses is a policy solution. Suggesting that post-menopausal women ought to spend more time baking cookies and planting herb gardens with their grandkids is not a policy solution. Not unless you are willing to offer them paid family leave since many of our seniors still work.

Did I mention the dilemma of being a woman of a certain age who has both child-rearing and elder caregiving responsibilities? If not, I wrote about it a few years ago. And let me tell you that even with my Mom gone, my situation has not changed as much as you might think. My Dad will be 77 on his birthday, and he hasn't lived alone for more than 40 years. If I wasn't around, this man would live off of Jamaican meat patties and Arizona iced tea. At my Mom's funeral, I was cornered by some of his church lady friends who made it clear that they were going to hold me personally responsible if anything happened to him. And the last thing I want to do is piss off a bunch of Black church woman.

I am not complaining. I am blessed that he is here and, as the old folks say, has a reasonable portion of health and strength. Instead, I will emphasize the fact that I am still amazed and awed by my Mom, who did all of this backwards, in heels, with a full-time job, and with two boisterous sons. But that doesn't take into account that my Mom had the benefit of a village. Once I let go of my Wonder Woman fantasies of her abilities and remembered that she had help, I've been seeing things differently.

It is important to point out that none of us lives in the center of the village. We have a responsibility to support each other just as we are supported. This is true even when there are non-family members in the midst, because we are probably extensions of their village in some way as well. If we are late picking up our kids from day care, that makes those employees late for whatever it is that they have to do in their second shifts. If we spend most of our involvement with our child's school as adversaries, as opposed to advocates, then the result is a contentious environment that hinders learning. If you are blessed with parents who are able to help, by all means accept it, but know that the situation could easily be reversed with you and your children providing assistance to them. Sometimes that isn't possible, because let's face it, some of y'all took jobs in other parts of the country for reasons other than just the pay...

Instead of talking to economists and podcasters about issues like this, policy-makers need to talk to the people who are on the front lines. Like the working parents who need flexibility and more options. Like the people who own childcare facilities and have to navigate a complex regulatory landscape. Like the private nannies who deserve living wages and benefits. Like the single Dads who might also be working in the gig economy just to afford childcare. Like the women who have to balance elder caregiving and full-time employment. Like those grandparents who, having raised their children, have earned the right to decide how involved they want to be in raising their grandchildren. Talk to the people who actually live in the village.

Arrogant, Uppity and Not Here to Perform Tricks

2024-08-30T11:44:00.003-04:00

Imagine being the kind of person who suggests that a man who expresses somewhat delusional opinions deserves an audience with the sitting Vice President of the United States. And upon being rebuffed in that demand, his decision to back her opponent is thought to be justified because she was too "arrogant, uppity."

Noting that the man with this kind of audacity happens to be the nephew of a former President and until recently, was also one of her opponents in this most extraordinary election year, you might be forgiven in thinking that she at least owed him a return phone call. I mean, getting tapped to take on the biggest role of one's life, maintaining a hectic campaign schedule, having to vet and announce a running mate, and attending a convention to formalize the process in the span of a month is NO EXCUSE for not taking the time to listen to whatever Master Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr. has to say (if you're willing to wait an hour for him to get started, right around the 1:02:30 mark). How dare she?

In choosing not to meet with Master Robert, it appears that Madam VP forfeited her chance at his endorsement. To be clear, he was never going to back her even if she had acceded to his demand, so it would have just been a stunt for the cameras. And she's too smart to be played for a fool by a guy who thinks we're naive enough to believe that story about "finding" Baby Bear on the side of the road (because now we've got a whale of a story to top it). Yeah, looks to me that unlike Trump, Harris dodged an actual bullet...(not saying he wasn't shot at; I'm saying the man was hit in the ear by flying glass from the teleprompter and until he produces a credible medical report that proves he is the luckiest SOB to be nicked by a bullet that should have blown his ear off his face, NO I don't believe the alternative facts version of what happened.)*

I was going to share some of my initial thoughts about RFK, Jr.'s decision to join the dark side on the Busy Black Woman Facebook page, but the spirit has been moving in me of late to get back to writing here in this space. And as the day unfolded, I had more of a chance to absorb some of the reactions to his endorsement of Trump. Then I almost got baited into one of those pointless "debates" on social media over staged rage engagement, so let's just see where this rabbit hole leads. Shall we?

It is not my intent to devote much more time or energy to assessing the unseriousness of Master Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr.; rather, it is my belief that we ought to recognize this entire debacle for what it has and always will be--a con. That man has been wasting our time and playing in our faces ever since he declared his candidacy, and just so that we're clear about this brand of chicanery moving forward, there are a lot of other people on social media who are players at the same games. As I mentioned, I almost took time to provide a detailed response to some random dude on X who challenged me until I was reminded of my own warning against engaging in such foolishness. To sum up, most of these people who post these open-ended, seemingly innocent questions are actually cat-phishers. There is no good faith in their motives, so no need in giving them what they really want, which is attention/engagement. Take a hint from our Madam VP Harris and decline the invitation to meet them, engage with them, or even acknowledge that they exist. Stand your ground, on business and don't sweat being called stupid, arrogant, uppity or any other adjective intended to bait you into a fruitless exercise.

You know what they say about arguing with a fool.

Last Friday in the afterglow of the DNC, I saw the breaking news announcement that Master Robert would be suspending his campaign and that he would probably be endorsing Trump. This was not much of a surprise as his running mate, Nicole Shanahan all but conceded that was the way forward for the campaign at the beginning of the week. I watched the footage of her statement with some vindication that I KNEW IT ALL ALONG because she seemed more sincere in her resignation to reality than their campaign had been. It's hard to believe anyone ever took either of them seriously--and not just because she is some random tech billionaire who barely beat out Aaron Rodgers for the job. Think about that...she prevailed in a veepstakes pageant between an anti-vax NFL player and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse "The Body" Ventura.

At least she's the prettiest.

Let's stay on the topic of Ms. Shanahan for a bit because I must admit that when I first took a more critical look at Master Robert's campaign earlier this month, I had only glossed over the existence of a running mate as non-consequential. I apologize for that oversight because I'm sure that she could have brought a sense of gravitas and credibility to the effort if they had continued in their quixotic quest. I would have enjoyed seeing her match wits with James David and the Coach because we already know that debate is going to look like an old-school wrestling match. And you know what...Imma stop lying because there is no way I would have appreciated seeing this woman on stage alongside Vance or Walz (and I mean that with respect to both men). Not that I am conceding or acquiescing to any of the arguments often made against a woman's qualifications or credentials for running because technically, there aren't any. I'm just recognizing these unserious PR stunts for what they are, and I am profoundly disappointed that she went along with this farce.

Which brings me back to a few of the issues I wanted to address with respect to Master Robert: his utter lack of seriousness and how it unnecessarily tarnishes his family brand. I am sure that he felt some compulsion to run for President because the weight of expectation to aspire to some elected or political office must have been drilled into every Kennedy man. At 70 years old, Master Robert needed to heed the call or accept his fate as the namesake who never felt compelled to go into the family business. He could have stayed in the private sector as an environmentalist or under different circumstances, he might have scored a cushy ambassadorship somewhere. Perhaps I can't appreciate what it must be like to be perceived as an underachiever or worse...which is why I don't understand why he didn't just continue to do his own thing out of the glare of the world's expectations of him.

I did write this mini post after the family statement was shared that notes how significant it is that his sisters rebuked him so loudly and publicly, and how that's gotta sting. Maybe he doesn't care, but I can only imagine the pain such a drastic choice had to be for them, particularly eldest sister Kathleen. As an eldest sister myself, we look upon our younger siblings as our perpetual charges because that's the role we are born into--watch out for your younger sister(s) and brother(s). My parents must have told me that a thousand times, so still at this age, that is a responsibility I take most seriously. Even when we disagree, my default is to protect them. Therefore, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's name atop this statement reveals just how truly a heartbreaking moment this is for this family.

The salt in the wound must have been that Madam VP wouldn't make time to meet with him; yet somebody from her campaign had extend an invite to his younger cousin to come speak in primetime on their to-do list. Hence, Master Robert, the eldest Kennedy male with the name and the face, was passed over, again...

By an arrogant, uppity Black woman!

Now, I don't believe in my heart (and I am serious) that her race or gender are what motivated Master Robert to set off a San Andreas fault level rift in his family. Instead, I believe her race and gender are what compelled that slithery Donald Trump to exploit this schism to his advantage. As one entitled rich guy to another, I imagine the constant refrain in their conversation was who does she think she is?

Privilege is one helluva drug and even the most liberal leaning of old money/nouveau riche gazillionaires have been known to question the long-term wisdom of a We The People ethos. The same democracy that touts the ideals of one person one vote stands in direct conflict with the affirmative action of generational wealth that Michelle Obama alluded to in her convention speech. Men like Trump and Master Robert never had to work at McDonald's. They didn't go to college on the GI Bill or Pell Grants, nor did they have to piece together funds from various sources to pay for their advanced degrees. They never had to tailor a resume to apply for any previous jobs, since running for President is the first high-stakes job interview either of them has ever pursued.

Take a moment to let that sink in. And then it becomes clear why their disdain for Madam VP is so intense. Who does she think she is, not sitting for interviews with the media as if she is Beyonce? Who does she think she is, being handed a nomination without a traditional process? Who does she think she is, filling two arenas with real people at simultaneous rallies during the DNC? Who does she think she is, refusing to kowtow to Trump's proposed debate schedule and preferred format? Who does she think she is, Black or Indian (because she can't be both)?

Every other person who runs for President is motivated by some over-inflated sense of self. And we wonder aloud that same question about traditional third-party candidates. What made Ralph Nader or Lenora Fulani, or makes Jill Stein or Cornel West think they can run this country if they only appeal to a fringe sliver of the electorate? I get that they want to shine a light on issues that won't receive priority attention, but that is a primary election strategy, not one that has yielded much change or reform on the national level. When confronted on the prospect of being spoilers, they typically respond that they don't care about the consequences. Ralph Nader has been particularly vocal, unapologetic, and defiant of late. Once the dust of their pie-in-the-sky Presidential campaigns clears, they aren't pounding the pavement to build momentum in the states for future contests. Therefore, it is fair to assume that the typical third-party bid is an exercise in toxic hubris.

If you need any further proof of that same inclination in Master Robert, look at how his campaign has strategically opted to stay on the ballot in states where it can inflict harm against the Vice President, but has taken steps to be removed in states where he might harm Trump. If he was so concerned about the right of third-party candidates to be treated fairly, he would have thrown some campaign resources behind Jill Stein or Cornel West, both of whom are still attempting to gain ballot access in various states. Why not righteously demand that they also deserve to be heard in debates against the two major party candidates? Why leave them without the funding and infrastructure that they sorely need in order to support Trump, who has the RNC infrastructure and his own personal fortune at his disposal?

Even though Drs. West and Stein are un-redemptive chaos agents (albeit in a more traditional fashion), Master Robert is on another level. He is on par with Kanye West, who launched a spoiler campaign in July 2020 to siphon votes from Joe Biden in service to Donald Trump. Nobody thought Con Yeah Man was serious, but he did succeed in helping to sow seeds of discord in Georgia, setting the stage for what will now be Ground Zero in the second Trump Insurrection. And make no mistake, there will be another violent attempt, and Master Robert just helped to make that prospect a guaranteed certainty.

For all intents and purposes, Trump is just another third-party narcissist who executed a hostile takeover of the Republican Party in 2016. Bernie Sanders attempted a similar coup with the Democrats twice, but they caught on and foiled his plans. These egomaniacs assume no one is hip to their duplicity, so once exposed by sunlight, they retaliate by gaslighting us. How many times has Trump whined that a process that doesn't advantage him is unfair, even with all of the resources he has to thwart his accusers? What have the Bernie Bros accomplished in the last four to eight years except become louder and more obnoxious?

Strategically speaking, while the Democratic National Convention was quite the party, Madam VP took to the stage on that final night to let it be known that not only was SHE the effing headliner, but SHE is also a woman all about the business, with no time for suffering fools. Cognizant of how hard some folks had been working to undermine her for the past three years by second-guessing her intelligence and arguing that she was an albatross around Biden's neck, Harris clearly understands that she only has two months to win or lose. Two months to define and introduce herself to the voters on her own terms as her own woman. With a truncated campaign schedule, she has to prioritize and be strategic about how she spends her time, and no good can come from giving an audience to a clown. It's enough for her to have to debate the Ringmaster. Folks who want to entertain a circus can vote for one, but she ain't with the shits!

So NO, Kamala Harris don't have time for tea with Master Robert. He's not entitled to an audience with her any more than the other chaos agent candidates. I listened to part of his statement, and it is puzzling to me how he criticizes the media for engaging in anti-democratic tactics while questioning Harris' right to choose if and when to give interviews. Which is it? It must be maddening to encounter a woman who can't be accused of using him to gain access to power because she already has more power than he could possibly imagine. She ain't concerned with his bruised ego nor is she impressed by his name. He is just one Kennedy. The majority of the family already publicly endorsed President Biden back in April (and are transferring that support to her), so any lingering hard or bitter feelings he harbors aren't with the Vice President, but with his family. She's not the one who will be uncomfortable at the Annual Kennedy Labor Day BBQ Bash on Hyannis Port...

When I invited you into this rabbit hole with me, one of the flashbacks that replayed on the way down was the memory of another Kennedy who pulled a similar stunt in 1980, which might have inspired this present carpe diem/YOLO effort. Lest we forget, the late Senator Edward Moore Kennedy, the baby of the family, also took on a sitting President when he thought there might be a vulnerability he could exploit. The rivalry and animosity between Uncle Teddy and President Carter lingered for decades and provides an interesting example of the historical rhymes and bars that we should commit to memory.

In his DNC remarks, former President Obama threw out a laugh line about the remake never being as good as the original, which probably prompted most of us to compare and contrast a mental list of movies or songs. And sure enough, there are plenty of examples that prove his point. Although that was a reference to Trump, in this instance, Master Robert must have thought that he could attempt a remix of history by succeeding where his Uncle Teddy had not. He saw in President Biden an old and war-weary general and gambled that a Kennedy candidacy could offer us the prospect of a 21st Century Camelot Returns. He must have forgotten that Old Man Biden was there in 1980, so the general knew how to out-maneuver his would-be adversary. In passing the mic to his protégé, Biden robbed Master Robert of his shot; and by refusing to meet with him, Madam VP only compounded his humiliation. Uncle Teddy died 15 years ago to the day of his defection...but President Carter is alive and eager to vote for Harris this fall. At this rate, the only way Master Robert's name will be anywhere near the resolute desk in the Oval Office is in the form of that bust of his father.

* Just because I want to be respectful and recognize the seriousness of what I am suggesting, there are reasons for my skepticism. I taught a class on the John F. Kennedy assassination, and one of the most graphic details was how the bullet that hit Kennedy caused his head to explode. That was from a rifle shot in 1963. Technology has advanced considerably in 60 years, and we know that a bullet from an AR-15, the gun recovered from the shooter, has the power to pulverize human flesh. If Trump had been grazed by that bullet, it should have knocked him down on that platform; instead, he reacted as if he had been stung by a bee before he was tackled by Secret Service. A man who was hit by one of those bullets, Corey Comperatore, died so it is offensive to me that Trump minimizes that man's life by stunting: thrusting his fist in the air in defiance; parading around with a maxi pad affixed to his head; and refusing to My disgust is compounded by the narcissism of Master Robert in endorsing such theatrical nonsense.

Women of a Certain Age

2024-08-21T15:46:00.003-04:00

If things had gone a little differently in my life, I would probably be one of the post-menopausal childless cat ladies that JD Vance and his running mate, 34 counts yet still running, keep insulting. As you know, when I started this blog, that was the path I was traveling (oh wait, some of you probably weren't aware that I had a cat-Mommy stint prior to the start of this blog...will tell you all about it in a minute)--except I was/am married. I was a dedicated Auntie to all of the kids in my husband's family and had just the one Baby Niece born to my younger brother. We were coming up on ten years of marriage, and all indications pointed to the probability that we were going to be one of those childless married couples--the kind who were content to spoil everyone else's little cherubs with unnecessary frivolity until they had to be returned to their parents.

We got really good at that. But then life took some interesting twists and turns...and well, we are now living another old married couple cliche--that of being the older parents of a young child. We are so old that we can't relate to any of the other parents in our daughter's peer group because we were in college or full grown adults with bills when most of them were children. Some of them are as young as our adult nieces and nephews!

And though I am not Post Menopausal, I am acquainted with her younger sister Peri while their niece Puberty has been trying to catch up with my daughter. Fun times for the Hub, let me tell you...

Since I mentioned it, allow me to take you on a quick trip through my childless cat lady phase, which got underway exactly 15 years ago! It started in late Spring or early Summer of 2008 when I happened to notice a stray kitten on my doorstep while I was grabbing the mail. It ran away, so I didn't think much of it until I happened to see another kitten with a larger cat out on the walkway in front of my house a day or so later. What struck me about them was both the coincidence of seeing two kittens in a span of days near my house, and the fact that the larger cat and the first kitten (black/white tuxedo cats) were obviously related, but now there appeared to be a tiger-striped sibling. Within a few days, I saw the original kitten (whose name I forget, and it is driving me crazy), Tiger, and the Mother cat whom we called Midnight in my backyard, at which point, I became ~~obsessed~~ invested with these strays. It didn't take long for the Hub to warm up to our little cat family once a fourth sibling (another tiger-striped kit whom he named Pudgy) befriended him, and for the next few weeks, we became foster cat parents.

Yes, you read that right. The soon-to-be Busy Black Lady with lifelong animal fur allergies bought cat food, a house, and even a heating pad in case the night temperature dropped. One night I saw a fox stalking my kits and I chased it away in high heel shoes! I scowled when their deadbeat fat Cat-Daddy (a tiger-striped that reminded me of Heathcliff) showed up one day, expecting to be fed even though he wore a visible collar. We contacted the Humane Society for guidance to support our kitties, and they referred us to a special program for stray cats. They recommended that we could extend the life of our strays by having them spayed/neutered, which we paid to have done (and I think we still have one of the cages they left behind).

Bob Barker would have been proud; alas, this was a short-lived sitcom. To my next-door neighbor, who kept a strict schedule of meticulous yard work and immaculate landscaping, our cats were a nuisance. They were crapping in his yard, so his demand was if we weren't going to bring them to live inside our house, then we needed to stop feeding them. I ignored him, so he retaliated by using some kind of repellant that kept them away. No matter what I did to entice them back, they never returned to our care.

The nature of passing fancies is that they pass, and once we were in the full throes of Obamamania, his Inauguration, and that first year of wow-we-got-a-Black-president euphoria, I moved on. By year's end, we were blessed with a Baby Niece (now the Mean Teen) and in spite of our excitement over her, we had accepted that God's plan for our lives wouldn't follow the traditional route of love, marriage, and baby carriages. As it turned out, the delay was not a denial with quite a few detours and left turns before we got here.

I shared that bit of personal history in response to the truly tone-deaf and insensitivity of the statements made by GOP Vice Presidential candidate James ~~Donald~~ David ~~Bowman~~ ~~Hamel~~ Vance (yeah, not exactly the kind of hillbilly name we're used to). He said some things about women that don't sound like a guy who hopes to ascend to a higher office with our support. His wife Usha, also a rather preppie Yalie in her own right, doesn't seem to know how to help him pull that country club loafer out of his mouth...

Childless cat-ladies is the kind of insult one would expect from some bitter IT guy living in his parents' basement because those are the only women he meets--the ones who post cat videos online. I'm not throwing shade because people like what they like, and cats happen to be the pet of choice for certain kinds of folks. I imagine that collecting houseplants and gardening would be similarly regarded, which is something I've done off and on for quite some time (and even blogged about it). So, I'm just saying that if we are categorizing people, basement-dwelling man-babies living in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

James David has argued that people who don't produce offspring don't have a sufficient stake in the future of the country, and therefore shouldn't have the same rights. Sounds kinda like a version of second-class citizenship that people marched and protested against, say 60 years ago. Because what about my Aunt E, a childless divorcee who taught pre-K for 35+ years? Or the nuns who taught me French, Biology, and Religion back at my all-girls' high school as part of my training and preparation for a good Catholic marriage? I could provide examples of the countless women, many of whom are good friends of mine, who wanted to follow the traditional path of love and marriage, but either never found the right man or experienced some course alteration that put them on a different path. Most of these women are doing great work in their professions, as business owners, and as civic leaders, because they have chosen to focus their energy on making the world better.

Because Lord knows, those of us with children barely have time to take care of ourselves. Ask me how I know...

Furthermore, just as there are childless women who have the time, talent, and treasure to dedicate themselves to improving the lives of others, there are men who are just as similarly convicted and concerned about human welfare. I happen to know quite a few of them as well. James David happens to be a recent adult convert to Catholicism, an entire Christian denomination that follows the edicts and proclamations made by unmarried men--a Pope, a college of Cardinals and Archbishops, Bishops, etc., and somehow, I don't believe he intends to disenfranchise his parish priest. That the men who are leaders of his faith have neither been married nor have any biological children, yet they have taken it upon themselves to impose their moral authority on the entire world...not at all problematic. But it's the cat ladies who can't be trusted?

(In all seriousness, because not only is my Dad a Catholic as are several people I respect, such as President Biden, so I won't dare make a crass joke...just a passing reference to the fact that yeah, substantial and unforgivable harm due to the sexual abuse that was covered up for centuries, but let's move on.)

As a former domestic relations attorney, I can tell you that there are too many people who have had children for all of the wrong reasons, so there is NO way we should entrust our country's future to their poor judgment. I could write a whole separate piece on that part of my life and what I have learned about human nature, but suffice it to say

Post-menopausal women sounds on par with referring to pregnancy after the age of 35 as geriatric. It is the kind of insult that may be technically correct terminology but might get you shanked if aimed at the wrong person. So of course it gets uttered by two men engaged in light banter on a podcast. And look, I would take James David at his word that he didn't agree with that term if his word could be trusted. This is the same guy who went from being a never-Trumper to his bottom bitch in less time than it takes for a woman in her mid-50s to become post-menopausal...

As offensive as their implied use of that term was, it was actually the awkward white guy "compliment" of their respective South Asian mothers-in-law that was more offensive. Perhaps I'm just being hormonal, but why do white men who marry outside of their race always seem surprised to learn that whenever possible, their non-white in-laws don't consider caring for their grandchildren as an imposition? (And have y'all ever considered that it's you they are most concerned about?) My MIL moved in with her son and then her daughter to assist with her grandchildren too, and I imagine had she lived, she would have moved to DC to assist us 9 years ago. Not because that would have been her purpose, but her pleasure.

Be clear on that distinction--it would have been her pleasure to assist us, and our privilege to accept and receive such selfless support. Because not all families operate under the automatic assumption of assigned gender roles, nor should it be regarded as an obligation. Relationships are choices. I am perplexed then, by someone like James David, who claims to understand and appreciate how strong women chose to intervene at various points in his life to save him, could so easily betray them with his misogynist rhetoric. I know that he wants to appease the hedge funders, venture capitalists, alphaverse Podcast Bros, and millionaire grifters running for President to avoid prison, but c'mon man!

Seriously, what kind of man talks shit about women the way James David has done and expects that all will be forgiven once he gets home? Would his beloved Mamaw, the woman he immortalized in his memoir appreciate being reduced to a post-menopausal woman whose only purpose was to keep him from ruining his life? Really? And what of his wife, Usha, an accomplished woman in her own right who has apparently chosen to compromise her principles to stand by her man...I imagine that if she's rethinking her life choices, she's wondering how much she might have accomplished as a childless cat lady.

This is the thanks they get--a man who prevaricates to obscure the impact of his shape-shifting and weather-vane politics. A cardboard cut-out opportunist who wears guyliner. A man who can't even settle on a consistent name for himself, but he's got disparaging names for women. Contrary to the various clarifications and remixed explanations issued by the campaign, James David isn't some inarticulate rube who misspeaks or makes up words. He's the kind of self-made everyman whose trajectory from the Appalachians to the Marines to Ohio State to Yale Law School to Silicon Valley to the NYTimes Bestseller List to the Senate to the point where he could be a heartbeat away from the Presidency is...almost too good to be true.

I may just be a former cat lady aging my way towards menopause, but this talented Mr. Ripley act James David is pulling has been calculated and methodical. He's not campaigning to be the wing man to someone he despises, because his mission isn't to help elect the useful orange idiot. Trump is a means to an end. Apparently, y'all haven't watched the Manchurian Candidate (1962) enough times. (What, you thought cat ladies and post-menopausal women only watched rom-coms in their downtime?)

Women who can think for themselves, exercise the freedom to make choices about what to do with their lives, and who aren't overwhelmed or tied down by familial obligations threaten the New (Old) World Order. Even if you haven't taken the time to read Project 2025 (and I have a kid, so no I don't have that kind of time), many of the proposals and policy recommendations are intended to undo much of the New Deal/Great Society reforms of the 20th Century. James David wrote the foreword, so even as his running mate disavows knowledge of what is contained in the plan, we know he's lying and it doesn't matter because James David knows. These are the people who ~~groomed~~ positioned him!

Thus, even if they lose in November, they have already sown enough seeds of discord. They have polarized this country along every fault line that exists and have exploited every vulnerability. We are embroiled in daily cultural skirmishes over the most ridiculous of topics. We live with constant agitation and anger over the pettiest stuff with the objective of keeping us under constant stress, exhausted, and on a hair trigger to overreact to just about anything. I mean, why does anyone need to lose sleep over a woman who prefers the company of cats unless she's insisting on bringing a dish to the office potluck?

Do you realize what these people have gotten us so angry about: rainbows, kittens, Dr. Suess books, tampons, crying babies, and RuPaul's Drag Race?! Remember when we used to end friendships over the choice between Coke vs. Pepsi, McDonald's vs. Burger King, and The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones? Me neither because I just picked my preferences and went on about my business. Sure, we've got fundamental disagreements, competing perspectives, and divergent ideas because this is a diverse country. Allegedly, that is supposed to allow us the freedom to be ourselves, whomever that may be.

For some women, that means choosing to adopt cats instead of having biological children. That's also a valid choice for men too. Choice means that children are born and raised by people who want and are able to provide for them, including extended family members, such as a post-menopausal woman or a retired elderly man. Parenthood shouldn't be mandated or forced on anyone, nor should certain family structures be proscribed by law or deemed superior to others.

Finally, because I don't know what to make of Usha Vance (is she a manipulative Eleanor Iselin, conspiring with the Kremlin to facilitate a scenario to deliver the Presidency to her husband) or is she a captive would-have-been a cat lady, and it is she who is under hypnosis? I don't know what your choice will ultimately be, but if you need to escape, there's an army of women ready to pounce, just say the word.

Auntie Ray, Go Get Your Gun!

2024-08-14T14:56:00.000-04:00

I had been waiting in breathless anticipation for the debut of Olympic Breaking. Okay, not really--anxious curiosity might have been a better way to describe it. Ever since it was announced that break-dancing would be included for the first time as an Olympic event, coupled with the ubiquitous presence of Snoop Dogg as an "ambassador" for the Games, I knew I had to see it to believe it.

With no expectations or assumptions, I tuned in to watch at the appointed hour. There were to be two days of competition consisting of a round-robin elimination tournament of dancers from various countries. The first day was for the women, known as B-Girls, so cool, I thought, let the ladies go first. Unfortunately, it was not the best roll out...

Since I watched from beginning to end, I'm not just reacting to viral clips or memes. In my humble opinion, the early rounds were cringe, but as the day wore on, the cream rose to the top and it definitely got better. I got my Dad to watch with me, and by the end of the day, we were invested to see whether our favorite, B-Girl India would win a medal. (Spoiler, she didn't.) The next day, I couldn't watch much of the competition because we were in a hotel where the channels only featured the main Olympic events. I only got to see a 10-minute replay clip of the B-Boys, and thankfully, their competition began with much stronger performances; therefore, I can only speak to what I saw from the women.

Opening question: does breaking need to be in the Olympics? I can't say. Having more familiarity with the traditional Olympic events like the team sports, swimming, gymnastics, and of course, track & field, it feels rather snobbish to question the inclusion of newer events such as skateboarding, beach volleyball, and rock-climbing. Yet, there is the argument that just because I can't get into it, that doesn't mean that others have the same issues. For example, while it is my humble opinion that golf and tennis are already popular tournament events with sufficient international appeal so there is no practical need to include them in the Olympics--that isn't my call.

I don't want to get bogged down by arguing the legitimacy of inclusion/exclusion because that undermines other important considerations, namely, that part of the Olympic ideal is to bring competitors from around the world together through a diverse variety of sport. Much of what we see every four years are the sports that don't get televised airtime but are no less interesting to watch such as wrestling, judo, fencing, and archery. A sport that I might disparage like table tennis (ping pong) looks a lot different on the Olympic level than it does in someone's basement.

However, as a former dancer, I do have some concerns about the inclusion of dance as a competitive sport as opposed to encouraging more admiration of it as a multifaceted artform. Most of us agree that dancers are athletes, and that seeing dance performed in a variety of different formats might expand its appeal. Several Olympic sports, namely gymnastics and ice skating, rely on dance fundamentals to convey artistry. An ongoing concern for me as a Busy Black Dance Mom is that an emphasis on competition decreases both artistry and tolerance for any work that doesn't involve explosive tricks or stunts. Audiences become trained to expect theatrics, and performers become more prone to career-threatening injuries. There has been a movement to get dance onto the Olympic stage for years, so this was supposed to be an experiment.

My curiosity was piqued by wanting to see if Olympic Breaking could become a thing. Because unlike other forms of dance that have a more ancient history and lineage, I'm old enough to remember some of the earliest days of break-dancing. Given that we just celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop (and now the 51st year as of August 11), it was almost divine alignment that one of the art forms that had been integral to the global outreach of the genre would make its debut as an Olympic sport. In the words of Biggie Smalls (and I happened to be in the Bronx on Saturday to take this very picture outside of the Hip Hop Museum), we never thought hip hop would come this far...only to be undone by an Australian soccer mom dressed like a middle school gym teacher mimicking a wallaby that had been dinged by a boomerang!

However, let's come back to properly roast Rachael Gunn (B-Girl RayGun) after a few more paragraphs. Before I turn my ire on her, I need to give a shout out to a few cultural icons who deserve to be acknowledged for their role as originators. In the interest of paying proper respect to whom it is due, I will defer to the dance historians for the scholarly bits and focus on my recollections from the purely anecdotal perspective of a kid growing up in the late 70s and 80s. The first time I remember seeing the origins of what would become break-dancing was on the sitcom What's Happening (1976-1979), in syndication. It was called pop locking then, and while it chronologically overlapped with the nascent phases of hip hop, this was a popular dance performance style tailor-made for the disco era.

Most people remember the late Fred 'ReRun' Berry from that show, and that part of his character's schtick was his dancing, as seen here. Anyone who has read this blog knows how much I loved Soul Train (1971-2006) while growing up, and that I alluded to one of Berry's earliest televised appearances on that show in this 50th Anniversary tribute. In it, I also made reference to the late Adolfo 'Shabba Doo' Quiñones, another iconic dancer who appeared with Berry on Soul Train (1976) and also on What's Happening (1976). Even if you don't recognize him from those earlier appearances, you do know Shabba Doo from Breakin' (1984). I finally learned the name of the man who brought these two together--the late Don 'Campbellock' Campbell, a visionary who founded the iconic dance group The Lockers, with ReRun, Shabba Doo, and Toni Basil (yep) as notable members. Though his name is not as recognizable, he clearly was the Godfather of Breaking.

I'm pretty sure that my first recollection of seeing break-dancing was on the Soul Train line. I also remember that around the same time, some kid at a school talent show did a spin on his back and ended in a pose, so whichever came first. Although I cannot pinpoint an exact grade or year, I can say that we engaged in dance battles as kids before anyone saw this scene in Flashdance (1983). Even if disco was dead, dancing was not, and we hit the floor to face off to songs like Dance to the Drummer's Beat (1978), Rapper's Delight (1979), Double Dutch Bus (1981), and DC's own Trouble Funk's party jam Pump Me Up (1982). I distinctly remember Afrika Bambaataa's Planet Rock (1982) being thee ultimate breakdance song, with Herbie Hancock's Rockit (1983) being the alternative choice.

Somehow, without much fanfare, we went from pop-locking to breaking in an organic evolution, which was eventually reflected in popular culture. Of course, by the time mainstream popular culture caught up via the aforementioned Flashdance (with Jennifer Beales' grand finale audition for the Pittsburgh Ballet); this dance sequence from the TV show Fame in 1983, very reminiscent of MJ's Beat It video; Beat Street (1984) and a pair of Breakin' (1984) movies; and then finally the crossover success of Footloose (1984)...we moved on.

As per usual, once a cultural movement went mainstream, it lost its edge...breaking immediately became uncool the moment Cleo McDowell exclaimed he felt like break-dancing in Coming to America (1988). It was fun while it lasted! However, the truth was that breaking didn't fade inasmuch as we just invented new moves and other dance styles. Did you see all of our energetic and fancy footwork throughout the 90s? Shoot, by the end of that decade, we were older, tired, and our knees were bad! And while there was always someone at the party ready to dazzle us with some retro moves, most of us were content to stand back and watch, which brings us to the present moment.

Assuming that most of these modern performers, especially Professor Kiwi, knew some of this history then no one should have been surprised that the harshest critics of Olympic Breaking were going to be GenXers. We were checking in to see if these children we raised had any of our skills; what improvements or innovations they made; and if they were going to demonstrate the proper respect for what we created. No way were we going to respond well to that kangaroo hopping and her whack modern dance earthworm impression. Furthermore, we were bound to be salty at being overlooked yet AGAIN for our contributions to the culture and were left wondering why come y'all waited 45 years, searched the world over, and she was allegedly the best a country as big and diverse as Australia had to offer?! (And I know, ReRun, Shabba Doo, and Campbellock were all Boomers, so it's not just us the living who were pissed, but also the ancestors whom she displeased by this epic foolishness!)

I read this and this (and a bunch of other articles), and I don't care that we're supposed to believe that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. What she did out there was a mockery. It was not an overreaction to object to the inclusion of someone who wasn't even remotely on the same level as the talent that rose to the top and ultimately placed in the latter rounds. It wasn't creative; it was embarrassing. And the fact that she, her family, and the Australian officials were out here trying to gaslight and shame us for clowning her was peak privileged behavior. No wonder the Olympic organizers for Los Angeles wasted no time in axing this event, lest there be more of that BS on our home turf. (BTW, I know that decision had already been made prior to these Games, but trust, nobody would even think of reconsidering at this point.)

For what it's worth, we're not surprised by her disingenuous defensiveness nor her trolling, since that is in line with the times. This was her chance of a lifetime, and hers alone--the rest of the performers who actually worked and put their heart and soul into the competition be damned. Yeah, I saw that she has a PhD in cultural studies and wrote her dissertation on breaking, but degrees and scholarly papers didn't make her any more likeable or talented. Like WTF, I took ballet for years but my ankles never got strong enough for me to dance on pointe, so guess what I never effing did in spite of all my knowledge of the mechanics? Bish, write a book and give a TED Talk like every other academic--don't go to the Olympics and make a Tasmanian devil of yourself!

But what am I saying, because Gunn made a much more impactful statement for women than say Manizha Talash, the Afghan refugee who was disqualified for wearing a political message on her outfit. God forbid an athlete from a country where women are suppressed would forfeit her opportunity to compete for a medal by reminding the world that she escaped an oppressive regime...but let's reward Professor Kiwi with a participation trophy!

And if we dared to question her right to be at the Olympics on the Australian government's dime (or perhaps thanks to the largesse of some generous billionaire benefactor who made his fortune raising emus), then we're wrong? Sexist, ageist, or racist? Sexist, at these Games where gender parity was achieved and where the women's events were definitely just as, if not more, exciting than the men's events? Ageist, when 15 Olympians were competing at age 40 and older? Racist, because we're not rushing to bring the lady a handkerchief to dab her crocodile tears? Because we witnessed enough of the destructive power wielded by white women crying at these Games per the treatment of Imane Khelif, Jordan Chiles, and now all of the women who had to compete against this bandicoot?

Yeah, I said what I said. Calling Professor Kiwi out for being a terrible break dancer declares to the world that what we saw was simultaneously hilarious, ridiculous, galling, mediocre, worthless, atrocious, appalling, cringy, sophomoric, selfish...

As I put my thesaurus away, note that I did not accuse Gunn of cultural appropriation. In these Parisian 2024 Olympic Games, we just celebrated this inspiring and unprecedented visual of three Black women on the podium claiming medals in a sport that was lily white on the international scene until the 1990s. When I tell you that this was unfathomable to me when I was growing up, not because Black women weren't allowed to compete (as far as I know), but because I vividly remember that the primary competitors of gymnastics in my youth were white women with eating disorders. It took seeing Dominique Dawes compete and win on the international stage to inspire this current generation of champions. So, we don't need to challenge the right of others to participate, enjoy, and even excel in various athletic pursuits.

After these Olympic Games, Black women don't need to prove anything. We showed up and showed out to win medals in every other sport imaginable, so it was a turn of good luck that we sat this event out to give those other B-Girls a shot at some hardware. Black women in hip hop have gold and platinum RECORDS, so our contributions to the genre speak for themselves. We know our place in the origin story of break-dancing: singing on those disco tracks, keeping up with our male partners on the dance floor, and cheering on their agility from the sidelines. Speaking of cheerleaders, again I remind you that Toni Basil, yes her, was an original Locker, so that's partly why the cultural appropriation label doesn't stick. And at age 79, I bet if she had been up on that stage, she would have taught a master class!

Rachael Gunn deserves all the smoke for single-handedly ruining what should have been a marquee Olympic event. She thought so little of her competitors as to insert herself into a narrative that should have centered them as pioneers in a new Olympic venture, instead of all of the ink being spilled to justify and/or criticize her 15 minutes of infamy. It isn't cultural appropriation inasmuch as it is good old-fashioned Columbusing--typical colonizer behavior to insist that her studies of dance qualified her for a spot on this world stage. Great that she admires and emulates the culture, but she could have done that as a spectator. Her antics overshadowed the talent and hard work of the sincere competitors and medalists because every other article written on Olympic Breaking features her in a meme or captured in some Elaine Benes-like contortion.

All of the reasons why I was ambivalent about dance being treated like a sport as opposed to an art form--Rachael Gunn is/was the embodiment of those concerns. No skill, no talent, just a gimmicky performance that humored an international audience as opposed to uplifting actual artistry. Meanwhile, some of the same people who were clutching their pearls during the Opening Ceremonies were cheering Professor Kiwi and the exclusion of breaking in future Games...

(Update: While I was editing this piece, I learned that there may be more to the story of how Rachael Gunn scammed her way to Paris...but if I devote any more energy assessing her shenanigans, this piece might never end. Depending upon when you read this, we will have learned that she did plan this massive farce with schemes to cash in on her notoriety while some other more deserving B-Girl from Down Under is waiting tables and donating blood to make ends meet. I'm not saying any of that is true, just pointing out how privilege is still the most addictive drug on the planet. Australia did not have to compete in this event. And watching an entire country go on the defensive is just as cringe as being tortured by watching her performance.)